The Marvels is headed for one of the MCU’s all-time worst box office openings
The Marvels is currently racing The Incredible Hulk and the first Ant-Man for the title of "worse Marvel movie opening"
Aux News Scott Lang
Whatever your feelings about the current creative state of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it’s hard to deny that the franchise’s financial issues are becoming more obvious by the week. That’s come into especially tight focus this week, with the release of Nia DaCosta’s The Marvels, which just posted the second-worst opening day in the MCU’s history—and is on track to potentially have the worst domestic opening of the entire 33-movie series, total.
This is per Variety, which reports that DaCosta’s film—which brings together Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel, Teyonah Parris’ Monica Rambeau, and Iman Vellani’s Kamala Khan for a cosmic-level team-up—brought in just $21.5 million on Thursday and Friday, just barely beating out the 2008 Incredible Hulk movie, the record-holder for worst Marvel opening day ever. If the film doesn’t pick up the pace on Saturday and Sunday, it’s in serious danger of slipping behind both Hulk and the original Ant-Man (which both brought in a bit more than $55 million at the domestic box office) to have the worst opening weekend in the MCU, period.
This is a pretty serious “from bad to worse” situation for the studio, from a couple of different angles. For one thing, while 2023's two previous Marvel movies—Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania and Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3—weren’t exactly world-beaters when it came to their returns, they did at least open at more than $100 million in the domestic markets. Meanwhile, the original Captain Marvel (one of like three different things The Marvels operates as a sequel to) opened way better, at $150 million, while costing $60 million less to make than The Marvels.
International numbers haven’t come in yet for the movie, although they’re expected to be at least a bit rosier than the U.S. take. None of which is going to stop analysts from tearing this situation apart; if Marvel has been trying to stave off all that “Marvel fatigue” talk by supposedly cutting back on TV production (and continuing to be a big tease about the last few major comic book brands it hasn’t tapped yet), this probably isn’t going to help.
317 Comments
This reminds me of how the horserace media writes about bad political outcomes after making sure they happen.
Yeah, these scores of professional film critics, whose jobs are to be objective and unbiased, and who are assigned to review movies that align with their personal tastes, are all conspiring to make The Marvels a box office bomb. That makes SO much more sense then the movie getting negative reviews because it’s bad.
Yes, it was all a grand conspiracy to tank The Marvels. It can’t possibly be that people are sick of seeing the same movie by movie #33.
Can’t say I’m surprised. I’m a big Marvel fan, and this may be the first movie that I have no desire to see.
Same. I’ve been expecting this. The trailors looked so boring and just like yet another generic, inconsequential Marvel film. The fact that it’s literally just called “The Marvels” is pretty ironic.
The most brutal review headline I saw for this film was from New York Times, which was ‘You’ve seen this movie 32 times before’.
That’s the real shame, is that you haven’t. This is the most refreshing comic book movie in recent history. Everyone in the theater was laughing, shouting, having a blast. It’s the most fun I’ve had in ANY movie in years. Shame that superhero fatigue (yes, it’s a real thing) MCU burnout, post-COVID movie theater attendance, and the ongoing reactionary project to tank any film that has a woman AND a person a color (let alone a woman of color!!) all reached their apex at this exact moment, because this movie is so goddamn fun.
Nice trie, Brie.
They have. Really: they have. They’ve seen this film before. We’ve all seen this film before. Marvel hasn’t had a new idea since 2012.
Man, when I went to watch Black Adam, I had a blast during it and plenty of people in the theater were having fun with it. After the film I still thought the film was bad, but now that we have established that individual anecdotal experiences trump all, I guess I was wrong.Hell, Black Adam had an opening weekend Cinemascore of B+ compared to The Marvels’ B, so the audiences loved that movie even more. Man, I now feel so guilty for thinking so little of that great cinematic classic.
Not sure what exactly you’re arguing against, because it isn’t what Dr Baby posted.
Wow, you really covered every possible fantasy land excuse as to why this film will tank. How do you explain Black Panther 2’s box office success? A woman of color, post Covid, and still made a massive amount of money. Covid is no longer an excuse for when a film poorly performs. Films like Barbie, Oppenheimer, and many others have had great box office success.The movie has a garbage villain and a weak story. The end.
Yeah, no. Covid is absolutely a factor as almost all films continue to underperform at the box office. I think the studios underestimated the impact of shortening the window between release in theatres and streaming. It essentially kills the FOMO that used to be present when that window was 6 months or longer. I personally don’t go to the movies because I have a family of 5-7 and that’s an expensive proposition. Add to that the worker shortage leaves many theatres understaffed and not to my standards of cleanliness and service. Why pay hundreds of dollars for a subpar experience when I can watch at home without someone kicking my seat or talking over the movie? My family probably fits the target demographic for this movie perfectly, so if this is playing out around the country, it’s no surprise the film is underperforming.
I haven’t seen the film but I can definitely see me watching it on streaming, just as I skipped Blue Beetle, Mission Impossible and others. I do think it’s also fair to bring up the toxic behavior of review bombing, because its yet another hurdle that these films have to overcome. FYI – there are people who think BP2 was trash and it only did well because people were too PC to speak out against it. Then of course you have people who always hated Marvel films as formulaic, which I just ignore. I also ignore folks who call the movie trash without even having watched it.
“Same old marvel forumula”“Marvel needs to go back to what makes their movies work”Can’t please everyone I guess
Yeah but this time they’re chicks!
You really wanted to see Eternals?
Yeah, based on the director. And yeah, it really sucked.
I didn’t for one second think she was a good choice. Just a total mismatch between project and director. There was no way they were gonna let her do her thing in a superhero movie. It’s like asking Christopher Nolan to direct a Melissa McCarthy comedy.
I feel like you could have said the same thing about Christopher Nolan when he was announced to be the director for Batman Begins. His work up until then was all indie thriller/drama stuff, and no real genre projects of the nerdy kind, yet he went on to direct the best superhero trilogy ever. Or take Black Panther. Before it, Ryan Coogler had only directed Fruitvale Station and Creed. I guess maybe Creed displayed more of an openness to studio directing, but I don’t know that it was obvious that he’d be a perfect fit for a VFX-heavy superhero epic unless you’re only focusing on his race.I haven’t seen any of Zhao’s work, including Eternals, so I have to defer to others’ opinions of both, but to me it looked like it could have gone either way, frankly.
Nolan and Coogler both made fairly straightforward dramas that didn’t stray that far from the general Hollywood style.Memento was quite different because of its narrative device, but the noir feel was something that definitely made sense for Batman. Insomnia was a very straightforward thriller.Fruitvale Station was a smaller film, but not especially artsy, and Creed is basically a superhero movie. I think VFX is mostly handled by a second unit on Marvel films anyway.Zhao, on the other hand, made really artsy fartsy stuff. Very little narrative, much more focus on character, meditative, shot on location with a small crew. Her work really didn’t resemble typical Hollywood faire at all.
Based on the comments here, that’s because of hate mongering incels, somehow.
I wonder if they regret not calling it Captain Marvel 2. (Though I doubt a different title would’ve made that big of a difference.)
It would’ve helped a little. But let’s be honest, this movie never stood a chance. It’s a sequel nobody asked for, to a 5+ year old film that was itself just average MCU filler. Then Disney swapped its premiere date a couple times and now they’re barely promoting it at all compared to their usual marketing efforts. I live in the middle of LA, and I’ve seen very little public promotion for Marvels (ie buses, billboards, ect). At this same time last year, Black panther 2 premiered and you couldn’t walk to your mailbox without seeing promotions for it.
“barely promoting it at all”Yeah, I wonder if that has anything to do with the actors’ strike which ended *checks notes* two days ago.
It would affect actors going on shows to promote it, but Disney could still have bought commercial space, no? For most Marvel movies, seems like we get blanketed with trailer ads, promotional material (for example, “This sports replay is brought to you by The Marvels, in theaters…”), and such for months before the movie premieres. This time around, they didn’t really ramp it up until about 2 weeks ago
I don’t know, I feel like I’ve been seeing ads all over the place for weeks.
And I’ve seen the trailer with Ms. Marvel freaking out over the tentacle cat before basically every movie I’ve seen in the past six months. And I’m not even talking about superhero movies. I saw it even before Killers of the Flower Moon for God’s sake.
I mean, none of us know how much marketing they’ve done for this movie. I honestly cannot believe I’m having to explain this again, but “I haven’t noticed much” is not evidence that there isn’t actually much.
I didn’t see ONE commercial on television.Also I don’t watch any television that has commercials, but clearly that’s not a factor to include in the dataset.
It was speculated way before the strike that they had chosen 11/10 specifically because of the promotional window it brought. I’m sure they were hoping to make use of Tom Hiddleston and Zawe Ashton promoting Marvel stuff at the same time. Iman Vellani tends to be fun on talk shows. They usually do SO MANY promotional actor pieces on Disney Channel. I’m sure it played a role. The box office is also very depressed relative to 2018.
Ive watched countless nfl, mlb, and nba games this season. You know, prime advertising for big upcoming movies. Seen a ton more Bloodmoon ads than The Marvels for christsakes. I’ve only seen 3 Marvels ads and I watch a ton of TV. Not to mention the distinct lack of public advertising in downtown LA (bus stops and billboards). Disney is clearly aware they have a stinker on their hands.
*distinct lack as in not nearly as many ads as one normally sees. Not none at all, but far less than usual.
*checks common senseThe Actors Strike doesn’t affect advertising at all.
I guess today is the day you learn that actors going out and promoting the new movie they’re in (on stuff like talk shows and etc) is also… advertising.
This snark is unwarranted. It’s clear from his first post that he’s very explicitly talking solely about print media (“billboards and buses”). You know, advertisements, in the countable sense (vs. the uncountable concept of “advertisement”). Perhaps he could have added the qualifier “print” before “advertising” in his last post for all of us keeping track of multiple threads, but I don’t see the need as he was responding to just one person, a person who could easily recall that he had needlessly, and with that kneejerk, misplaced snark, countered a point about print media by bringing up the actors strike.
No, today’s the day you learned (or perhaps not) that there is a difference between promoting and advertising a film. *one is free, the other is paid for from a marketing budget.
Promoting a film isn’t free, it’s a job that the actors agree to as part of their compensation package. Kind of funny that you’re talking down to someone while not understanding basic facts of life like this.
Lots of people asked for this. I know I did. Mid-tier comic movies films exist. Female fandoms exist. I noticed people didn’t get this hostile for mid-tier stuff like the male-led poorly received Antman movies but a movie that stars women like Marvels and Birds of Prey, suddenly here comes the critical over-analysis and “no one should make movies like this” nonsense.What went wrong here is the long time between movies and the poor title. Audiences don’t know this is a Captain Marvel movie from the title alone. Disney did this with John Carter. Titles matter and a bad title can hurt a movie.
When you say mid-tier, do you mean budget? Because The Marvels cost almost three times as much as Birds of Prey (which was delightful and wasn’t given a fair shot by audiences) and $60 million more than Captain Marvel.
They mean Mid tier as in the character’s popularity. Although, I’d describe CM popularity as low tier. I don’t see any CM merch in the stores, no captain marvel costumes on Halloween, but tons of little spidermen & black panthers for instance.The only reason ppl saw the first movie was bc of it’s proximity to Endgame. CM clearly isn’t very popular outside of that to MCU fans. She just doesn’t have much going for her.
Lowest opening of all time. Looks like “mid tier” character movies exist, but nobody cared for another boring captain marvel.
I feel kinda bad for Iman Vellani—the two MCU things she’s starred in have been major low points, profit-wise.Can’t really blame Disney for not promoting this though—based on this opening weekend, sounds like it was the right call. Sure, heavy promotion would have attracted a lot more viewers, but probably not enough to pass a cost–benefit analysis for advertising, since it was tracking so poorly.
The Disney+ & theatrical release synergy is just not working out. Marvels expects it’s audience to have completed their prerequisite viewings of both Ms. Marvel and Wanda Vision from years ago. Instead of building buzz through those shows, Marvels went into its release with “anti-buzz”. No amount of Entertainment Tonight PR blitzes would have mattered even if there wasn’t a strike affecting promoting this dud.
To be fair, I think the writers and actors strikes severely limited their ability to promote the movie the same way they normally would have. Instead of promotional tours, interviews, etc., we just got a handful of clearly increasingly desperate trailers and relatively bad press about the movie and the mcu in general
Yeah on both counts. I do wonder how much the actor’s strike and the stars not being to promote the film affected the outcome. Although then again while I do like Brie Larson as an actress, I don’t know if she is the kind of a sparkling personality who is able to drum that kind of interest during promotional tours.
Can’t blame this on the strike. Barbie and Oppenheimer came out during the strike too.
Those three together would have.
She’s no leading lady. All talk about how charming and charismatic she is straight up denial. Put her next to Gal Gadot, and it’s obvious she’s an average plain jane with a face you’d forget the second you looked away from it.
They called it Captain Marvel 2 in China. Didn’t help there.
Wouldn’t have mattered. The highest grossing Batman film didn’t even have Batman in the title.
Yes. The title is why this failed. Not the fact that it’s a movie about characaters nobody cares about and was rewritten 100 times reshot 100 times and the director has no connection to the material other than, “Black Girl Magic” (TM). Fuck off. Marvel sucks. You suck… KYS
Lol you are such a weirdo
Did you show him a picture of you naked?
Shocker.
I still contend that the biggest fuckup with this movie was simply its name. Captain Marvel was a billion-dollar hit. People loved it. Seems obvious that you’d call the sequel Captain Marvel 2 or something similar. “The Marvels” is just an aggressively generic name that the casual fan could take to mean almost anything. At this point, with the MCU having become big, confused and over-complicated, refusing to communicate to your audience what hero your movie is even about is just an unforced error.The reasoning behind it is just dumb. “Oh, we called it The Marvels because there are other heroes in it.” Yeah, every Marvel movie has other heroes in it nowadays, that ain’t special. You could call literally any Marvel film “The Marvels.” But you really shouldn’t.
They could’ve even had the best of both worlds and called it ‘Captain Marvel 2: the Marvels’.
Call it Captain Marvels. Done.
*Captains Marvel
Cap’n’em’s Marvels
Beat me to it!
All of my knowledge of this grammatical rule comes from that old Onion “Whoppers Jr.” article.
That article is the reason I constantly make this joke!
Marvel invites cinemagoers to marvel as Marvel presents Captain Marvel and the Marvels, starring Marvel and those other Marvels. Marvel!
The title is meaningless. Simply no one cares. And the incels who were the backbone of this entire Marvel thing have checked out.
The incels were obviously the Snyder stans
The only trailers I’ve seen for this (on YouTube here in the UK) seem to be selling it Captain Marvel 2 – there’s barely a split-second shot of the other two… Marvel’s.Let’s face facts; all of us saw this movie bombing. Regardless of whether it’s decent or not, Marvel have completely dropped the ball lately. Nobody (specifically the general audience) cares where all these random, half-arsed movies and Disney+ shows are heading.Deciding on KANG THE FUCKING CONQUERER as the new big bad was a stupid idea from the fucking jump.I’ve got absolutely no idea what the guy is trying to achieve. Most of the MCU haven’t heard of the fucker either as far as I barely remember.I’m absolutely fucking dreading the shambles they make introducing the X-Men into this mess.
I agree that Captain Marvel 2 would have been more respectful to Brie Larson. (I hear she was irritated at that.) But I kind of like the title “The Marvels,” especially since there are three leads.But the right wing was already mobilized to hate the movie, before it ever even came out. The movie never had a chance.
But the right wing was already mobilized to hate the movie, before it ever even cameout.The right wing had mobilized to hate Barbie long before it came out, and that movie made over a billion dollars worldwide. Hell, the right wing had mobilized to hate Captain Marvel long before it ever came out and that grossed a bil ww.
The right wing was mobilized to hate the first Captain Marvel and it made a billion dollars. Before that they mobilized against Black Panther and it made even more. Then they mobilized against Barbie and it’s STILL making money.They have zero impact on the success or failure of these films.
Yea, as loud and aggressively stupid as these right wingers are, it is very doubtful they can influence box office in this way.
You’re right, but the chuds are still taking credit for it.
Of course they are. And I think because the first Captain marvel was such success they’re looking to just troll harder.
When the product is stale people won’t want to buy it no matter what it’s called.
“The Marvelous Captain Marvel” was right there, too.
It’s a fine name. In fact, the comics have used that name for ages. The problems they have don’t have anything to do with the name.
You really think people are dumb if just changing the title would suddenly bring more people. Captain Marvel was a success but not a beloved movie in particular, it was a generic MCU origin story that was forgotten as soon as seen, and was a huge success only because anything from the MCU was a huge success at the time. The fact that they succeeded at destroying this money printing machine in just 4 years is the real story.
People didn’t love it. They felt that if they didn’t see it they wouldn’t understand End Game. That’s the only reason it did so well. The movie was nothing special and one of the weaker MCU movies.
CaptainMarvel2: Electricmarveloo
The highest grossing Batman film didn’t even have Batman in the title. But sure, we can pretend Marvels failed because of the name.
I don’t think anyone was confused that this was a Captain Marvel movie. I think the basic premise of this movie was misguided. Captain Marvel did not resonate with audiences that much in her first outing. Pairing her with two other heroes seemed to be an attempt to generate some excitement for a second appearance, but Monica Rambeau and Kamala Khan were never going to be popular enough to meaningfully bolster audience excitement about the film. Trolls are going to jump on this as evidence that female-led superhero films are doomed. That’s not true, but it probably is the case that these movies have to overcome more of a hurdle to draw in an audience. Wonder Woman and Wakanda Forever both looked great in trailers and got solid reviews. Wakanda Forever also was part of an established franchise that really clicked with audiences, and its story had a real-life connection that gave it additional power.
Willful ignorance is fun!
A shame really because it is a solid Marvel movie.
Which might be the problem. It’s a “Marvel movie” after 15 years of “Marvel movies”. It’s still gonna appeal to plenty, but at some point, you’ll hit diminishing returns on the wider audience
Nerds think repetition and sameness is a good thing, which is why they can’t comprehend how others can be sick of of seeing the same thing over and over and over and over and over again. For them it’s a feature, not a bug.
You’d think that but the biggest whiners are the nerdboys who would be there in droves for yet another Iron Man movie starring RDJ.
Fair point. I suppose this shakes up the formula too much: instead of their Elon Musk analogue-idol on screen (whose main power is – *checks notes* – being born to a rich daddy who left him a giant science and engineering company and billions of dollars, but I digress), it’s the sort of people who tell them they’re creeps and smell funny and are weird.Or, as you might better know them, “women”. Remember, the MCU formula has established that women are, at best, supporting heroes! It’s why Black Widow has been part (and one of the most interesting parts) of the franchise since IM2, yet her biggest moment in the main arc was sacrificing herself for a male hero who was treated as, somehow, even less important than herself. (She got a token post-mortem movie, yay.)Pepper Potts only exists to keep Stark Industries running while Tony goes off on one of his benders/Musk-grade meltdowns, so that when he comes back and decides to magic up some bullshit he’s got the means to do that.Wanda? Look, she’s powerful, sure, but she’s also unable to properly wield those powers. Now, the MCU doesn’t openly say it’s because she has a vagina but…you don’t seem even the Hulk go nuts as much as she did. Captain Marvel? A goddamn woman who had a successful career as an F-16 pilot before going super? That’ll get some tendies chucked at the Alienware monitor they’re watching her on.
Well. It’s Capt Marvel, even a hard sell in her own comic book. Marvel seems always at odds on what to do with her.
Well there’s no way to know what since it’s not going to happen.
Except they’re not really jumping at the chance to see this, or the last few Marvel movies…
This is such a dumb and bizarre comment, on multiple levels.
That’s good to hear. It’s looks fun. Gonna try to catch it next weekend when my oldest son is fully recovered from his surgery
Jesus, you are the king of oversharing.
Just saw it. It was a blast. With no strike and those three women out there on the circuit, would be doing better. They are that charming. Still time to get them out thereI predict a good life on D+ and will also get people watching Ms Marvel. And another one I won’t spoil And didnt Guardians 3 make like $800 million?
Can’t blame this on the strike. Barbie and Oppenheimer came out during the strike too.
845 million worldwide, 359 million in the states.
And that’s bad now?
Apparently soLooks like The Marvels like they won’t get anywhere near those numbers.
And Ant-Man 3 made 215 million domestically so I don’t see how either of those are considered underperforming
Because they lost money on it. And apparently this needs to be repeated each time because as much as this is self evident, it is not for most people – the studios don’t get 100% of the ticket sales but only around 50%.
Because it reportedly had a much higher budget than the first two films. Add in marketing, and it needed to make a lot more than 215 mil just to break even.
Marvel “underperforming” is apparently not having every new movie be the new biggest movie of all time.
I don’t see how either of those are considered underperforming
Because they were expected to make more. It really isn’t complicated.
The Strike didn’t seem to bother other blockbuster movies….
…and is on track to potentially have the worst domestic opening of the entire 33-movie series, total.
Good lord. It’s taken 56 years to get to 25 Bond films and every one of those has proven to be a commercial and critical success.
Yeah even the objectively bad ones like Spectre and Octopussy still did well financially.
Genuinely asking – are bond movies in general significantly cheaper to make than the average marvel movie? Especially older pre-brosnan bond movies? I can’t imagine those had big budgets, which would make financial probability easier to achieve
It’s hard to compare anything pre-Brosnan (or even pre-Craig) with today’s average Marvel movie but with few exceptions, they have never been cheap to make. Even Casino Royale cost $150 million to make, and that’s a movie about a poker game.
Casino Royale cost $150mil in like 2004? That sounds insane. I can’t even think of what that money was spent on
The movie features a 10 minute parkour chase involving a construction crane, destroying an Aston Martin by rolling it over a dozen times, shooting in multiple countries, etc… and it’s about in line with budgets for comparable action films of the time. Batman Begins had the same budget, for example.
Well, the first couple were dirt cheap even adjusting for inflation — Dr. No was made on $1.1 million in 1962 (about $12 million today), But by 1967’s You Only Live Twice you had budgets of $10.3 million ($95 million) as they included more stunts and gadgets. 1979’s Moonraker was $34 million ($137 million). So pretty much in the $100-$150 million range throughout adjusting for inflation. So considerably less than the $200-$300 million a typical Marvel movie gets. It turns out that the increase in budget doesn’t really happen in the Brosnan era but the Craig era, with both Spectre and No Time to Die getting over $250 million in budgets each, comparable to a Marvel movie.
Even the first couple movies weren’t considered dirt cheap for their time. They were produced independently, so it’s not like a studio used the change under its couch cushions to fund them, and everything about the film industry from distribution to marketing was different then, so there weren’t many $150 million equivalents back then.
The Bond movies were famous for multiple foreign locations (frequently shot on location), massive stunt scenes involving dozens of stunt perfomers, and usually contained a “one time only” shoot at the end where they’d take the large and elaborate villain’s lair and blow it up.Nowadays send all that stuff off and CG it for a fraction of the cost. Then? That was built, shot, then blown apart in the real world with people paid for every step.Different worlds. That was just what was done if you wanted a Bond film.
CG isn’t really that much cheaper. Arguably, at the bottom line, it isn’t cheaper at all, it just lets the scope be bigger, safer.
What was objectively bad about them? They were both competently made. I think you mean subjectively bad.
I can’t speak to the ads for Octopussy, but the trailers for Spectre made it look awesome. Christoph Waltz seemed like inspired casting, and Craig had developed a great track record as Bond. I don’t think people hated Captain Marvel, but I don’t think audiences were begging for a new installment. And the trailers didn’t necessary do anything to convince people this was a must see.
Well, in terms of Spectre and Waltz, it made me remember Bardeen in Skyfall, which while probably the second best Craig Bond movie after Casino Royale, had a rather weak villian role for Bardeen that was obviously supposed to remind of the viewers of his better performance in No Country for Old Men. So I wasn’t that surprised that Waltz in Spectre basically gave a weaker version of his role in Inglorious Bastards.
If your standard for a villain in any film you see, “Is this literally one of the best villain performances of all time,” you’re just setting yourself up for disappointment.
Suprised you didn’t say Quantum of the Solace, which was the one filmed during the last writers strike and was just a mess of a movie
Bond is kinda the anti-Marvel(or I guess Marvel is the anti-bond since they were first by a long time). Any Bond movie can be your first and you can watch the rest in any order you want and skip whichever don’t interest you and still get the point of it all.
Fuck, in the parlance of our times, the haters. I saw it tonight, and I enjoyed the shit out of it. Kamala is an ever-spinning dynamo of fun, and the other two bounce off her with aplomb. Plus: cats, cats, cats!
I literally saw someone come across my feed from haters saying that this movie should be boycotted because Kamala Khan is Palestinian(Ron Howard voice She isn’t) Which is dumb on so many levels that I can’t even comprehend it.
Kamala Khan is PalestinianHAHA, so stupid! You can tell they didn’t even watch her show.
I thought it had fun set pieces and the core cast was good, but it kind of gets a bit messy in the middle with pacing issues and the ending feels meh.
“Ever-spinning dynamo of fun” is a great way to describe her. Nicely done.
Completely gray, I could still tell this was Gene Shalit lol(Though it might’ve been Gabe Kaplan)
You’re assuming that the rest of us are “haters,” but we’re just average people who aren’t watching movies in shopping malls very much anymore. I saw zero movies during the pre-vaccine pandemic, then I saw just one while wearing a mask post-vaccine, and all that time gave me opportunities to find new hobbies and routines. Most of us don’t actively “hate” these actresses. We just don’t care. If someone is slightly curious, they know they can see it from their couch pretty soon anyway.
I assumed no such thing. There’s a lot of empty space on the scale separating you, who don’t care (which is a perfectly reasonable stance), from the haters (who care to an unhealthy degree about shitting on a perfectly fun, but not perfect, movie). Nilus’ response to my post cites an example of proper haters.
That’s fair, but the box office result here isn’t likely driven by “haters.” Their prominence online shouldn’t make you overestimate their numbers. For a Marvel movie to succeed, it has to appeal to a broad cross-section of viewers, and there seems to be a general failure here to resonate with potential viewers.
No one acknowledged your existence to call you a hater so why do you feel the need to label yourself a hater?
Also the promotion has been insanely bad for this movie, at least from my perspective as a non-MCU fan. Part of that is probably due to the strike(s), but I saw a promo for this movie and was, like, vaguely aware that Brie Larson had done a Superhero and so this was probably a sequel to that? But otherwise I had no context for what the fuck this was about or who these characters were
Kamala is an ever-spinning dynamo of funAnd other than the first teaser, I’ve hardly seen her in any of the other promos. Lots of Carol and Monica, but no Kamala. It almost feels like the studio is trying to play down her presence, which is nuts because I thought her D+ series was pretty well-received.
So not only are you a douchebag but you have bad taste too. Gotcha.
Jesus Christ that is brutal.My worry, and I would argue that we’ve already seen this happening, is that Disney is scrambling to respond to this series of underwhelming results while constantly revealing that they don’t understand what is happening. And it feels like it is currently in this downward spiral.To be clear this isn’t some argument about them being Woke, I find those just idiotic and to anyone reading this who thinks so to be a moron, or that I know exactly why their big franchise is stumbling so badly. These are complicated, nuanced processes. However, it is clear that their attempts at course correction just are missing the mark completely.
It’s incredibly annoying that the discourse has devolved to the point where it’s impossible to criticize Marvel Studios or any of their projects without the presumption that you’re a bigot.
To be fair, the bigots earned it
Unfortunately the bigots have polluted the discourse to that point.
You mean to the point where Marvel fanboys/girls have a convenient deflection against valid criticism?
k i l ly o u r s e l f
To the point where you have spewed your asinine bigotry over every possible surface and any genuine criticism that could get through from other voices is indistinguishable from you jerking off again while looking for attention. Which is sad here because this movie is great but you and your pals have spent months flinging shit at it to convince other people it smells. The movie is fine, you’re just full of shit as usual.
I’m at the point where I blame ardent defenders for the poor discourse more than the bigots themselves. There’s no debate to be had with bigots because bigotry is indefensible. But no one was rushing to defend Blue Beetle, a movie that stars an almost-entirely POC cast and was directed by a Puerto Rican filmmaker, from criticism before it opened, even when articles reported that it was tracking poorly. Or take Black Adam, a movie which also featured a mainly-POC cast and a nonbinary supporting actor. It was critically-panned but also generally liked by audiences that actually saw it, if the 88% Audience score on RT is to be trusted. Despite both movies attracting the scorn of Snyder Bros for the audacity of not being part of the Snyderverse, and despite multiple negative articles from outlets like AVC both before and after its release, no one accused its financial failure of being a self-fulfilling prophecy created by the media (when The Rock suggested it, most people here sided against him).Here’s my point: trolls gonna troll, and Marvel Studios isn’t the underdog here. No one should take users who are clearly gleeful that a movie is bombing because it stars three women seriously. Maybe leave them in the greys, and dismiss them if they reply to you. Trolls love attention; don’t give it to them (full disclosure: I’m a hypocrite because I struggle with this).And maybe consider that Barbie (which was also directed by a woman) was a lightning rod for trolls but still made over a billion dollars worldwide just a few months ago. The Little Mermaid was the target of racist attacks from the moment Halle Bailey was cast, was no better than the soulless live-action remakes of classic animated films that came before it, and still opened to $95 million.Given these facts, I think that Marvel fans need to take a beat and consider the possibility that there are legitimate criticisms to level against The Marvels (and Marvel Studios as a whole), and maybe don’t get so defensive that it’s not doing well critically or financially.
I saw plenty defending Blue Beetle. And I don’t recall Snyder fans having much to say about it.
Excellently put. Not only this, but your initial comment about how tragically weird the discussion has become.It has been a long time building in the background, I realize that now when looking back, but it has been genuinely puzzling and in certain was disturbing to watch this defensive and coping reaction settling this past week. Like every negative news item was just haters trying to sabotage this film and now the overt reliance to weird anecdotal evidence.Also completely agreed that while bigots are an eternal problem, at this point the counterreaction to them has taken on its own life that is actually more stiffling to the discussion.
I think this is a good point. Toxic assholes are awful, but the reaction to them often contributes to making the discussion of these movies exhausting. I like being able to watch a movie, and like it or dislike it, without feeling like that view put me on one of two teams that each think they’re fighting for the fate the civilization. The Melissa McCarthy Ghostbuster movie, to give just one example, cannot carry those stakes on its shoulders.
Speaking anecdotally at least, the people I see getting the reaction you’re talking about are more often than not the “toxic assholes”. I think you can make an argument about whether or not those people should be engaged with at all, but I really don’t see a significant number of people having a go at someone else just for simply not liking a given film.
To give this one example, “Hypestyles” posted on Barsanti’s box office article this morning: “don’t listen to the haters! I don’t care: the movie features three capable women, including two POC, plus directed by a black woman. Support this movie!!!”A movie isn’t a charity, particularly when it’s a blockbuster produced by Disney. I don’t want to “support” a movie, and the Marvels sure as hell isn’t important enough to seek support. I spend a lot of my life doing things because I’m supposed to do them, and watching superhero movies (or not watching them) doesn’t get to be one of those things. They can only ask for my money or time if they convince me I want to see them.
That is not what I would consider “having a go” at someone. That doesn’t sound like a reply to you or to anyone else in particular, it sounds like a given person posting their thoughts; thoughts that might be arguable but which aren’t really offensive in any way, so I’m not sure if you’re arguing that someone else should be moderating their notion of praise for a film on the chance that someone else might feel guilty for… not seeing that film?
If all you did was say “I didn’t like this film / it didn’t click with me” without resorting to “ugh the woke brigade is at it again, what’s with all these female protags” etc etc etc, and someone came at you specifically anyway and called you a bigot, that would be an entirely different show. But that doesn’t sound like what you’ve posted here so I’m not sure what you’re arguing against.
I’m at the point where I blame ardent defenders for the poor discourse more than the bigots themselves. Yep. This.On the right, you see the same sort of edgelord bullshit that we’ve seen for decades. The people who are just killing time on the shitter, exercising what minute power they have by trying to needle people who will take the bait. There’s absolutely fuck-all to be gained by engaging with them.
Meanwhile, you’ve got the defenders, who are pointing to the very large button prominently displayed on their chest and saying “Don’t you DARE touch that button!” They’ll spend entire days (and I’ve been there before) arguing with people who could not matter less in their day-to-day lives, over topics that could not matter less if they tried.It’s all just screaming, cacophonous expressions of id. I have some respect for those who will at least acknowledge that. “I fight because I like to fight.”
It’s disingenuous to say “the bigots” have done that. It’s also the fanboy culture where nobody can handle criticism of things they like, and the easiest way to dismiss it is to poison the well and call the critic some kind of “ist”
I’ll criticize it! Superhero movies suck ass! Don’t you people get sick of watching the same good guy bad guy white hat black hat Joseph Campbell hero worship story over and over and nauseum? Can nobody comprehend nuance in their storytelling anymore? I cannot wait until this 20 year cultural preoccupation is over
Ad nauseum
But why weren’t you making that criticism about the superhero movies that starred a generic white man, you bigot? /s
Those are even worse!!!!!
It never ceases to amaze me how much people who hate superheroes spend so much time talking about them instead of just watching something else.
OK, but we don’t have to make that presumption. Toxic bigots deserve a lot of shit, but if a person is wrongly assuming that someone is a toxic bigot, that’s not the fault of the toxic bigots. That’s on the person making the unjustified assumption.
Oh no! Will Disney’s shareholders be okay??!
Won’t someone think of their yachts!!
You know what’s a shame? I watched it last night and it’s an absolute blast. Definitelt not among best but was really supremely fun, Iman Vellami is a fucking delight, and it includes what might seriously end up being my all time favorite sequence of the whole MCU
Brie, you’ve had enough internet for the day… go home.
I’m a huge MCU fan. I haven’t gone to see one in theaters since they started putting them on Disney+ a couple months after. It was one thing when you knew you’d have to wait like eight months to a year. When you know you can watch the movie in your home theater in a couple months why not just wait. As I understand it Disney+ isn’t even profitable, so while I like it it was probably a dumb move to put the theatrical movies on there so quickly.
Disney+ is great as an archive of classic animated films and lesser-seen media. It should have been obvious that a cheap monthly subscription streamer wasn’t the right venue for huge new big-budget projects.
100%. Box office grosses are down across the board, with a handful of exceptions. This is just the continuing death of people seeing movies at the theater.
I think that is truly the biggest issue with comparing the current box office to previous MCU movies as opposed to the rest of the 2023 box office. Streaming numbers for Loki certainly suggest people are tuning in.Ant Man 3 is still in the top 10 domestic box office for the year. Even other Disney disappointments like Little Mermaid are in there. If studios need to grapple with anything, it’s that.
“Death” might be overstating things. If you only look at the yearly box office totals, the peak was 2018, years after streaming began being a thing. There was a 4.4% percent drop in 2019, and then a catastrophic collapse in 2020 for some reason. Since then, the box office has bounced back to early-2000’s levels and looks to be hovering around there.In other words, reports of the death of people seeing movies at the theater appear to be exaggerated.https://www.boxofficemojo.com/year/?ref_=bo_nb_hm_secondarytabOf course, there are other indicators you can look at, like the actual number of people going to the movies. I just think it’s more complicated than a lot of movie theater haters make it seem.
Yeah, I was being hyperbolic. Death is obviously an overstatement, but, you know, the internet. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The Covid desperation of premium streaming certainly made a change, though. It changed habits around a lot of movies and movies performed less well as a result. The closing of the distribution of window also makes a difference.My local theater also drastically reduced – and kept their reduced – hours. I was an A-List member at my local AMC. Used to see a movie a week. They now open three hours later and close two hours earlier so it’s next to impossible for me to keep up that kind of viewing with a work schedule.I was all set to go see The Marvels this Friday morning before I headed to work only to find that they didn’t open until much later still.
That’s why I pointed out that the box office is hovering around early-2000’s levels. I don’t think it’s going back to the peak of 2018 anytime soon, but it’s still slightly up from last year. So there was inarguably a huge shift in movie-watching that I’m not denying, but the people that are predicting an imminent death for movie theaters are ignoring that revenue isn’t continuing to decline.Before COVID, I had some discussions with commenters who believed streaming was the nail in movie theaters’ coffins because studios wouldn’t have to split revenue with theaters. Now that we see that studios are losing money on streaming services and responding by cutting costs and raising prices, I don’t see how people can continue to pretend like movie studios don’t need movie theaters to make the economics of blockbusters work.At the same time, the market can only support so many blockbusters in theaters. For every Barbie, there’s a Flash, Mission: Impossible 7, or a Fast X. The studios are going to need to reckon with that too.
I do wonder what role PVOD could play in all of this. I genuinely don’t think a day and date release would stop those who like going to theaters from going while potentially opening a revenue stream.I don’t think theaters will die, but I do think they will change.From a Marvel standpoint, it’s easy to say Phase 4 has been an unmitigated disaster based on the recent box office take, but there is also nothing emerging to replace it. If the Marvels wasn’t in the mix this week, the box office would have taken a total of $35.12 million based on today’s estimates. As depressing as $47 million might be – it’s still more than 50% of the top 11 box office.
Agreed. For me, This one is not in the must-see right now category, more than happy to wait for Disney+
I kinda agree but also disagree. Because a theater is still a very different experience than one at home, but man, do some movies just don’t need to seen on a projector.
Disney+ lost a magnitude of subscribers and then raised their yearly subscription prices by $50.
Most of those subscribers were from losing cricket, not from movies/tv show releases.
I’m the same but ultimately, if these Phase 4/5 films had been… y’know… good… I would’ve rushed out straight away to see them, not wanting anything to be spoiled for me. Now I DGAF.
Five Nights at Freddy’s opened in theaters the SAME DAY it released on Peacock, and it still made more than Marvels.This whole comments section is full of excuses why this movie failed, and none of them hold up.
cool? I’m not sure what this has to do with my comment about how my movie watching habits have changed. Like I wouldn’t go see that movie either.It should have been pretty clear I wasn’t defending The Marvel’s box office performance, but rather suggesting a reason they might be down across the board.
And people seeing a horror movie on Halloween weekend would have nothing to do with that movie overperforming and then dropping 76%.
I just got back from seeing it and it’s by far the most fun a Marvel film has been in a long time. But without the actors doing the press junket and the asshole toxic fanboys screaming “it’s going to bomb” for months, plus the bottom feeding entertainment sites *stares at camera* looking for clicks about how Marvel is dying, you’d never know how good this movie is.
But the “toxic fanboys” and “bottom feeding entertainment sites” were right. It bombed. Fact.And a 62% fresh score on the Tomatometer just barely meets the requirement for “good.”
It’s been out for 3 days. Might I suggest calming down.
Or maybe…just maybe…people didn’t want to see another “superhumans shooting lasers out of their eyes” movie
Hmmm, no press for Barbie, toxix fanboys saying it will bomb, movie is a box office triumph. Try again, those excuses are shit.
Barbie has plenty of press before the strike and became a meme. Try again, your toxic fanboy is showing.
Exactly. The strike began 7/14. Barbie came out worldwide 7/21. Just google Gosling Barbie promo. Fucker was everywhere.Ah well, I also don’t think the MCU is, no matter what the critics wishcast, at the point where one outright bomb – Ant-Man 3 at least broke even – kills it.Plus, I really do think this will have a nice life on D+ and will likely pull Ms. Marvel’s numbers up.
Toxic fanboy? I actually went to see the movie you knob. I just don’t make excuses for what is a completely mediocre type of film that most people are tired of.
The Strike is such a lame ass excuse. You act like people don’t know this movie exists because the actors aren’t promoting it. People see movies based on trailers. Ffs a movie like Five nights at Freddie’s opened to $70 million. Your excuses are like you, weak.
You’re giving toxic fan boys way more power than they actually have. There are multiple factors for this movie to not be performing but that’s probably one of least influential. Same for “bottom feeding entertainment websites”. The AV Clubs of the world dont have that kind of reachI’m glad you enjoyed the movie. Maybe it’ll be a slow build for this one
You have bad taste.
I think most people are waiting for the Snyder Cut.
We have a grey conservo-troll in the comments that managed to get ungreyed in this thread. Based on the comment history, especially the recent stuff from the last Jezebel story, I’d strongly advise against ungreying that troll, ever.I’ll issue a very strong caution against looking too deeply at that comment history, as the porn gif collection is quite disgusting, and has turned the last Jezebel comment thread into a minefield of vileness. I try to get past it fast when reading other comments.
(It could almost be compared to typical GOP/Faux News/Kremlin-lover comments given physical representation)The troll has shown a willingness to be that horrid when he thinks he can get away with it.
There is a subset of toxic YouTube that is jizzing in their goofy helmets over this news.
I figured those guys hanged themselves after the last wOkE movie Barbie was a huge hit.
The one guy I’m thinking of probably called Oppenheimer woke because the Nazi lose the war.
Spoilers!
No, they still made bank talking about it. To paraphrase Dick Jones from Robocop “Who cares if it was bad or not?”
It’s like the Star Wars Youtubers. They make a fortune shouting how Star Wars is terrible, including for the streaming shows they admit they haven’t watched. Their followers eat it up and drive ad revenue.
I wonder if the two strikes and the limited ability to promote films has anything to do with it?
It didn’t seem to affect Barbie and Oppenheimer, which both came out during the strike.
Yeah but didn’t they already have ample hype before the strike hit?
The week leading up to a film’s release is the most critical marketing window, and since the strike happened exactly a week before the movies came out, I would say no.
There are plenty of promotional videos recorded before the strikes began for both Barbie and Oppenheimer. You can easily find them on YouTube. Both premieres were attended by the cast, with the premiere for Oppenheimer getting free buzz because the cast walked off the red carpet. I don’t think the SAG strike was the sole culprit of The Marvels’ underwhelming opening, but it’s silly to act like the strikes affected the promotional tours for those movies as much as they did for The Marvels.
There’s also the whole “Barbenheimer” meme, where every media outlet in the nation talking relentlessly about how many people were planning to see both movies in the theater. Seeing Barbie and Oppenheimer was essentially the Ice Bucket Challenge of cinema.
Yes.
You keep saying this like you can make it true. The strike began 7/14. Barbie came out a week later and had its Hollywood premiere before. Gosling and Robbie were everywhere. I know you’re fapping over this result, but wipe the hand lotion off and get better material
This is really disappointing – I went and I really enjoyed it. I thought it was a good movie that didn’t try to do too much (Marvel’s big problem post-Endgame, I think). It was a fun Marvel movie.
I’m sure Marvel wants to be making more money and I’m more than willing to accept the moment may have passed, but last weeks box office involved the #1 movie making $9 million. It might be superhero fatigue. It might be the lack of promotion due to the strikes. But every Marvel article ignores that the box office simply isn’t supporting this scale of movie anymore. Even the old reliables like Mission Impossible are opening at $54 million. Guardians 3 and Ant Man are still in the Top 10 domestic and top 10 worldwide releases for 2023. Across the Spiderverse is also in the top 10 further suggesting superheroes aren’t the problem.
From what I’m seeing, the #2 movie is expected to be a holdover from previous weekends in single digits. With a few exceptions, movies aren’t performing like they did in 2019 and studios really do need to deal with that fact.
Guardians 3 opened to $118 million in the US. For this movie to not make even $50 million over the first weekend is a complete disaster.
And Guardians 2 opened to $145 million. Movies are not opening like they did pre-Covid with a few exceptions.Ant Man 3 was surely a box office disaster as was Little Mermaid and both are sitting in the Top 10.
Point? Guardians 3 opened post pandemic so gtfo with the lame Covid excuses.
My point is the GotG was considered a massive disappointment relative to 2. The Marvels opened extremely low. It still accounts for more than 50% of the weekend Top 11. If you remove The Marvels, the remaining movies made a combined $35 million.But sure, the box office is still like it was in 2019.
No one said it was like it was before. But to do only $47 million is pathetic. FFS, Five Nights at Freddie’s opened to $70 million. The ONLY reason Captain Marvel did so well was because they made it connected to End Game. Without that, it was a completely forgettable film.
And Five Nights at Freddy’s then dropped 76%.But to answer “no one said it was like it was before.” You said it. You did.
Uh no I didn’t. I said Covid isn’t an excuse for a film to do poorly anymore. People will go to the movies for things they want to see, and Marvel ain’t it. And the fact that a ridiculous movie like FNAF nearly doubled Marvels opening weekend only proves how tired people are of this shit Disney keeps churning out. I mean there are dozens of films this year that had better opening weekends than the Marvels did.
And followed it up by saying that movie going habits are different. And yeah, FNAF overperformed because it was HALLOWEEN.
LOL, your argument makes zero sense. There have been over a dozen films this year that have had much bigger openings that The Marvels. Your logic that that “Covid” is what made it flop is ridiculous. Theater numbers will never be what they were pre pandemic, but using Covid as an excuse for a film performing as poorly as this one is ridiculous. I mean Ant Man had a bigger opening than this pos and the Ant Man movies have always been the weaker performing MCU films. The Marvels performed bad because of two reasons. The films star is unlikeable and probably the most disposable MCU star, and because people are tired of the MCU churning out the same trash over and over again.
I never said Covid caused it. I said the box office hasn’t recovered which at one moment you agreed with then claimed you hadn’t. I’m using Covid as a time marker – the pre-Covid box office (2019) and the post-Covid box office (2021 – present).Maybe re-read what I actually said. You’re literally arguing with yourself at this point.
Your argument was that the film was never going to perform very well because of Covid reasons. That is complete bullshit. It’s certainly possible for a film to perform really well (See Avatar, Barbie, Oppenheimer, Super Mario Bros) when it’s something people want to see. No one wanted to see Brie Larson reprise her role as Captain Marvel.
And both opened to more than the pos that is the Marvels.
So one of their new core heroic leads (a prev billion dollar one at that) 2nd film will probably bomb, while another (Shang Chi) hasn’t/won’t be seen for years. Diminishing his relevance/impact.
Seems Dr Strange is the only one of the new roster that’s set up to continue intact without complications.
Now this I agree with. We should be eagerly anticipating Shang-Chi 2 by now. And I think Feige got too cute with the Harry Styles/Charlize Theron/Brett Goldstein cameos. It’ll be years, if ever, before we see them in projects.Part of it is actors wising up. No one is signing 6-8 movie deals. Elizabeth Olsen, whose parents have literally been around the business since her sisters were babies, says she loves Wanda, but would only go project by project. I don’t think this is the end of the MCU. If Deadpool 3 flops, I’ll worry.But if it is, 33 movies and like $8 billion is not bad.
It wasn’t a bad movie. I liked it a lot more than Quantumania, but boy was it sure offensively inoffensive. Very paint by numbers with a couple of weird stuff (the whole thing with Valk was kind of out of nowhere since they never really interacted outside of Endgame I guess?). Cosmic MCU stuff still looking good and doing weird things. But overall just kind of okay. Very much one of the more stronger movies that came out recently from the MCU.
it was a bad movie.
When a company saturates the market, if they want to increase or maintain sales, the product they are offering has to be more innovative in order to entice customers. That could be achieved through creativity, not by churning out the same product with the same stale formula.
It’s actually one of the fresher Marvel movies.
Not according to the fresh score on Rotten Tomatos.
Something like 84% user reviews, which I thought you guys trusted instead of bought professional shills or whatever the shtick was
Nope, I trust critics over fans, who are easily entertained, generally have low standards, and aren’t capable of being critical of anything within their fandoms, as evidenced in these comments.
Sure, now you do. Until the movie you want to succeed gets critically trashed, then it’s back to “paid woke critics!1″ and “I only care what real people who saw it think!”
The entire fast food industry would like a word. They innovate once a decade if you’re lucky. Their sales of products some have been making for ~100 years are not declining.
A company is not the entire industry. There have been plenty of fast food companies that have risen and fell in the last ~100 years.
I rarely eat fast food, but there are about 5 foods I love so much I could eat every day and never get sick of. And yet, I’m bored of superhero movies. What a contradiction! How is that even possible!?
Fast food restaurants are not saturating the market. Besides their product is essential; people have to eat at least 3 times a day everyday. Despite that, even they introduce new items on the menu to diversify their offerings or keep up with shifting eating habits.
But in this one the heroes are diverse women. How much mow creative and innovative do you want?
I definitely want to see this, and I know my kids do. But at the same time has there ever been a Marvel movie with more prerequisites than this one? Because having to have seen the previous movie plus three different Disney+ shows (including one terrible one) to fully understand things is a lot to expect, even for Marvel studios.
No, no, you’re overthinking it. Just consume the product, and get excited for the next product!
I like when you guys pretend to be anti-mass consumerism and not just upset that you can no longer consume product because the product is 80% straight white dudes instead of 99% straight white dudes
The cries about having to watch too many things first are overblown. The movie explains who everyone is and why they’re there.
Oh good, there’s exposition explaining who’s who so the audience isn’t lost. My dude, if a movie needs that, it’s not a good sign.
It helps if you’ve seen the first Captain MarvelSo long as you are generally aware of Ms. Marvel, its fine. Secret Invasion is not necessary at all.
I figured it is probably actually like that because the writers can’t be that stupid can they? But I also think there could be the impression among a lot of casual fans that you do need to see everything for it to work. Or people think it will tie in directly to Secret Invasion and how much it sucked turned a bunch of people off.
I guess I’m spoiling, but Fury’s wife is not in this, nor is Emilia Clarke.Now, I wonder if they were and Feige saw he had a turkey in Secret Invasion and cut that. It all works in reverse too. Kamala and her family are so fun in this that i would expect Ms Marvel streaming to go up
Is Emilia Clarke’s weird baby Drax arm in it?
Bro, the fact that you needed to break it down for someone like you just did is proof itself that the MCU is too convoluted.
I think Infinity War or End Game probably had more prerequisites. The first Avengers was preceded by 5 movies that fed into it as well, two of which I hadn’t seen at the time but it didn’t affect much for me.Civil War encompassed so many characters from different movies, and involved knowledge of what had happened in Age of Ultron that I would say you’d need to see at least the entirety of phase 2 (minus Guardians), and the origin films of Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, and The Hulk to fully understand all the character relationships. And maybe Iron Man 2 so you’re not guessing who Don Cheadle is playing, and why he’s wearing Terrence Howard’s suit. Although it’s not like the characters are so deep, or the story so layered that you couldn’t figure all this out in the first 10 minutes.I’m sure all you need to see to understand The Marvels is the trailer, and I’ll bet even that’s not a prerequisite, because they’ll explain anything important in the movie in a few lines of dialogue. Probably something like this:Captain Marvel: I knew you when you were a child.Monica: I remember.Nick Fury: We have also met before.Kamala: I am a big fan of yours Captain Marvel.Dar-Benn: I am new. You haven’t heard of me before, but you will be able to figure me out very quickly, just like every other character, even ones that have been in other movies.One of the things that makes fictional world building successful is the suggestion that important things have happened before the story began. Iron Man didn’t need to tell you exactly what Tony’s life was before the movie. Two minutes in a hummer taking selfies with soldiers was enough. Captain America didn’t require that you know how Steve and Bucky met. Thor didn’t expect you to be familiar with Norse mythology. You just figure it out, because it’s not even necessary.
Geeze a whole lot of incels losing Not Nut November this weekend over this news!
I said at another article and I’ll say it again: “The Marvels” was victim of one of the worst and most undeserved hate campaigns towards a movie in recent times. A lot of pop culture sites and “movie critics” trashed the movie way before it was released, with strong claims of being clunky, not funny, poorly written, messy paced, too heavy on the so dreaded “homework” bullshit”, etc…And then, now that it has been released and the actual audiences got to watch it and judge it by themselves LOTS of people are getting to social network services to say how they got surprised by how good the movie actually was, and how they loved and got entertained by it!But the damage is done by the preemptive attacks on the movie. We can count this one as a sad win for the usual “anti-woke” hatemongers online, made even sadder by the naive help they got from people who simply bought into the bad faith arguments.
Just like how all those bad faith hatemongers managed to derail Barbie? lolSure, Marveks bombed because of an online conspiracy, not because no one wanted it to begin with. Makes SO much sense.
also, it’s not a good movie.
I think I might be able to sit through this entire movie for about…2 grand.If anyone needs an escort / chaperone.
You’re working way too cheap.
This opinion piece just wants to sh!t on Marvel. The movie was good. I enjoyed, and my daughter enjoyed it. Keep your complaints to yourself. Using buzz words such as Marvel fatigue, what a joke
Feminism fatigue
Feminism fatigue sounds like women being tired of your shit. Trust me, we all are.
Or, hear me out… maybe – MAYBE – someone else just has a different opinion than you.
No. The AV Club has been running a clickbait farm on this. They don’t actually care if the movie was good (it was) as long as they get ad impressions. Look how many comments the articles get.
Quality is subjective. What you find good might not appeal to someone else. That’s my point. If you liked it, great. I liked The Flash. Most people here seem to think it was terrible. I don’t get to argue that it was objectively good actually. As for the AV Club running a clickbait farm, sure. They run a clickbait farm every time a Marvel movie or streaming show comes out. Hell, they ran a clickbait farm for Don’t Worry Darling. The AV Club is and has been a clickbait farm for years now. I don’t understand the accusation that they’re treating The Marvels differently. Of course “they” don’t care if the movie was good or not. But they breathlessly cover every Marvel TV show, movie, and video game, giving them free publicity, and you’re upset because their breathless coverage isn’t glowing too?
There is a thing to engagement where being contrarian drives clicks and revenue. It didn’t take too long for people to figure out if you had a contrary opinion than the majority you could drive people to your site. Expecting comic book films to not follow a certain formula is like expecting water not to be wet. If that is your hang-up, these films were never going to appeal to you.
“Keep your complaints to yourself” uh how about no, and fuck off? Deal with other people not being as in love with children’s movies as you.
47 million opening sure feels like Marvel fatigue
your daughter is a whore.
I see they are censoring extremely critical responses to their sub-par opinion piece
Being in the grey at the start is how the entire site works. What the plan was, was to have writers and staff monitor the conversation and then as people were seen to be good-faith commenters, not just trolls, then a writer or staffer would follow that account and that would bring the person out of the grey, and make them easier to see.
The AVClub is kind of lacking on that follow-through, though. Some of the other sites are good about it though. You just need to be seen as contributing nicely for some time and they bring you out of the grey.
The AV Club is the only one who’s brought me out of the grays and I’ve been contributing for years.
But when did they bring you out of the grey? I’ve only been here a couple of years, but tried to be constructive in my posts. I may have just not been getting seen at the right times, but it does seem as though the effort just goes into the void and I’ve just stayed content with occasional interactions.
cum!!!
That sucks. I’m a fairly new commenter, and half the time my hot takes and shit posts get starred or replied out of the gray lol. The trick is to trigger people!
“I’m a fairly new commenter” Lol no you aren’t.
cum!!!
Not surprising. It was very funny at times, but aggressively mediocre otherwise. Some nice fight choreography, in the few occasions there is action. The main villain isn’t scary, kinda doofy. It also felt like they were checking items off their checklist. Mutants? Check. YA? Check.
Their mistake was once again withholding Tawky Tawny.
The marketing and lack of promotion due to strike rules really hurt this one. Captain Marvel was a big box office success, but it’s been nearly five years since it came out and the sequel really needed its cast out there promoting it heavily to build buzz. I think it also just doesn’t have that big of stars in it, nor the “event” buzz in the way that Black Panther 2 had after its main star died young. Samuel L Jackson is famous, but Brie Larson isn’t as famous as Benedict Cumberbatch and the character isn’t as famous as Spider-Man.
The FNAF movie was a huge success for what it was, despite the strike, and very little promotion, thanks to brand power and positive word of mouth. Two things the MCU no longer has.
This one had positive word of mouth. As for the brand, it’s worth remembering that out of the MCU films this year, only one of them could be described as a disappointment (Ant Man 3), and the rest were successful (Thor 4, Guardians 3, Black Panther 2 – all successes).
Plus it has dumb bitches nobody likes in it.
Too bad, it’s a fun film with really likeable performances. It’ll catch on over time.
Superhero movies don’t work like that. Historically, they live or die by their opening weekend.
Before Disney+ maybe. Now they’re on that for forever and have movie and TV spin offs.
Some of you need mental help. The fact that you defend a big corporation like Disney who keeps churning out cookie cutter superhero movies and then complains that people don’t want to watch them anymore is fucking crazy. Stop defending this bullshit and maybe they will get their shit together and make a decent film. We don’t need a superhero movie every few months. People are tired of it. Do something different. I also love the people who call out the “fanboy geeks” who aren’t seeing the movie. The fanboy geek is the person who lines up for this movie like a little Disney robot to see the same superhero shit over and over.
But in this one the heroes are diverse women. If that does’t break the mold, I don’t know what does! lolThankfully there won’t be ANY MCU movies until 2025. By that time what little enthusiasm is left for the franchise will have dropped off considerably, and diversity stunts alone won’t sell tickets any more.
Touch grass, little boy. You’re embarrassing yourself in these comment sections. Anyone who has enough time and energy to post like a dozen-plus porn gifs (hilarious!) at Jez and still has the time and mental wherewithal to have and write multiple VERY STRONG AND ORIGINAL OPINIONS about diversity in the latest superhero movie… I mean, the picture paints itself.“Pathetic “ is the wrong word, but it’s not all the way the wrong word. Go flex in front of the mirror, child. No one is impressed by you.
Don’t engage with him. He just wants attention.
you smell like poop
Isn’t this the first movie to have a female action hero in it?
I don’t think anything that happens in internet comments (defending or decrying) is going to affect what Disney does. They’ll make decent films every now and then, and the rest will be mostly mediocre, with a few bad ones. The only thing that’s going to change their business plans are box office numbers, and there won’t always be a direct correlation, because making a good movie isn’t an exact science. The MCU isn’t gonna suddenly put out the Citizen Kane of superhero movies because everyone on the AV Club took them to task for being corny.
When a movie that fans didn’t ask for (the sequel was a contractual obligation) doesn’t give any reason to see it other than just because you have to, I hope it is a wakeup call for Disney. They are wasting ungoldy amounts of money making these just for the sake of making these. It’s an assembly line, and the heart is gone.
Until they force Kathleen Kennedy to resign, nothing will change.
As good a place as any to ask: why does The Root no longer have comments? Same with Kotaku started occasional articles with no comments? Is it really that bad over there?
It absolutely got that bad. A small group of trolls created multiple accounts and flooded the comment sections with bile on such a scale that it was just more practical to shut down all the comments rather than moderate them. The same trolls we’re targeting Jezebel too, but that site getting shuttered last week made it a moot point.
Not really. The Root had far more trolls in 2020 than they have the past 18 months. In fact, it barely had any engagement at all. The average article there would have 4 total comments in the few months before they closed it.
Jezebel got shut down? I did not know that. And as I’ve looked up articles about it they are being touted as a valuable feminist site, which is unfortunate since they so often allowed sleezy writing to take priority.
They were a valuable feminist site a decade ago, like when the AV Club was good.
Yeah, so “valuable” Jim Spanfeller shut it down because no one wanted to buy it.
Just noticed that Barsanti’s piece about the Monarch series is sans comments.
It was enjoyable as hell.But the rub is that, during the time where you’d have a massive hype train, there was a strike. So no panels, no press junkets, no way to hype it up than just watching a trailer that used “Intergalactic.” That’s pretty much it. Like, if it had been pushed to early next year, all the actors would have been able to go out and hype it up, get people excited at the late-year conventions. But alas.
The FNAF movie was a huge success for what it was, despite the strike, and very little promotion, thanks to brand power and positive word of mouth. Two things the MCU no longer has.
It must be fatigue. No, it must be the strikes. No it must be the incels. No, it must be… because it had a bad name? There are still those bending over backwards trying to explain away how this could possibly be. How about these movies have been bad for a while? How about misunderstanding target demographics? How about taking for granted that popularity matters? People have had a lack of interest, and have said so. For months. Maybe believe them? It doesn’t mean a bulk of the world is in on some misogynist conspiracy. And it also doesn’t mean anyone should be guilted or shamed into seeing it. If folks, regular-ass casual folks, are asked to vote with their wallets, don’t get mad when they do.
How about these movies have been bad for a while?IMO that counts as fatigue. But FWIW I agree with your sentiment.
There simply hasn’t been a substantial hook in anything after Endgame. I don’t care how much of a fan of any one character or actor you are, the stories presented since Endgame have not made you sit up and go, wow, I can’t want for one more of these.Which is a shame, because there are a lot of great characters/stories in the decades of comics that exist. Curious to see how long they let this linger without some kind of full-stop effect.
Also, and I can’t stress this enough, these movies have been mostly terrible.
>>There simply hasn’t been a substantial hook in anything after Endgame. personally this resonates, as somebody who has a more casual relationship with Marvel and DC movies. Everything up to end game felt grander in scope and scale to me. Afterwards it’s been all over the place, some of the work good, a couple bad, many just meh.
To be fair, in comic circles Kamala Khan is pretty popular. Or she was, they have been struggling to find a good place for her in the comics for a while and did some stupid shit with her character. They pulled the old “Oh look we killed her, psych of course we are bringing her back already, shes got a movie coming out” shit. I also think she is official a Mutant in the comics now and maybe also an Inhuman. But yeah outside of comics she is less known, her show did not do that great(even though Me and my family really enjoyed it). Monica Rambo is even more obscure and no matter what Marvel tries to do, Captain Marvel is not their Wonder Woman. That is not me being a woman hating incel, I like the character and I like Bree Larsons take. She is just never going to be Wonder Woman level popular. Marvel doesn’t really have a stand out female superhero like DC does and I think they realize that.
Marvel comics aren’t popular at all. None of them are. Kamala Khan has had several series outright cancelled. Try again.
A, the quality of the movies is entirely subjective. B, the fact is that all the things you have listed and dismissed out of hand probably did play a part. C, “misunderstanding target demographics” is just another way of saying “I’m a white guy and am SadMad that everything isn’t about me for once”. D, “guilted or shamed into seeing it”? Literally what are you even talking about? How would that work? Like I’m honestly amazed you didn’t work “woke” somewhere into this. E, “popularity matters” is a particularly foolish argument when you consider that practically *nobody* knew who the hell the Guardians were when those films came out, and also the first Captain Marvel movie cleared a billion at the box office.
Tell us why women don’t support women?
how many comic book stores have you set foot in you stupid cunt? go watch a romantic comedy and stfu.
>> How about misunderstanding target demographics?What part was misunderstood?>>If folks, regular-ass casual folks, are asked to vote with their wallets, don’t get mad when they do.Fair. But you do sound kind of mad yourself. What’s up?
Mind you this is the first Marvel movie under a strike and couldn’t be promoted like hello??
Whatever else is going on, I’m wondering if Disney’s signing on to the “The Marvels was always going to fail” storyline is them trying to cover for a bigger turkey.“Wish”.The animation looks like a video game from about fifteen years ago – minus the ‘star’ character that looks like it wandered in out of a 3-D test reel from the 1990s. The storyline so far is (in the three or four commercials I’ve seen) “don’t wish for things to be better – they never will be”. It looks like a giant steaming pile of “what the hell were you thinking” and I’m wondering how much Feature Animation might have to do with them trying to at least partially bury “The Marvels” so that they don’t look as bad when the shitstorm hits THEM.
I’ve been thinking about what’s going on with the MCU, and I’m pretty sure it is simply a change in generation. Iron-Man was 15 years ago, that’s 3/4 of a generation.
The MCU is entering the phase of a long-running franchise that the year you start watching it affects your feelings about each particular entry. For example, think of how gen-xers think of the first two Star Wars trilogies compared to millennials. In ten years, kids will hate Avengers: Endgame because they don’t want to have to watch all those other movies to get it. (Sound familiar.)The difference between post-Endgame MCU and the PT of Star Wars box office will be due to how people consume media. To watch any of the OT and PT, you had to go to a theater. That’s why both had high box office even though the “core fans” hated the PT. My wife and I saw The Marvels yesterday, but my kids didn’t. They’ll watch clips of the best parts on TikTok and then maybe watch it on Disney+ in a few months.Lots of people will point fingers about who it to blame for The Marvels not making as much money as other MCU films. The reality is that people have moved on from the MCU as a natural course of culture. Movies aren’t gettng dumber. Music isn’t getting louder. You’re just getting old.
Beautifully stated, wholeheartedly agree
I haven’t been paying real close attention, but as the three heroes are now in a polygamous marriage, what other title would be as accurate?
I think my favorite part of the clickbait article is the typo in the blurb.
the first one wasn’t that good, the last several MCU movies ranged from ok to awful, nobody cares about these characters (except <3 Kamala), they’ve done a terrible job of tying the “Phase 5" films together to convince us any given entry is essential, and Brie Larson doesn’t have the charisma of an RDJ or even a Scarlett Johansson to draw in the audiences.So what does that leave us with? A lead character we’re not invested in, coupled with a downward trend on the MCU big screen... this was never going to work unless it was “Phase” plot-critical, or got stellar reviews. Neither happened, nobody will see it.
I, for one, look forward to Disney/Marvel taking all the wrong lessons from this and cancelling all plans for representative/female-centric superhero stories. Because that’s bound to work! And not, like, just making a good movie that doesn’t end with fucking sky lasers for once.
Normal people care about character, not skin color. We care about stories, not political agendas. We care about universal themes, not scolding and virtue signaling. And we’re also bored as hell of sky lasers, that much I agree with.
You don’t care about anything.
I’m looking forward to seeing it, I will probably enjoy my time, but at the end of the day, I’m going to watch in on D+, using a service I already pay for, and already accounted for in their financials.