Marvel Studios has been too good at its job. After 15 years of increase the MCU as the last word interconnected saga, audiences have actually taken to coronary heart the concept they should see all the things with a view to catch the most recent launch. This was all the time going to be a priority — 15 years is a very long time! Youngsters that noticed Iron Man in theaters are actually paying mortgages, spry adults circa 2008 now should schedule “regular colonoscopy screenings.” It’s a distinct world, man!
However when taken along side the broader Marvel Studios turmoil, a nominal concern turns into a five-alarm hearth. Folks must know, or a minimum of really feel, like each new MCU present or movie doesn’t include a prolonged homework task. Marvel’s resolution, then, is a brand new banner known as Marvel Highlight, which is able to debut when Echo premieres on Disney Plus and Hulu in Jan. 10, 2024.
A particular early screening of Echo showed off the new banner, which comes with a title card and its personal piano fanfare by Michael Giacchino, the famed Misplaced and Ratatouille composer additionally answerable for the common Marvel Studios tune (and director of MCU TV film Werewolf by Evening). Growing a pre-roll title card for Highlight titles indicators simply how critical Marvel is about letting folks know in regards to the studio’s intent right here. In Echo’s case, according to Marvel Head of Streaming Brad Winderbaum, that’s to say “just like comics fans didn’t need to read Avengers or Fantastic Four to enjoy a Ghost Rider Spotlight comic, our audience doesn’t need to have seen other Marvel series to understand what’s happening in Maya’s story [in Echo].”
Photograph: Chuck Zlotnick/Marvel Studios
It’s ironic that that is getting used for a present a few character that was launched in Hawkeye, with ties to a personality from Daredevil, however that’s neither right here nor there. Ideally, each story stands alone nicely sufficient to get pleasure from, and solely will get higher whenever you see the connections. That Marvel feels Echo, about deaf mob enforcer Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox), is price signaling as a recent begin to audiences might be nearly as good an indication as any to these feeling a bit leery of the MCU.
In turning into the last word superhero comedian e-book adaptation, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has inherited the last word superhero comedian e-book downside: What to do when continuity stops being an asset and turns into a hurdle to clear. In its publishing, Marvel most famously responded to this downside by beginning over with 2000’s Final Marvel line, updating its characters for the brand new millennium in a means that will inform the MCU. The basic variations stayed in print, unbothered, however Final Marvel gave creators and readers area for bolder and extra divergent takes on basic heroes.
After about 15 years, nevertheless — there’s that quantity once more — Final Marvel’s continuity grew to become as thorny because the mothership, and the entire thing ended.
Marvel’s Highlight banner will not be practically as radical an concept, nevertheless it’s the primary time MCU brass has actually gestured at the truth that the challenge will not be resistant to its supply materials’s deadly flaw: The very factor that makes it attention-grabbing will, finally, make it off-putting for some time. It’s regular! Nothing stays on prime ceaselessly.
However hope springs everlasting. Did you hear? Marvel is beginning up its Final Comics line once more. Will it succeed? Will Highlight work? Who is aware of. Let’s examine in once more in 15 years.
