To much delight of the fans, Marvel seems to be finally breaking away from the tried and tested, largely humor-filled type of storytelling with which it had gained an audience for over a decade.
Marvel seems to be going into a really good phase. Don’t get me wrong, everything is not as Marvel is expecting it to be. There have been occasional highs and lows lately, but thankfully unlike most other studios, this has actually gotten Marvel to change things. Not the huge character IPs or the resources, but this attitude at Marvel to have no qualms about learning at every step and changing it, that is Marvel’s biggest asset.
Marvel, like a great spouse, actually listens.
Marvel recently changed the genre of its upcoming holiday special for Disney+ Hotstar titled ‘Werewolf By Night’. While the special was initially tagged as comedy, it is now a ‘horror’. While this in itself is not worth anything much since they can’t just change the whole movie before its release in 2 weeks, Marvel is actively marketing it as a horror genre venture from MCU. As to what has led to this, there is a lot of speculation, it may have a lot to do with the disappointing ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’.
The latest Thor film was criticized by the public for forcing humor into every scene, even when there was no need for it. This invariably affected the storytelling of the film, and even someone like Taiki Waititi could salvage it. The movie was in no way bad, but after Thor: Ragnarok, they expected something more.
‘Werewolf By Night’ in that regard hopefully will have something different for the fans. The movie is a special hence a lesser runtime of 52 minutes, unlike usual Marvel features. The official trailer had comedic moments but not the usual laugh-out-loud ones and the horror and gritty environment was a fresh sight for the fans.
With this genre change and Marvel showing us more of its supernatural sides like werewolves, the big green Man-Thing, and other monsters, it is probably safe to say Marvel is turning over a new leaf.
Marvel has invariantly learned from its mistakes in ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ which was letting the need to generate humor to attract the film’s usual audience affect the story and how its told.
And this is why we at Binged labeled it as a very good phase for Marvel.
They say the most testing time is a call to either introspect on how to make improvements and get out tougher or cry over the misfortune. Marvel seemingly has chosen the former. And as fans, we cannot be more excited about this discourse of Marvel.