By Brandon Fairweather
Marvel Studios is looking forward to re-structuring the Marvel Cinematic Universe for Phase 5 and beyond, following a controversial Phase 4 to fans.
On November 20th, Marvel’s parent company, Disney, re-hired former, now current, CEO Bob Iger in place of Bob Chapek following a $1.5 billion quarterly loss on Disney Plus.
Under Chapek’s leadership at Disney, Marvel released 18 total projects in two years since the start of Phase 4 in 2021, which is more projects in one phase than any of the previous three phases.
Prior to Iger taking over the reigns, Marvel had announced 15 confirmed and 8 unconfirmed projects for the MCU’s Phase 5 and 6 at Comic-Con 2022 that were originally going to culminate with Avengers: Secret Wars on Nov. 7, 2025, which would’ve resulted in 41+ projects in 4 years.
Amidst Disney’s quarterly loss, Marvel has adjusted their plans for future phases to focus on “quality over quantity”, according to CBR, after fans’ sentiments that have been reflected in their ratings for Phase 4’s shows and movies.
All the movies in Phase 4 of the MCU have been box office hits as they’ve combined to make an average of $802 million internationally, according to BoxOfficeMojo.
Although the movies are excelling in theaters internationally, a little over 57% of the seven movies released in Phase 4 earned fan ratings below 80%.
Phase 4’s movies accumulated an average critical score of 76% from the audience, according to Rotten Tomatoes.
Fans have also rated the Eternals, Thor: Love and Thunder, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Black Widow, which are all movies, as the worst 4 projects of the entire phase, according to CultureCrave.
While fans have about 43% of the films in Phase 4, majority of the Disney+ projects that were green-lit by former CEO Chapek to jumpstart the platform have seen more approval than the movies.
In comparison to ratings of Phase 4 movies by fans, the projects that came out on Disney+ saw higher approval ratings.
In fact, the projects that came out on Disney+ accounted for 80% of the 10-highest-rated projects of the entire phase, with the other two projects being movies.
As far as the critical audience score goes, Disney+ content saw approval ratings over 90%, which is a 14% difference compared to the movies.
In comparison to the previous phases, Phase 4 is not far off from Phases 1-3 as it pertains to approval ratings. Phases 1-3 of the MCU saw an average rating of 83.3% from the fans, while Phase 4 stacks up in line with the previous three ratings with a percentage a little over 83%.
Although Phase 4 stacks up to the first three phases of the MCU according to the numbers, they don’t always tell the entire story.
While the studio has seen good ratings for their shows and decent ratings for their movies, fans still don’t feel like the numbers reflect the quality of the phase overall.
As seen in articles from sources such as The Daily Beast, CBR, TeensInPrint and more that discuss issues with the MCU at large, there are a vast amount of gripes that many fans have with the current state of the projects that Marvel Studios have released such as the quality of their projects that’s become associated with former CEO Chapek, the connectivity of the universe, character development, inconsistent connections amongst projects and subpar writing.
While fans understand that Marvel Studios is attempting to rebuild their universe in Phase 4 following the events of Avengers: Endgame and introducing new characters to build towards their next big saga in “The Multiverse Saga,” fans are getting lost in what they see as no direction forward within the phase.
These are comments that Marvel President, Kevin Feige, sees all the time and in his announcement about future phases, he comments on giving fans a sense of direction:
“People used to have that guide point of when an Avengers movie would come to cap the Phase — it felt like announcing today that the Multiverse Saga and two Avengers films would cap that was something we needed to share.”
Kevin Feige, Comic-Con 2022
Although fans have had their gripes with Marvel Studios as it pertains to Phase 4, fans will have to wait for the future phases to come to see how the studio improves upon its direction as the “Multiverse Saga” continues.
Data Journalism 395 