This is kind of a weird year for the MCU. We only have one movie coming out due to last year’s writers and actors strikes, which pushed back Captain America: Brave New World and Thunderbolts*.
Those will now be released in 2025 with The Fantastic Four, and this year we will just be hanging our hopes on Deadpool & Wolverine.
Director Shawn Levy is feeling the pressure of being that one and only film during a period of time in which Marvel’s fanbase is unsure about it’s future. Levy told Total Film in a recent interview:
“We had no idea it would be this unique moment where people are asking what the MCU means any more. Can it surprise us? Can it break molds in ways that we don’t expect? We certainly hope that this movie is an answer to those questions.
What Kevin Feige has built with the MCU is historic as far as a string of successes, but culture has its tide chart, culture has ebbs and flows, and one thing we do know is you can’t keep doing the same thing ad nauseum and expect people to greet it with the same excitement.
And so it just worked out really fortuitously because our movie is not like any MCU movie. Yeah, and I say that as a fan of a lot of MCU movies.”
Who knows how the film will affect the future of the MCU? For the time being, Levy has focused on making the best film possible. He went on to add:
“I would love to take credit for those parallels. Some we absolutely intend, but some are coincidences, and we came up with ‘Marvel Jesus’ two years ago. People love to get on bandwagons whether they’re positive, but frankly even more when they’re negative.”
Marvel boss Kevin Feige clearly has faith in Levy’s vision as it was recently reported that he’s the frontrunner to helm Avengers 5. Deadpool & Wolverine is expected to lead straight into that movie, and I have a good feeling that we are in for a resurgence in solid Marvel movie storytelling and fun.
Deadpool & Wolverine arrives in theaters on July 26th.