The future of Marvel movies lies in adding teenage girls to Doctor Strange

On August 31, 2009, comic book fans were rocked by the news that the House of Mouse was absorbing the House of Ideas. The $4 billion deal between Disney and Marvel Entertainment was just as surprising to those following the companies’ movements and tremors — but the news quickly formed a consensus narrative. departures from The New York Times to the guard to forbes agreed Marvel Entertainment would give Disney an audience that the venerable studio had struggled to attract.

Speaking to NewsweekDisney Chief Financial Officer Tom Staggs put it bluntly: “We both have properties with broad appeal, but [Marvel properties] tend towards boys.”

More than a decade later, with Marvel Studios dominating the entire mood of franchise cinema, Marvel Entertainment and its mousy parents are reaping what they sow. The teens of 2009 are the 30-year-olds of the 2020s, and the teens of 2022 are of a different race. The future of Marvel Studios lies in recapturing teenage audiences, but this time they have a different plan. After a decade of drought, a certain breed of superhero appears in nearly every upcoming film on the company’s roster.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe revolves around girls.

Biff! phew! Comic adaptations are no longer just for boys

Marvel sequels often expand their cast by adding more heroes – Black Widow and War Machine in iron man 2the falcon and the winter soldier in Captain America: The Winter Soldierthe wasp clean Ant Man and the Wasp. Marvel’s Phase Four (so everything from Black widow on) takes this tendency and makes it the rule. And the rule is: add a superhero. Ideally a teenager.

Black widow has already introduced a younger Legacy character in Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova, and eternal chose not only a female character, Sersi, from the ensemble of comic demigods as the main actor, but also the eternally youthful character Sprite, who was always portrayed as male in comics until the film.

Of Marvel Studios upcoming feature films with release dates, only one is (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3) has so far declined to introduce a new female superhero. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness will welcome queer, teenage Latinx character America Chavez to the MCU. Thor: Love and Thunder will follow Natalie Portman’s unexpected return to the franchise to play Jane Foster’s rise to the role of Thor. Even without the untimely death of Chadwick Boseman, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever would probably still have capitalized on the breakthrough popularity of Letitia Wright’s Shuri, but the film will also debut Dominique Thorne as Riri Williams, a black teenage girl who rebuilds Iron Man’s armor to become the hero Ironheart. The wonders will snag two female superheroes from their Disney Plus debuts to star alongside Carol Danvers. Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania will contribute Big little lies‘ Kathryn Newton as the third actress to play the hero’s daughter and the first to actually don her super suit as the shrinking heroine Stinger.

Similarly, Marvel’s rush to bring TV series to the Disney Plus service. WandaVision spotlighted the second female recruit to the MCU Avengers and introduced Teyonah Parris as Pulsar. Loki presented her own version of Lady Loki hawk eye brought Kate Bishop and Echo to the screen. And the company’s future TV series is – compared to past installments – shocking female led. Mrs Miracle, She Hulk, heart of steel, echo, Agatha: House of Harknessand an untitled series featuring Danai Gurira’s Okoye are all on the board.

It’s a stark departure from a franchise that had only produced two television shows in its first decade (Agent Carter and jessica jones) with a woman as the sole title character and has not made a single female-directed feature film. It’s a testament to Marvel Comics’ deep source of diverse characters, many of which are no more obscure than Iron Man was before 2008, and a testament to belief that many fans have been demanding for over a decade.

However, we shouldn’t think of this as a company bending to the demands of its existing audience. What’s actually happening here is a company bowing to the reality that the audiences it’s neglected for the past decade are the ones it needs to survive.

New kids in town

There’s a certain amount of bullshit latitude that should be given to any exploration of generational trends. But whether the generalizations of such research are true or not, it’s still the generalizations that Disney and Marvel have to work with. And as the oldest Zoomers enter the workforce, a growing body of research on their cohort is coming to the same repeated conclusions.

According to research, Gen Z is more racially advancedmore Acceptance of Gender as a Spectrumand more queer and queer-accepting than any generation before it. They have a low tolerance for pandering, especially from corporations, they despise brand loyalty, and they expect the brands they patronize to be socially responsible.

In addition, there is their recency bias. Millennials remember a time when an entertaining superhero movie was a novelty and a reliable superhero franchise? Virtually unheard of. For each Batman begins there was one Superman returnsfor each X-Men or Spiderman there was one X Men: The Last Stand or a Spider-Man III. But Hollywood’s repeated attempts to create interconnected film franchises are the mainstream media environment in which Gen Z became aware of the existence of mainstream media. The eldest of them were just about to reach their teens iron man came out in theaters and the youngest was able to share a birthday with Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

Superheroes aren’t the shiny new thing for them – they’re the standard building block of cinema. Many members of the cohort were media savvy and strong online when the vibrant, female, queer-dominated online fandoms emerging around the Marvel Cinematic Universe hit a thundering and awkward decades of silence. While the oldest millennials grew up with bowdlerized translations of Sailor Moonthe medium-sized television landscape of Generation Z offered them the diverse worlds of Avatar: The Legend of Korra, Steven universe, She-Raand Disney’s own owl house. Gen Z observes Disney’s repeated stumbles. you are straight protest against them.

Marvel Studios must come up with new ideas to attract a new generation to the MCU as millennials outgrow the youth group, because this time a five white and one white female Avengers cast won’t cut it. Luckily for Marvel Studios, they have something to fall back on: the indeed house of ideas.

Be amazed now

Credit: Russell Dauterman/Marvel Comics

As Marvel Studios built the Infinity Saga, superhero comics evolved. Perhaps the strangest shock of returning to current coverage of Disney’s Marvel acquisition is recalling industry perceptions of both companies in 2009. A large number of articles note Hannah Montana as Disney’s headline product, and almost everyone defines the mood of Marvel Comics as “tough” or “gloomy.”

Needless to say, those perceptions have changed — not least because Disney is now the home of not just Marvel, but Star Wars as well. The simpsons, it’s always sunny in Philadelphia, and the Alien and Predator franchises to name a few. But things have changed at Marvel Comics, too.

Two years after 2009, Brain Bendis and Sarah Pichelli founded Miles Morales. In 2012, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Jamie McKelvie, and Dexter Soy debuted a reimagining of Carol Danvers as Captain Marvel. In 2013, editors Sana Amanat and Stephen Wacker, writer G. Willow Wilson, and artists Adrian Alphona and Jamie McKelvie collaborated to make Kamala Khan the new Ms. Marvel. That same year, Kieron Gillen and McKelvie finally modernized Young Avengers with an almost exclusively queer cast. In 2014, Rick Remender, Carlos Pacheco, and Stuart Immonen awarded Sam Wilson the title of Captain America. That same year, Jason Aaron and Russell Dauterman made Jane Foster Thor.

And that’s only the first half of the decade. In 2015 Laura became Kinney that Wolverine in Tom Taylor, David Lopez and David Navarrot The all-new Wolverine. In 2016, Jennifer Walters took on the title role in Mariko Tamaki and Nico Leon’s hulk Series. That same year, Bendis and Mike Deodato debuted with Riri Williams as Ironheart.

For the writers, artists, and editors of these stories, the reward for success was often being the target of malicious harassment aimed at punishing the creators of various comics. And that’s exactly the work Marvel Studios is now turning to for the multi-billion dollar films and shows of Phase Four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, often with just a “thank you” on the side. Between WandaVision (Demiurge and Speed), Loki (child Loki), hawk eye (Kate Bishop) and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (America Chavez) alone, Marvel Studios has introduced five of the members of Gillen and McKelvie’s Young Avengerswith options for Shuri, Ironheart, Patriot (Eli Bradley) and Stinger (Cassie Lang) on ​​the side.

This is not an accident. Marvel Studios POC-led franchises like Black Panther, Shang Chiand a new one Captain America are already in the can. Queer-adjacent films are clearly an area Disney prefers not to consider, which might explain why it’s been five years since Marvel Studios regained the film license for the overwhelmingly popular and heavily queer-coded X-Men franchise, without even looking at a new movie. The future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe lies in Disney’s ability to garner the loyalty of the most progressive and skeptical generation yet, and there’s only one “safe” new axis of diversity for Marvel Studios to lean on: women.