We all remember being very excited about the release of Avengers: Endgame after the devastating cliffhanger at the end of Avengers: Infinity War, and being pleasantly satisfied with the film. With Steve Rogers retiring and the passing away of the beloved Tony Stark, it truly marked the end of a golden era for a unique cinematic universe. What does the state of the Marvel Cinematic Universe look like post-Endgame? Mediocrity to put it simply. You’ll hear it time and time again that the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has fallen out of popularity, and it’s unfortunately true.

Marvel has been churning out content one after another, focusing seemingly on quantity rather than quality. It can be seen with the worsening visual effects in their shows and movies. This, however, was a problem caused by the harsh work Marvel studios have their visual effects department working and as a result, the effects in their movies have noticeably gotten worse. According to a former Marvel VFX Dhruv Govil employee they state in a Twitter post, “working on Marvel shows is what pushed me to leave the VFX industry. They’re a horrible client, and I’ve seen way too many colleagues break down after being overworked, while Marvel tightens the purse strings.” This is just one of many accounts of this issue in the industry and it’s a big problem because not only are the workers suffering, but their movies are as well.

Let’s take a look at Marvel’s most recent films after Avengers: Endgame. One of the first films to come out directly after was Black Widow, a film that received a mediocre rating for lacking in pretty much everything. The story was bland and confusing, and the effects were especially bad. After that, there wasn’t much difference in the quality of products as they seemed to want to focus on creating more Disney Plus shows instead of taking their time with movies. They had the occasional better-than-average film like Spider-Man: No Way Home and maybe the Loki show. However, recently, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever had just released and surprised everyone to be a good film. Let’s just hope that Marvel Studios is finally learning from its mistakes and finally listening to the fans and their employees for a change.