Do Marvel releases feel less “special” now that there are so many?

Marvel has released two movies so far this year: Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Thor: Love and Thunder. It’s also released two TV series: Moon Knight and Ms. Marvel. And there’s still Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and She-Hulk on the way.

Does anyone else feel a little inundated with content? Speaking personally, Marvel releases don’t quite feel like the events they used to, probably because there’s just so many of them.

And I’m not the only one who thinks so. Damon Lindelof, the guy behind Lost and Watchmen, told Vulture about some of his issues with the churn. “[I]f you make a couple of great Marvel movies, the instinct is, ‘We need to make more Marvel movies, and we need to expand this.’ And I have this sort of interior feeling of like, ‘Wow, I wish they made less because it would make each one that came out a little bit more special.'”

Mark Ruffalo defends Marvel by throwing shade at Star Wars

But not everyone agrees. Just ask Mark Ruffalo, who’s starring in that She-Hulk show as…He-Hulk. “It’s not something I worry about,” Ruffalo told Metro.co.uk when asked if there was too much Marvel content. “I understand that these things run their course and then something else comes along. But the thing Marvel has done well is that, inside the MCU, just as they do with comic books, they let a director or an actor sort of recreate each piece to their own style, their likeness. Marvel generally lets them bring that to the material.”

Fair enough, Marvel does have some variety; Moon Knight is a very different show from She-Hulk, for example. And of course I don’t expect Ruffalo to rag on Marvel right on the cusp of his new Marvel series. I was kinda surprised to see him bring Star Wars into the discussion, though. “If you watch a ‘Star Wars,’ you’re pretty much going to get the same version of ‘Star Wars’ each time,” he said. “It might have a little bit of humor. It might have a little bit of different animation. But you’re always, really, in that same kind of world. But with Marvel you can have a whole different feeling, even within the Marvel Universe.”

Shots fired! Very polite shots fired!

Oscar Isaac open to playing Poe Dameron again

Star Wars is another franchise that’s in the business of perpetuating itself. Earlier this year we watched The Book of Boba Fett. Next month will feature the premieres of both Andor and The Bad Batch season 2, and Disney is at work on plenty more beyond that.

At Disney, nothing stays dead for long. I wouldn’t be surprised if they eventually returned to the sequel trilogy, reuniting us with characters like Rey and Finn and Poe Dameron, played by Oscar Isaac. The actor once seemed like he wasn’t interested in returning to Star Wars, joking in 2020 that he would only do it again if “I need another house or something,” per Variety. However, during a recent SiriusXM interview he said he’s open to coming back:

"I don’t know. I’m open to anything. You never know. I have no real feeling one way or another. I’m open to any good story. Time is the one thing that becomes challenging…as you get older and kids and all that. Where do [movies] fit in? If there was a great story and a great director and [Lucasfilm president] Kathy [Kennedy] came to me and was like, ‘I have this great idea,’ then I’m so open to it."

This is the way franchises work now; nothing really ends or goes away. Studios like Disney want the stories to be eternal so they can keep making money off them. And while Disney might be leading this charge, they’re not the only ones. Witness the huge crop of Walking Dead spinoffs coming our way over at AMC, or HBO’s upcoming Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon.

Even Lindelof admits that he doesn’t have room to talk when it comes to producers milking intellectual property for all its worth. “I’ve made prequels and sequels and reboots, so I can’t be a hypocrite and say, ‘God, come up with an original idea.’ Meanwhile, I’m making two Star Trek movies and Prometheus.”

Is the new age of mega-franchises bad? Good? That’s a separate question, but it’s our reality until something new comes along.

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