Who can save Marvel?

In Marvelrather than holding their heads, they are slicing their brains to find a solution to the debacle, both artistic and at the box office, of what was the most successful film franchise in the history of Hollywood.

With a problematic 2023 – the new Ant-Man It didn’t work, and it ejected the Argentine Victoria Alonso from one of the Marvel Presidencies; The Marvels was Marvel’s lowest box-office film in history – for 2024, which started with a weak Madame Web and it is expected to raise this weekend in North America up to a ceiling of 20 million dollars, which would be surpassed by Bob Marley, the legendonly one premiere is announced: Deadpool & Wolverine.

It is clear that the replacements that Marvel made have not worked. The early, in my opinion, disappearances of Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man and Chris Evans as Captain America, brought more nostalgia than replacement.

Add in Chris Hemsworth taking sabbaticals, and the deaths of Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow and, tragically, Chadwick Boseman’s Black Panther, plus the closure of Guardians of the Galaxy, and what’s left?

Spider-Man, obviously. But the new film, in which the villain to be defeated will be Morlun, is still in the script writing stage.

Christopher Nolan was not wrong when, as he recalls Varietyproclaimed that the hiring of Robert Downey Jr. to play Tony Stark in Iron Man It was “one of the most consequential casting decisions ever made in the history of the movie business.”

Iron Man fueled the Marvel Cinematic Universe for the next 11 years, with Downey Jr. appearing in 10 films that grossed $12.5 billion, before Stark died in Avengers: Endgamein 2019.

And, in one of those, the recent hiring of the interpreters of the new The Fantastic Four could add to that statement by the director of Oppenheimer (for which Robert Downey Jr. is nominated for an Oscar for best supporting actor).

Let’s see. Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn and Ebon Moss-Bachrach, like Downey, were all in big-budget films or series that were mega hits: the Chilean Pascal with The Mandalorian y The Last of UsKirby appeared in the two most recent films of Mission ImpossibleQuinn and Stranger Things y Moss-Bachrach en Andor.

Another point in common: None of the four headlined their own blockbuster action film before signing with Marvel.

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby imagined The Fantastic Four for the first time in 1961, launching the Marvel universe as we know it today. And there are those who dare to suggest that these 4 characters come to replace 4 other Marvel characters, who are no longer there: Reed Richards (Pascal) instead of Stark; Johnny Storm’s Human Torch as the warrior that was Captain America. The Invisible Woman (Kirby) would take Captain Marvel’s place, if she fell out of favor. And, of course, Ben Grimm (Moss-Bachrach) is a monster like The Hulk, but without the uncontrollable rage.

Marvel announced the hiring of the four performers on Wednesday, February 14, Valentine’s Day. He showed them in an illustration in which they appear in a living room, like their characters. There is something retro there: the furniture and the magazine Life that Ben is reading. Could it be that the actions are transported to the ’60s?

Nothing is known other than the release date (2027: an eternity) of Avengers: Secret Wars, but it is imagined that the Fantastic Four will join the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which would involve multiple parallel universes. Is this an indication that a new Marvel Cinematic Universe is being born, with the Fantastic Four and the X-Men, as suggested by the post-credits scene of The Marvels?