Marvel’s Future Depends On The Thunderbolts And That’s A Mistake
Thunderbolts is Marvel's next big team-up, but it's being set up to fail by the sheer weight of the MCU.
When Marvel released The Avengers in 2012, Hollywood was changed forever as, for the first time, characters from five different films were brought together into one movie, creating a massive blockbuster event that was, for years, the most profitable film in history. Warner Bros saw that success and tried to skip the buildup, going directly into the big team-up with Justice League, which failed spectacularly for a multitude of reasons. Now, Marvel is set to debut Thunderbolts next year, the first big team-up since Avengers: Endgame, and as things stand now, it’ll be an uphill battle to match even a fraction of The Avengers‘ success.
Working against Thunderbolts is the effort required to know the background of each character; it will require watching Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Black Widow, Ant-Man and The Wasp, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Hawkeye, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and likely, Captain America 4. That’s five films and two tv series, all of which require other films to have been watched first in order to understand, so realistically, it’s a massive commitment to be fully educated before even entering the theater to watch Thunderbolts.
James Gunn has commented on the real impact of “superhero fatigue,” Emilia Clarke also alluded to it recently by saying Secret Invasion doesn’t “require watching 17 films” to understand. The initial Marvel plan to flood Disney+ with multiple shows each year has been put on hold, with none of the 2022 releases (Ms. Marvel, Moon Knight, and She-Hulk) becoming a major MCU hit. All of that adds up to the very real possibility that when Thunderbolts is filled with B-level characters that the general audience doesn’t know, no one’s going to show up to theaters.
Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania was a disaster for Marvel, Thor: Love and Thunder was a disappointment, and the changing cast of the Black Panther films may not be as successful in their third outing. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is a hit, but it’s also the last film with the current team and James Gunn’s last outing in the MCU, which puts more pressure on the success of The Marvels (which faces similar issues to Thunderbolts). As the first “new” property of Marvel’s Phase 5, Thunderbolts, even a year away from release, is going to be the litmus test that will decide where the MCU now stands in a post-Avengers world.
From overcoming the poor performance of Marvel’s Phase 4, to the sheer amount of backstory required to digest before watching it, the deck is stacked against Thunderbolts. Then again, the DCU supervillain team-up, Suicide Squad, exceeded low expectations and became a lasting success, even if the first third of the film was character introductions. “This is Katana, she’s got my back” is an admittedly low bar to clear, but who will remember John Walker two years after the show that introduced him?
Marvel’s Phase 5 will be made up, movie-wise, of Quantumania, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, The Marvels, Captain America 4, Thunderbolts, and possibly Blade, making it the first complete phase to rely mostly on characters introduced in Disney+ shows. Sam Wilson may be a holdover from Winter Soldier, but his breakout came in The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, making this, on paper, the weakest-looking slate of movies in the 15-year history of the MCU.
We’ll get our answers in under a year, when Captain America 4 will be out, with Thunderbolts following one month later. Between now and then, can Marvel regain the MCU mojo that made them the most dominant force in pop culture? Or will the sheer weight of all these movies and shows bring it down, just as the comics hit rock bottom in the mid-90s?
Of course, using Marvel’s past as a guide, when the comic industry was bottoming out, they launched the Ultimates universe, a new, updated version of their characters without 50 years of backstories weighing them down. It was such a success that it became the foundation for the MCU. So even if Thunderbolts fails as the big Phase 5 team-up, there’s precedent for Marvel learning from failure, but will it be enough?
