Over the past few years, fans have shared plenty of opinions about where Marvel Studios Multiverse Saga went wrong. While some place the blame on individual projects, others find fault in the premise, believing it was doomed to fail with general audiences struggling to find interest in alternate realities. Whether it’s one, the other or a little bit of both, the end is nigh and the big shots behind the scenes at the studio have remained relatively quiet about the struggles.
Sure, under Bob Iger’s second term, there’s been a mandatory reduction in content and some rebranding meant to make projects more accessible, pivoting from the “It’s All Connected” era. According to Marvel’s head of streaming, television and animation, Brad Winderbaum, the rebranding was meant as a “signal to the general audience that we’re creating a lot of options, and you can follow your tastes within this brand.”
We’re trying to dispel the idea that you need to do any kind of setup work to watch anything else.
-Brad Winderbaum
To that end, the studio attempted to make it clear that its latest theatrical release, The Fantastic: Four First Steps, was “homework-free,” requiring to prior knowledge of the MCU. The same idea holds mostly true with Marvel Animation’s recently released Marvel Zombies, which spun out of one 30-minute episode of the first season of What If…?. Despite garnering underwhelming reviews, the TV-MA series has been wildly popular on D+, leading to speculation that a second season could be given the green light relatively soon.
In a world where viewership matters most, Marvel Zombies looks to be another in a string of successes for the studio as it looks to right the Multiverse ship. In an interview with CBR, TV boss Winderbaum explained why the project works while addressing the “valid criticisms” of the studio’s Multiverse narrative.
“I think one of the valid criticisms of multiverse storytelling is that when you have multiple realities, the stakes diminish,” Winderbaum explained. “But there’s another way to look at it when you have the opportunity (with) something like Marvel Zombies, where actually it raises the stakes quite a bit to be in a pocket universe outside of the MCU. Where death feels very final, and we don’t have to worry about putting the toys back in the toy box unbroken. We can really make a mess.”
Winderbaum’s comments are more than just talk. In both the zombie episode of What If…? and in Marvel Zombies, high-profile heroes were subjected to Mortal Kombat-esque violence, something that just isn’t possible in live-action, making them ideal Multiverse stories. “The fact that the audience might not know what’s coming, because all bets are off,” he continued. “There’s no guarantee for anybody. People come in this cold, they’re truly surprised. They have literally no idea what we’re about to pull on them.”
Unafraid to put a point on it, Winderbaum levied his own criticism against the Multiverse Saga stories, citing a lack of stakes.
“I think, you know, for better or for worse, it’s been missing a little bit. You go into someone’s franchise movie, and it’s like ‘You’re making it out at the end!’ And the filmmakers are doing the best they can to build some tensions, so you worry. And they do, and that’s great,” explained Winderbaum. “But in this, it’s just like, no, there’s no guarantees for anything. It’s a whole different type of viewing experience.”
Given his position at the studio as both the D+ gatekeeper and a member of the Marvel Parliament, fans might want to take Winderbaum‘s comments to heart and as a sign that the studio’s course correction isn’t simply superficial.
Source: CBR
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