Arrowverse Co-Creator Weighs In On Bob Iger's Marvel Critiques, And His Response Is Steeped In DC Loyalty
The past year has been quite a busy time for Disney boss Bob Iger, from welcoming himself back to the mega-corporation in late 2022 to backwalking some of Bob Chapek’s pricy theme park decisions to the lawsuit-laden culture war with Florida’s governor. Though his early return was largely positive, Iger totally stepped in it thanks to an in-depth CNBC interview in which he heavily criticized Marvel Studios for its lacking Disney+ success being a major hindrance to the box office earnings for the MCU in a post-Avengers: Endgame world. Arrowverse co-creator and comic scribe Marc Guggenheim entered that conversation with a P.O.V. that sounds more than a little loyal to his longtime ties to DC.
Bob Iger, who also provoked anger by calling out striking writers and actors as being “non-realistic” with their demands, claimed that Marvel screwed up by not only releasing an increased number of theatrical films, but also by pumping out streaming TV series, which he says “diluted focus and attention.” Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. vet Clark Gregg shared a brief response to that notion, as CinemaBlend reported, but former Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow showrunner Marc Guggenheim had a lot more to say about it that essentially aligned with Iger’s vision, albeit more from a creative angle than one based more purely on financial gains. When appearing on an installment of the podcast The Aarthi and Sriram Show, Guggenheim addressed the glut of MCU programming, saying:
If I was suddenly in Kevin Feige's role, I would do basically what Iger is saying, which is prune the tree. You know, there's just too much content. I'm like the biggest Marvel nerd ever, and I haven't seen Moon Knight. I can't keep up. There's too much content. And then of course like Iger was saying, there's a question of how much content you can produce at quality. To me, the difference between Phase 4 and Phases 1 through 3 is fundamentally something very simple, which is you could even be watching Infinity War without having seen the prior X number of movies.
As someone who helped create DC’s most fluid and interconnective live-action universe to date, Marc Guggenheim’s viewpoint here actually is more informed than one might think from the outset. Granted, the Arrowverse was on a vastly different wavelength than the MCU, without blockbuster features factoring into the mix, but Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl and the rest also churned out far more hours of content than Marvel has with its small-screen efforts. And on comparatively tiny budgets, also, which often didn’t help with the quality, but at least made things consistent throughout the seasons.
More to his above point, one wouldn’t have needed to see Sara Lance or Ray Palmer’s Arrow seasons or Mick Rory and Leonard Snart’s villainous roots on The Flash in order to fully understand Legends of Tomorrow. There may be connective tissue that adds layers of value and context for completists, but that tissue shouldn’t affect a project’s ability to tell a coherent tale all on its own. Guggenheim continued:
Winter Soldier was its own movie with a beginning, middle and end. And yet, that movie set the foundation for things that, you know it didn't deal with Infinity Stones, but it did deal with HYDRA and SHIELD and Steve Rogers' relationship with the government and the Winter Soldier. There were a lot of pieces. And same thing with Black Panther. Black Panther works great as a movie beginning, middle, and end, even though it's setting up this whole world of Wakanda that figures very large in Infinity War.
Guggenheim is good at making it clear he does enjoy Marvel projects — save for those still unseen — and isn’t just siding with Bob Iger to be harsh to the fandom. It's no secret that he's written a bunch for Marvel comics, and not just superhero stories for S.H.I.E.L.D. and X-Men, but also Star Wars series. But then he let the DC vibes enter into his answers, as seen below.
Each of these movies in Phases 1 through 3, they all stood on their own. Look, I get it. I think, honestly, what the Marvel Cinematic Universe is going through right now is the same discovery that the Marvel print universe and the DC print universe also went through. Which is I think of these universes like ships, and the longer a ship sails, the more barnacles get attached to its hull, and the more that weighs down the ship and the more it affects how fast the ship can move through the water. And every now and again, you need to do some sort of reboot that scrapes off the barnacles, like Crisis on Infinite Earths.
Basically, what Marc Guggenheim is saying here is that the only way Marvel can save itself from overproduction is to pull a storytelling move directly from DC lore, and should probably just be more like DC in general. Okay, okay, that’s not actually what the Green Lantern co-screenwriter is saying, but it’s not like he accidentally dropped a “Crisis on Infinite Earths” reference in there.
Not only was that one of the comic medium’s most important and influential arcs, but it was also the namesake of the biggest Arrowverse crossover event, with so many cameos and surprises, which included Ezra Miller’s Barry Allen. Regardless of one’s feelings about it, it inarguably changed that TV multiverse in huge ways, which is what Guggenheim is suggesting should happen within the MCU.
Regardless of what he thinks, though, Kevin Feige is gonna do Kevin Feige. And considering Miller’s Flash movie has widely been considered to be one of DC’s biggest bombs, with James Gunn and Peter Sarafan steering the DCU into an unknown future, I can’t imagine the Marvel Studios bigwig is looking across the comic pond for any inspiration on that front. Still, though, maybe he could just suddenly become obsessed with Jaws’ less is more outlook for guidance…
