Why the Marvel Cinematic Universe is a massive TV failure

www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/jul/27/secret-invasion-marvel-samuel-l-jackson-olivia-coleman

Not even a cast boasting Samuel L Jackson and Olivia Colman could save one of the least watched MCU projects ever. Does this mark the end of the world-dominating franchise?

If you want a sign of how far the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has fallen, look no further than this week’s Secret Invasion finale. Look at its comprehensive lack of impact. Look at the dearth of reaction it generated. Secret Invasion is one of THE big comic events, an opportunity for Marvel to match the breathless superhero orgy of Infinity War and Endgame. Yet it ended up being parped out on Disney+ as a series, and nobody on earth cared about it.

To be clear, this isn’t entirely Secret Invasion’s fault. For some time now, the entire MCU has been on the skids. Its CGI looks so bad that directors actively mock it in promotional videos, as Taika Waititi did for Thor: Love and Thunder. In return, the visual artists who work on the film complain about being overworked and overstretched in the service of film-makers who don’t seem to know what they want. Meanwhile, former stars such as Elizabeth Olsen, Chris Hemsworth and Robert Downey Jr are becoming increasingly public in their misgivings about their roles.

The dip in quality has been so pronounced, in fact, that the people at the head of the table have been forced to rush in and publicly course correct, and shows such as Secret Invasion have been the target. As far back as February, Kevin Feige, president of Marvel Studios, was telling people: “It is harder to hit the zeitgeist when there’s so much product out there,” and “The pace at which we’re putting out the Disney+ shows will change.” More recently, Bob Iger, managing director of Disney, seconded Feige’s statement by claiming that the root of the MCU’s decline is its non-stop output of television programmes. “Frankly, it diluted focus and attention,” he said this month.

This leaves Secret Invasion in a very bad place. Like the last few DC movies, which all suffered from the knowledge that they were the last few unloveable stragglers before film-maker James Gunn swept in and tidied house, Secret Invasion now stands as a totem of MCU rot. When even the producers are announcing that there are too many bad-quality Marvel shows on Disney+, it doesn’t exactly make you want to watch the latest one.

Especially because they clearly have a point. None of the shows that preceded Secret Invasion were particularly great. Moon Knight was weirdly boring for a show that featured a talking hippopotamus as a character. Ms Marvel was punishingly zany. She-Hulk: Attorney at Law ended up as an aimless, technically inept mess. The Marvel fatigue was real long before Secret Invasion came along.

That said, it doesn’t help that Secret Invasion is also pretty terrible. It seems fairly apparent that it had its heart set on being a complex, mature thriller. However, it lacks the chops to achieve its vision, resulting in very long, boring episodes interspersed with a handful of jarringly overblown set-pieces. It’s a viewing experience not unlike someone intermittently setting off an airhorn next to your ear during a church service. No wonder it’s the second least watched MCU series.

The biggest shame about Secret Invasion, though, is how badly it squandered such an amazing cast. It’s bad enough to wait this long to give Samuel L Jackson a proper vehicle of his own, only to doom it with weak material, but to waste the talents of the supporting cast is a crime. This is a show, remember, that boasts the likes of Olivia Colman, Emilia Clarke, Kingsley Ben-Adir and Ben Mendelsohn, some of the best actors on the planet. It’s sad to see. Speaking of which (spoilers),

In the end, Secret Invasion has been a flop. That’s OK. Flops happen. But this is the MCU, where everything is connected. The finale of Secret Invasion is said to tie directly into both The Marvels (out this year) and Armor Wars (no release date yet), but the poor viewing figures and bad reviews mean people will be going into those films with incomplete data. They won’t make as much sense, and all because audiences didn’t have the stomach for six hours of bad television. It’s another sign that the MCU – once so thrilling and fun – has become little more than homework. On the basis of Secret Invasion, the rot looks terminal.