By the time Iron Man came out in May 2008, I was already a lost cause.
The Batman movies of the 'gos were fun; Christopher Nolan's 2005 Batman Begins was maybe a masterpiece. But as soon as Iron Man landed, the energy was different and when it ended with Tony Stark proclaiming to the world, I am Iron Man, it became clear that everything was about to change. For the next 11 years and 20-plus films, Marvel Studios sat atop Odin's High Seat. Its movies grossed billions upon billions of dollars, their casts were stacked with Hollywood legends, and people like me (and probably you, too) were invested.
When Spider-Man: Far from Home concluded what Marvel Studios called "The Infinity Saga" -the overarching story of its first 23 movies-it did so with the promise that there was so much more to come.
Then an evil worse than Thanos himself besieged the planet: Covid-19 blacked out theaters and blocked MCU releases for all of 2020. When Black Widow and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings emerged to lead the Phase Four charge in 2021, things were, somehow, off. The epicness of it all was... missing. In what was supposed to be a pause before the next classic blockbuster marathon, Marvel seemed winded instead.
Eternals (2021) was a bore. The mighty Thor in 2022's Thor: Love and Thunder lacked electricity. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and Phase Five's AntMan and the Wasp: Quantumania -they were all just fine. Meanwhile, former bigscreen mainstays Loki and Hawkeye were relegated to decent-enough streaming shows on Disney+.
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