If they went back to doing standalone movies with very loose tie ins (or none at all) to the MCU at large, instead of every movie feeling like a 105 minute trailer for the next movie, more people would see them.

One of the best things to come out post Endgame (for me at least) has been Moon Knight, precisely because it stood by itself with no connection to the MCU at large.

Once they realize that movies can be reasonably successful without having to tie in to one overarching, decade spanning plot, they’ll go back to being good.

The thing is there is so much source material that they could refresh it with a completely new take and new characters. But.the shared universe has become unwieldy, both in production a nd in narrative.

What they should be doing is backing off the slavish attention to continuity and letting auteurs do their thing without worrying about setting up future installments or following up stuff that came before. And they seriously need to slow down their rollouts. When it was still new, it was exciting to be getting two new shows and three new movies in this world every year. But the novelty is gone now, so they only have the strength of their stories to hold them up, and lately, those have been suffering because of the brutal production line.

Disney is in the business of beating dead horses. But I’m happy for them to keep trying, I just won’t watch until they make something good. I still want to see a film with avengers/xmen/fantastic 4 in it at some point, but with the massive loss of momentum that’s starting to pile up who knows how this will unfold.

I can definitely see video game adaptations being the next big thing, with the successes of Sonic the Hedgehog, The Last of Us, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Gran Turismo, and Five Nights at Freddy’s.