How old were you in 2008 when Iron Man launched the MCU, the Marvel Cinematic Universe? How old will you be in 2042? I was nine years old when Iron Man was released, and I’ll be 43 in 2042. That is, according to Kevin Feige, how far into the future they have plans for the cinematic universe.
34 years would be an incredibly long run. Even the oldest franchises still going have rarely gone that long, and they usually had several years in between sequels. The MCU has been churning out projects yearly, and that probably won’t change in this theoretical roadmap they have.
And as impressive as that may initially sound, it’s just more proof that Marvel has lost its way and gotten way ahead of itself.
Proposed MCU Plan Proves They’ve Lost the Plot
At this point, with Avengers: Doomsday coming out in December and Spider-Man: Brand New Day at the end of the month, the MCU will have officially made it 18 years of movies. Congratulations, Marvel. You can finally vote. It has been a long 18 years, and the last few have not exactly been the kindest.
Doomsday, for all the excitement the latest trailer has perhaps surprisingly inspired, still feels like a last-ditch effort. Marvel has been slowly losing its audience since Endgame, and they’ve struggled to recreate the setup for that film in the build-up to this one.
All of that is to say that the MCU feels like it’s on its last legs. It desperately needs Spider-Man, Doomsday, and Secret Wars to resonate with critics and audiences and make a lot of money. There is a lot riding on this trio of films, as well as the other projects that will be interspersed.
So when Kevin Feige says that they have plans for the Marvel Cinematic Universe through 2042, it’s just astonishing. Having forethought is good. It’s why the universe was able to build to Infinity War and Endgame so well. But this is overkill and feels like a clear mistake.
Feige said he had plans for Marvel through then, but admitted, “As for whether we can hold on until 2042? Who knows. Will it be those movies that will be made? Who knows.” At least he’s honest. He has to know that this universe is on thin ice with everyone except the most die-hard of fans (and even some former die-hard fans have fallen off).
It’s important to know where you want to go, but it’s also ridiculous to plan ahead 16 more years after all of this. The criticism with Phases 4 and 5 is largely that most of it has not built to Doomsday and that plenty of plot threads have been totally abandoned. Jonathan Majors’ issues certainly derailed them, but it was wonky in the build-up for Kang, too.
So for the last seven years since Endgame, Marvel has struggled to effectively walk a path to their end goal. Thinking they can go from here to 2042 and avoid those pitfalls is bold, to say the least. Feige doesn’t view the upcoming Secret Wars as a true reboot or reset, but it is going to be a new starting place, essentially.
Maybe Feige has learned his lesson and will go back to the roots of what made the MCU so great to begin with. However, after seven years of not doing that, it’s hard to have much hope for it, especially when the overarching plan is for this to last a total of 34 years.
I have hope that the MCU can turn it around, but this is a little worrying. It’s a little bit bonkers to expect this thing to survive until 2042. Audiences are changing, and they’re shifting away from big-budget IP blockbusters more and more all the time. That’s not to say that high-quality superhero movies aren’t successful (Superman, Thunderbolts, etc.), but high-quality is hard to come by now, and may continue to be if the MCU keeps its eye on 2042 instead of 2026.
