Why does Marvel’s Phase 4 feel so disconnected and muddled?

Marvel Studios continues to expand its universe, but its newest movies haven’t reached the same highs as earlier entries

Superhero and comic book movies continue to dominate the box office with huge lines at cinemas for the latest action-packed extravaganza. Since 2008, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has ruled the roost with its cavalcade of beloved characters and dense, inter-connected storylines. But the genre’s most beloved achievement has stumbled a bit with its latest phase and fans are starting to ask - has the MCU lost its magical touch?

Branded as the “Multiverse Saga”, Phase 4 has had the shortest timeline in the entire franchise, spanning barely more than a year, mainly due to delays caused by the coronavirus pandemic. It is also the first phase to not end with the grand climax of an Avengers movie, but instead has numerous TV shows and specials that mostly serve to tie up plotlines. This seems particularly odd given that Phase 3 ended with Endgame, which left many fans teary-eyed, broken-hearted, and dying to know what happened next. 

BLACK WIDOW

Phase 4 stumbled out of the gate with 2021’s Black Widow, a look back on the overarching storyline of Natasha Romanoff, the titular super spy. Fans had been calling for a standalone film for the character since her appearance in the first Avengers movie. The film was initially part of Phase 3, but delays pushed it back to Phase 4 and so it does not have the larger connections to the Multiverse many of the later movies do.

The movie tries to connect with fans through well-choreographed action and a simple spy storyline to provide an emotional send-off to the character. The film also introduced Yelena Bonova (a phenomenal Florence Pugh), Natasha’s sister and another victim of the Red Room Soviet spy training programme, who will likely pick up the super spy baton going forward. However, the film is held back by bad Russian accents, questionable CGI, and perhaps most damningly, a lacklustre villain. The Taskmaster, a master assassin and tactician from the comics, had their story rewritten to flesh out Natasha’s MCU character arc in a way that left them a bit hollow. That hollowness is also true about the rest of the film, which feels as if it was dutifully tying off loose ends rather than building to the next big climax for the MCU.

SHANG-CHI AND THE TEN RINGS

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings came next and brought a martial arts flavour to the MCU, focusing on a mostly Asian cast, Chinese and Asian-American culture, and concepts of mysticism through the character of Xu Shang-Chi (Simu Liu), who goes by the name Shaun. The origin story for the character is grounded by Shaun’s relationship with his father (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) and his friendship with Katy (Awkwafina). 

The movie follows the classic Marvel origin formula with a strong blend of action enhanced with CGI and quick humour from a talented cast. Though the final act of the film goes a little over-the-top, the storyline is quite soulful and ends in a humbling experience that caps it off thematically. The character relationships and the major threat to the world make for a great standalone entry in the franchise, but the difference in tone and subject matter still makes the film quite detached from the other MCU properties. A few cameos try to tie Shang-Chi into the larger MCU, but not even the final scenes fully clear up how this cast will tie into the rest of the ongoing story.

ETERNALS

Where Shang-Chi provides a tighter, more contained experience, Eternals feels extravagant with a grand narrative, dynamic visuals, a star-studded cast, and heavy lore. The film’s broad scope and ambition are ultimately its undoing as the film loses itself and its sense of identity in a frantic plot that tries to introduce too many characters in too short a time to get the audience to care. Chloé Zhao’s stunning visuals and strong performances from the core cast, with the little they are given to do, ultimately do not add up to a satisfying entry. 

Of the first three Phase 4 entries, Eternals has the clearest ties to the larger MCU but is largely used to justify why beings imbued with immortality and incredible power do not intervene during the Infinity War and do not add to any past or future entries in the franchise. 

SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME

On the other end of the spectrum is Spider-Man: No Way Home, a film that is about where its titular character came from and where he’s going. Tying together the different cinematic versions of Spider-Man is not easy to comprehend let alone pull off, but Marvel’s success on this front drew droves of fans to theatres. The nostalgia-forward approach does have its drawbacks though. The plot is a tad reliant on pulling in tons of characters, especially iconic villains, from various eras in Peter Parker’s cinematic history. It’s also a bit more complicated than it needs to be and the involvement of Doctor Strange, a supposedly level-headed hero, in the shenanigans of this plot seem a bit out of character. 

Despite this, Tom Holland succeeded in bringing more range to his Peter in this entry, which is a strong foundation for future entries. However, the position the character is left in at the end of the film complicates things and we’ll just have to see what the bevvy of upcoming Spider-Man projects manage to pull off. 

DOCTOR STRANGE AND THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness came next and, unfortunately, proved to be more madness than multiverse. Many fans were excited that director Sam Raimi (of Spider-Man 2, and Evil Dead fame) was helming the project. Unfortunately, the released movie shows that directors have little to add to Marvel projects aside from their names. In fact, the movie’s ‘horror’ scene was one of its worst, wasting an entire A-list cast for something that made little sense and retcons Wandavision, the best Marvel TV show, while cutting off hope of its continuation. The character assassination of Wanda Maximoff in particular shows how disconnected and unaware the movies are of their TV counterparts. 

The big draw of the movie – the journey through different parallel universes – did not live up to the hype either. While the movie teased characters and cameos across the realms, it never delved too deep, keeping things on a surface level. While the new characters and CGI could have made for a fun romp, it ends up limp and disappointing. And while strange might be part of the title, that doesn’t actually explain why the titular doctor seemingly has little to say about his previous dimension-hopping adventure in No Way Home, which had seemed so integral to the Multiverse Saga.  

THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER

If Multiverse of Madness is a messy film, Thor: Love and Thunder is an actual mess. The slow, careful character development Thor made over his three previous movies was tossed by the wayside as if the writers gave up on writing a complete and engaging script and let the actors make things up as they went along. The film is striving for a light, goofy tone, but falters because it doesn’t fit with the seriousness of the major storylines. As a result, Christian Bale’s dramatic antagonist Gorr the God Butcher is underutilised, Jane Foster’s melancholy arc as Thor is rushed through, and some powerful side characters are mocked for cheap laughs. 

Love and Thunder is a clear case of wasted potential. By the time the movie ends, not only does the audience have little idea of where Thor and the characters around him are going, they don’t even know what tone to expect in the next entry. 

BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is the capstone to Phase 4 of the MCU. As an artistic achievement within the restraints, Wakanda Forever is stunning. Following the death of the late Chadwick Boseman (who played T’Challah in the first film), the filmmakers and writers were left with the huge task of paying tribute to him while also giving the other characters and the audience the space to move forward with the series. To its immense credit, the film manages it. However, the effort is not without its drawbacks. The lack of a strong central character shifts proceedings and the film focuses on a slower, more suspenseful story focused on ideas of conflict and revenge. 

Given all the things it has to accomplish in its runtime, the film has a bit of a mechanical nature and lacks some of the spark of the original. There is also some sense that the film is holding back on some characters. Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne) could have had a powerful dynamic with the rest of the cast, but the movie seems to be waiting for the next MCU phase to utilise her potential to its fullest. The same seems true for Namor, played gracefully by Tenoch Huerta, who does not have a completely convincing character shift in the final act of the film. However, the way his story wraps up does leave him available for future projects.

WHAT'S NEXT?

Overall, Phase 4 of the MCU tried to accomplish a lot. Perhaps too much. It tried to tie off the stories of existing characters while introducing new ones, it tried to explore new tones and genres while giving audiences familiar entertainment, and it tried to bring the intensity of the franchise down gently after the explosive Endgame while sowing seeds for the future. The comics took several years, numerous characters, and a massive number of issues to lay out their version of the Multiverse. The movie adaptations tried to pull it off in abridged form and didn’t quite succeed. Ultimately, these movies failed to pick up traction and lay the sufficient groundwork for what is to come. 

Many of the new characters, and even some of the older ones who cropped up in this phase, have lacked layers, defining details, and storyline depth. The lack of an Avengers entry at the conclusion also made it feel anti-climactic. There seemed little effort to form a complete team to tackle the threats of the Multiverse

At this moment in time, Marvel seems to have stumbled into an unintentional imbalance. A lot of attention seems to be going towards the TV shows that are shoring up the Disney + streaming service and the movies seem to lack the level of care and dedication apparent in previous phases. Phase 4 suffers heavily from the way each entry seems cordoned off from the others, restricted to its own small playground without enough space to branch out. Marvel should make an effort to ensure that future projects are more cohesive in their storyline and feel. It is, after all, the defining aspect that kick-started the MCU and made it one of the most popular and profitable franchises of all time. If they do not make a conscious effort to do so, subsequent entries will continue to feel isolated, muddled, and disjointed.