After a string of independent narratives in Phase 4, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is officially kickstarting another period of deeply interconnected stories with Kang the Conqueror at their heart, but given Marvel’s failures in the past few years both in terms of storytelling quality and production value, is the company even equipped to take on another Avengers movie?
Even at its most productive, Marvel Studios used to churn out a maximum of three to four movies a year in the Infinity Saga. That changed when the company adapted itself to the golden age of streaming a few years ago, compelling them to not only work on those projects as previously planned, but now incorporate a bunch of television shows into the schedule as well.
Let’s look at 2021 as an example. On top of Black Widow, Shang-Chi, Eternals, and Spider-Man: No Way Home, the MCU released a whopping five television shows in the form of WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki, What If…?, and Hawkeye.
This has adversely affected the cinematic universe in two major ways. For one thing, the community can’t help but notice that they’re being inundated with all these stories they need to keep track of. For another, though the studio has grown larger in size and most certainly ambition, juggling all these balls at the same time was always guaranteed to deal production quality a hard blow.
Now, with movies like Thor: Love and Thunder and even the latest Quantumania garnering criticism for their lackluster CGI, and other reports claiming CG artists have to deal with terrible work conditions under Marvel, we’re beginning to wonder if we’ll ever have a movie on par with Infinity War or Endgame.
Why Marvel is likely to drop the ball on Avengers: The Kang Dynasty
The Kang Dynasty will heavily lean on the kind of sci-fi elements we saw in Quantumania to depict Kang’s reign of terror. That shouldn’t be a problem in and of itself, since we’ve already seen a small version of that play out in the Ant-Man threequel, but with an Avengers installment, we’re essentially talking about a movie that will unite dozens of superheroes from across the MCU.
This will essentially mark the culmination of two Phases’ worth of storytelling, and with all these failed attempts recently — Doctor Strange, Thor, Black Panther, and Quantumania among them — perhaps Marvel Studios needs to take a break and look at its roster more carefully. The fandom might not even object to some delays, because with where things stand at the moment, we have a hard time seeing The Kang Dynasty turning the table even from a narrative point of view, and most of all in the way of CG effects and production value.
What makes these prospects even more troublesome is the ridiculously cramped schedule. Between Quantumania and The Kang Dynasty, we have seven movies and some seven TV shows to burn through, even though the Avengers sequel is coming out in May 2, 2025, which is barely two years from now.
That’s why, in its current state, Marvel Studios may be in no way equipped to handle a movie of The Kang Dynasty‘s gargantuan proportions, let alone its sequel, the long-anticipated Avengers: Secret Wars.
The MCU is in trouble, anyone can see it. But whether the underwhelming Quantumania premiere will help change those ambitious plans — or at least steer them toward a more reasonable path — is another question.