I have to make a confession: I haven’t watched any Marvel content for the past year.

The reason why this matters is because a little over 12 months ago, I felt incredibly optimistic about the state of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). At the time, Marvel was beginning to round out Phase Four and enter into Phase Five. I was still keeping up with Marvel lore, in spite of the subpar content that I was willingly viewing at my own leisure. 

My viewing experience has since changed drastically.

I’m actually glad that I’ve stopped following Marvel religiously, given what I’ve heard about the dismal shows that have been pumped out of the Marvel machine. “Echo,” a series that was released in January, was forgotten within a week of its release. “The Marvels” was dropped in November and disappointed fans with its blase storyline. And of course, the infamous “Secret Invasion” has scored an embarrassing 53 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, marking it as the lowest MCU show so far. 

By far, the biggest factor in this decline has been the overconfidence that Disney, Marvel’s parent company, has in the MCU’s brand power. This has led to an increase in content quantity and a decrease in content quality. 2022 and 2023 saw more Marvel content than in years prior, while continually breaking Marvel’s lowest rated show and movie records during that same period.

It’s clear that its consumer base has shifted away from the MCU in the wake of these tragedies; the box office numbers display this. Out of all the MCU titles in the past year, only “Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3” can be considered a runaway success, making nearly $845 million at the domestic box office and receiving high audience praise. What was once a cultural cornerstone has now crumbled into irrelevancy.

The flipside of this, however, is that consumers get to experience Hollywood and its flourishment once more.

2023 was highly regarded as a year for cinema, a comeback after the pandemic halted much of film production. “Oppenheimer,” “Barbie,” “The Holdovers,” “Poor Things” and “Killers of the Flower Moon” all received outstanding critical and audience acclaim for their fresh and captivating screenplays. 

All of these films eclipsed Marvel’s coverage in the media. The most prominent example of this was the “Barbenheimer” trend, where many people attempted to see both “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” in theaters on the same day. At the same time this was trending on social media, “Secret Invasion” was getting lambasted by people for its horrible CGI and weak plot.  

It was during this period when my attitude towards Marvel’s future became far more pessimistic. At the same time, I also realized the immense value these Hollywood productions carried. They were far more grounded than any of Marvel’s recent projects, and they carried far more impactful themes and spectacular cinematography than anything I’ve seen from the MCU in the past few years.

For the most part, I feel as though many former MCU fans have followed in the same direction as me. We reminisce about the hype leading up to “Infinity War” and “Endgame,” but we also recognize that those are memories, and that it will take a major upheaval to return Marvel to its former glory. Many of us have left the franchise and instead embraced what we deem to be higher forms of cinema. 

In the wake of Marvel’s fall, Hollywood films more than filled the vacuum that the weakened MCU left behind. They provided us with a reminder of what the MCU is truly missing: an enriching, and necessary, story for people to willingly enjoy – a core element of human existence and expression.