Just Stay Home: Are Marvel Movies Still Worth The Hype?

How Marvel has sacrificed artistry to capitalize off of the profit-driven, formulaic culture of cinema today.

A few weeks ago, I went to see Spider-Man: No Way Home – The More Fun Stuff Version, a re-release of the original Spider-Man: No Way Home movie with added content. I had seen the original when it was released back in December 2021 and its re-release was, granted, more fun. I got to watch the same reunion of all the Spider-Mans and all the villains with a sprinkle of extra comedy scenes that developed the world of Spider-Man in a needless but amusing way. My evening was, in the highest praise, not wasted. But as I left the theater, I couldn’t help but feel as if the movie was a bit, well, cheap.

In a 2019 interview with Empire, director Martin Scorsese explained, “I don’t see [Marvel movies.] I tried, you know? But that’s not cinema. Honestly, the closest I can think of them, as well-made as they are, with actors doing the best they can under the circumstances, is theme parks.” While there was media outrage about his criticism, he’s not the first person to speak critically of Marvel movies. The general public seems to be split into two halves: dedicated Marvel fans and those who think the movies are repetitive, boring action movies. And yet, despite the split opinion, Marvel continues to rake in billions in gross income, with a worldwide box office revenue of 26.6 billion dollars. So the MCU isn’t cinema but it has incredible monetary success––where exactly does it fit into our world of film today?

Marvel Studios was born out of a desire to put Stan Lee’s beloved comic characters on the screen. Since 2008, they’ve released 29 movies in the MCU and are on course to release 6 more in the fifth phase of their universe. The Walt Disney Company bought them in 2009 and, together, they’ve amassed over a billion dollars in box office revenue. Marvel movies are huge in pop culture and ignite conversations in both the media and in personal lives. If there’s a new Marvel movie coming out, you know about it. It’s widely popular, so why is there hesitation in labeling their movies as cinema?

When looking at what separates Marvel and independent films, other than budget and resources, it’s how much risk they take. As James McMahon wrote in his graduate dissertation on capitalist power in Hollywood, “The conventional wisdom is that cinema is a very risky business enterprise, which means that even the biggest Hollywood firms are uncertain about their financial success.” Major film studios are, first and foremost, businesses trying to turn a profit. The art of film is something they’re willing to sacrifice along the way. And, as with any creative field, art’s subjectivity means there is a major monetary risk involved. 

Consequently, major film studios have developed certain strategies to minimize this risk and ensure that their film will turn a profit, such as, “the repetition of genres, sequels, remakes; the cult of movie stars…” etc. McMahon goes on to explain that “…if the social relations of cinema are determinable because they are orderly, Hollywood’s biggest distributors can then select and capitalize upcoming film projects with a greater degree of confidence.” Maybe there is a reason why Marvel movies feel repetitive and formulaic––it’s because they are. Marvel has figured out that with a certain number of well-known actors, straightforward comedic moments, and CGI-ed action sequences, they can guarantee that an upcoming movie will make some profit and satisfy the company’s monetary desires. When they take fewer risks in their production, they take fewer risks in relation to the film’s income.

Marvel seems to think they can predict audience reception, but how accurate are they? Do people really want to watch the same movies with different superheroes and titles? Yes, in a way, their formulas do seem to guarantee a profit. The privilege of being a big name is an increased chance that people will buy tickets to see their upcoming movie––brand familiarity can go a long way. But Marvel has failed in guaranteeing a positive audience reception. Of all released Marvel movies, only two have scored above four stars on Letterboxd.

For one of the biggest film studios in the world, that number is shockingly low. Yet, when we look at Everything Everywhere All At Once, an indie film with an eighth of No Way Home’s budget, a never-before-seen concept, and an Asian female lead––essentially everything that goes against a major film studio’s guide to success––we see that it has had more audience and critical acclaim than any Marvel movie. With 4.5 stars on Letterboxd (it was briefly Letterboxd’s top-rated film of all time), “universal acclaim” on Metacritic, and multiple glowing reviews from magazines and newspapers, it has stirred up an immense amount of positive reception that’s rarely seen. When Marvel hides behind the safety formulas, they sacrifice a certain originality and creativity that audiences are craving-–that they found in Everything Everywhere All At Once. When film studios take some risk, they can bring something fresh to the table and find success in capturing bored audiences.

Everything Everywhere All At Once may not have turned as much of a profit as No Way Home, but profit is only a fraction of the conversation when discussing audience reception. Even if we were to discuss numbers, Everything Everywhere All At Once is the first A24 movie to gross over $100 million worldwide and grossed $1.1 million from just 38 theaters in its second weekend of release. In fact, Everything Everywhere All At Once grossed an average of $28,900 per theater in its second weekend while No Way Home grossed an average of $28,200 per theater on its opening day. For an indie film competing with an incredibly-anticipated threequal of a beloved Marvel trilogy, those numbers are no small feat and speak to just how many people want to see something like Everything Everywhere All At Once. For Marvel, profit is expected. For Everything Everywhere All At Once, this amount of profit is significantly monumental. 

So why are MCU movies so successful? Why do people continue to watch them? The broad answer is: there’s nothing better to watch. Just by taking a quick look at AMC’s current streaming movies, it’s a mixed bag of underwhelming horror movies, sequels and threequels, and probably the 6th medieval action movie I’ve seen the trailer for this past month. People are watching Marvel movies because there’s nothing else for them to watch. Everything Everywhere All At Once brought audiences something new and sensational but it was a rare occurrence in cinema. 

For a large majority of the time, people are watching mediocre or even below-average movies. In a world of unremarkable films, anyone wanting to visit the theater and watch a movie will likely turn to what they know: Marvel. What Marvel offers isn’t quality, it’s familiarity. Just in the way Hollywood refrains from taking risks in the movies they produce, audiences refrain from taking risks in the movies they watch. A majority of theater-goers are not cinephiles, enthusiasts willing to give a chance to anything; they’re just people looking to spend two hours having more fun than they would sitting at home. Marvel movies guarantee exactly that––a fun time with CGI and anticipatory music. When you watch a Marvel movie, at least you know you’ll get something out of it. It may not be on the nominee list for a Best Picture Oscar, but at least it’s not awful, and when all the other titles on the now-playing lists are awful, you’re picking the better of cheap-comedy-and-flat-character evils. People may want to see Everything Everywhere All At Once or Parasite or any other unassuming film that took over the world of cinema, but these gems are very few and far between. 

Still, major film studios are, after all, major for a reason. Their formulas do work. At the end of the day, No Way Home is one of the highest-grossing movies and I did, as promised, have fun watching three Spider-Mans hop around and make inside jokes. There’s nothing wrong or shameful about enjoying Marvel movies (it’s the subjectivity of media and whatnot.), but Marvel’s main goal doesn’t seem to be to make good movies, it’s to turn a profit. When their recent releases saw a decline in quality and success, they jumped at the chance to release No Way Home so they could capitalize off of Spider-Man fans’ nostalgia and rake in a massive amount of money. It’s the exact antithesis of “capitalism breeds innovation.” It will always be in a film studios’ best interest to play it safe, much to the misfortune and displeasure of audiences. Spider-Man: No Way Home – The More Fun Stuff Version is a perfect reflection of our money-driven society, a society that punishes the risk and reward formula.