Marvel Studios has had some standout weekends in its history, but since “The Avengers” debuted in 2012, there hasn’t been a more important weekend for the company than this last one.
On Saturday night, Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige opened the company’s presentation at San Diego Comic-Con by announcing that “Deadpool & Wolverine” would have the biggest opening weekend ever for an R-rated film, and that the Marvel Cinematic Universe had just surpassed $30 billion in global box office gross, the first film franchise ever to reach that milestone by a wide margin. About an hour later, Feige closed the panel by announcing that Joe and Anthony Russo, who directed the last two “Avengers” films that grossed more than $4.8 billion worldwide, would be returning to direct the film. the next Meanwhile, Feige headlined his 2025 slate of films, which included a first look at Harrison Ford as Red Hulk and the debut of Marvel's first family, Fantastic 4.
It was by all accounts an impressive display of Marvel's unique ability to turn fan excitement into a sense of joyful inevitability, that light-hearted feeling that naturally Studio films will be huge, crowd-pleasing, and inevitable cultural phenomena.
But by this weekend, that reputation was in serious doubt—for the first time in 12 years. The chatter began in February 2023 with the critical and financial disappointment of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania ; over the next year, the studio weathered a series of high-profile hits, often of its own making, that led to a flurry of media grumbling about superhero fatigue in general and speculation that Marvel in particular had lost its mojo. (This same publication contributed to the chatter.)
These were not superficial concerns. The development of the MCU required that every project be at least a success. And It took a huge capital outlay to make movies, and the movie industry as a whole had become dependent on Marvel as the central engine that drove the movie market. Going into Comic-Con, Marvel really needed to reassert its arrogance, to prove that 2023 was just a temporary decline and not the beginning of an irreversible decline.
The effort began in earnest on Thursday, July 25, when “Deadpool & Wolverine” stars Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman and director Shawn Levy joined Feig for a screening of the film in full in Hall H, then capped off the night with a long fireworks and drone show over the San Diego Convention Center that screamed, “Nobody else would spend this kind of money to put on this kind of show.” The celebration continued with Saturday’s panel, which opened with a full church choir singing “Like a Prayer” as an army of dancing Deadpools surged through the audience. Other studios have had panels at Comic-Con; Marvel put on a great show. Displays.
The bulk of the panel resembled many Marvel Studios Comic-Con presentations before it: Feige and a moderator (in this case, “Deadpool & Wolverine” co-star Rob Delaney) would run through the cast of one of the studio’s upcoming films (“Captain America: New World Order,” “Thunderbolts,” and “The Fantastic 4: First Steps”); the actors would stand on stage (rather than sitting behind a table) and offer revealing, strategic answers to questions about what to expect in their film; and then offer an extended first look at said film that was created specifically for Comic-Con to extract maximum fan anticipation. After repeating that guide a few times, Feige would close out the night with a previously unannounced reveal or two (the Russos! Downey! Victor von Doom!) meant to send the audience out into the streets of San Diego, giddy with weird glee.
All the fanfare and hype masked some flaws: There was no mention of a future “Blade” movie with Mahershala Ali, which was first announced at Comic-Con five years ago and has since lost two directors. Feige explained, without much convincing, that the Thunderbolts name in “Thunderbolts” actually has nothing to do with Ford’s character, Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross. But then he blocked “Thunderbolts” director Jake Schreier from explaining why there was an asterisk in the title, which even drew some boos. And “Brave New World” director Julias Onah couldn’t attend because he had contracted COVID-19 — an unfortunate absence given the film’s extensive rewrites and reshoots.
More broadly, the return of Downey and the Russo brothers represents a kind of creative retreat, an admission that Marvel needs to lean on its biggest filmmakers rather than seek out new voices and actors. The euphoria over Downey’s return will fade, leaving behind some thorny creative questions, like whether the general public will be able to accept Downey as a Marvel character who isn’t Tony Stark, or how the MCU’s most popular actor can be justified in playing a completely different role than just “because of the multiverse.” (In this regard, Marvel at least has an unintended precedent in Chris Evans playing Johnny Storm before he played Steve Rogers.)
None of these complications mattered at all inside Hall H, where the audience enjoyed wave after wave of dopamine-fueled, tech-savvy stimulants. Some attendees even began chanting Russo’s name and Downey’s initials long before their return was confirmed. On Saturday, Marvel proved that it still knows how to entertain its audience better than any other entertainment company in the industry. All the studio had to do was sleep with Deadpool and call up Doom.
