Can we all admit that it was starting to look decidedly hairy for Marvel prior to last week’s info-splurt of a Comic-Con panel? After shaping the Hollywood architecture for more than a decade, the Disney-owned superhero studio has in the past nine months released a trio of movies – Eternals, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Thor: Love and Thunder – that if not quite duds, certainly came nowhere near the top ranks of the critical pantheon.
With a lingering sense that any movie not part of the Multiverse Saga (now officially concocting phases four, five and six) might as well have been subheaded “a filler you needn’t have bothered catching”, the studio seemed to be going through a sticky period. But let’s put this in perspective: we are talking about a few under par episodes in a series that now stretches to 29 films, the majority of which have received critical acclaim. Like Real Madrid falling to the occasional defeat, or the Beatles recording Rocky Raccoon, it was bound to happen sooner or later.
