Many serious film fans and casual moviegoers alike have often made similar commentary about the state of the film industry in the current day. There is a general lack of imagination, brave ideas and compelling storytelling being told that is also viewed as accessible or successful. While there have been plenty of noteworthy box office hits since the beginning of the 2010s, there is truth to the idea that modern cinema is dying. And while it is not the single load-bearing cause, the truth is that none other than Marvel Studios is more guilty of killing modern cinema.
Marvel established itself as a self-sufficient intellectual property reservoir in 2008 with the release of Iron Man. This refreshing take on the superhero genre was one of the handful of well-received superhero films in a time where they were still considered campy, nerdy and far from being a dominant force in Hollywood. Before this, only Christopher Nolan and Sam Raimi, with their respective Batman and Spiderman trilogies, were critically and commercially successful in the 20 years prior to the release of Iron Man. This meant that superhero films were still a fairly unproven genre with lots of potential but a risky past containing as many flops as it did hits.
Marvel shattered this expectation, creating a straightforward, accessible, high-content formula that would go on to stake their claim that the 2010s was their decade. Through the releases of Captain America and the first Avengers, the Marvel Cinematic Universe allowed for movies with different characters and stories to be created simultaneously with the promise of bringing them together for collaborative missions that would shatter box office headlines. Marvel repeated this formula three more times with the subsequent Age of Ultron (2015) and the tandem of Infinity War (2018) and Endgame (2019). These were then recognized as cultural touchstones of the late 2010s, with Endgame becoming the second-highest-grossing film of all time. This level of box office dominance was unprecedented at the time, and it still remains the high water mark for what other film franchises could be capable of reaching.
While the results were desirable for Marvel, its side effects on the film industry would prove disastrous. Other studios looked on with envy as they witnessed the genre formally considered ‘nerdy’ become the most successful on the planet. However, this desire to earn the same profits would come at a heavy cost for the consumers. As the 2010s reached their end, more and more studios would begin to turn to established properties more frequently. One of the core ideas behind this is that they are guaranteed to bring in a minimum audience through name-brand alone. This would lead to an enormous amount of sequels, reboots (e.g. Spiderman) and prequels (e.g. The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025)) being developed by all of Hollywood in a desperate attempt to catch their own lightning in a bottle. The decision to turn everything into a safe, popular franchise with marketable characters and easy storylines made many writers in Hollywood turn away from bold, envelope-pushing projects. Instead they chose to ride the wave and write as many sequel scripts to Star Wars or Marvel as possible. This destruction of creativity led to many of these sequels being panned critically while struggling to succeed in the box office because of their redundancy. Studios continue to try with mixed success, but it seems as though this has become the norm for film, with the majority of ‘big hits’ being remakes or reboots of old, already proven concepts. The distortion of film from an artform into a cash cow is dooming the medium for good, and we are running out of time to rescue it from this ugly grave.
Marvel Studios made a massive imprint on popular culture with the films they created, but at a painful price. While creating the gold standard for a film franchise, they ended up establishing a trend that nobody else has equalled. The result was the widespread sacrifice of originality within the film industry. With much of modern film feeling so bland, Marvel most certainly is a prime suspect for the death of cinema. Although there is always the possibility of a return to times before the superhero trend, it seems that with each passing release that we have already passed the point of no return.