Even though Phase Five has only been underway for less than a month, the response to Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania has put the Marvel Cinematic Universe in a more perilous position than ever before.
While claims that the long-running superhero juggernaut is on its last legs are probably at least a million miles wide of the mark, it can’t help but be noticed that the Multiverse Saga has been responsible for a string of increasingly concerning lows, ranging from the franchise’s lowest scores on both Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, as well as all seven of its steepest second-weekend box office drops.
That would have you thinking the ideal course of action would be for Kevin Feige’s crew to heed the words of Disney CEO Bob Iger and tighten up, focus on quality, right the ship, and try to arrest a worrying decline. Instead, headlines have been seized by Marvel subpoenaing Reddit over the entire Quantumania script being leaked online well ahead of time. As you can imagine, it’s been a field day on the internet.
The single most successful film and television franchise in the history of the industry seeking legal action against Redditors most definitely wasn’t on our bingo card for 2023, but with one of the entire site’s most popular subreddits now having been temporarily – or permanently – suspended, sh*t just got real.
We can joke all we want about Feige having snipers on the roof whenever one of his stars hits the press trail, but even if that was the case, Marvel’s very real secret police are unable to do a damn thing to prevent a solitary forum-dweller from dropping Quantumania‘s screenplay into the Reddit abyss, unless of course they turn on their own and hand over the culprit.
If the company has its way, though, there will be repercussions.