Has Marvel lost its relevance?

Marvel is currently facing its toughest phase, where even decent films are failing at the United States of America box office, just barely recovering their budget, all because of the global audience.

After Endgame, there was no movie, except Spider-Man: Far From Home, Deadpool, and Wolverine, that made an impact on the box office. Even if you asked Marvel Cinematic Universe fans, they couldn't even tell you films after Endgame.

Films are just one side; on the other hand, series were also failing. The breaking point for the MCU was that even big names were unable to pull audiences. Just three projects blasted the screen originally; we can say just two—Loki and Moon Knight—while Daredevil already had a built-in audience from the Netflix series, which is why.

Here, the question is: why did they fail? What was it about the standard set by Endgame, or was it a lack of favorite characters? Let's break it down one by one.

The reason for MCU's failure is clear: the lack of relevance. Yeah, it somehow connects with the lack of favorite characters, but it doesn't. Here, relevance is about the connection between fans and characters. There is no such point of new characters that connect with me. It is all basically related to the writing department, where the writers are not doing what they were getting paid for.

Just imagine a character like Sentry, the strongest character in the MCU, being introduced, but no one has the buzz. We got Female Hulk, or She-Hulk, but it failed; like, even Marvel wants to forget they had some characters like that. The studio just focused on cashing in things but did not monitor what was going on in the air. If they did, they would cut down their wages. The poor writing made a lot of money and wasted time for Marvel and the fans.

After a while, Marvel is now heading towards a revival where we are going to have the buzz we all love. The original Marvel stuff, after Fantastic Four and Deadpool & Wolverine. They announced the biggest homecoming: the return of Robert Downey Jr. as Doctor Doom in Avengers: Doomsday. They are going to pull the biggest star cast we have ever had on screen. The idea is the buzz the view count of their four teasers has. The total views they grabbed were one billion—one of the biggest numbers we have on social media from any movie.

What makes this movie so special is the return of RDJ itself. Marvel kneeled in front of fans to bring back not only RDJ but also Chris Evans as Captain America and Chris Hemsworth as Thor, returning to the silver screen. The list of characters was so long that it would take a full paragraph. It was rumored to be over 500 to 600 million. And the combined expected cost for Doomsday and Secret Wars will be near one billion. The amount itself is huge; we can hardly imagine so much money ever being spent on a single project.

The buzz is real, but the biggest issue for the film will be the release date. December 18, 2026, is not a free slot for this project, as it is already going to clash with Dune 3, which was confirmed. While it was rumored that Ice Age 6 will be released on the same date, until now, nothing is final.

Another major country for MCU films is India, where there are a lot of fans who are crazy about the MCU. Here is the catch: in India, it was expected that Doomsday would directly clash with Love Insurance Kompany, a much-anticipated project from the South industry. But it is not official; it is based on trade reports. The confirmed news is that this film is indirectly clashing with Shah Rukh Khan's film King, where his daughter Suhana Khan is going to be introduced. This movie already has so much hype. SRK is returning to the screen after three years, and the previous projects were pretty interesting. That already made a buzz among Bollywood fans, which will be a headache for the MCU.

On top of this, if we add films in the USA releasing one week earlier, we have names like Violent Night 2, which made a great buzz from the first part's success, and Jumanji 3, a big film series that already has big names like Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart, while One Hundred Years of Solitude is also in line just before the Doomsday boom. If we add films releasing after this project, we have names like Werwulf, with names like Aaron Taylor. The concept of the film is based on werewolves, which is one of the most famous horror genres. This film also increases the competition for Doomsday at the domestic box office.

After all these things, if Doomsday survives, it will be a cult classic. But until now, it just feels like a blind move from the MCU and Disney Studios. For sure, the buzz and the hype are pretty crazy, but clashing with such big films will have an impact on the film. On the other side, MCU fans have emotions with RDJ; his return will be an impactful, creative thing. All these things will be great to watch—whether it becomes the highest-grossing film ever or just proves to be the dumbest idea ever pulled.