Because I work in a nerd-adjacent field, I've been asked a lot over the last few weeks whether I was going to go and see Thunderbolts, and every time I'm asked I give the same answer: lol absolutely not.
This is not because I am pre-emptively criticising an individual film without having seen it, or that I am giving shit to those who are excited to go see it. For all I know this could be a fun little superhero romp, a lighthearted couple of hours spent in a cinema watching actors blow shit up. But then, this is not really an individual film, is it? It's a mere chapter, the latest instalment in a movement that lost me (and a lot of other people) a long time ago and will likely never get us back.
You can point to all kinds of factors behind the colossal success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe between 2008 (when Iron Man was released) and 2019 (when Avengers: Endgame hit cinemas), and whichever one you point to--the chemistry, the humour, the effects--would be a fair point. I've always figured the series' success was broadly based on something more fundamental, though, something that goes beyond the merits of any of the individual films or the people involved in making them.
Comic books are modern mythology, a cornerstone of Western popular culture (and American in particular), but they have also grown over the decades into an impenetrable mess of conflicting canon, characters and storylines. You can say that you love Superman, and I will believe you, but the average person has not read an actual Superman comic since they were a kid, if ever, because to commit yourself to reading superhero comics is to subject yourself to the torment of burying yourself under almost a century of bullshit.
That's why even at points in my life when I have been super into comics, and there have been several, I was never really into Marvel or DC stuff. I sought out fresher stories with a clean plate, like Tom Strong and Planetary, whose sagas I could get a handle on from beginning to end, not those with encyclopaedic levels of baggage behind every character, location and reference.
The real strength of the MCU was that it felt the same way. It brought us everything great about comics--the adventures, the escapades, the one-liners--but without any of the burden. Iron Man, Thor, Captain America–all these film series started from scratch, and so millions of people around the world were able to watch as these movies told new and self-contained stories, despite the fact they all starred very old characters.
Or, at least, that was the strength of the MCU until Endgame. The conclusion of the Avengers saga left Disney and Marvel with a void to fill, and instead of filling it with whatever a new generation's version of the MCU could have been, they just started shovelling whatever leftover and rebaked slop they could find in there instead. So we got a succession of TV shows and movies that felt cast adrift from the series that broke box office records, full of new actors in old costumes and brighter spotlights on lesser characters, each one telling a new story but also one that wove into those that had come before.
As these films and shows began piling up, that central appeal of the MCU began to wane. The whole point was that these were simple stories for the masses that you could partake in every few months, as good-to-amazing films hit the big screen through that 2008-2019 run. But when those simple stories started continuing in movies less people were seeing and cross-referencing the events of TV shows even less people had seen, that created problems.
I first noticed this a few years back, when I found that it was becoming a struggle to keep up with everything. I don't know if it was the volume of information I was now supposed to be retaining or just that the quality of the films and shows that were conveying it had gone downhill, but somewhere around that first slate of TV shows (Wandavision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022), staying in step with the wider Marvel narrative had stopped being a pleasure and had started feeling like a chore.
I used to be into the Marvel movies because, for the most part, they were fantastic big-screen adventures. I followed the story because I wanted to follow it, but lately it's been more about obligation than pleasure, Marvel keeping you forever hostage, because how could you possibly enjoy Captain America VII: Shield Party if you haven't seen the Disney + series Black Widow Goes To Washington, which itself only makes sense if you know the backstory from Hawkeye Nearly Died Under A Snow Plough?
I finally hit my breaking point by the end of Loki's second season. I made it all the way through to the final episode, one that was piling increasing amounts of intrigue and major new villain reveals into the canon, before turning it off only a few minutes in, because...well, everything I've just said hit me within a few seconds of stark realisation, like a bucket of cold water being dumped on my head. I haven't watched a single Marvel movie or TV show since.
And let me tell you, it feels great. Where even five years ago I would be watching Marvel trailers and then movies like they were homework, I now see brief mentions of announcements on my social media timelines and feel nothing. I can't recommend it enough. It's liberating. Every hour of the last three years that I would have been stuffing Marvel slop into my brain I've instead been doing quite literally anything else, from playing with my kids to helping run a website to watching, gasp, other types of movies.
To make that break, though, means making the break. You can't step off the ride then try to get back on later while it's still moving, not without a ton of homework that would defeat the point of getting off in the first place. I have no idea what Thunderbolts' deal even is! I half-recognise people from old movies, I see some assholes from TV shows I did not enjoy and have stopped watching, and I have no idea what they're doing here or why I should care. Being off the ride really highlights how much of a ride it is; that somewhere along the line the MCU stopped being about making cool movies (that made billions of dollars) and started being, like so much else in our modern hellscape, about user retention.
Which has worked for Disney, to a point: even in its reduced state, Marvel stuff still makes a lot of money, still has millions of fans around the world who keep turning up again and again to consume it, and I'm so tired of criticising stocks-addled movie executives that I can't even fault them for trying to make the line keep going up, as much as I can't get angry at a dog for barking.
As a result of that greed, though, and a complete inability to let go of the golden goose that was the MCU, Disney has created something so much more than a series of fun movies that all tied into one another. They've created an obligation, a cultural job you need to clock in for to keep getting paid, and like all shitty jobs, there are few things on Earth that feel better than quitting and never going back.
