A personal essay on what happens when a franchise loses the audience that sustained it through twenty films, and what the franchise’s response to that loss reveals about its broader trajectory.
The Confession
I watch Marvel Cinematic Universe Phase Four and Phase Five productions in fast forward. I have not watched a recent MCU film at normal playback speed since approximately Avengers: Endgame in 2019. The fast forward is not casual. The fast forward is deliberate. The fast forward represents specific accumulated decisions about what the franchise is currently asking of me as a viewer and what I am willing to provide.
The confession is not unique. Substantial audience numbers have made comparable decisions across the past five years. The Marvels’ approximately two hundred thirty-seven million dollar estimated commercial loss in 2023 represented the accumulated decisions of millions of previous MCU viewers who declined to attend. Captain America: Brave New World’s substantially weaker commercial performance in 2025 represented additional accumulated withdrawal. Thunderbolts’ continued commercial underperformance in 2025 confirmed that the pattern was not specific to individual properties.
The fast forward is one specific behavioral response among multiple possible responses to franchise audience withdrawal. Some former MCU viewers stopped watching entirely. Some watch through streaming subscriptions they were already paying for rather than attending theatrically. Some watch in fast forward as I do. Each response represents the same underlying decision: the franchise is no longer worth the full attention it had previously earned.
The Specific Moments
Fast forward did not begin as default policy. Fast forward began at specific moments within specific productions when the franchise asked for engagement I was no longer willing to provide. The accumulated moments became default policy across multiple films.
Thor: Love and Thunder generated the first sustained fast-forward viewing for me. The screaming goats sequences. The Korg comedy. The Russell Crowe Zeus parody. Each comedic interruption to the Bale Gorr material confirmed that the film was not committed to its strongest single element. The fast forward through the comedic sequences allowed me to engage with the Gorr material at the level it deserved. The film I watched was not the film Marvel Studios released. The film I watched was the Bale Gorr material with the Thor comedy compressed to seconds.
Quantumania extended the pattern. The Cassie Lang political activism sequences. The Quantum Realm computer-generated environment exposition. The MODOK character sequences. Each operated at register that did not justify the screen time the production allocated. The fast forward allowed me to engage with Jonathan Majors’s Kang performance without the surrounding material competing for attention.
Captain America: Brave New World received complete fast-forward viewing. The political-thriller register the marketing promised was not delivered. The Sam Wilson Captain America material did not generate the audience trust the role required. The Harrison Ford Red Hulk material operated at register the surrounding film could not support. The fast forward allowed me to sample the production without committing the runtime the marketing had implied.
Each fast-forward decision represents the same underlying calculation. The production was asking for runtime engagement. My evaluation of what the production was offering did not justify the engagement. The fast forward allowed me to maintain awareness of franchise developments without paying the full attention cost the production demanded.
What This Means
Fast forward is one specific form of franchise disengagement among multiple possible forms. The pattern matters because franchises depend on sustained audience engagement across multiple productions. The MCU built its commercial dominance through accumulated audience investment that subsequent productions could draw on. The fast forward represents withdrawal from that accumulated investment.
The franchise economics depend on viewers like me providing the engagement that justifies the production budget. When I fast forward, I am not paying the attention cost the production requires to function as designed. The production assumes my full attention across the runtime. My fast forward violates the assumption. Other viewers who have stopped watching entirely violate the assumption more completely. The aggregate effect is documented in the commercial underperformance that has characterized Phase Four and Phase Five productions.
The franchise’s response to the audience withdrawal has been mixed. Marvel Studios announced production schedule reductions following The Marvels’ commercial failure. The Disney+ series production schedule has been reduced. Some adjustments to the broader creative approach have been visible in The Fantastic Four: First Steps’s specific 1960s retro-futurist commitment. Whether these adjustments will produce sustained audience recovery remains an open question.
The audience withdrawal also affects me as a viewer. I had spent approximately a decade engaging with MCU productions across multiple films as they released. The franchise had earned my attention through specific sustained craft commitment across Phase One through Phase Three. The withdrawal of that attention reflects the franchise’s specific failure to maintain the craft commitment that had originally earned the attention. The trade is mutual. I would prefer to watch MCU films at full attention. The MCU has not produced sufficient material to justify the attention. The fast forward is response to the franchise’s specific decisions rather than to broader changes in my viewing preferences.
The Franchise’s Response
Marvel Studios’ response to the audience withdrawal has been substantially shaped by the studio’s framing of the audience critics as politically motivated rather than as craft-motivated. The She-Hulk: Attorney at Law Episode 3 sequence in 2022 mocked specific audience criticism as “M-She-U” misogyny. The framing positioned audience critics as bigots whose complaints did not warrant serious response.
The framing is partially accurate and substantially incomplete. Some audience critics of MCU productions have operated through misogynistic or otherwise bigoted positions. Those critics exist. Their criticism deserves the dismissal it has received. The dismissal does not address the broader audience criticism that operates through craft-based rather than political positions.
The broader audience criticism includes viewers who actively support diverse representation but who recognize the difference between additive female protagonist development and subtractive male character diminishment. The broader audience criticism includes viewers who appreciate political themes when they operate as load-bearing structural foundation but reject them when they operate as decorative signaling. The broader audience criticism includes viewers who would engage substantively with the franchise’s recent productions if the productions had delivered substantive material.
Marvel Studios’ choice to dismiss this broader audience criticism as misogyny rather than to engage with the underlying structural patterns has compounded the audience withdrawal rather than addressing it. The pattern is documented across multiple subsequent productions. The dismissive framing generated additional audience resistance that the franchise has not yet found a way to recover from.
For Writers
The fast-forward viewing pattern represents one specific form of audience disengagement that franchise productions must take seriously. When your audience starts skipping through your work, the audience is providing specific feedback about what the work is actually delivering versus what it is asking for. The trade between production runtime and audience engagement is calculated by each viewer based on perceived value. Productions that do not deliver value proportionate to their runtime generate fast-forward viewing. Productions that deliver value at the appropriate level generate sustained attention. The lesson for writers and franchise developers is that audience attention is conditional rather than permanent. Audiences will provide attention proportionate to what productions deliver. When productions stop delivering, audiences stop providing attention. The mechanism operates regardless of how the production team frames the audience response. Dismissing audience critics as politically motivated does not change the underlying engagement calculations. The audience will continue making the calculations regardless of how the studio characterizes them. Production teams that want to recover audience engagement must address what the productions actually deliver rather than how the audience is characterizing the underperformance.
The Personal Stakes
The fast forward represents specific personal cost. I had invested years of attention in the MCU franchise. The accumulated investment included familiarity with the broader character ensemble, awareness of the franchise’s storytelling patterns, engagement with the specific themes the productions explored, and emotional connection to specific characters whose arcs I had followed across multiple films. The investment was substantial.
The franchise’s Phase Four and Phase Five trajectory has substantially devalued that accumulated investment. The characters I had followed have been diminished or eliminated. The themes I had engaged with have been replaced with decorative signaling. The storytelling patterns I had appreciated have been replaced with multiverse-driven nostalgia delivery. The investment that the franchise had earned through Phase One through Phase Three has been spent rather than maintained.
The fast forward represents the only mechanism for continuing to engage with the franchise while limiting the additional cost the engagement requires. Watching at normal speed would require me to provide attention that the productions have not earned. Watching not at all would require me to abandon the accumulated investment entirely. The fast forward operates as compromise between these positions.
The compromise is unstable. Each subsequent production tests whether the compromise remains worthwhile. Productions that justify even fast-forward viewing maintain the compromise. Productions that do not justify even fast-forward viewing push the calculation toward complete abandonment. The Marvels was close to complete abandonment territory. Thunderbolts pushed further in that direction. The Fantastic Four: First Steps represented temporary recovery that subsequent productions will need to maintain.
The personal stakes also include the broader cultural conversation that the franchise generated through Phase One through Phase Three. The conversations among friends and family about MCU films were one specific form of cultural engagement that depended on the films justifying the conversations. When the films stopped justifying the conversations, the conversations stopped. The franchise has lost not only my attention but the broader social engagement my attention represented. The cumulative loss is substantial across audience populations that previously generated comparable social engagement around MCU releases.
What Would Reverse This
Specific creative decisions could reverse the audience withdrawal. The reversal would require sustained commitment across multiple productions rather than individual recovery attempts that subsequent productions undermine. The fast forward viewers like me would need to receive sustained evidence that the franchise has changed its underlying approach rather than that individual productions have improved temporarily.
The specific creative decisions would include: commitment to substantive antagonist development across multiple productions rather than the obstacle-villain pattern that has characterized most recent MCU productions. Commitment to load-bearing rather than decorative social content across the broader franchise. Recovery of the diminished male characters through subsequent productions that respect their accumulated history rather than continuing the subtractive replacement pattern. Engagement with the broader audience criticism rather than dismissal of critics as politically motivated. Sustained craft commitment across multiple productions rather than individual quality entries surrounded by decorative content failures.
None of these decisions are impossible. Marvel Studios produced substantial dramatic engagement across Phase One through Phase Three. The studio has the institutional capacity to produce comparable work in Phase Six and beyond. The question is whether the studio’s leadership recognizes that the audience withdrawal requires substantive changes rather than marketing adjustments. The signs across the past two years have been mixed. The Fantastic Four: First Steps suggested recovery potential. Subsequent productions will determine whether the potential generates sustained recovery.
The reversal would also require the studio to acknowledge that the audience criticism has substantive validity rather than dismissing it as political opposition. The acknowledgment does not require the studio to agree with every criticism. The acknowledgment requires the studio to engage with the craft-based criticism rather than dismissing all criticism as politically motivated. Productions that engage with criticism through quality response generate audience recovery. Productions that dismiss criticism through marketing adjustments compound the withdrawal.
The Broader Question
The fast-forward viewing pattern raises broader questions about franchise filmmaking that extend beyond the MCU specifically. Multiple major franchise productions across the past several years have generated comparable audience withdrawal patterns. The Disney Star Wars sequel trilogy. Various Disney live-action remakes. Specific DC Films productions. The Terminator franchise’s most recent entries. The Alien franchise’s recent entries. The pattern of audience withdrawal from major franchise properties extends beyond Marvel Studios’ specific decisions.
The broader pattern suggests structural problems within contemporary franchise filmmaking rather than individual studio failures. The problems include: prioritization of streaming-platform content delivery over theatrical exhibition. Standardization of creative decisions across multiple productions through franchise-machinery pressure. Marketing emphasis on decorative content as substitute for substantive dramatic engagement. Dismissal of audience criticism as politically motivated rather than as craft-based feedback. Production schedules that exceed what creative teams can deliver at sustainable quality.
Each of these structural problems contributes to the audience withdrawal that the fast forward viewing pattern represents. The problems extend across multiple franchises and studios. Individual productions that address specific problems can generate temporary recovery. Sustained recovery requires addressing the structural problems systematically rather than through individual production adjustments.
Whether contemporary franchise filmmaking will address these structural problems remains an open question. The commercial pressures generated by sustained audience withdrawal may force adjustments that the institutional commitments would otherwise resist. The Fantastic Four: First Steps demonstrates that specific creative decisions can produce improved results. Whether the industry will commit to comparable decisions consistently or whether the industry will revert to the patterns that produced the withdrawal will depend on factors that individual productions cannot fully determine.
The End Point
The fast forward viewing pattern has a natural end point. At some point, even fast forward viewing becomes more cost than the engagement justifies. I am not yet at that point with the MCU. Recent productions have provided sufficient material to justify continued fast-forward viewing. Subsequent productions will determine whether the compromise remains worthwhile or whether complete abandonment becomes the more rational response.
The franchise has approximately one or two more catastrophic productions before complete abandonment becomes more likely than continued fast-forward engagement. The trajectory across recent productions has been substantially negative. The recovery indicated by The Fantastic Four: First Steps and the relative success of Spider-Man: No Way Home, Shang-Chi, and Guardians Vol. 3 has demonstrated that recovery is possible. Whether the broader franchise will commit to sustained recovery or whether the recovery will remain isolated to specific exceptions will determine whether the fast forward remains viable or whether complete abandonment becomes inevitable.
The personal calculation continues to shift based on what the franchise actually delivers across subsequent productions. The calculation operates regardless of how the franchise frames audience response. The calculation operates regardless of marketing emphasis on the franchise’s continued relevance. The calculation operates through specific viewer evaluation of what each production justifies in terms of attention investment. The fast forward represents the current position on the calculation. Future productions will determine whether the position remains stable or whether the calculation shifts further.
For related analysis of the broader franchise patterns this essay describes, see The Snap, The Blip, And The Catastrophe The MCU Refused To Show, How The Multiverse Destroyed The MCU, The Emasculation Of The MCU, and Load-Bearing Versus Decorative Social Content.