Back in the mid-2000's, Marvel studios was planning an entire movie series about Marvel Comics superheros, an entire franchise. They had a problem, though: They had earlier sold the movie rights to many of their biggest and most recognizable characters to other studios, and thus legally they couldn't use them. Thus, they put their heads together and started researching which characters they hadn't sold out to others, and noticed that from the ones they had the rights to, a significant portion actually belonged to the long-established "Avengers" team.
So that's the idea that they went with: With a few minor adjustments, the movie franchise would revolve about said team: The background story for each of the team members will nicely make for a movie or two each, and then they could have a couple of "full team" movies by the end of this first "phase".
Superhero movies were never extraordinarily popular, and even the best of them had only a relatively moderate success, but quite surprisingly the new MCU movies took the world by storm, and became astonishingly popular and successful. In fact, the MCU franchise has become the most profitable movie franchise of all time.
(Technically speaking the Star Wars franchise has been more profitable, but this is only if you account for inflation and, more importantly, count in the profits from all the ancillary products, such as made-for-TV and direct-to-video movies, cartoons, books, comic books, toys, promotional material such as posters and figurines, etc. If you only count the feature films, even adjusting for inflation the MCU franchise gets ahead.)
Not only were the movies quite well scripted and made, but many of the actors chosen for the lead roles happened to be extraordinarily liked by the wider public.
Perhaps no better examples of this than the two (what could be considered for all intents and purposes) "main characters", ie. Tony Stark, depicted by Robert Downey Jr, and Captain America, depicted by Chris Evans. Both are very charismatic and likeable, each in their own different way (both actors depict their characters extraordinarily well, look the part, and are overall really likeable personalities in their own way.)
Thor and the Hulk were given their own movies, several of them, but they were relatively quickly shoved to somewhat "secondary characters" because while the public didn't exactly hate them, they weren't so utterly enthusiastic about them either. (I think that the depiction of Thor is a bit too egotistical and bombastic to be likeable, and the depiction of Bruce Banner is a bit too broody, jaded and depressed. They may be believable portrayals, but that doesn't make them super-likeable.)
This "First Phase" ended with a total banger: The Avengers, which is one of the highest-grossing films of all time.
"Phase Two" was like a kind of interim phase that consisted of just various movies about the individual characters and one crossover movie (which was nowhere even nearly as popular as The Avengers). The movies were still quite popular, but it was, perhaps, slightly starting to lose its novelty value.
"Phase Three" was huge, in terms of amount of movies (and other ancillary material such as TV series). In fact, the "finale" was split into two full-length movies, ie. Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame. The latter of which became the second-highest grossing movie of all time (and very close to the highest one.)
(Personally, I don't really understand why. I myself hated the movie. But that's not here nor there.)
Those first three "phases" were the so-called "Infinity Saga". And that was where the success of the franchise peaked, and started a free fall.
The next phases are the so-called "Multiverse Saga", and it has quite clearly not enjoyed even nearly the same level of popularity.
There are many reasons for this, and of them we started to already see in Phase Three: Oversaturation. Too many movies, too many TV series, too much to follow. Phase Three still could manage it, but Phase Four is when the public at large had had enough and was starting to get tired with the franchise.
In fact, even just the feature films of Phase Four are quite unremarkable. The movies are forgettable and, unlike the previous phases, there is no "crossover grand finale" movie featuring all characters.
Also, remember when I commented how Tony Stark and Captain America were effectively the "main protagonists" and most likeable characters of them all? Well, good job at killing off one and disposing of the other at the end of Phase Three. Now Phase Four onwards are without the most liked protagonists.
Those two characters, and their actors, were arguably one of the biggest driving forces behind the popularity of the franchise. They removed them, and now are watching popularity fall like a lead balloon. Big surprise.
Couple that with the oversaturation problem, and the problem that most of the new movies are confusing and boring, plus the fact that the public at large has lost interest, plus the needless political pandering that they started towards the end of Phase Three, and you have a once-great franchise trying to regain its former glory.
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