Websites have jumped on practically every opportunity they can to celebrate Marvel Studios’ downfall, and I understand the impulse to kick Marvel while they’re down — especially after they helped reshape Hollywood in such a significant way and helped contribute to the current state of Hollywood. But the reaction this film is receiving is ridiculously out of proportion with its quality: “The Marvels” is a fun but flawed movie, but there have been tons of worse films in the MCU that haven’t received this much vitriol. This is not DaCosta’s fault, but an accumulation of factors (some of which, to be fair, Iger also talked about at that summit — most importantly, the rapid increase in the number of Marvel projects to help feed Disney+).
Let’s give Iger the benefit of the doubt for a second. Let’s say I’m reading too much into his comment, and he didn’t mean anything by it. He should still be savvy enough to know that absolutely anything he said about Marvel was going to be circulated around social media, and framed with headlines like this one from Variety, which reads in part “‘The Marvels’ Suffered From a Lack of ‘Supervision on the Set,’ Says Bob Iger”. He obviously can’t control how the media decides to frame every single one of his statements, but at the same time … come on. He definitely knows better.
Best case scenario? This was just another self-inflicted blunder from a guy who built his career by being smart enough to avoid gaffes like that.