With each movie sounding more and more similar, Disney is taking Marvel into a formulaic direction with their projects.
Marvel is “beating a dead horse.”
As morbid as that saying is, it perfectly sums up what Hollywood, more specifically Disney and larger production companies, are doing with their streamline content.
A perfect example of this is Marvel Studios and their work in the superhero genre.
They have a template and follow it every time because it receives great reviews and makes them (more importantly Disney) boatloads of money they can spend on the future.
Ant-Man, aka Scott Lang, said it best in “Avengers: Endgame”: “You’re repeating yourself! You’re repeating yourself!”
The last time a genre like this became so popular was in the mid-1960s.
It was the spaghetti-western and they became so oversaturated in the media.
It birthed new tropes and clichés and kept on producing more and more films until people lost interest and stopped watching them all together.
It turned into a dead genre because they didn’t change their story templates and/or the way they’re made.
It’s a straight forward nameless hero who goes into a new town and frees someone or something.
That is pretty much every spaghetti western ever. That’s why we can’t have modern movies becoming stale.
We need to see them explore new ways to make movies and give the hero new problems that can’t be solved with a one-two-punch or a huge laser sword.
They can give the heroes times to make the hard choice and have them choose the wrong option further progressing the story to the next film.
The movies the world loves now are becoming the same movie, blending together with ones that have come before.
They aren’t new and original like the originals that invented the genre, such as the 2000’s “X-Men” and 2002’s “Spider-Man.”
They need to become fresh and new again.
Introducing the audience to new characters or at least new versions of old characters that can reinvent the series will keep the audience guessing what will come next.
Maybe the tropes will grow and change over time, but at this rate this genre of films may become dead and the few that go beyond into the future will either hold a special sense of nostalgia or it just has that key all of the other superhero movies need.
“This is the fight of our lives, and we’re going to win. Whatever it takes.” (Steve Rogers, “Avengers: Endgame”)