In physics, there is a concept known as the "heat death of the universe." An open scientific question is whether the universe is somehow finite or bound or whether it will simply keep expanding and expanding until it grows colder and colder as it grows vaster and vaster. Marvel is testing that from an artistic platform.
The "phases" of the MCU were designed both to lead up to the Avengers: Endgame extravaganza while setting the stage for future movies. Amazingly, Marvel more or less stuck the landing with Endgame, which prompted the question: What next?
Sadly, Marvel has decided to go bigger and bigger, vaster and vaster, risking the heat death of physics. I have not seen the latest MCU Disney+ offering of "What if..?" simply because I haven't gotten around to it. I've seen Loki. Falcon and the Winter Soldier and WandaVision. Because the MCU is really more of a massive television show than a series of movies, these fit in well with what came before. All of them expanded on the storylines of characters who were important, though not central, in the lead up to Endgame. Loki, in particular, suggested where the franchise was headed, building off themes from Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, themes which will be expanded upon in the upcoming Spider-Man movie: No Way Home.
Basically, rather than tell a coherent story about Tony Stark and Steve Rogers bickering over how to save the earth from extraterrestrial evil, we will now have multiple, parallel universes - similar but unique.
While it is not a multi-verse story, The Eternals suggest the peril that Marvel now face.
Look, The Eternals was...fine. It wasn't "bad." It simply never gripped me. Oh, the earth is in trouble from a celestial being? OK. I'm going to go ahead and predict our heroes will save it. (What made Thanos so compelling was eliminating half of all life. There are still stories after that, so his initial victory made great narrative sense.) OK, Celestials are now a thing to worry about? But the galactic screw-ups, the Guardians of the Galaxy, took down a Celestial so...how really hard can it be? The fact that Circe, one of the least powerful of the Eternals, took down the Celestial and there was nothing metaphorical about her power...it just kind of...yeah.
Left me chilly.
By any objective standards, the MCU has kicked DC's butt. Batman is compelling, but Superman is not cinematic, unless you find a way to make him Not-Superman. I mean, he's good and all-powerful. Batman shares with the MCU heroes a certain set of flaws and fallibilities that make for better cinema, which is why we get pretty good Batman moves and shit like the Justice League.
It is the small bore humanity and humor that makes the MCU hum. The Galaga joke in The Avengers; whatever riff Robert Downey, Jr. rips off; Tom Holland's endearingly dorky Peter Parker; the outright hilarity of Thor: Ragnarok - a lighthearted romp about the end of a world.
The multiverse suggests narratives so huge and multitudinous that it drains them of meaning and emotion. Emotion is why the MCU took over the multiplexs. Every move can dazzle with CGI, but the sagas of Steve Rogers, Bruce Banner, Tony Stark and Natasha Romanov were ultimately human stories. For all the apocalyptic scale of Infinity War and Endgame, it was the emotional beats that made it work.
If we are now headed for a "cinematic universe" where if "earth" gets destroyed, we know there is another "earth" in a different, parallel universe, we are headed for a set of stories empty of human stakes and human meaning.
I can understand why Disney would want to keep expanding outwards and outwards, creating more "IP" cornering more of the global market. I fear, however, the MCU could grow colder as it grows more vast. Ultimately, it would die out with a sputtering irrelevancy, like the last dying star.
I honestly hope I'm wrong, but if The Eternals is a harbinger of what's to come, I fear I'm not.
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