Marvel’s The Marvels opens at the top of the weekend box office, and let’s leave it at that
It's another win for Marvel Studios, though not exactly a big, exciting one
Aux Features Unknown
It looks like Marvel Studios’ domination of the U.S. box office continues, with The Marvels—the latest entry in the MCU—opening in the number one spot. Of course… it did also manage to have the worst opening weekend in the history of the franchise, as predicted, with $47 million. Something had to have the worst opening in the franchise at some point, so maybe Marvel can look at this as a “rip the band-aid off” moment and not a “the sky is falling moment.”
The bright spot for Marvel in this, though, is that The Marvels made way more than everything else currently in theaters—suggesting that this may have also just been a particularly slow weekend for theaters. Last week’s winner Five Night’s At Freddy’s made $9 million ($127 million total), Taylor Swift’s Era’s Tour movie made $5.9 million ($172 million total!), Priscilla expanded a little wider but made slightly less money than last week ($4.7 million this week, $12 million total), and Killers Of The Flower Moon continued a slight bummer of a run by making $4.6 million (it has $59 million total).
Outside of the top five, The Holdovers jumped way up (from 16 to six) with $3.2 million (the 700 additional screens will explain that), Jesus movie Journey To Bethlehem made $2.4 in its debut (opening a little early for the Jesus season, come on), and PAW Patrol, Radical, and The Exorcist: Believer finished up the top 10.
You can see the full top 10 again below, thanks to Box Office Mojo.
- The Marvels
- Five Nights At Freddy’s
- Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour
- Priscilla
- Killers Of The Flower Moon
- The Holdovers
- Journey To Bethlehem
- PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie
- Radical
- The Exorcist: Believer
154 Comments
I think calling it The Marvels is probably hurting it at the box office. They should’ve called it Star Wars: The Rise of the Marvels or Avatar: The Way of the Marvels instead.
Wrong keywords for international returns. History shows that it should have been called Marvel Studios Presents: Marvel’s Ranger Solo, The First Avenger.
If it doesn’t have a ‘Tokyo Drift’ suffix, I don’t leave the house.
Me but “Back in the Habit”
They should have attempted to confuse the prestige movie audience by calling it Marvels of the Flower Moon
The Barbmarvelheimers
The Marvelous Ms. Marvels
Sometimes, I feel like being number 1 is mostly a symbolic win than anything.
It really depends. If you’re a haunted Chuck E. Cheese movie with a relatively low budget of $20 million, then it’s very much a win. If you’re a historical epic or a big budget comic book extravaganza with a $200 million budget minimum, then it’s an empty victory.
usa number 1
Obviously Disney/Marvel wants more money.But if Marvel is failing, there’s also nothing replacing it. The Marvels -as bad as the opening is – made more money than the other 10 movies below it combined. I think it’ll be a different conversation when MCU movies start coming 2nd or 3rd at the box office.I’ve been watching the long-term forecasting and right now: Hunger Games is on track for $38 – $50 million and Trolls: Band Together $21 – $31 million. The box office is on the struggle bus. Pretty much nothing currently being tracked is expected to crack the mid-$50s except for Wish.
Pretty much this. And it depresses me that the worst opening ever for Marvel still handily beat the opening of Dungeons and Dragons, which was the best time I’ve had in the theater all year.
Xenk refusing to step aside to avoid a rock in his path is still one of the best jokes I’ve seen in a movie for years.
How’s that meme go again…
Get yourself someone who loves you like Disney loves Marvel premieres?
I can assure you that Dungeons and Dragons would’ve done incredible numbers if they had half the advertising that Marvel films get.
I barely saw any commercials of it until a week after the film came out, and to me that’s an industry issue.
The panedmic changed movie-going habits that were already changing. People aren’t just going to go to whatever the big new movie is each weekend like they used to. The studios had a pretty solid 3-decade run where they were able to effectively open anything in summer or Thanksgiving-to-Christmas season and make money off of it as long as it was relatively well-marketed. They even were able to expand the big weekends through late March and late October, with only January, February, and September as true dead zones for film releases. That’s over now. People have giant, beautiful screens with soundbars at home. They have subscription services that let them watch any of 100,000 titles at a given time, with new content constantly being advertised within the services to them. And they went anywhere from almost a year (for countries that didn’t care about the loss of human life, like the United States) to nearly 3 years (for countries that did, like Japan) with movies being, at best, a very special occasion thing.Guardians did well because people wanted to see more Guardians. Ant-Man did medicore because it was mediocre and a lot less people wanted to see Ant-Man. The Marvels is a mish-mash of sequel to a not-particularly-beloved film and two televisions series that only the most ardent Marvel fans are caught up on. It’s a very “Marvel is my main fandom” movie. And now Marvel/Disney knows exactly how big that audience is. About 5% of a mainstream megacharacter like Spiderman. They need to start budgeting the smaller character movies accordingly or just learn the more is not always more.
This is where promotion would have helped.You only really NEEDED to see the first one, and it’s not an outrageous cultural ask to see the first one before seeing a sequel.It helps to be generally aware Ms Marvel exists, but you don’t need to see the show. Secret Invasion is not necessary in the slightest.It is critical malpractice for reviewers to keep saying you need to do homework.
If you don’t need to see Ms. Marvel / Wandavision / Secret Invasion then call it Captain Marvel 2, not The Marvels. The title (and the marketing) implies the homework, not the critics.
Bullshit, the critics acted like you needed to retake calculus to see this.
Blaming this on critics is so fanboyish it’s ridiculous. Worse-reviewed Marvel movies have done better box office. Your straw man is imaginary.
I could give a shit if the NY Times likes it. What I care about is them being honest.
> What I care about is them being honest.This is ironic.
Don’t worry, you’re doing a good job of conveying how you don’t care about this.
Critics acted like its a sequel to Captain Marvel that also heavily features the lead from Ms. Marvel and a key character from WandaVision. Sorry if you don’t think 10+ hours (at a minimum) of backstory is a big commitment, but that doesn’t make the opinion dishonest.
But that isn’t what is needed and critics who say it is are incompetent at best and intentionally sabotaging at worst. It is fucking obtuse of them to keep trotting that bullshit out.Here is what you really needed:
* To have seen the first Captain Marvel – and it is not a big cultural ask to see a first movie before the second one.
* To know what the Snap/Blip was. Since Endgame made $2.7 billion and it’s general plot has entered the culture almost as much as “I am your father” did back in the day, that isn’t that tough.Here is what would have been nice:
* To sort-of know Ms. Marvel exists. Not even to watch her show, but to have seen her face while scrolling on Disney+. Nice, but not necessary.
That’s it. All you need to know about Monica is that she’s the little girl from the first movie. You don’t need to have seen WandaVision. They explain her powers in this movie.And they quite cleverly explain who Kamala is and her love of Captain Marvel in the first two minutes of this movie.SPOILER:* It is more fun if you’ve seen the Hawkeye show and have a passing knowledge of the X-Verse. But again, not strictly necessary.
You seem to be confusing the experience you had with the one had by people that (and this is the crucial part here, so read it twice) are not you.Their experience is valid too, and doesn’t mean that the people who voice it have sworn some kind of vendetta against Marvel.
Promotion how? They showed a million trailers for this movie. Do you really think that the actors going on press tours matter?
Guardians was still seen as a massive disappointment. It opened far lower than Guardians 2 and it made less than 2 by a significant margin if adjusted for inflation.As disappointing as things like Little Mermaid and Ant Man 3 seem on the surface, both are still in the Top 10 domestic grossers for 2023.End of the day, I think Disney – much as they’d love MORE money – they’re likely also making decisions around other revenue streams. Elemental was a huge disappointment, but based on things I was asked to buy my very young nieces and Halloween costumes I saw, it’s making money in other ways. How much merch and park tickets these movies generate will always continue to matter to Disney especially if the box office is dying for everyone.
> Guardians was still seen as a massive disappointment.No, it wasn’t.
Yeah, I don’t understand this current spin on Guardians 3 at all. Like would Disney have liked it to make more money? Probably, but that’s probably true for every movie. But there’s really nothing to indicate that it was a financial bust.
I don’t understand what people find so hard to understand.
“Disappointing” doesn’t need to mean “wasn’t profitable”. It just means it didn’t do as well projected.
Disney highlighted the financial success of GotG3 multiple times after the film came. It didn’t meet the expectations for the opening weekend, but it also turned out to have strong legs and didn’t have that steep of a drop for the second weekend.Do you have some actual financial statements or reports that indicate what Disney’s internal expectations for the film were and how much it underperformed?
Nope. Just the engaging armchair accounting we all do.
But look at it this way— GotG 3’s return was roughly on par with its predecessors, but once you take into account the significant inflation of the last few years, that’s a pretty significant drop.Somewhere in the last decade, $1B became the target for a tentpole movie. Partially bc it’s a nice round number, and partially because it gives a good profit margin to $300M films that double that budget with marketing included.
So not getting there, for one of the better liked series in the MCU, wasn’t a great sign.
Doesn’t mean it didn’t make a profit (“a financial bust” as you put it), doesn’t mean the world ended for Marvel, but it does mean the canary is looking a little woozy.
It’s no secret that Disney Parks are the revenue machine for WDC; the films and shows act as gateways to park merch and park attendance. That being said, IP fatigue has exhausted some of the park goodwill as well, especially the Avengers campus. Guardians in EPCOT has received great reviews, but WEBslingers is a much worse version of Toy Story Midway Mania, and arguably even the old Buzz Lightyear ride. Rise of the Resistance is an amazing ride and Savi’s is a great lightsaber experience, but Galaxy’s Edge has little other utility outside of a place to get overpriced merch. Parks like Tokyo Disney/ Tokyo Disney Sea and Shanghai Disney get it right by creating immersive experiences that tell unique stories (see also: Joe Rhode’s work at Aulani and for Pandora). With the parks becoming more expensive, Disney’s overreliance on non-classic or original IP may come back to bite them.
How is $850 million box office a massive disappointment?
There’s also the “spoiler factor” that used to be important with Marvel. You’d rush to see consequential MCU movies before some twat told you the big plot twist. The overall saga got its hooks into a lot of people.
But this saga hasn’t, and now nothing feels that consequential, and no spoilers are worth rushing out to see the films for. I think this was the difference with e.g. Guardians recently, a much loved 2 films having the director and casts’ final outing, with deaths very possible. It felt like something WOULD happen and even if not, it was going to be a good time. That’s sadly lacking in most of the output now.
This is a great point. I’m a Marvel fan. I’m caught up on all the films and tv series (minus Loki, but will get there soon) and I had no interest in going to the theaters to see this, especially after the poor reviews. And I actually really liked the first film and loved the two series the other Marvels come from. But these days it’s a heavy lift to get me to a theater when I can just wait a few weeks and watch it at home. Even if I end up paying the $25 to buy it on iTunes before it goes on Disney+ that’s about the price of a theater ticket these days (at least in NYC) and then I get to own it.
Release dates are scheduled long in advance, and studios frequently schedule their movies based on when other studios put their movies to either avoid them or to attract a different demographic. I know Marvel kept pushing the release date for The Marvels back, but analysts were initially predicting a $90 million opening, so I think all of the studios figured it didn’t make sense to compete with what has been until now a guaranteed box office win. Five Nights at Freddy’s opened to $78 million just a couple weeks ago, and I’ve heard that FNAF is worse than The Marvels by far.The new Hunger Games coming up is like the fifth Hunger Games movie, and the Trolls movie that’s about to come out is like the third or fourth one, I think. I don’t think it’s just Marvel failing. I think it’s Yet Another Entry fatigue. Yet Another Mission: Impossible? Yet Another Fast & Furious? Yet Another DC movie?As for what’s replacing Marvel, hopefully the overperformance of movies like Barbie, Oppenheimer, the Taylor Swift movie, and *sigh* Five Nights at Freddy’s means that audiences want more Non-Sequels.
Couple of things. The Marvels did not compete with any other big films in this window, so that comparison to the other top 10 films is just weird.Then, the Hunger Games film coming up is a sequel to a decade old franchise that was notoriously running out of steam towards the end of it. It also has a budget of 100 millions dollars compared to the Marvels 220 million dollars net budget. If Hunger games opens up at 40-50 million dollars next weekend, that will be a really good result for them because context matters a ton.
They didn’t compete with other being movies, but in 2019 and earlier, the #2 movie was usually cracking $10 million per week. It’s only meant to highlight that the box office is depressed.
But the comparison doesn’t work because the partial reason the box office is so depressed just now is because of the movies that are out. There aren’t any big movies that would justify that point.I’m not arguing that the box office isn’t worse than in 2019, but there were lull weekends then as well. Also, we’ve had multiple really big weekends in this past year alone, so the only thing this weekend showed was that the movies out right now aren’t the big ones. Really nothing more.
But it extends to most weekends and most seasons including weekends when very large movies came out.The summer box office was down 16% from last year despite Barbenheimer. Almost every weekend has been down relative to pre-Covid weekends and those drops are before you even adjust for inflation. The top 3 movies of the year to date – as successful as they are – fall below past years if your adjust for inflation. It’s not that this weekend was a lull. It’s that every weekend is a lull.
Yeah, I already stated that the box office is down, but this is horrible weekend to use as an example how this top movie made more than the rest of the top 10 combined. That happened often in 2019 as well.Also, there’s been huge movies already in the past 12 months, some of them even Marvel movies. Let me try to clarify. What exactly is your point as it relates to this box office and the Marvels’ performance this weekend?
Lindsay has zero grasp on how the economics of films work. To her, the Marvels failed, so every other film failed too.
The problem is more that they are spending WAY too much on making the movies. And since movies have a 2-3 year lead time, it’s tough to course correct based on these results.
copium is a dangerous drug
Yes. This isn’t a MCU problem. This is a many-people-quit-go-to-the-movie-theater problem.
Five Nights at Freddy’s made $78 million domestic opening weekend on a $20 million budget. The Marvels made $47 million on a $270 million budget. If you’re going to blatantly lie, at least make it a little harder to look up in like less than 5 seconds maybe? Tool.
Yeah I think that’s part of the conversation that gets left out when discussing the MCU—it’s that superhero movies are the tentpoles holding up the entire box office right now, and if that goes kaput, it spells disaster for the wider movie landscape (and probably even more doubling down on “safe” IP getting recycled, a la what Mattel is up to as everyone learned the wrong lessons from Barbie.)
I agree with everything except the part about The Marvels opening at #1, and an MCU movie opening below that would change things. Opening at #1 means nothing, if the movie ends up losing $150+ million, which is likely at this point.
When other franchises or other types of movies start to exceed revenue for MCU movies, Disney will move on. They don’t want to lost $150 million, but the reality is that most movies right now, with a few exceptions, are losing a massive amount of money. They’ll course correct on budget before they stop making Marvel movies so long as they come #1.
Anyone worried about Marvel failing only need look ahead to the release of Deadpool3, Fantastic Four, Blade and whenever the X-Men movies come to light.
Honestly, I think the biggest threat to Marvel is Sony muddying the waters with everything they’re releasing that’s MCU-adjacent. Madame Web? Kraven?
The Marvels will be on Disney+ within a month to two months. That kills a ton of box office potential. If you had to wait at least 6 months before seeing it, more people would be inclined to go buy a ticket.
With these numbers I bet it up by Christmas weekend(exactly 6 weeks out)
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny had a disappointing b.o. and it’s only getting dropped on D+ in December. That coupled with a stacked December slate(Doctor Who Xmas specials, The Santa Clauses Season 2. Percy Jackson, to name a few), I would think they are aiming for The Marvels to drop around February(since Echo drops in January).
I think it will come down to their current subscriber counts. They’ve done surprise drops right before Christmas a few times for movies that underperformed in November and that ended up helping the legacy(aka the marketability) of the film. Encanto being the big one in my mind
That could be, but Disney hasn’t really been rushing all of its movies to D+ lately. The new Indiana Jones movie still isn’t there.That said even if it’s not true, the perception it’s true could hurt box office.
On the flipside, I do wonder what the take would look like if they did day and date PVOD. I suspect those who go to the movies would still go because of the experience and they’d probably make a chunk of money.
I live in a small city that has one remaining movie theater. It is overpriced and smells like popcorn farts.Meanwhile the TV on my wall is directly in front of my favorite chair. The experience my ass.
The FNAF movie came out on Peacock the SAME DAY it hit theaters, and it still made more than Marvels.
Eh, true, but slightly different circumstances. FNAF isn’t a franchise that’s been churning out multiple films a year for 15 years. People know what to expect from a Marvel movie so unless its Spider-Man, the trends over the last few years are showing they’re willing to wait and see it on demand. And two, FNAF is horror, which still seems to do well in the box office compared to other genres, especially this time of year.
every marvel movie has this same issue, yet it did worse than all of them. STFU GTFO
i dunno, i think a lot of people are OK with waiting 6 months for mcu content at this point. its not that they won’t watch it all but doesn’t feel urgent at all. kind of like the D+ star wars series
Yeah, people are talking about how moviegoing habits changed during the pandemic, which is true – studios helped the change along by touting their streaming services as a great replacement for movie theaters. Now they want to unring the bell. (Or more accurately, they want to double dip, with people going to the theater and also subscribing to the same content via steaming.)
As a parent that has to line up a babysitter to go watch a movie in theaters, I’m entirely okay with waiting for just about any movie to come out on streaming services before watching it. Pretty much the only times I go to movies now is either kids movies or random times when we have a grandparent visiting who can watch the kids for us on a night out. It’s just really not worth the effort to plan movie nights at this point. Besides, I make better popcorn at home than I can get at theaters.
It genuinely is an odd mystery as to why this one under-performed. You could point to the main leads not being particularly famous or the characters being relatively obscure, but that’s not totally true (Samuel Jackson featured heavily in the marketing) and it didn’t stop the first Captain Marvel movie from making over a billion dollars. You could point to the MCU brand, but while it’s not generating billion dollar movies it’s also not really a failure – all of the MCU movies this year except Ant-Man 3 were unqualified successes, and even Ant-Man 3 was a success just on raw box office grounds (if not what they were hoping for). Best I can guess, they leaned on it heavily as a comedy in the marketing for too long, and comedies both tend to underperform internationally and rely heavily on star power these days to make them work. Because of the strike, they couldn’t have their stars out there promoting it. Or maybe audiences just weren’t interested in what it was selling. It does have a “B” cinemascore from audiences, which is pretty low for an MCU film – that puts it on par with the heavily panned Eternals film, which genuinely was a failure at the box office.
I think the first one overperformed a bit as it was the film right before Endgame so there was a lot of hype surrounding the mcu in general right at that moment and people were hoping CM would give some hints or at least help setup Endgame, i dunno. Her short subsequent appearances (mostly as a deux ex machina) were fine, i’m not sure anyone was demanding she headline another movie. Monica and Ms Marvel are both cool characters but i’m not sure they’re a cinematic draw in an environment that really requires a movie to just command the public’s attention for a month or two in order to rake in the money Marvel’s accustomed to.people are mostly just satisfied to wait and watch it on D+, assuming they don’t hear anything overly negative about it. Its a problem for the industry in general but most especially for big budget movies.another way of looking at it – to get us to the cinemas it has to have a lot of visual pizzazz and the marvel movies really haven’t had much of it lately, compared to say Barbie or Spiderverse 2.
It’s not a mystery. It’s a sequel to a movie that is nobody’s favortie, featuring three characters that are nobody’s favorites, with the implict need to have watched two TV series which even the biggest Marvel fans are getting burned out on. The first Captain Marvel movie was a much easier sell since it was an origin story. You didn’t have to know and love the character to “get” the movie. Plus it had Samuel L. Jackson at the peak of his mid-Avengers importance in the series and Brie Larson at the peak of her post-Oscar fame, before she proved more interested in appearing in ads (and, for whatever reason, Fast 9) than taking on interesting roles. Since then, Nick Fury has become really, really unimportant. Captain Marve has become really, really unimportant. Marvel really is testing the power of their brand. And they’re learning that the edges of the brand aren’t that strong. Captain Marvel’s character got hurt a LOT by how decentralized she was in Endgame. She’s supposed to be one of the most powerful beings in the universe and that movie made her just another superhero, even after setting her up SUPER hard at the end of Infinity War. It backgrounded her because, well, she’s just not a top-line character in Marvel world. And she was joined by two even smaller characters.Marvel deserves this opening. Granted, it probably should have been The Eternals which was lower, given those are D-grade characters and that movie was boring as hell. Marvel has proven that one of two things must happen for their movies to hit now: either the audience has to be rabid for the film because of either the character itself (Spiderman) or the quality of the filmmaking/actors involved/audience segment underserved (Black Panther), or the movie just has to be—and more importantly read—as really damn good. The Marvels never read as good, mostly because Marvel itself has been so hit and miss (more miss than hit) in the last few years. And I already explained that nobody was begging for more Captain Marvel. So there you go. Not a mystery.
I think you’ll find quite a few people were begging for more Captain Marvel. I was one of them. Just because you don’t associate with any of those people doesn’t mean they don’t exist
If you adjust for inflation, even the successful Marvel movies are performing less well. The box office hasn’t come back to its pre-Covid days. You had the strike which limited promotion. In this case, I think the promotion it likely would have benefitted the most from would have been throwing Iman Vellani into the interstitial promos they do on the Disney channel. Plus I can see a world where Zawe Ashton and Tom Hiddleston were promoting this and the end of Loki together and certain fans would have LAPPED that up.But the other side of this is that disappointing as it is, it was still #1. It’s not yet a world where stuff is performing better than Marvel. I think that’s something that will matter more to Disney. It sucks to be a weak #1. It sucks more to be #3. By studio share, Disney is only behind Universal in terms of raw numbers, but it’s #2 with 7 fewer releases to date. Superhero movies are #2 by market share, but just 13 superhero movies accounted for 1.3 billion in domestic revenue while Contemporary Fiction (#1 by market share) had 252 releases to beat it out for market share. All this to say – Superhero fatigue might be real, but it’s a slower dip than it seems.
Inflation applies to budgets as well – a $200 million film now is not the same as a $200 million film in 2014, etc.
Agreed – I do think that’s the real thing that Marvel needs to be assessing.
The covid explanation is not serious. Covid changes nothing, people go to see good movies or movies they want to see. Ask Barbie, Oppenheimer or Avatar 2. They are just not interested in Disney crap anymore.
The overall box office is down relative to 2019 even with Barbie and Oppenheimer (Avatar 2’s take is split between two years because it opened in December 2022). Summer 2023 was down 16% relative to Summer 2022 and that was with Barbie and Oppenheimer. The entire Top 11 made less this weekend unadjusted for inflation than the same weekend in 2019 which included such gems as Midway, Doctor Sleep, and Last Christmas – Not exactly movies that were known for being box office fire. If you adjust that for inflation, it’s even more abysmal. And it’s easy to say they’re not big movies, but comparing them to other not big movies, they are also doing terribly.I’m not using Covid to say that people are scared of the virus. I’m simply using it as demarcation of time.
The reason is indeed not covid but the quality of the movies. They went full franchise/superheroes and it worked for a time but no more and we have nothing to replace it for the moment. There are also long term reasons like home cinemas, cultural changes and so on.
So you’re claiming that all of the movies that made a lot of money at the box office in the past were all good movies? Sure.
When you are number 1 with no other new releases that week do you really think that means anything? Give it up, none of your box office theories hold a drop of water.
An odd mystery ? Is it a joke ? How could anyone think this one would work ? 2 unknown characters and one that is not particularly popular. A bad story. Bad writing. Bad editing. More of the same usual MCU nonsense that nobody cares about anymore. Who even goes to see that ?
“all of the MCU movies this year except Ant-Man 3 were unqualified successes”All the MCU movies except Ant-Man 3 this year are GOG3 that was a relative success, not a big one. And now The Marvels that is a complete flop. And of course all the D+ shows that were complete flops.
I mean ultimately the box office is always a roller coaster. The new Mission Impossible got great reviews and audience reception numbers, but still underperformed. Although that was also affected that it came just before the juggernauts that Barbie and Oppenheimer turned out to be, but still.However, I do think that that final point about Cinemascore is a bigger one. Not because it is the great teller of things, but it reflects that there just wasn’t that much buzz going into the weekend and there is even less coming out.
Also, brie larson is an insufferable cunt.
At some point people are going to have to accept that the only reason the first Captain Marvel performed so well is because people felt an obgliation to see it to be able to understand End Game. The film got propped up by Infinity War and End Game and as a stand alone movie wouldn’t have done anything close to what it did. Take out the Nick Fury calling Captain Marvel at the end Infinity War and this movie would have performed more like Ant-Man numbers.
I’m sure the redundancy of the name didn’t help. A Marvel movie featuring Captain Marvels called The Marvels. Maybe for added redundancy if they make a sequel they can call it Marvels: Eternal.
Adding onto what everyone else is saying: I feel like there was almost zero marketing for this. I didn’t really know it was even coming out until like 2 weeks ago, which was mostly because reports came out that it would probably underperform. Granted, all the other factors mentioned were likely even bigger factors, but this probably didn’t help.FWIW, I thought it was a fine movie and (as someone who hasn’t seen a couple things referenced) not anywhere near the “homework” it’s been made out to be.
At this point the MCU is failing. There have only been 2 MCU movies prior to this one this year. Ant-Man 3 and GotG 3. Ant-Man 3 was NOT a success at the box office. It barely broke even, if it did at all. (The standard calculation is the movie’s production budget x2-2.5, and this made about 2.38 times its budget.)GotG3 was a big success, but it’s also different. It’s the last in a trilogy of beloved movies that had the same creative team and are mostly separate from the rest of the MCU. The Marvels’s failure is 80% due to the MCU’s general failure this year. Thor 4 made money but was seen as bad. Quantumania broke even at best and was seen as bad. Secret Invasion was generally seen as bad. They’ve put out too much content and too little quality.
I think most Box Office this year rely on generated hype that didn’t rely on pure basic marketing (trailers, poster, etc). From M3GAN, Barbenheimer to FNAF. Viral and social marketing did became a driving factor for Box office compare to big marketing budget. Even Tom Cruise “stunt” promotion gimmick can’t predict this.
Along the same lines, is anyone really surprised Killers of the Flower Moon didn’t make more money? The trailers were complete downers (which in fairness the story is as well) that I imagine left a lot of people cold. It’s also not the kind of movie you “need” to see on the big screen to enjoy the full experience.
Hopefully the lesson Disney/Marvel take from this is “make better movies and tv shows” and not “don’t have women lead our movies.” The three stars and their chemistry was by far the best thing about it.
It has an 84% audience score. Hopefully, Disney’s real takeaway will be “get budgets into line with the current box office.”I do think the strike likely hurt it especially with tween girls who might have been intrigued all the more if Iman Vellani had been popping up on the Disney Channel (something they normally do a ton of).
Bingo. Iger said back in like February that they’re gonna start reducing budgets; this movie was just already filmed by then. Deadpool 3 & Cap 4 are in a similar situation with high budgets. Thunderbolts will be the first MCU flick where we could conceivably see how the lower budget helps.
Cap 4 is screwed because of Sabra, tbh. I don’t see anyway that story could have been going that isn’t now going to be a huge problem.
I’m 90% sure the reshoots are to take her out of the story.
Shira Haas is a great actress so it’s a bummer for her, I’m sure, but I have to imagine they are going to rethink that.
I look forward to the #RELEASETHESABRACUT hashtags in our not-too-distant future.
With the recent news around RT citing anything from RT as “evidence” is not the way to go. There is no credibility in any of RTs numbers, not that there ever has been. the OP is not wrong in their assessment, Disney really needs to make better things. The strike hurt, along with changing streaming habits. We have seen other movies perform exceptionally well during the strike, so the strike is no real reasoning behind the poor performance. The biggest player as far as i see it, has been the diminishing returns that Marvel movies have put out since Endgame. Quality has fallen off of a cliff. People can like the thing, but that does not equate to quality and something the broader public are interested in. Even taking your audience score as valid, that still does not put people in seats.
Hopefully they’ll learn both those things. 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, of course, for superhero movies, it’s only possible to have strong characters, stories, and universal themes when the lead character is a male, right? Since you’re saying that “don’t have women lead our movies” is a lesson Marvel needs to learn.Or maybe you’re referring to women leading the movies from behind the camera. That’s another way to interpret that lesson you feel Marvel should take from the underperformance of The Marvels.
Why don’t women support women?
The percentage of men who went to see The Marvels is higher than the percentage of men who went to see Top Gun. Try and blame men all you want… This movie sucks. Full stop.
I think the quality could and should improve, but this one wasn’t that bad. It’s hard to nail down the audience reception, since some outlets show high favorability while others show a low one. But it seems that people aren’t that down on it, like they were with Eternals and Quantumania, at least, even though some of the metrics have them all around the same.Anyway, I fully agree, I hope they don’t pull back on diversity because of this. Mostly what they need is direction. There hasn’t been a team-up since Endgame, and we’ve had 8 movies and 8 TV shows since then.
I wonder if it was the same movie but titled ‘Captain Marvel 2′, that would have made a difference? I feel like ‘The Marvels’ doesn’t have any caché to it. Like I imagine the Marvels are a thing in the comic books, but there’s not any brand recognition there for the average punter. Also, the fact that the movies are made by Marvel and here’s a film called the Marvels is a bit odd. Like if the next Batman film was called ‘The DCs’ and it was Batman teaming up with a couple other randos from the comics that nobody knows, it would be understandable if folk didn’t rush to the cinema on opening night.
Same thing happened to Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn.
Marvels didn’t bomb because it wasn’t called Captain Marvel 2. The 2 highest grossing Batman films, and the 2nd highest grossing Superman film didn’t have Batman or Superman in their titles.
I’ve thought the same thing since this was announced. If you’re not familiar with these secondary (tertiary?) characters then hearing a movie called The Marvels sounds like it’s going to be yet another platform-wide team-up.
Marketing for this movie was horrible. A lot of that had to do with the actors strike, but Marvel didn’t do a good job getting the word out.
This excuse doesn’t hold up. 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.
A big part of FNAF’s target audience probably also got some promo related to a cameo from somebody who isn’t in SAG-AFTRA & thus wasn’t forbidden from plugging the film. But that’s just a theory…..
I saw trailers & posters & billboards & internet ads & TV commercials & sponsored posts all over.
Merchandise got desynced by the change in release date, though. And, of course, the SAG strike killed cast promotion.“What about FNAF?”, somebody will surely ask.
FNAF only has 2 name actors in it anyway, 1 of whom’s role is a spoiler. And because it’s a game adaptation, it probably got a bunch of hype from MatPat plugging his cameo to his internet fans, which he could because he’s not a SAG member.
Maybe its a regional thing ? I’m in Ireland and saw literally no promotion for it here (and generally we share the marketing etc with the UK)
That’s a good point. I have no idea what the promos looked like overseas.
The change in release date killed this movie. I took kids to McDonald’s back in early August and there were Marvels posters everywhere, Marvels Happy Meal toys, etc. Of course, all of that was gone by Labor Day, and the movie didn’t open for 10 weeks after that.
We just got back from seeing it. It was fun! I actually wished it had been a few minutes longer; there were a couple of spots where they rushed from one thing to another and it could have used a breathing room. (By longer I mean by, like, two or three minutes.)Also, dat mid-credits scene *fans self*
it should keep the momentum going until the Beyonce movie comes out. But it should still have enough momentum to keep good box office going into the Thanksgiving and Christmas weekends. support this movie! 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!!!
Most of the “haters” as you might call them that I have heard are complaining about how the editing butchered the plot, not the cast.
But is it actually any good? Or is any pap acceptable if it has the right demographics onscreen?
Reviews are widely available. RT’s summary consensus chunk says, “Funny, refreshingly brief, and elevated by the chemistry of its three leads, The Marvels is easy to enjoy in the moment despite its cluttered story and jumbled tonal shifts.” Having seen the movie, this is accurate.
Support pandering mediocre corporate products!!! DIVERSITY!!!!!!!!
It’s a for-profit movie made by one of the biggest entertainment companies on Earth. It’s not a charity.Don’t “support” movies. See them if you want to see them, or don’t.
The greatest trick capitalism ever pulled was making people think they were morally righteous for buying a particular product from a giant corporation.
That’s up there but the greatest trick was surplus labor theft, tbh
the reframing of completely inconsequential personal decisions as ‘supporting a cause’ is something that has broken a lot of brains, i agree.
no no, i’m not ordering dinner because i’m lazy, i’m supporting a restaurant and an essential worker.
Reminds me when I bought something on ebay a couple months ago. There was a card thrown into the box that was like, “Thanks for supporting a small business!” Dawg, I just went for who was selling the thing for the lowest price online.
I like Iman and will eventually see this mostly because of her/Kamala’s charisma (the last two MCU things I’ve watched—Love & Thunder and She-Hulk—were godawful so not exactly champing at the bit to dive back into the ‘brand’), but lol no you shouldn’t watch movies just because it has poc or because chuds are mad it. I’m latin and would rather gnaw off my own foot than watch Blue Beetle, for instance. If anything, “supporting” mid to bad movies made by poc just gives culture war dorks more ammo (so at least keep the sentiment to yourself lol).That said, give us a cool cyberpunk Spider-Man 2099 streaming series!
Speaking as someone who did see ‘Blue Beetle’, your preference is entirely reasonable.
I won’t support it. Sorry!
don’t care. I’ll see it twice. Minority filmmakers get trashed more viciously than white filmmakers who put out “pablum”. but hey, you’re more righteous than me, so go ahead.
I know it’s hard for you to understand this but most people don’t care about the skin colour of the director. Both black and white persons are capable of making trash movies. In this case a black lady made the trash.
most people have no problem being casually racist toward a black woman, especially one in a creative space. If this is you, own it. stop denying it.
There’s no racism here. Other than you nobody cares about her skin colour because it’s irrelevant to the movie being good or bad. If anyone is racist here it’s you.
racism continues because folks like you perpetuate it but assume that you are above the fray because you are “colorblind”. arrogant foolishness, ultimately, and it erases the coded racism in the creative/entertainment world where minorities can be categorized as “untalented” while their white peers continue to fail upward, from project to project.
The movie didn’t fail because a black woman directed it. The movie failed because it features three characters nobody likes or cares about.
I am not excited.
85% audience score on RT (fwiw). And most of the comments I’ve seen here in other Marvels pieces said it was very enjoyable, even if not an MCU highlight. Sometimes that’s enough, for the viewer. I know the studio will need more than our mere satisfaction…
$47m with some 15 years of inflation making that look better than it is. Kinda feel bad for Larson, she just missed the main wave.
The MCU’s problems have really started to fester. People were complaining about Marvel movies having weak villains and pointless weightless CGI battles since Phase 1.
And these issues keep persisting, so much so that even She-Hulk made
fun of it. But then they repeat the exact same mistake in Secret
Invasion. People were willing to overlook these problems when the MCU
was new but they can’t ignore them forever.
But on the plus side, they can still course correct. They can create success with new and unknown characters. After all, the MCU was built on C list comic book characters.
They can also rehabilitate weak characters. I don’t think that many
people had Thor as their favorite hero until Ragnarok, the third Thor
film that came out just half a year before Infinity War.
As long as Kathleen Kennedy is in charge at Disney there won’t be a course correction. They’ll only double down on what’s been proven to fail out of stubborness. There are no winners in the culture wars.
Weightless CGI battles are, like, the MCU’s whole thing, aren’t they? I’m not an MCU fan at all, but I did see Avengers, and one of the only things I remember about it was the Hulk leaping over skyscrapers like an Olympic hurdler and other massive, muscle-bound heroes getting tossed around like ragdolls. (that and the totally bizarre jingoism/warhawking stuff, but that’s a different discussion entirely). To be fair, though, CGI that was photorealistic but completely unconvincing in terms of movement/weight was en vogue at the time—I’m thinking particularly of The Life of Pi, which got rave reviews for its effects despite spending its entire runtime depicting a several hundred pound tiger bouncing around on a tiny boat like an energetic kitten.
BLACK GIRL MAGIC IS DEAD! RIP M.SHE.UGIRLS DON’T READ COMIC BOOKS. GIRLS ONLY SHOW AN INTEREST IN NERD CULTURE WHEN THEY CAN MOENTIZE IT WITH THEIR TITS. FUCK OFF GIRLS. GO WATCH ROMANCE AND LEAVE THE NERDS ALONE. CULTURAL APPROPRIATION!!!
Look at the superhero fatigue setting in as Marvel/Disney now has their own The Blue Beetle—a fanboi movie that’ll crater at the box office next weekend since all the Marvelites will have already seen Marvel’s version of DC’s Green Lanterns.Marvel and DC…they’re scraping the bottom of the barrel since they’ve both shot their wads on the big, all-encompassing stories.
I’m all for “girl power.” I want this movie to succeed. Maybe it has one of Marvel’s great space villains. No? Was Annihilus busy? Now I’m hearing that it has two musical numbers shoehorned in. Weak villain and musical numbers? This movie will have to succeed without me.
Less musical numbers, more scenes where people singing makes sense. It’s science fiction, and it’s weird, but you’ve gotta work hard not to love this movie (if you ever get around to seeing it, anyway.)
yeah, I’ll eventually see it. Probably in the theater on $5 day. It’s too hard to pass up when my movie theater is right across the street.
Stop rubbing it in! Having a theater across the street would be magical enough, but a theater with a $5 day? Bananas.
$5 Tuesdays at Cinemark theaters. I thought that was nationwide.
Sadly, there are no Cinemarks within 100 miles of [the place where I live] and all the second run cheapo theaters have closed down.
At one point they visit a planet where they speak in song. There weren’t two numbers in the sense that there were two full songs. There was just two spots where they were speaking in song. Thankfully the prince of said people, who did most of the talking, was bilingual (he could speak without singing).
So if people want to say Marvel’s opening week wasn’t a failure, were they saying that when The Flash did 55 Million? Or when Shazam 2 did it’s shit number? Marvels was decent (way better than Thor 4 or Antman 3 to me) and It’s a shame Icel trolls are loving this. But lets not act like this was “fine” when this same comments section was laughing at the Flash’s shit number when it was about the same movie as Marvels, a C or C+.
Yeah, dude. Obviously people said that about The Flash and Shazam 2. Where have you been? All three movies have done very badly.
Going to a movie theater is a terrible experience these days. Expensive snacks and half an hour of advertisements. It may be the last movie I actually go see in a theater.
I go on $5 day, after they hype has died down. Empty theater, and I sneak my own snacks in. Grand total: $5.
Yeah, that’s why I almost never do snacks in a movie theater. I’m perfectly content to wait until after the show to snack.
Black Panther 2 – Woman of Color in the starring role – Big Box office – “Way to represent, women of color have an audience that people want to see.”The Marvels -Woman of color in the starring role – Awful box office – “Racists won’t go to see a movie where a woman of color is one of the main stars. Racism is alive and well.”Of course it had to be racism that made this movie fail.
it’s over nerds! Time to go outside!
Something had to have the worst opening in the franchise at some point, so maybe Marvel can look at this as a “rip the band-aid off” moment and not a “the sky is falling moment.”There’s been a movie with the worst opening in the franchise since the second movie was released, The Incredible Hulk. This isn’t a milestone, just a low-point
The best parts by far are when it it’s light & zany. Marvel Studios has made it difficult to portray Captain Marvel compellingly, but Ms. Marvel & the Flerkens were flawless!https://mattthecatania.wordpress.com/2023/11/11/is-the-marvels-a-flerken-fiasco/I
dread misogynists using this as Exhibit A in not letting women in front
& behind the camera for big budget IP adaptations, ignoring how the
opposite lesson could be learned from Barbie.Did Disney
set this up to underperform by only giving it a week’s advance on all
those other releases? By releasing it at the same time as the season finale of Loki, is Marvel also competing against itself for attention?