It has been 15 months since the last entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, "Spider-Man: Far From Home," and we'll be waiting even longer for the next.
That's the biggest gap between Marvel Studios movies since the 23 months between "The Incredible Hulk" in 2008 and "Iron Man 2" in 2010. With the announcement Wednesday that the already-delayed Nov. 6 release of "Black Widow," starring Scarlett Johansson, has been pushed back to May 2021, we're looking at another nearly two-year wait for the movies in which superheroes bicker and save the planet from maniacs.
The MCU has been responsible for plenty of bad trends, including the omnipresence of superhero movies and the dedication to fan service over storytelling. Too many Marvel movies worry less about coherent narratives than cramming in characters and story lines from the comic books.
But the MCU has been responsible for worthwhile trends, as well. "Black Widow" will be a rare movie that centers on a female superhero, something Disney-owned Marvel Studios also did with "Captain Marvel" and has been laying the groundwork for since Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow debuted in "Iron Man 2." Her popularity undoubtedly fueled rival Warner Bros.' decision to give Wonder Woman two of her own films, the latest of which, "1984," was postponed to Christmas.
The Marvel series has also been fairly inclusive, with juicy roles for Samuel L. Jackson, Don Cheadle, Tessa Thompson and others. "Black Panther," with its cast of top-notch talents, made the late Chadwick Boseman a star and gave an entire community the heroes it had deserved for decades, while also providing gifted Ryan Coogler a big stage on which to direct.
The MCU has lagged on behind-the-scenes women. So far, a co-credit for Anna Boden on "Captain Marvel" is the only sign that women also make movies. But that will change with the next two projects, Cate Shortland's "Black Widow" and "Eternals," which stars Salma Hayek, Kumail Nanjiani, Gemma Chan and Brian Tyree Henry and was directed by Chloé Zhao. Zhao is known — barely — as the director of "The Rider," a beautiful drama that killed on the festival circuit and nowhere else.
That may point to the best thing about the Marvel movies. Producer Kevin Feige has taken chances on directors whose records give no indication they'll be good at staging explosions in space, with one bunch of special-effect characters battling another. In addition to Zhao, Coogler ("Fruitvale Station"), Boden and Ryan Fleck ("It's Kind of a Funny Story") and Destin Daniel Cretton ("Short Term 12") have basically gone straight from making movies about three people chatting on a porch to movies where the world might end.
For complicated and boring reasons, not all Marvel characters are part of the MCU — the rights to the X-Men, for instance, have belonged to another studio — but they've still released 23 movies in 12 years, and from the perspective of someone who's more a fan of good movies than comic book movies, many are worth another look.
