Since Marvel’s debut movie X-Men in 2000, Marvel has amassed a band of diehard followers. With the help of top performers such as the Avengers series and Black Panther, Marvel has made a whopping 22 billion dollars at the global box office. Superhero movies have always been widely adored from fans across the world. Marvel has embarked on 20 years of global dominance over the superhero industry. You probably read the title and are wondering when there will be a punchline. To be completely frank with you, there is no punchline. You can’t argue the company’s success or their ability to produce money making machines year after year. There is one thing you can dispute; the quality of film. In my opinion, the Marvel movies are drastically overrated and don’t deserve anywhere near the praise they receive from their audience each year.

A typical Marvel movie consists of one plot. There’s one evil being that brings destruction to our planet. You can expect a pretty typical end to each Marvel movie: there’s a big battle and the antagonist is always defeated by the protagonist. You could argue a movie like Infinity War, where half of the world disappears into dust, doesn’t have this typical ending, but it does. This movie is no more than a part one to the next movie, Avengers: Endgame, where everyone is brought back to life. 

Another reason that it’s hard to enjoy the Marvel movies is the total disappearance of our military. I get it, 6 people with cool powers and masks draw in views, but shouldn’t the military play any role in the movies? It’s never up to the armed forces and the heroes to beat the antagonist, instead all the trust falls onto the heroes. In a real world scenario, don’t you think the military would play some part in the destruction of our entire planet? In Infinity War there were zero signs of the armed forces although there was a man trying to eliminate half the population. It’s a bit ridiculous. 

A great superhero movie is one where the end is always in question, and one that can leave the audience guessing. While every movie should and will end with the protagonist coming out on top, the ending should never be too obvious. 

In order to narrow my research down to one Marvel movie, I asked diehard fan Zach Morse for some insight. He said in the interview that his favorite Marvel film was the original Avengers film released in 2012. The plot of the movie zeroes in on Thor’s evil brother Loki, who gets unlimited power to an energy cube referred to as the tesseract. With the tesseract threatening our human existence, Nick Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D gathers the six Avengers. You’re probably wondering how it ends– well, don’t. Just like any typical Marvel movie, the good guys come out on top with no casualties. The ending is never in question regardless if you want it to be.

 Instead of having the typical evil figure, like Marvel always has had, I’d suggest they create a movie that doesn’t paint them as the good guys. One where the society isn’t totally on their side. Like in the second movie of The Dark Knight Trilogy: The Dark Knight Rises. In this film you see the city of gotham along with the police force on a manhunt for Batman. What if we saw a fallout between the Avengers and the military?  I think that would make for a pretty special movie and something that we are not so accustomed to.