It’s a valid question. The MCU is currently in Phase 4 and there have been quite a few heroes and villains that have been introduced and in some cases ditched for one reason or another. But there are still so many to bring in that one has to wonder how long the MCU plans to continue before fans might start to think that it’s growing a bit tired and the same stories are being told a little too often. Well, to the last part the answer is that the continuity needed for the overall scope of the MCU is bound to make it appear that the same stories are being told over and over, but with stock footage, it’s bound to happen that there will be a lot of familiar moments that will happen from time to time and will make it appear as though the MCU is doing little more than the minimum amount of work to expand the overall universe while utilizing everything they’ve done before. This isn’t true obviously, but there have been a few individuals that have attempted to criticize the MCU using this standpoint.
As far as how many phases the MCU will have, there’s no real definitive answer at the moment since it would appear that the plan is to keep going for as long as possible. Things are going to continue to change as actors either age out of their roles or move on to other paths which would force the MCU to evolve and bring in other characters as it’s already been doing. The Marvel timeline, which has been ripped up and redone anyway throughout the years when it comes to the comics, is bound to be utilized in every movie and show that’s coming, but it’s also going to be adapted to fit what the Mouse House has in mind for the overall story, which means that it might not be entirely recognizable even with the many elements that people have seen in the comics over the last several decades.
To be honest, a lot of the movies have deviated from the comics in a number of ways, even though they’ve managed to keep most of the elements that people recognize. Captain America: Civil War, was one of the most retconned movies in the MCU since not only did the beginning of the conflict get changed but due to whatever licensing issues might have arisen, the fight was kept between the Avengers and those few people that were connected to them, while in the comics there were numerous heroes and even villains being used. The unfortunate part of the MCU is that by introducing too many characters too quickly it’s likely that the same thing that happened to DC with their movies could end up happening, too much information too quickly could divide the fanbase and possibly degrade the movie experience. There are a lot of people that might argue this point by saying that Marvel has something DC doesn’t, but such a debate has been done and done again without really solving the problem of why so many characters can’t be introduced all at once.
So far the MCU has been topping DC in a big way by simply being itself when it comes to the big movies, while DC still holds a dominant position in TV and has been improving greatly in the movies. But when it comes to the different phases that the MCU has been going through it does make a person wonder how many are going to be enough and how long the fans are going to keep paying attention. Each phase is bound to bring more and more to the table, but it will also have to lose characters as time goes by, especially since keeping too many characters around is going to feel like things are getting too big at some point. Endgame brought a large number of characters together that fans love, but in all honesty, the amount of screen time per character wasn’t exactly even since some of the characters received a lot of screen time while others were there for a matter of minutes or seconds before the scene shifted to another character.
However many phases the MCU is bound to have, it’s evident that things are going to keep evolving and adapting to make certain that there will be a certain balancing point that can’t be tipped too far one way or the other in order to keep things moving forward. It’s kind of easy to think that the MCU is banking on the current fanbase will grow with the universe and perhaps wean their kids on these types of movies, meaning that there might not be an end to the MCU for a long time to come. It’s not the worst strategy.
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