Loki arrives to fight Marvel’s biggest challenge — MCU fatigue

Loki arrives to fight Marvel's biggest challenge — MCU fatigue

(Image credit: Marvel Studios/Disney Plus)

Loki premieres on Disney Plus next calendar week, and I'yard non exactly thrilled at the prospect. In fact, I'm simultaneously excited and nervous about the impending launch of the third Curiosity original TV series on the streaming platform.

I've previously raved virtually WandaVision, so it'south non that I accept whatsoever problems with the MCU beingness delivered in a small screen format. It's more that afterward I found Falcon and Winter Soldier to exist extremely lackluster that I find myself starting to feel a lilliputian burnt out on the interconnected comic-volume universe.

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Of grade, Marvel fatigue is is not exactly new — it'southward a phenomena that's been around for over a decade. Some of the franchise's nigh vocal critics were decrying that multiple movies a year was too much even before the first Avengers movie debuted. Simply recently it'south starting to experience similar Disney is terrified of letting the MCU breath.

Loki arrives next calendar week, then Black Widow finally hits theaters (And Disney Plus Premier Access) in July. Then we get the blithe series What If? in Baronial, followed by Shang-Chi and the Fable of the Ten Rings — too in August, The Eternals arrive in November, and Spider-Man: No Style Habitation closes out the year in December.

And don't forget Disney Plus shows Hawkeye and Ms. Marvel are also slated for 2021 — and will likely observe a mode to the schedule soon. Information technology's an awful lot of content, and unlike with some juggernaut franchises like Star Wars, where it feels easier to consume some chapters (like Solo) piecemeal, the MCU has always been by and large an all-or-nothing commitment.

Marvel execs could really do with pumping the brakes because I tin can't be the only ane who feels a piddling exhausted looking at that upcoming schedule, can I?

Feeling the burn

At the offset of the yr, I was feeling pretty content with the state of the MCU. Due to the pandemic, 2020 concluded upward being a forced fallow yr for Marvel without a single picture or original streaming series set within the universe releasing for an entire twelve months.

WandaVision episode 5 — (Image credit: Disney Plus/Curiosity Studios)

That meant I was naturally anticipating my starting time dose of Curiosity goodness, which ultimately came in the course of WandaVision in Jan. The MCU'south first foray into streaming was a brilliant original series admittedly stuffed total of water-cooler moments. Though the ending was a trivial anti-climatic.

That was quickly followed upwardly by The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, where my fatigue settled in. I didn't finish the series until three weeks after the terminal episode arrived, and it wasn't out of existence decorated. I simply felt little motivation to actually run across the series through. Ultimately, simply doing so out of a sense of duty to stay caught up rather than because of whatsoever actual want to run into how things played out.

In the bridge of a couple of weeks, I went from "give me all the MCU content possible this instant" to already wishing the franchise would take another interruption like the twelvemonth earlier.

Creatively lacking

It's not even that Falcon and Winter Soldier was specially bad. It merely felt routine. Like something I'd already seen before simply done significantly better in the Captain America solo films.

Black Widow super bowl ad still — (Prototype credit: Marvel Amusement)

I get the same feeling when I see the trailers for Black Widow, which has been running trailers that I've seen dozens and dozens, after so many release date pushbacks. Yes, this first MCU characteristic in years looks fun, just it doesn't appear to be anything we've not already experienced (absolutely, Florence Pugh is great in everything, so she may drag the film).

Several of the upcoming MCU films and series look like pieces in a franchise that is simply going through the motions. Even the recent Eternals trailer left me pretty cold, though the management from Chloé Zhao looks spectacular.

At least shows like What If…?, which rifts on hypothetical non-canon scenarios, seems refreshing. And the Loki series doesn't look that bad. The Tom Hiddleston and Owen Wilson banter already interests me, and it looks off-the-wall enough to possibly offer something completely new.

Marvel's What If coming to Disney Plus — (Image credit: Curiosity)

Overall though, the problem is that MCU products should seem genuinely inspired.

Instead, they're stacked on superlative of each other so much that it looks every bit if they're exiting a factory line engineered to avoid whatever gaps in the schedule. During the MCU'south gold period (2016 to 2019, if you ask me) I felt genuinely hyped whenever I saw that "Marvel Studios" splash screen before watching something, recently it's not quite instilled the same reaction.

Recapturing the magic

An important lesson that I hope Curiosity execs larn soon is that sometimes less really is more. We don't demand a fresh slice of the MCU every single calendar month, information technology'south okay to give audience members time to start peckish more before giving us another hit.

Back in the Disney Plus-less days, nosotros used to get 3, maybe four, MCU features a yr. That release schedule allowed anticipation to grow amongst the fandom over a period of months, and also gave plenty of time for online debate and discussion to rage as the latest piece of MCU content was digested.

Of course, information technology would be unfair of me to not point out that the pandemic has had a serious impact on Disney's unabridged release schedule, so there's every possibility that such a glut of MCU content being squeezed out over a handful of months wasn't necessarily the original program.

I'll also be the first to admit that despite my reservations, I'll exist seeing Black Widow as before long every bit humanly possible, and the same is truthful of the remainder of the MCU'southward slate. I'm already two dozen films deep, plus a couple of tv serial to boot, I'm too invested to abandon send at present.

So, with Loki due out in less than a week, I'm a fiddling disappointed to exist feeling burnt out in a period when the MCU is expanding farther than ever earlier. All the same on balance, and having watched a couple of trailers for the series, my curiosity is just about overcoming my sense of fatigue for that item series.

Maybe I'll never rediscover the childlike sense of giddiness I had for the MCU effectually the time Avengers: Infinity War released, where I was practically begging for whatsoever scrap of Marvel-related content I could consume, merely if unique-looking content similar Loki becomes the focus (and banal stuff like Falcon and Winter Soldier is nixed) then I'yard certain my Marvel fatigue will quickly become a problem of the past.

Rory is a staff author at Tom's Guide based in the Britain. He covers a wide range of topics including tech news, deals, gaming, streaming and more. When he's not writing hot takes on the latest gaming hardware and streaming shows, he can exist found watching a borderline unhealthy corporeality of movies and being thoroughly disappointed by his terrible football team.