Has Marvel Forgotten the Secret of the Superhero Film's Success?

It has long seemed to me that the reason for the consistent success of the superhero film relative to other forms of splashy sci-fi spectacle at the box office is the tendency of such movies to be accessible to broad audiences. This seems to me to be confirmed by the characters whose adventures have proven most salable over the decades--Spider-Man and Batman. In each case we have a hero who is a human being (rather than an alien, a god or something else of the kind with all the associated history) existing in contemporary New York or some derivative of it (Gotham counts) and having what are usually fairly grounded adventures (fighting local criminals rather than extra-terrestrial or inter-dimensional invaders).

Compared with a space opera requiring the viewer to process the cosmography, technology, politics, history of the people, or multiple species, of a galactic civilization, it asks very little of us in the way of cognition--which, even if hardcore fans of science fiction and fantasy love the intricate world-building and the rest, is best with the kind of mass audience to which one has to appeal to sell a billion dollars' worth of tickets. (Yes, every once in a while there is a Star Wars or an Avatar, but it is notable that in each of their ways they were, at least at the outset, conceptually simple films by the standard of that genre, while on the whole the superhero movies have for decades been far more consistent winners with audiences than movies like these.)

The early Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) films certainly kept it simple, very simple (to the point of flatness in the view of more hardcore fans)--with this likely to its advantage. Iron Man, Thor, Captain America were far from being demanding movies--and the same even went for a movie in which they were all thrown together. Instead of it making for something hard to follow people said "Iron Man and Thor and Captain America all in the same movie? And the Hulk, too? Cool!"--after which 2012's The Avengers became a blockbuster on such a scale as to start the MCU on the path of making billion-dollar hits routine.

However, if the films did not get more complex, the interconnections among an increasingly sprawling collection of films, and then TV shows produced for the Disney Plus streaming service, did so. This did not have to be a problem--except that the big-ticket movies were getting made with their plots assuming the moviegoers had watched the streaming shows. In the process the simplicity that made the movies accessible, and enjoyable, for a wide audience fell by the wayside. Granted, the result did not make the same kind of demand as other more involved forms of science fiction, but all the same, there was that greater processing burden as the producers expected the general public to watch each and every little thing they made, and care about all of it, and relate it to what they were looking at. (Thus did it go with Dr. Strange 2. Thus did it go with the plan to launch Phase Five with a film from one of the weaker franchises in the group, Ant-Man 3. Thus did it go with The Marvels.)

In short, they expected the general audience to be willing to pay the same level of attention as the really hardcore audience. It was not a reasonable expectation--and while it has been far from the only problem the franchise has faced (a higher bar for what will get people to theaters post-COVID, the groaning of a franchise that was always more marketing success than a display of artistic genius under its own weight, the wearying of the audience for blockbusters like these generally and superhero films specifically), it is indicative of the franchise-runner's poor understanding of their own material, and consequent poor management of what had for so long been a spectacularly profitable franchise, now looking very vulnerable indeed.