Marvel’s problem wasn’t that the films got bad. They’re actually all decent films. It’s that they got greedy. Before they thought about linking all the films, they needed to make it so all the films were great standalone films. That just made it feel like we had to commit to everything and that’s just daunting. In all honesty, films like Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania and Captain America: Brave New World are decent. Though the fighting scenes were subpar in the latter. They really lack fluidity. But they suffer from the now you have to see… In short they jumped the gun and it cost them.
Also Kang was a good villain. Shame they didn’t bleed him into the universe properly. Kang versus Doom would’ve been delicious.
Yeah, they’ve run into the same issue comics can have.
Once you have the first crossover, there’s an idea that you have to keep doing them.
And you don’t. More importantly, the broader the crossover gets, the less stamina anyone is going to have for following the damn story arc across a dozen titles.
Add in the fact that you’re bouncing between movies and tv shows, as well as more characters than anyone can track, and you get trouble. Stack the difficulty in knowing what order to watch things in, and more people drop off, if they didn’t just because they’re now expected to pay for a steaming service.
Then, when some of the movies end up weak as hell, you shed more fans.
And, unlike comics, you aren’t getting an installment every month. Some parts of the stories have years between them. You can’t maintain serialized interest at that time range. Long gaps between seasons kills shows.
Don’t get me started on the comics. My biggest issue with them is the non-permanence. Every time something good happens, it gets reset and all my time and energy was wasted.