It’s finally 2026, which means that “The Mandalorian and Grogu” will be released in theaters in a few months, while “Avengers: Doomsday” will debut at the end of the year. However, even though we’re getting movies from two of my favorite franchises ever, I honestly find myself feeling bored. It isn’t that I’m not looking forward to these films, but too much has happened in these franchises to keep me from getting too excited.
Star Wars Until Now
My relationship with Star Wars has gotten complicated over the recent years. Personally, I don’t believe it’s in as big a train wreck as the MCU (which I’ll get into more later), but it’s also not in a good place right now, either. It all started when Star Wars returned to the big screen in 2015 with the theatrical release of “The Force Awakens,” which fans have positively received and continue to praise to this day. Many people enjoy the nostalgia it evokes for those who grew up with the original trilogy, the new characters and performances, and the complexity of the villain Kylo Ren. A couple of years later, they released one of their biggest and most successful movies to date: “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.” I was surprised to see that half the critics on Rotten Tomatoes seem to have issues with the film, but many other fans love the bold and darker approach to the storytelling, (once again) the characters, and how perfectly the movie ties into the events of “A New Hope.” However, I believe that it was after this that the franchise (for the most part) started to fall apart.
In fact, I believe that both the fans and even Lucasfilm knew the franchise was going downhill after the release of “The Last Jedi.” I already wrote an article about this, so I won’t get too deep into this, but the reception for this film was so bad that even Mark Hamill himself dissed it! Do you have any idea how bad your movie has to be for one of your own actors to trash-talk it in public interviews? Yet, somehow, that wasn’t even the worst of it. A couple of years later, “The Rise of Skywalker” took the narrative, but like when you give a child a monkey wrench, it just didn’t know what to do with it. From Palpatine making an unexplained return from the grave, to the rushed plots, and to the unresolved side plots or character arcs, fans have no shortage of complaints about this movie. While Lucasfilm has attempted to rectify this incredibly tragic mistake by releasing amazing shows, such as “The Mandalorian,” the final season of “Clone Wars,” “The Bad Batch,” and even “Andor,” a few bad apples are unfortunately inevitable. And there isn’t a bigger or better example than “The Acolyte,” which I don’t believe I’ve ever seen that much hatred in a work of fiction in a long time. Not that the fans have no good reason, as the plot is incredibly inconsistent and boring that it’s not even funny, the characters were miswritten, the lore was mishandled (seriously, Jedi and Sith can just erase minds with no explanation?), and many other reasons deserve their own article. But the bottom line is that this show alone pretty much destroyed everyone’s excitement and expectations for the future of Star Wars. Although I personally enjoy other shows like “Obi-Wan Kenobi” or “Ahsoka,” many fans still aren’t impressed, and that can be a significant factor in determining the success of a show or movie. Therefore, since Star Wars is already on (at best) shaky ground, it’s an incredibly large risk to not only release the first theatrical Star Wars film in years, but also to take something that’s clearly meant to be a series for streaming and turn it into a movie. Worse, with the overall negative reception of Mando’s third season, Disney will lose many fans if they fumble an extremely iconic and popular character like Dinn Djarin.
Marvel Until Now
Many people say that the MCU died after “Avengers: Endgame,” and I couldn’t agree more. The new era began with the release of “Spider-Man: Far From Home,” and fans had such high hopes for the future of the MCU after watching such a compelling story and character growth for Peter Parker. Many faiths were further strengthened after watching “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” which also presented a compelling story, fun and memorable characters, and awesome action sequences. It didn’t even matter that Wenwu’s rings weren’t completely comic book-accurate because of how amazingly they were utilized. Even the streaming era for Marvel started strong with positive receptions to “WandaVision,” “Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” “Loki,” and even the first season of “What If…?” However, that’s about as good as it got in the eyes of the fans.
The main problem for Marvel from this point forward is that they have forgotten what made the MCU successful in the first place: clear, consistent storytelling. From 2008 to 2019, Marvel wasn’t concerned with playing catch-up with Stan Lee’s characters and pumping out projects by the dozens to introduce them. Instead, they released at least a couple of movies a year, with enough breathing room in between each release for the audience to digest the story and get excited for the next film. Not only that, but the consistency of the stories remained strong, and it also connected the events from each film to make it truly feel like a universe that these characters share. However, once Disney+ launched and streaming became more popular, Marvel took a turn for the worse. Releasing three shows not long after each other was fine, but then they started releasing about five shows and specials every year, more so than actual movies. And whatever movies they did release overall received mixed reception at best, but relentless online slander at worst. It’s gotten to the point where barely any of them actually connect the MCU anymore, like how it took a couple of years to finally address the frozen Celestial from “The Eternals,” and not a single mention of Shang-Chi or what his rings were calling to. The only way anything in the MCU is connected at this point is if you want to count watching about two to three shows to understand what’s going on in ONE movie. For instance, to watch “The Marvels,” you pretty much have to watch all of “Ms. Marvel” and “Secret Invasion.” And even if you’re willing to go through hours of that content, the stories are all over the place, contain many plot holes, and make countless anger-inducing decisions that would make almost anyone quit halfway through. “Secret Invasion,” for example, kills off popular characters almost every episode, Nick Fury is a hollow husk of who he used to be, and they squeezed a clearly rushed CGI fight in the finale just for the sake of having an epic, explosive showdown. At least when the Infinity Saga had epic showdowns, there were actual stakes (both for the safety of the world as well as personal, emotional stakes) involved that actually gave the explosions and superpowers meaning.
However, the absolute worst part is that the villain buildup for Dr. Doom is so atrocious that it’s pretty much nonexistent. Dr. Doom is one of the most iconic villains in all of Marvel, and possibly even in all of fiction. He’s a master of both science and sorcery, a major threat to superheroes everywhere, and has actually succeeded in taking over the world at least a few times. And yet, there was nothing even hinting at his presence in any MCU project until the most recent “Fantastic 4” movie. Before this, it was clear that Kang the Conqueror was going to be the next big bad, but even that buildup was incredibly sloppy. There was a lot of hype built up in the “Loki” show, but then there’s pretty much nothing until “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” and still no resolution to the Council of Kangs mid-credits scene all these years later. It doesn’t help that Disney let go of Jonathan Majors after a domestic violence case, and in a desperate move to recover, brought back the actor who played Iron Man to now play as Dr. Doom. But what makes this setup different than Thanos? After all, Thanos barely had any screen time until he was finally unleashed in “Avengers: Infinity War.” However, even with the short appearances he had, he made good use of them. Smiling at the deadly challenge of the Avengers, ordering Ronan to bring him the Power Stone, deciding to take care of things himself, it all sent shivers down the spines of audiences everywhere. Those scenes carried an ominous tone that warned fans of what was to come, without revealing too much at a time. By the time we all saw Thanos standing amongst a massacre on Thor’s ship, we understood how big a threat this guy was, and everything that had happened in the MCU until that point accumulated into a massive fight to save the Earth. With Kang, on the other hand, it’s clear that he wanted to rule all of time and space, as well as keep his other variants in check. However, we still don’t get enough of a clue as to how big a threat he is, or what his overall plan is. Sure, he’s conquered and killed and is very ahead of the game, but we’ve seen that a hundred times from many big villains both in Marvel and outside of it. So why should any of this matter? Why should we be afraid of a guy who got beaten by ants? And even though Dr. Doom is well-known to Marvel fans, many other people don’t know about him. So, to make a last-minute decision to drop him in at the end of the Multiverse Saga with (again) no buildup whatsoever is incredibly risky and, quite frankly, stupid.
Conclusion
Despite these rants, I’m still looking forward to seeing movies from my two favorite franchises in theaters this year. I love the Mandalorian, and I am absolutely blown away by the insane cast of Doomsday, so I’m excited at least to see what they’ll both look like. However, I remain very skeptical about either film’s success with the way Disney has been handling them so far. I don’t know how they’re going to redeem the Mandalorian or the extreme lack of buildup for Dr. Doom, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see once the films release this coming May and December.
