Where, my father asked while flicking through the Disney app on my television, were the films he might enjoy? And what was the Marvel Cinematic Universe?

The two questions are related. If you’re not a man under 45, or you don’t have children in your house, the Marvel phenomenon might have passed you by. You’ve seen the posters, but you’re confident that anything with people running around in Spandex can be ignored. But Marvel is the monster that has eaten Hollywood, and the survivors of its arrival have had to rebuild their lives around it.

Until a bit over a decade ago, there was no particular reason for anyone in Britain to know about Marvel Comics. The actual comic books were hard to get hold of here, and they only had one real star — we’ll come back to him. A British person asked to name a comic book hero would probably have gone for Superman or Batman. And they belonged to rival publisher DC Comics.

Instead of a few stars, Marvel had a large network of characters who had, in the comic books, a long complex history of interacting: teaming up and falling out as they fought baddies. That wasn’t how things worked on the big screen: Superman got his films, and Batman got his. This received wisdom was the reason Marvel had been selling the rights to its characters piecemeal. Marvel’s one big name, Spider-Man, was owned by Sony (who had picked him up from MGM in exchange for the rights to Casino Royale, a trade that enabled the 2006 James Bond reboot).

Marvel movies approach twice the takings of Star Wars and Harry Potter films put together

A few believers at Marvel, though, had a plan. They were going to put their network of characters on screen together, dropping into and out of each other’s movies, just like in the comics. It wouldn’t be a conventional series of linear sequels, but instead a collection of sometimes-intersecting stories told across multiple films.

It was like nothing that had been attempted before, and they delivered it on a scale that’s hard to take in. Since 2008, the studio has put out 32 movies, as well as more than a dozen TV series. The only franchise to come close is James Bond, in 25 films over a leisurely 60 years. The Harry Potter franchise managed eight films over 11 years. You might have felt there were too many Star Wars films, but compared to Marvel, Lucasfilm, with 11 movies in 42 years, is the JD Salinger of cinema.

There’s money in this: Marvel movies have taken just under $30 billion so far — approaching twice the total takings of the Star Wars and Harry Potter films put together.

Until recently, the films have been good. Rather than trying to make them all feel the same, the company encouraged difference. They were all superhero films, sure, but they ranged from comedies to political thrillers. The Winter Soldier is a decent Washington conspiracy movie. Thor: Ragnarok is laugh-out-loud funny.

But, like a superhero trying to use his powers for good, Marvel is starting to distort the world around it. Other people want a slice of the action. Sony, as well as allowing Marvel to play with Spider-Man, is releasing its own animated films. Marvel’s old rival, DC, has piled in. In cinemas right now there are two films in which a superhero visits parallel universes after an attempt to change history goes wrong and encounters different versions of himself. They go nicely with the 2021 and 2022 Marvel Cinematic Universe films with the same plot. We get it, guys: we promise not to meddle with the space-time continuum.

Talent is sucked in, too. Take New Zealand’s Taika Waititi. His 2016 film Hunt For The Wilderpeople was both moving and funny. It was the work of a filmmaker who promised great things, and to be fair, that was what he delivered for Marvel. You can’t begrudge him success, but there are interesting films he wasn’t making while he oversaw last year’s unnecessary and forgettable Thor: Love and Thunder. Likewise, Benedict Cumberbatch could be doing more worthwhile work than pretending to be a wizard in front of a green screen in yet another movie about saving the world from computer-generated aliens.

These films are increasingly incomprehensible to people who haven’t watched all the others

We are now in a world of diminishing quality. Of the nine (nine!) Marvel films released since cinemas reopened in 2021, perhaps three have been worthwhile. I would struggle to tell you the plots of some of the others. My kids are beginning to lose interest.

What’s more, the price of all the cross-referencing is that these films are increasingly incomprehensible to people who haven’t watched all the others. Sony’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is wonderful, but it’s not for newcomers. DC’s The Flash is fine but, again, it assumes you’ve seen several films released over the last decade. How many movies can you make that require you to have watched 30 other movies to understand what’s happening?

Good may yet come from all this. Waititi could follow Christopher Nolan, who used the clout he got from directing Batman films to pursue projects that would have struggled to get backing otherwise. Cumberbatch must now be rich enough to do what he wants for ever.

At some point, though, Marvel will have to stop making three movies a year, and it’s unlikely the studio will have the wisdom to do it gracefully. It’s a tale as old as comic books: the hero is becoming the villain.

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This article is taken from the July 2023 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.