I mean, it kind of follows Marvel's own historic struggle with continuing stories past their natural conclusion.

The cinematic MCU had parallel stories of all these different hero plot lines that would intersect in interesting ways. That takes a lot of planning and building, all leading to a single nexus point where it all came together.

And it felt impactful. All the build up led to an epic intergalactic showdown. Twice.

Then afterwards, what are you left with? From an MCU standpoint, everyone goes back to their small little slice of the world/galaxy to do their thing, with some cameos of other heroes they befriended along the way.

To try to bring some level of stakes back, they spiraled down the multiverse paradigm. Just like the comics kind of struggled to make things interesting after the heroes finished their primary arc.

Add on top of that the real world issues of actor burnout on characters they've played for over a decade, and you're going to have trouble keeping up with expectations.

There are still things to do. But they've burned through the primary material like origin stories and top villian arcs, and the original actors have probably fulfilled their contracts and are probably not that interested in renewing.

Phase 4 alone is longer than phase 1,2 and 3 combined. They made it a chore to keep up with everything going on and even though I have enjoyed some of it, I really just don't care anymore. I still want to watch GOTG 3 but beyond that I have no interest in any of it.

I rather enjoyed it, but I don’t know how any of the recent films are going to come together to create an engaging Avengers film. There really hasn’t been a good unifying story that they have been building to. They keep throwing in references to future movies at the end of each film/show, but they all just seem to be hype for new characters that most people have to go to a screen junkies article to get an explanation for.

I don’t feel like Kang has been properly built up, because he has appeared several times already, posed little actual threat, and even got defeated one time by Ant-Man, who is essentially comic-relief in any ensemble affair. There’s also the casting issue.

I have seen every MCU film in cinema, and have enjoyed them all in their own way, despite the visceral glee the internet has in tearing them apart. But I don’t feel any excitement in hearing about Avengers 5. Because I don’t know what it is.