Marvel Studios Needs to Fix This MCU Problem to Save Their New Movies

It was previously unthinkable for an MCU movie to have a second-weekend drop at the box office larger than 61%. That’s all changed with Phase Four and Five of this franchise, with titles like Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Black Widow establishing a new worrisome norm for this franchise. Nearly all of the biggest Marvel Cinematic Universe second weekend drops have occurred in the last few years, with The Marvels having the worst plummet of all with a 78% fall-off. This past weekend, Captain America: Brave New World scored another hefty drop for the saga with a devastating 68% decline.

A few years ago, these would’ve been unthinkable declines for not only any MCU movie but also any title opening over $80+ million, with exceptions like the Twilight sequels or Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. Now, such massive drops are the standard norm for the MCU, with only Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and Deadpool & Wolverine bucking this trend in recent years. It’s clear this franchise is in trouble and it’s high time the Marvel Cinematic Universe implements one specific tactic to stave off these grim second weekend declines.

Stop Making the MCU Inaccessible To General Audiences

Movies take a long time to make. This is especially true for massive blockbusters, that could end up being years of work for everyone involved. General audiences are still only just now, five years later, finally seeing MCU projects like Ironheart and The Fantastic Four: First Steps even though Kevin Feige announced both at a Disney investor meeting in December 2020. This means the MCU movies are still, halfway through this decade, still in the 2018-2023 mindset that this saga’s films and TV shows could directly intermingle. The thought process was that audiences would go gaga for this in the streaming era just like they’d embraced individual character films colliding for big Avengers movies.

Captain America: Brave New World was announced back in April 2021 right after The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’s series finale and before MCU movies began returning to theaters. The lengthy development and creative process means that Brave New World was conceived and launched in two radically different entertainment landscapes. It turns out it’s a lot harder to assign audiences multiple six or nine-hour chunks of television compared as homework for an MCU movie compared to just a couple of movies. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, The Marvels, and Quantumania all suffered in word-of-mouth (among many other factors) because they required knowledge of Disney+ shows to understand what was going on.

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It’s one thing to hinge a Spider-Man movie on appearences from two separate Spider-Men sagas that each grossed a combined $1+ billion worldwide. It’s another to make Brave New World contingent on both a 17-year-old movie and also a four-year-old miniseries. In the past, something like Doctor Strange or Black Panther worked perfectly fine as standalone movies for anyone who wandered into the theater. Even 2012’s The Avengers was relatively coherent for those who hadn’t seen previous Phase One titles. Now, modern MCU films live and die by their dense lore, which limits who can see and enjoy their movies.

Only the folks who memorize MCU wiki pages can possibly hope to comprehend the images flickering on-screen, which inherently restricts the box office potential of these features. Once the die-hard fans watch these titles, who else is going to want to watch something like Brave New World?

Make More Accessible Standalone MCU Features Again

May 2025’s Thunderbolts*, which features a team-up of various Phase Four and Five movie and TV show characters (plus MCU fixture Bucky Barnes), doesn’t look to be countering this worrisome MCU trend of inaccessibility informing how frontloaded these movies have become. However, July 2025’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps certainly appears to fit the bill as something that can resonate with moviegoers of all stripes. Rather than being rooted in Disney+ mythology, First Steps has emphasized a zippy retro vibe in its marketing that works for MCU fans and newbies alike.

With Marvel Studios preparing to pursue massive lore-heavy movies like Avengers: Secret Wars, this outfit needs to remember to also make accessible, lore-lite MCU titles to stave off further frontloaded box office runs. 2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy didn’t resonate with people because it was teeing up additional movies, audiences from all walks of life connected to the characters and soundtrack. Black Panther, similarly, wasn’t a hit because of its connections to further MCU features. It was because it provided an emotionally satisfying cinematic experience in the moment. These kinds of singular, standalone motion pictures are among the MCU’s biggest and leggiest box office hits.

They’re also the kind of movies that stick around in theaters for months on end rather than falling off a cliff after one weekend like recent MCU titles. Marvel Studios needs to embrace accessibility once again in its movies rather than solely worrying about intertwining theatrical films and TV shows like it did at the dawn of this decade. The innately lengthy creative process for any movie means the MCU won’t change overnight. However, this accessibility problem needs to be straightened out to avoid further box office plunges in the future.

Captain America: Brave New World is now playing in theaters.