Remember that high of watching Avengers: Endgame in theaters in 2019? It’s hard to believe that was 5 years ago! Probably as hard as it would be for someone in 2019 to believe the Marvel Cinematic Universe would slowly erode its goodwill to the extent that it’s almost become a punchline.
Similarly, WWE entered a Renaissance Era in mid-2022 when Triple H (Paul Levesque) took over creative duties as Vince McMahon stepped away from the company amid a scandal. Although Vince came back and interfered in creative several times during the next year, the WWE product became the hottest it’s been since the Attitude Era, which were the heydays of the Rock and Stone Cold. They were making records everywhere, with the biggest gates (ticket sales) at multiple venues and record viewership of almost every PLE (premium live event). WrestleMania 40 (or WrestleMania XL) was set to be the biggest WrestleMania of all time. While Triple H’s booking of Raw and SmackDown wasn’t flawless, the major strokes, such as Cody Rhodes’ story, and more recently, CM Punk’s return, consistently got high approval from fans.
Yet, when yet another Vince McMahon scandal broke out and CM Punk got injured, WWE made a pivot to a predictable- but big money- storyline. In this storyline, it appeared that the Rock was set to challenge Roman Reigns, at the expense of Cody Rhodes, who won back-to-back Rumbles and seemed poised for a rematch with Reigns on the biggest stage, where he would finally accomplish his father’s dream. There were rumors that Cody Rhodes might challenge Seth Rollins for his World Heavyweight Title, with further rumors about a planned title unification match with the winner of Rock vs. Reigns at SummerSlam.
The segment of the Rock confronting Roman Reigns on SmackDown quickly became the most disliked video on WWE’s Youtube channel so far, with over 430,000 dislikes in 3 days, over ten times the number of likes. The hashtag #WeWantCody was the number one trend in the United States on X (formerly Twitter). Fans were faced with the prospect of another WrestleMania where WWE decision makers forced a storyline featuring a prominent part-timer that came at the expense of a full-timer in the prime of his life who’s built up a lot of goodwill with the fanbase in the last two years. This is a story we have seen many times in the last two decades in WWE, but since Triple H took over, we thought we were past those days. What happened?
With both the MCU and WWE, there’s a common thread. They both hit incredible heights for a sustained period, and fans came to expect that the product would always deliver at that high level.
However, our memories of that high are filtered through rose-tinted glasses. Only five or six movies in the MCU, up until Endgame, surpassed the level of just being very good. These included Captain America: the Winter Soldier, Thor: Ragnarok, Black Panther, Infinity War, and Endgame. Of the rest (over 20 movies leading up to Endgame), a handful of them were mostly good, and the rest were entertaining at best, and sloppy at worst. Infinity War and Endgame hit such a peak in MCU storytelling that they became the standard for future projects.
Now, could Marvel Studios have done better? Of course. However, they expanded their portfolio as greatly as possible without focusing on maintaining the quality of these new titles. They thought the strength of their brand, their signature formula, and their greater focus on diversity would be enough to make these projects a hit. However, they tried too many things at once, and the overall story for the Multiverse Saga so far hasn’t gelled together as well as the Infinity Saga.
With WWE, as good as Roman’s title reign was up to last year’s SummerSlam, the storyline lost major momentum once Jimmy Uso turned on his brother Jey and rejoined the Bloodline. The women’s division, while booked competently, hasn’t captured the highs of 2018-2021. Thankfully, the men’s tag team division has gradually become very exciting, although the lack of two sets of titles still hurts the division.
Last year’s WWE wasn’t consistently great: it was consistently decent, with some truly memorable moments and some duds. While Vince is no longer involved with the company, his practices are still an intrinsic blueprint for many people there. So it’s much easier to dip into bad story territory than the positive hype would have you believe.
Now, you might say that Christopher Nolan has consistently made great movies, as has Denis Villeneuve. However, these filmmakers get years to work on their next installments, whereas MCU and WWE pump out their stories on a much more frequent basis. There’s a lot less room for quality control.
It’s much more common for even celebrated filmmakers to deliver flawed movies as often as they deliver masterpieces. This is true of Spielberg, Ridley Scott, and even Martin Scorsese.
So, yes, the point I want to make is that to err is human. It’s very hard to deliver excellent narratives, and if some stories reach a high watermark with their storytelling, we should also understand if their next installments fall short.
The good thing about both WWE and Disney is, they respond to criticism, especially when it gets to the level it got with the #WeWantCody in the days following that segment with the Rock. WWE pivoted well in the next week with a dramatic press conference for WrestleMania where the Rock tried to hype up his match with Roman Reigns and Cody Rhodes came out to say he changed his mind and will challenge Roman after all for this year’s WrestleMania main event. The Rock, for his part, has dove headfirst into this new direction by committing to a heel (or villainous) character. He has stood out for the last few weeks and the WWE has planned for him to make consecutive appearances on WWE SmackDown for three weeks.
The MCU delivered the surprisingly deep Echo TV show that had promising elements despite its flaws, and Bob Iger has stated that the MCU will scale back its content to focus on more meaningful and fewer titles.
By all means, criticize MCU for travesties such as Secret Invasion, and criticize WWE for its bullheaded decisions. But let us not fool ourselves into thinking that there was a golden age of storytelling for these franchises. More often than not, there were ups and downs. So let’s be patient for both cases, especially when the people behind these franchises have shown a willingness to positively respond to fan criticism.