In March 2023 Jonathan Majors, one of Hollywood’s fastest-rising prospects, received a text. He was sitting beside his then girlfriend, Grace Jabbari, in the back of a car in New York, when, by her account, she saw a message from another woman on Majors’s phone: “Wish I was kissing you.”
When she picked up the phone, Majors grabbed her, twisted her arm behind her back and hit her in the head to retrieve the device, according to prosecutors in a court case last December. Jabbari was left with a fractured finger, bruising and a cut behind her ear. It was, according to prosecutors, the latest escalation in Majors’s attempts to “exert control” over his girlfriend through physical and emotional violence.
Majors had been cast as the next supervillain in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). He was, as The Irish Times put it, “among the best actors of the rising generation”, gaining renown as a disciplined character actor with leading-man potential. The MCU, known for its intricate superhero-movie tie-ins between the likes of Thor, Hulk and Iron Man, was working its way towards a 17-movie story arc with Majors at its centre. There’s hardly a more prized role in Hollywood than the arch-nemesis in probably the 21st century’s largest cultural franchise.
He was convicted of assault and sentenced to a year-long domestic-violence intervention programme – and, in doing so, brought a $50 billion film franchise to its knees. Following the verdict, Marvel, which is part of Disney, said the studio would not be moving forward with Majors on future projects, so cutting short his dizzying ascent to stardom. He avoided jail, but Majors instead entered what was tantamount to a prolonged celebrity purgatory, far from the limelight he once enjoyed in swanky jackets, eye-catching trousers and puffy corduroy caps.
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It left Disney’s golden goose with a hole in the middle of its universe, and capped off a troubling period for the entertainment giant typified by widespread job losses. So what went wrong?
The films leading up to Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, on the eve of the pandemic, had propulsion, steadily navigating their way towards a shared cinematic event that was, in fairness, pretty cool. Thereafter, however, the Disney machine tagged in on the streaming wars and arguably pushed Marvel Studios to its brink, with visual-effects workers complaining about gruelling work hours and understaffed teams.
Marvel should be praised for elevating women to positions previously occupied by grumbling Action Men and bringing us some semblance of cultural diversity through Shang-Chi and Ms Marvel. That said, amid an unprecedented number of film and series releases for its parent company’s Disney+ steaming platform, the franchise once praised for its innovation began hurtling towards a confusing tangle of cheap fan service, one-dimensional characters and a never-ending slew of low-stakes showdowns – the plot armour was almost as thick as Iron Man’s.
Last year Marvel released two very bad movies and two fine ones. (The latest Guardians of the Galaxy instalment, as always, was a delight.) But, of course, it had to pepper its record with middling shows on its streaming platform – for example, fans were dismayed at the butchering of Secret Invasion, one of the comic’s most celebrated storylines. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania was received with a widespread “meh” – I’m looking at you, distorted floating head man. It’s amazing what 15 years of CGI overload can do to a studio’s sense of creative judgment.
Marvel ended the year not only with Majors’s conviction for reckless assault but also with its lowest-grossing film to date. The Marvels, a sequel to Brie Larson’s 2019 film and two Disney+ shows, flopped hard, with this newspaper calling it “a solid contender for the worst Marvel film yet”.
To drudge through every disappointing project would be to tear the eyes from our discerning readers, but suffice to say that last spring felt grim for the franchise. With countless interconnected projects already commissioned and audiences inured with superhero fatigue, it felt a bit like that Austin Powers scene in which a man is slowly and very avoidably flattened by a steamroller. In this instance, Kevin Feige, the president of Marvel Studios, appeared locked into a path difficult to manoeuvre from, and the steamroller was catching up.
Ironically, the most interesting story to come from Disney around this time played out in a Succession-style boardroom battle that saw the company’s chief executive, Bob Iger, defeat activist investors in a closely watched contest. It was widely seen as a referendum on Iger’s ability to turn around the company’s fortunes, and investors were no doubt glad when news broke last week of the company’s unprecedented dominance of the summer box office.
Between May 1st and last Sunday, Disney films accounted for 42 per cent of ticket sales in US and Canadian cinemas, a huge increase on last summer’s 27 per cent and a sign that, despite its creative struggles, audiences will still turn out for a Disney movie. It had Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Inside Out 2 and Alien: Romulus to thank for this.
Marvel has finally had another hit on its hands – commercially, anyway – with Deadpool & Wolverine. My colleague Donald Clarke gave Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman’s “awful pile of puerile, snarky parody” just one star. Nevertheless, the film has already made more than $1 billion at the box office, the 11th Marvel film to do so, and with it studio executives may breathe a sigh of relief.
Principally, though, Marvel still needs to replace Majors at the fulcrum of its next multifilm extravaganza. And so last month at San Diego Comic-Con, an event generally seen as Christmas for comic-book nerds, fans gathered to see what Feige and the Disney overlords had up their sleeves. What better way to prove to them that it can recapture the magic of the Infinity Saga – which is to say, the first 23 feature films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, from 2008-19 – than to bring back its biggest star from the dead? Robert Downey jnr, aka RDJ, who played a central role in elevating the franchise in its early days as Iron Man, was announced not as the hero this time around but as the villain. He will return as Doctor Doom, replacing Majors’s Kang the Conqueror.
Of course, diehard fans went ballistic, but such regression in casting shows a spectacular lack of imagination for a company dominating a supposedly creative industry. Marvel has shown it will drag back any old sock from its multiverse if it boosts sales. The risk-averse recasting of RDJ will have a corrosive effect on the industry, further signalling that it intends to play it safe and forgo new talent. Disney’s recommissioning of Toy Story and Lion King sequels also speaks to this practice.
The introduction of Marvel’s multiversal McGuffin has allowed for some fun cameos and creative what-ifs, but at the cost of any real danger, a problem for a franchise built on the concept. We even believed them when they killed off Tony Stark. Now, it seems, they’ll revive this playful rogue until RDJ – an actor whose range and talent far outstretch what the MCU requires of him – can give no more, like a leathery Expendable.
Marvel’s downfall won’t come at the box office but in its slow march towards mediocrity and homogeneity. Audiences are wising up to the formulas and craving something different. The success of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune films shows audiences will put faith in sci-fi that doesn’t fit the tried-and-tested mould.
The 1993 box office was dominated by genre-defining originals such as Schindler’s List, Sleepless in Seattle, Mrs Doubtfire and Jurassic Park (the last of which has come to be thoroughly milked dry of its dino juices). In 2023 just one film in the top 10 internationally performing movies was not based on a franchise or pre-existing brand: Oppenheimer, for which RDJ won a thoroughly deserved Oscar for best supporting actor. In 2053, if cinemas still exist as we know them today, the danger is that they’ll be devoid of the sort of originality that laid the groundwork for so many great stories we know and love.
In the pursuit of media dominance, Disney, Marvel and its parade of Spandex-laden heroes have set the tone for the future of film-making: generic, inoffensive and unremarkable. It will be up to consumers to vote with their feet and choose between original storytelling and more soulless rollercoasters. Unfortunately, I think we know which will win out.
