On The Current State of Cinema: “There Has Been an Awakening. Have You Felt it?”

Over ten years ago, Disney released the first full trailer for the highly anticipated next STAR WARS installment, Star Wars: The Force Awakens. It begins when a mysterious voice states, “There has been an awakening. Have you felt it?” The ripple effect of those sentences can still be felt at full power in the entertainment industry today.

Within the setting of The Force Awakens, we are told that, in part, what led to the rise of the nefarious FIRST ORDER was Luke Skywalker failing to keep his nephew, Ben Solo, from being corrupted by Snoke’s allurement. Snoke is the ultimate evil in The Force Awakens and is the one speaking in the trailer. Even with the most hopeful and forgiveness-loving uncle as your Jedi master, sometimes we cannot resist our deepest temptations…

When I wrote my first article in this series, the world had shut down. Before the 2020 COVID-fiasco, superhero movies were doing well both critically and at the box office. In May of 2019, for example, Marvel Studios released Avengers: Endgame, which set the record for the biggest opening weekend of all time. Is this still the case? If not, why?

To assess the current state of cinema in 2026, we must examine the most popular movies, which, for almost 20 years, have been stories of “the superhero.” It’s still a genre that drives box office numbers.

Right?

In 2023, Time Magazine released an article titled, “How Marvel Lost Its Way.” This article explored how many fans had felt since the end of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s (MCU) Infinity Saga, with Endgame. Writer Eliana Dockterman notes, “For years now, audiences have not been able to watch Marvel shows and movies casually.” She ends this thought with, “The various MacGuffins, Easter eggs, and pseudoscientific explanations of superpowers used to be fun. Now they feel like homework.” During the first 3 phases of the MCU, 2008-2019, Marvel Studios made 23 movies, 9 of which grossed over 1 billion dollars. Since then, they’ve made 14 movies, and only 2 have reached this height. More on this later.

In an article from Variety from July, 2025, Kevin Feige, the mastermind producer behind the MCU, commented on this, “I’ve always thought if you take success and don’t experiment with it and don’t risk with it, then it’s not worth it.” They were experimenting with characters in movies and new TV shows, like Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and Moon Knight. Was there just too much new material that made the MCU feel like homework?

Let me put it to you this way: 2017 was the first time the MCU had 3 movies released in the same year. It was a big deal. I was 15 at the time, so of course I was excited. It was the perfect amount to still have some breathing room of months between films. Just enough time to digest and theorize. In 2021, with TV shows on Disney+ now part of the MCU, 9 projects were released. In contrast with 2017, I was now 19, and by the end of the year, it definitely felt like a part-time job. Pumping out so much content without properly connecting each project, like the previous MCU had done so well, might not have been “the move.” What a shock, when you oversaturate the market, demand goes down.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023) was intended and marketed as a return to form. I was a manager at AMC Theatres during its opening weekend. We expected huge numbers! Let’s just say I sent people home early that night. It was meant to fully introduce the new big bad of the MCU, Jonathan Majors’ Kang the Conqueror, and to put the start of Phase 5 back on track. This did not work, leading, as reported by Forbes, to Quantumania having a net profit of $88k. There is no long paragraph to explain why this happened. After finally sitting through the whole thing on my 4th watch, I can attest that it’s just plain bad. This would become Marvel’s trend among the public. Will there be anything to change this perception?

What made the MCU work was how comic nerds and 9-5 dads could both find joy and be invested because of the attention to detail to the characters. We cared about Tony Stark because we understood who he is and enjoyed watching him change. It’s hard for people to get invested in new characters when the last time they saw them was 3 years ago, as a side character in someone else’s spin-off mini-series. This becomes especially prevalent when you’re bringing TV show characters into film and vice versa. This new Multiverse Saga has felt less like a step in the right direction and more like a multiverse of missed opportunities.

Along with the potential of “too much new,” superhero fatigue was every entertainment media’s favorite word for a while. In that same Variety article from earlier, Feige adds, “Look at Superman, it’s clearly not superhero fatigue, right?” Oh boy, this one didn’t age very well. The drama surrounding the DC side of the movie industry is intense. It got off to a horrible start after Henry Cavill announced back in October 2022 that he would be returning as the Man of Steel! This was great news, as many felt his Superman was one of the best parts of Zack Snyder’s DC. So, anyway, two months later, he let everyone know that the new leadership of DC was moving in a new direction and he would not be returning as Superman.

Who was that leadership that pulled this bait-and-switch? None other than James Gunn, who spearheaded Marvel Studios’ Guardians of the Galaxy and its sequels. It should be noted that he has since spoken about this, saying the decision to have Cavill announce he was coming back as the Man of Steel was made while under previous leadership. Gunn would co-lead DC, with Peter Safran acting more behind the scenes. Soon after, Gunn announced a whole new slew of movies, and we were off to the races! From his social media posts, it seemed like Gunn couldn’t be more excited, even explaining that the release date for his Superman movie landed on his dad’s birthday, July 11, 2025. So, with a new actor and a new universe, what could go wrong?!

Cut to a few months later, and Warner Brothers, the owners of DC’s film properties, put itself up for sale. It’s been going back and forth over who will buy one of the largest companies in Hollywood history, but in early 2026, multiple outlets reported that Netflix was looking to spend some serious cash to acquire the company. Due to this, on February 5, 2026, the CEO of Netflix, Ted Sarandos, under oath in front of a congressional committee, when asked by Congressman Cory Booker about the release windows for movies in theaters, said, “When movies underperform, the window moves a little bit. And Superman was a little shorter window, and Sinners was a little longer window…”

This strongly suggests that Superman did not meet the studio’s expectations, grossing $615 million worldwide. This may sound like a lot of money, and to us plebs it is, but here are a few facts to keep in mind. On purely box-office numbers, before any other math, Gunn’s version made around $55 million less than Zack Snyder’s interpretation of the character in 2013. When we do the actual math, Forbes reported that the film’s production budget was $215 million, and the worldwide marketing budget was $125 million. They note that, “Even going with the $308 million before taking the other expenses into account, Superman’s net falls below the $350 million Warner Bros. spent on the production of the film and marketing.”

Good luck, this summer’s Supergirl. I’m sure you will make a Supergirl-zillion dollars.

On the box office numbers back in July, 2025, Gunn said, speaking to Rolling Stone, “We’re definitely performing better domestically than we are internationally, but internationally is also rising and having really good weekday numbers in the same way we are.” He went on to say (IN THE SAME INTERVIEW), “Superman is not a known commodity in some places. He is not a big known superhero in some places like Batman is. That affects things. And it also affects things that we have a certain amount of anti-American sentiment around the world right now. It isn’t really helping us.” I’m sorry to break it to you, man, if the movie were good, people would go watch it. It is that simple.

For one more ounce of context, this is also the guy who said about 2023’s The Flash (a critical and box-office failure), “Like it’s one of the best superhero movies I’ve ever seen.” Oh yeah, and he also made this unprovoked comment on a podcast about how weird it was to direct his wife to kiss John Cena, in the DC TV show Peacemaker. Sir, you are the head of the studio and writer and director of said TV show. Maybe just rewrite the scene so they hug passionately?

Returning to our Star Wars analogy, Snoke himself is later revealed to be a fake version of an old threat. Something we had seen before. Politics seeping its way into our favorite franchises is an unfortunate reality of keeping up with modern Hollywood. Can this evil be defeated? Well, the entire Voice-over from Snoke in the teaser says, “There has been an awakening. Have you felt it? The dark side and… the light.” There is always good. Now, it’s the superhero who needs saving, rather than doing the saving. Can this happen, or have audiences moved on?

Well, checking in on both the leading faces of the superhero genre, we find things might not be going well. I would imagine most people don’t know the intricate behind-the-scenes politics of these mega-franchises. So, what’s kept audiences away? In a nutshell, because of the quantity of projects, the quality dropped HARD. Basic filmmaking 101 was forgotten. Things like editing, including match-to-action errors, or proper J-cuts. The special effects were taken out of the digital oven too soon, ruining immersion. The writing suffered most, with a generic plot structure, inconsistent character motivation, and poor dialogue.

All of these basic filmmaking ideas were set aside to push agendas that pander to Twitter users. Sorry, X users. Whatever they call that app. Not to go zero-to-sixty, but you don’t need to be well-versed in film knowledge to see this. Before I start, I’ll reiterate what I’ve said before. The agenda itself is inclusivity and representation. Wait, I’m sure you’re saying, what’s wrong with that? As an idea, nothing. In execution, everything.

On paper, the MCU show Echo (2024), about a Female, Deaf, Native American, Amputee, who uses sign language to communicate, fits all the boxes to satisfy social media demands. In execution, this show lacks a reason to exist within the MCU, or, more broadly, outside the check markers of “making everyone happy.” This is also bad for each community these characters are supposed to represent. If a movie or TV show about a diverse character sucks or feels preachy, the audience is not going to want to see more diverse characters.

They pushed the idea that Anthony Mackie would be the new Captain America, making this American Icon African American. Then they gave him a TV show that had no real consequences, and a movie that bombed at the box office and was poorly received. I myself gave Captain America: Brave New World a D+.

2023 had The Marvels, the sequel to Captain Marvel, which had 3 leads. One of them was an African American woman, and the other a Muslim Pakistani teenager. The movie wasn’t awful, but by no means good, and everyone blamed the poor quality for pushing a pro-feminist, diverse agenda.

The funniest part about the latter is that it really doesn’t have much of a “girls get it done” mentality. The main issues are the script’s poor pacing and incoherent structure. The bottom line is that when you make movies with diverse leads that suck, over and over again, it is hard to separate representation from bad movie-making.

Marvel became very aware that they were no longer at the top of the food chain. To look at the Variety article one last time, “For the first time ever, quantity trumped quality,” Feige said. “We spent 12 years working on the Infinity Saga, saying that’s never going to happen to us. We always had more characters than we could possibly make because we weren’t going to make a movie a month. Suddenly, there’s a mandate to make more. And we go, ‘Well, we do have more.'”

With a change in direction, recent Marvel films and shows have received mainly positive critical response. Personally, Thunderbolts (2025) made its way onto my list of favorite MCU films. It felt like a real movie, made by real people who wanted to tell a story about finding a purpose greater than ourselves. Even with a positive critical reception, people spoke with their wallets. The film needed to gross $450 million to make a profit. It ended its theatrical run at around $380 million.

Looking at the 3 MCU films released in 2025, they have collectively made only $1.319 billion. For context, in 2019, all 3 MCU films each made over $1 billion at the box office. I previously mentioned that only 2 MCU projects post-Endgame have grossed over $1 billion. These two films are Spider-Man: No Way Home, and Deadpool & Wolverine. These films only made this much money because of pandering to nostalgia. No Way Home brought back nearly every major Spider-Man villain from the Sam Raimi and Marc Webb movies. It also saw the return of Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield. Both actors played Spider-Man before the MCU version.

Deadpool brought back Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, along with a handful of other actors who played X-Men when Fox owned the film rights to those characters. Marvel is fully aware that to make money, they need to include fan service, no matter the cost. There is even a moment in Deadpool where the lead character breaks the 4th wall to say, “Can we just be done? With the whole multiverse thing? It’s not great. It’s just been miss after miss after miss.”

It’s a bit too early to tell if James Gunn’s DCU will be able to stay afloat, but as for Marvel, the clock is running out. After delays and a change in story and directors, on December 16th, 2026, Marvel Studios will release Avengers: Doomsday. This movie will truly make or break the MCU. It really could go either way. They’ve brought back the Russo Brothers, who directed the last 2 Avengers films; Robert Downey Jr. will be playing the villain Dr. Doom, and even Chris Evans will return as Steve Rogers. Kevin Feige has said this is a direct continuation from Endgame. The downside is that bringing back all these elements makes the last 7 years of the MCU feel a bit worthless.

Will Doomsday be enough to bring everyone back to the Marvel Cinematic Universe? I don’t know. Boring answer, but a truthful one. There are just so many characters and storylines that need to be addressed; it will be quite difficult to pull off. With Thunderbolts and even Fantastic Four: First Steps, really prioritizing quality, I think it could be possible. The truth is, this universe will never reach the heights of the first few phases. And that’s okay. Those films will always exist and feel rewarding to watch. It is clear Marvel is trying to return to its glory years; something within them is awakening.

The reality is, Disney and Marvel Studios simply flew too close to the sun. No one forced them to oversaturate their own market, and looking back, no one was really asking for it either. To quote Iron Man 3, “You start with something pure. Something exciting. Then come the mistakes, the compromises. We create our own demons.” This is something that Kevin Feige and company know best. It would seem that if not careful, Gunn and DC will become familiar with this reality as well.

It’s interesting to have lived through the superhero boom. I grew up inspired by Star-Lord, Steve Rogers, and Tony Stark. That is because the writing of said characters was so fantastic. It’s not nostalgia; Marvel just used to care more about integrity and characters than money and pandering. I do not think I would care about the MCU if I were 12 or 15 right now. There is simply too much going on, and it does at times feel like homework.

Something that brings us cinephiles peace is that film has an innate ability to achieve what no other medium can: it unifies us. I have personally never seen the world more united when we all wanted to see the Avengers defeat Thanos in Endgame, after he wiped out half the universe in Infinity War. Maybe that same connection will be felt seeing the Avengers fight Dr. Doom. Even with all the drama, all the politics, and corporate orders for more more more, good will always triumph over evil.

“There has been an awakening. Have you felt it? The dark side and… the light.”