{"id":200209,"date":"2025-12-19T13:55:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T13:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/200209\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T13:55:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T13:55:09","slug":"2025-was-the-year-the-bottom-fell-out-of-the-marvel-cinematic-universe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/200209\/","title":{"rendered":"2025 was the year the bottom fell out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the summer of 2025, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige summoned a group<\/a> of<\/a> journalists<\/a> to his office for an uncharacteristically unvarnished interview. One week before the release of The Fantastic Four: First Steps<\/a>, he admitted to the press that the sprawling Marvel Cinematic Universe had started to feel like homework. \u201cIt is a no-homework-required movie,\u201d he said of Fantastic Four. \u201cIt literally is not connected to anything we\u2019ve made before.\u201d In the same breath, he conceded that the MCU had taken a wrong turn in the post-Avengers: Endgame<\/a> era: \u201cFor the first time ever, quantity trumped quality.\u201d<\/p>\n

2025 was supposed to be a year of course correction, where Marvel scaled back production (slightly) and focused on great storytelling. Feige was finally going to shake off the dust that had settled in the wake of Thanos\u2019 snap, and retake control of the greatest cinematic franchise in Hollywood history. At least, that was the idea.<\/p>\n

The reality was\u2026 different. While 2025 marked a slight but noticeable upswing in the quality of Marvel\u2019s cinematic storytelling, this failed to translate into success at the box office, at least at the level the MCU was once known for. The studio’s three major releases this year \u2014 Fantastic Four, Thunderbolts*<\/a>, and Captain America: Brave New World<\/a> \u2014 all struggled to recapture the momentum of Marvel Studios in its prime. All combined, they suggest that even, when putting its best foot forward, this once-unstoppable superhero franchise keeps releasing one embarrassing pratfall after another.<\/p>\n

\"The
\n Image: Marvel Studios\/Walt Disney Studios<\/p>\n

Feige and company kicked off the year with Captain America: Brave New World, a movie that was stuck in production hell<\/a> for years due to rewrites, reshoots, and major Hollywood strikes. While the final result had some charm as a conspiracy thriller in the vein of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, it was weighed down by the twin pressures of resolving long-forgotten plotlines from 2008\u2019s The Incredible Hulk<\/a> while setting up the MCU\u2019s next big crossover.<\/p>\n

While Brave New World was a creative lowpoint for the MCU in 2025, it was arguably a financial high-water mark. The movie made $415.1 million on an $180 million budget \u2014 not bad for your average action flick, but still a big step down from the days when Marvel movies regularly cracked $1 billion in ticket sales. The Captain America brand\u2019s failure to attract audiences also seemed like a flashing warning sign that replacing the core Avengers with new characters wasn\u2019t going to fly with fans, which may explain why Chris Evans is reportedly<\/a> set to return in next year\u2019s Avengers: Doomsday<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Next up was Thunderbolts*. Here, Marvel promised a focus on characters and narrative, and mostly delivered. Director Jake Schreier took a handful of B-tier Marvel characters<\/a> (plus Bucky Barnes) and made a genuinely fun superhero movie. But audiences weren\u2019t interested in that either, even after the titular asterisk was quickly revealed to be a placeholder for \u201cThe New Avengers<\/a>.\u201d Thunderbolts* limped to a $382 million take on a budget of $180 million. (Side note: If you\u2019re wondering why both these MCU films had such similar budgets, it might have to do with Marvel\u2019s abysmal 2023, but more on that later.)<\/p>\n

\"Yelena
\n Image: Marvel Studios\/Disney<\/p>\n

Finally, there was The Fantastic Four: First Steps, with a slightly beefier $230 million budget and promises that it could be enjoyed with zero MCU homework. Technically, Feige wasn\u2019t lying. Fantastic Four is a standalone story set in an entirely different universe from the main MCU<\/a>. Director Matt Shakman borrowed visually from genre classics like Interstellar and The Incredibles<\/a> (itself a riff on Marvel\u2019s first family) to create arguably Marvel\u2019s most stunning entry in years. The story was fine, too.<\/p>\n

Despite all this, Fantastic Four still struggled at the box office, making just $522 million. Perhaps audiences were wary of yet another movie about a superhero team that 20th Century Fox had already mercilessly butchered<\/a> several times over. Or perhaps the promise of a no-homework story backfired, and fans really did want a movie demonstrably linked to the characters and settings they\u2019d already invested in. Either way, even Marvel\u2019s most ambitious attempt in 2025 failed to make more money than Thor 2<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s perhaps an unfair comparison. Sure, Thor: The Dark World is one of Marvel\u2019s least-loved movies, but 2013 was a different time, both for the Marvel Cinematic Universe and for the box office in general. It came one year after 2012\u2019s The Avengers, when fans were ravenous for more Marvel movies, and our collective theatergoing habits had yet to be chipped away by Fortnite, Netflix, inflation, and a global pandemic.<\/p>\n

\"Tom
\n Image: Marvel Studios<\/p>\n

To pull out another year at random, let\u2019s compare Marvel\u2019s 2025 to its 2015. That year saw the release of Avengers: Age of Ultron, which easily cleared a billion dollars in theaters (a feat that seems slightly less attainable for Avengers: Doomsday); and Ant-Man, which raked in $520 million. That\u2019s right, a superhero comedy about a character most casual fans had never heard of made just $2 million less than the extremely hyped MCU debut of the Fantastic Four, one of Marvel\u2019s most recognizable superhero teams. I\u2019m frankly not sure how the studio recovers from that.<\/p>\n

We should probably also address 2023, aka, Marvel\u2019s worst year ever<\/a>. Not only did Feige embarrassingly overextend the Ant-Man brand with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania<\/a>, but the studio actually lost money on The Marvels<\/a> ($206.1 million at the box office, on a budget of $374 million). That year still had a bright spot, however, in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3<\/a>, which cracked $800 million, proving the MCU could still score a hit at the time. (Guardians director James Gunn has since abandoned ship for DC, where his 2025 debut, Superman<\/a>, soared past Marvel to take home $617 million.) So while 2023 was a major blow for Marvel Studios, it showed there was still hope the good old days could return. By 2025, that hope has all but vanished.<\/p>\n

\"Star-Lord
\n Photo: Jessica Miglio\/Marvel Studios<\/p>\n

Where does this leave the MCU as we head into 2026? The studio is betting everything on Avengers: Doomsday, a film that already seems more like a montage of Marvel\u2019s greatest hits (Robert Downey Jr., the Russo brothers directing, the Fox-era X-Men cast<\/a>) than a high-quality story like the ones promised in 2025. But maybe that\u2019s what the studio needs. And maybe, if Doomsday can coast to $1 billion on pure Hey, I remember that inertia, it will be enough to reinvigorate the entire franchise. If not, I have a feeling we\u2019ll look back at 2025 as the moment that the bottom finally fell out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the summer of 2025, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige summoned a group of journalists to his office…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":200210,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[93,61,60,270],"class_list":["post-200209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}