America is Over the MCU: Fantastic 4 and X-Men Lost Their Audience Years Ago

A young film attendee around age 8 to Robert Downney Jr. ‘s initial Iron Man (2008) origin story is now in their mid-20’s and everything about the MCU has changed since its inception over a decade and a half ago. That was before the concept of infinite “phases”, ham-fisted gender swapping of legacy characters, and recent The Walt Disney Company turmoil erupting into sensational media reports of a troubled executive’s coveted “second shower” and paltry shareholder dividends worth no more than 30 cents.

Growing up in the 1980’s, I was fortunate enough to receive a monthly mail subscription to several Marvel comic titles, including the Fantastic Four and X-Men; it was an incredible era to enjoy some of Stan Lee’s finest work supervising groundbreaking creative talent like Chris Claremont and John Byrne. In the modern era, The Disney Marvel film versions of both titles were recognized as being potentially the most popular and also hardest to pull off of the MCU films. These jewels in Stan’s crown were essentially saved for last, but popularity and fan acceptance of the latest string of Marvel offerings on the big screen has waned, all of that magical Avengers Endgame momentum and big money has evaporated into thin, post-pandemic air.

The Western genre reigned supreme for half a century, capturing Americans’ imaginations in daily newspaper comic strips, monthly comic books, on radio, television, and in the sweeping cinematic epics still remembered today once presented in theaters retrofitted to accommodate some of the widest formatted films ever made. Keep in mind, the much loved television series Gunsmoke was broadcasted for 20 straight years with several made for TV films delivered in the early 1990’s starring the then still living members of the original cast. After Hollywood director Micheal Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate (1980) was released, its bloated budget, insane shooting schedule, poor reviews, and lack of interest by movie-goers helped to destroy an entire film studio, the Western was declared dead almost overnight.

As a little boy in Missouri in the late 1970’s and 80’s, I was often dressed by my parents like a little cowboy complete with hat, holster, and toy pistols, just like kids before me in the 1930’s, 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s. That type of cultural legacy Westerns built overtime is something The Walt Disney Company thought they could replicate with the massive backlog of Marvel comic characters and storylines, but now after diminishing box office returns and audience rejection of entire Disney Plus television series, it is fundamentally too late to introduce characters like Reed Richards, Dr. Doom, Galactus, the Silver Surfer, Wolverine, Professor X, Storm, Cyclops, Jean Gray and others. A warning to Disney Marvel: kids never were dressed like cowboys again.

I am told the Western genre will make a complete comeback soon, it took more than 40 long years to recover. The smartest way to approach the most popular unfilmed Marvel properties at this point is to preserve their memory and not release them in the current MCU modern era. Superhero fatigue is real in the sense that not only are the fans and general audience sick of these weak, repetitive offerings, but budget weary Hollywood producers are ready to pull the plug themselves, making this the worst time ever to make an X-Men film where production values will be too low to pull it off properly. You will eventually get Reed Richards and the First Family of Marvel on the cheap where a lower budget is demanded by Hollywood. Imagine being told that since The Marvels (2023) had a $200 million budget and was a flaming box-office disaster, you can only get Wolverine and company in a film for a $100 million compromise. Oh yeah wait, that basically just happened.

Matt Ankney is a freelance writer living in St.Louis, you can find more about his work at twitter.com/Ozark_Matt.