“Tony Stark was able to build this in a cave! With a box of scraps!” That’s what Jeff Bridges bellows about Robert Downey Jr. in the first Iron Man movie. And, for a while, it was that scrappy, improvisational Stark-like energy that made Marvel Studios special. Across three “phases” of filmmaking, Marvel combined the backbone of good superhero storytelling (likable characters, exciting action, cool special effects, compelling plots, a fun sense of humor) with the true secret sauce of the genre: meaningful storytelling themes.
Lately, however, it’s as if Marvel has forgotten that superhero stories are actually supposed to have ideas. Marvel has moved from the Age Of Heroes to the Age Of Aimless Intersecting Content. That philosophy reaches its nadir in the latest big-screen addition to the MCU, Captain America: Brave New World—a film that continues the “what are we doing here?” trend of recent Marvel projects like Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania and Secret Invasion.
It wasn’t always like this. Marvel once understood what filmmakers like Richard Donner and Sam Raimi long ago proved: More than any other genre, superhero stories are built around archetypal characters engaging in ideological battles meant to reflect something larger about the human condition. That means they need driving central themes to elevate their sometimes-thin individual components into something greater than the sum of their parts.
I think the slightly casual, almost throwaway comment that I started this with was more about the fact that, specifically Marvel, films have become all theme and no story.
The standard superhero narrative of “Bad guy gets weapon, or does something bad and Superhero A must stop them” doesn’t sustaing multiple franchises.
Couple that with the classic trauma genesis story which forms the obligatory introduction arc.
Marvel films have become about themes almost entirely to the point where characters and story are interchangable. Take the latest captain America… Almost any other Marvel character could have played the same role in that film… The narrative is so weak that it doesn’t matter. The themes are grand and perhaps even important (a bright red tyrannical monster rampaging in the whitehouse) but the story is what let’s it down.
These stories are weak and we’ve seen them multiple times now. It doesn’t matter how often we change the themes, whether the film is about fascism in America, finding friendship and family, or the perils of unchecked science… These themes ultimately fall flat when the underlying structure, the story, used to convey them is weak.
Sure, all art is usually about something, and those themes can be important, but I stand by what I said… If you want Superhero films to see any good they need to shrug off the notion of being entirely about symbology and theme and maybe have some gripping story.