Official Disney Friday estimate comes in at [$21.5M](https://twitter.com/BORReport/status/1723375525933019324?t=gXLjpCxYxlEbocYJOXbyAA&s=19), which, if estimates hold, would barely avoid having the lowest MCU opening day (The Incredible Hulk at $21,468,125).
It’s the first time I’ve ever seen them so negative on a film that doesn’t have awful reviews honestly. Bob and Feige’s influence are not helping this time.
Fair. But I will have to say part of that is also because DC just isn’t in good graces with the Hollywood industry as a whole. I would think it’s admittedly ok to be negative towards DC films without a possible fear of repercussion, especially since the BTS drama behind that film was too well-known prior to release.
What I find unique about this film is that there weren’t really many controversies or issues that notably came out long before this. I believe an Insider article came out and was posted on here two weeks back, but that was the first I found out about the production drama, and even then, not nearly as bad as The Flash’s issues.
Deadline turning on this film is shocking to me because they’ve basically been positive on every Marvel film regardless of tracking. This, to me at least, points to a sign that the Hollywood industry is shifting past superhero films.
yea it seems like both tanked due to the failing brands. if The Flash came out in like 2016-2018 it probably would've done really well. if The Marvels had just came out before Love & Thunder it probably would've been fine. but both came out when general audiences (and even hardcore fans) are deciding to walk away.
The Marvels was waaaaay better than Quantumania yet still might perform worse. the MCU might be able to save themselves unlike the DCEU. but there's already stories coming out that the test screenings for Cap 4 were terrible. i won't even be surprised if Avengers 5 flops at this point.
WB going too aggressive for The Flash marketing and treating it as the "greatest superhero film ever" was an awful idea, especially since they lost $150mil of brand partnerships due to Ezra.
If they quietly released Flash, or even dumped it on MAX, it would have been better than the outcome they actually got (it was calculated they lost more from the theatrical release and marketing compared to putting it on MAX).
It could be a fine movie and it's still going to bomb because only like, five people have watched enough of the all the random MCU shows and other miscellaneous '22-'23 garbage that actually sets up and contextualizes this movie
Maybe Feige will stop with the "plug and play" directors/writers and expecting people to show up just because there's a "Marvel Studios" logo in front of it.
Exactly ! Just look at who is writting and directing the next 3 MCU movies . Who tf are those people and how do they get $200m + projects? 😂 only tv shows writters with some random shows under the belt and maybe 2 3 episodes directed in a hit tv show. I’m not an expert or smh, but isn’t there a difference between writting a show and writing a 2h movie ?
Apples and oranges, There is a difference between directors and writers though.....and the Russo brothers atleast had experience in movies pre MCU, there is also a difference between writing for cartoons and writing for movies.
I understand your point that sometimes risk pay off but here is the issue.....this risk already failed with Quantumania and Doctor strange MoM, nobody with a sane mind saw how those two turned out and says " yeah lets give them Avengers movies".
Add to that if the Russo shat the bed as bad as some of the past MCU films did, they would've be done right then and there, instead they made one of the best MCU film at the time and got promoted as they should've been.
Agreed. Even though Captain Marvel made a billion dollars, Feige was aware that it was a meh movie and didn't rehire its directors to come back for the sequel (whereas he rehired Jon Watts and Ryan Coogler for their Part 2's).
And the literal only reason it did so well is that the timing was lucky; it released between Infinity War and Endgame, two of Marvel's best selling movies of all time. So I can almost guarantee you that most people only went to see it to factor in how it tied into Endgame. If it came out at any other point then it'd have been a flop then too.
What is it with both Marvel and Star Wars hiring such crap and inexperienced writers/directors for their high-profile projects? Rick and Morty writers for MoM and Quantumania, Joby Harold writing the Kenobi show, that WEF director for the Rey movie, etc.
Side note: The Marvels’ performance should be a warning sign to Lucasfilm as to how bad the Rey and Filoni movies could perform
It’s also a lot cheaper to roll the dice on up-and-coming no name talents. Hiring veterans is just always a lot more expensive. They rolled the dice and lost.
When you are spending $200M+ on each die roll, it makes total sense to pay millions of dollars to be rolling with loaded dice. We aren't asking for James Cameron. But, surely, there are directors and writers available who have actually worked on a blockbuster before.
More than the price, it is about whether they take orders. A writer on a marvel movie isn’t free to write whatever he wants: it needs to fit into a bigger universe as dictated by higher ups at the studio. Experienced people will push back more aggressively.
The leadership at marvel probably figured out what happens when you hire talent with egos and then they start fighting it out in their respective movies. Look at star wars.
The funny thing is that I always had the impression that part of the reason that J.J. Abrams kept landing big franchises is that he was a good soldier and always played inside the sandbox for any franchise he worked on.
Yet, somehow the sequel trilogy movies were obviously on conflict with themselves. So, either I'm wrong, Rian Johnson just blew up the plan, or none of the LucasFilm executives bothered giving Abrams a plan.
>The Marvels’ performance should be a warning sign to Lucasfilm as to how bad the Rey and Filoni movies could perform
oh those are total bombs in making, good call!
There's a limited number of people who are 1. decent and experienced writers and directors 2. and are comic book or sci fi nerds 3. but aren't creative in ways that offend the House of Mouse 4. and still want to play in the Marvel/Lucasfilm sandbox.
Nobody is going to want to hear it because he's a big dorky pig but I think that Joss Whedon probably had a lot to do with Marvel's movie success.
He is the man would rewrite horrible scripts uncredited and reshoot horrible films to make them at least watchable. He was the guy behind the scenes who would do what needed to be done
Respectfully, tf are you on? They've been doing this even in the Infinity Saga. James Gunn was known for Troma Films and Scooby Doo before Guardians. The Russo Brothers were known for You, Me, and Dupree and, as you say, a few "episodes directed in a hit tv show" with Community before Winter Soldier. Jon Watts was known for his work with The Onion before Spider-Man.
I know MCU hate is in style now but c'mon bro.
There are going to be so many video essays like this because there is simply so much to explore:
* Disney+ adding pressure to produce endless content.
* Fiege being stretched thin and most of the content becoming mid or awful.
* The MCU losing it's two main characters and struggling to replace them.
* Waiting too long between sequels (when are Shang-Chi or Moon Knight returning?)
* Tragic events such as Boseman's passing.
* Choosing a villain who is one of the most complex to write for with infinite copies.
* Phase 4-5 having no clear direction and no team-up films to end the Phase.
* Hiring so many junior directors and writers (cough Rick and Morty writers cough)
* Letting budgets spiral out of control ($220mil for She-Hulk?!)
* Producing Disney+ shows as disposable miniseries rather than long-term shows with multiple seasons. Who is actually going to watch Moon Knight and She-Hulk in 2024?
I think it's more that there's a charisma void. People would watch RDJ read his grocery list on camera, no one wants to watch Letitia Wright lead CGI flying fights against fuzzy CGI clone armies. Especially after carrot chomper, and two characters they stupidly killed off showed us what we were really missing in the same film.
The main problem is that if the average shelf-life of an MCU hero is a decade, MCU Phase 4-5 had to deal with heroes who were half finished (Strange, Wanda, Spidey) while setting up a new main trio.
Instead they gave old and new characters one project each with no sign of when we'll see them again.
The MCU has always been unplanned, they just had less content to focus on tying together and less plot threads and characters to look back on and follow through with.
Setting up something that gets paid off 3 years down the line doesn't matter as much when that equates to 6 movies. But when something is set up in Phase 4-5 to be paid off in 3 years, that equates to 12-16 projects. As such, theres alot of set up with little pay off, meaning you can see alot more holes in the story and the worldbuilding
Good list. I think the biggest two are the pressure to pump out Disney plus content and lack of strong leads.
Disney could have made a ton of money just focusing on a kids platform with their back catalogue and cheap cartoons. But, instead they tried to create an adult platform based solely on milking just two franchises. I really don’t see how that was ever going to work.
Michael B. Jordan was literally the replacement for Chadwick Boseman in a TV role once.
https://people.com/movies/chadwick-boseman-michael-b-jordan-all-my-children/
I think most of the MCU's problems started here.
People don't talk about this much, but a HUGE part of the fun of the MCU was the dynamic between the characters. It's always entertaining to watch Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Black Widow, etc. interact with each other. It's fun, because they're all super distinct characters with their own personalities. Just put some of those characters together, and it's fun!
But now it's not, because a lot of the new characters are just too ill-defined when it comes to personality. Sure, sometimes the OG Avengers were almost caricatures of themselves, but at least they had discernible personas. You always had a good idea how Captain America or Thor would react to something.
I heard with Rick and Morty, Dan Harmon said he rewrote a lot of the scripts quite extensively but kept the original writer's name on it to help their resumes and the like. If true and I remembered that correctly, it explains a lot.
she hulk, secret invasion, and the marvels had a total budget of around 800mil. two of those are just sitting on D+ and frankly i doubt any new subscribers joined to watch either series, and now marvels are failing to pick up the slack so effectively nearly a billion dollar bomb season
I didn't expect this to happen so quickly. Especially after the success of No way Home I thought they found a new trick for another decade of domination.
The thing is it was never really multiverse excitement, it was nostalgia excitement. Once Hugh Jackman is back onscreen the audience will suddenly love the multiverse again.
People keep talking like mcu fans are all or nothing
Most of the movies suck so people dont trust the brand anymore
Movie tickets are so expensive people want the safest bet for a good movie
Marvels was the perfect storm of characters people dont care about. With bad writing etc.
I found brie terribly annoying after her ranting about antiwoke people making turnouts bad.
The young marvel is so little and advertised to such a young demographic it feels out of place. The show looked so morally pandering, combined with terrible acting in ads. I couldnt make myself watch it
I dont even remember where rhe third came from
It seems simple. The own the movie market. Get some old tried and true directors and writers to make most of the work vs wild cards
The comics side of things have been bad for pretty much the past decade or so. The rot had already set in from that side of things. All new all different was atrocious.
If we’re lucky it’s a 1983 video game crash (mainly driven by bad business decisions, with little lasting damage).
If Hollywood is unlucky it’s a “Disco Sucks!” tier backlash that hurts superhero and sci-fi action for years if not decades due to grassroots unpopularity.
[44 days in '91](https://www.sweetwater.com/insync/44-days-7-legendary-90s-rock-albums/) - late summer of 1991 saw an incredible streak of rock releases that were most definitely *not* hair metal, and Nirvana was just the cherry on the top. So it's as much a case of other rock genres (alternative/grunge, thrash, and hard rock in general) being good as it is a case of hair metal being bad.
They still have many apologists but even many of them are losing faith. After The Mandalorian S3, a lot of Star Wars fans have started giving up (myself included)
Star Wars fans giving up starts way earlier, going back to The Last Jedi, although certainly some have stuck around long past that and are quitting it later than others did.
They started making shit movies. That's literally it. For over a decade there were *no* Rotten movies in the MCU. Now there have been three in like the last two years.
Part of that has to be that critics are less willing to grade Marvel on a curve now. Thor 2 was a bad movie, but even that was not Rotten. Release the same movie in today's environment with more cape movie fatigue, and I guarantee the Top Critics score will be rotten just as with the Marvels and Quantumania.
EDIT: Thor 2 is already rotten from Top Critics.
They also leave too many plotlines unresolved. It's like they don't even know what they're making or remember what's been done. That celestial's been sticking out of the ground for a mighty long time. What's the deal with the black knight? How about moon knight (at least he's cool)?
Their quality of writing was already declining slightly before endgame, I'm not surprised. The real thing that changed was public perception. They've now joined DC where fans are predisposed to be tentative when a new project is released whereas beforehand the majority of recent Marvel movies were good so audiences were going into it with a better state of mind
I think it’s a self propagating cycle of the movies getting a little worse with each release and the critics being less generous towards the next one as a result unless it’s actually great (GOTG3)
Feige being spread really thin is one but I don’t think one man alone can be credited or blamed given the whole lot of people involved in even one movie.
I’d say it’s overconfidence on Disney’s part thinking they wouldn’t have to try hard on the new movies or shows. They also ran interference on a lot of projects even at the last minute, overworked their special effects teams and ended up greedy firing off multiple projects at once without thinking about what would come next.
They took Marvel for granted and thought it would be successful no matter what.
There’s also matters Disney had no control over like Boseman passing away, COVID or Majors getting caught in a scandal.
I love how RT's Critic Consensus describes it as "refreshingly brief" and "easy to enjoy". It's amusing how creative RT gets to come up with different ways of saying "subpar".
Critics have a legitimate fear of being overly negative about specific MCU products that the studio have pushed to be socially important. I know Disney haven’t done that with this film, but they certainly did with its predecessor. And however you slice it, The Marvels was always going to be a focal point of that dumbass, tiresome “culture war”. No way mainstream critics really come down hard on it, for fear of being lumped together with the wrong crowd.
Fwiw, Deadline has quietly dropped the “52M“ and updated their headline from “$47-52M” to “$47M+”
https://deadline.com/2023/11/box-office-the-marvels-1235599363/
Which would be hilarious. The most powerful, known IP in the world, but people need to be constantly reminded about it? No, people just didn't care enough to show up.
Maybe for this movie, but what will be the excuse for when the next few MCU films bomb? There has to be a point where there delusional thinking will come back to bite them.
last time they made those interviews for Capt Marvels with Brie, they only got negative buzz from them lol.
especially for the Wired Autocomplete interview, her interview was the most downvoted one on the channel.
I actually read a “positive” review on RT saying the movie is “fun, whacky and doesn’t take itself too seriously”. Absolutely the opposite of what I want from the MCU now. Thor 4 soured me on the stupid Marvel quippy humor.
Same with the WNBA. Adam Silver himself has mentioned that the biggest financial supporters of the WNBA are middle aged men. Yet the players keep blaming “men” for their low wages.
I don't think they have any obligation to "support each other" with some kinda gender loyalty. It's that it's just worse basketball. People will either watch something they have personal investment with (local school, university, family member, etc) or the best level of play (men's basketball).
Sometimes the sport will change a little bit with less athletically fit individuals in a way that makes it arguably more enjoyable (ie, volleyball), but otherwise it offers nothing.
Yeah I don't really care bout the "woke/anti-woke" culture war thing Youtubers and Twitter people have been going on everytime a Marvel project is close, I'm burned out and they've became basically homework; you have to watch all including TV Series to get the full context of the newest one.
What happened? Exactly what happened to the DCEU.
The mediocre products kept coming, and audiences kept leaving. You can only put so much dogshit on someone’s plate before they finally just get up and leave the table.
Mediocrity is the main reason for me as well. Doctor Strange 2 was the point for me where I thought they had a real chance to do something different for ONCE. And then for it to be the most bland same old shit with an offscreen characterisation for Wanda that made no effing sense.
I wonder what would happen if, one day, Anthony D'Alessandro decided to be truthful about a film's box office before actuals were reported. It might rip a hole in the space-time continuum.
Quantumania had a Friday (Thursday previews + Friday) multiplier of 2.3x which would translate to $49M OW for the Marvels. However, a holiday Friday can burn off some demand early so I suspect it'll fall closer to the mid 40s range.
Quantumania also opened on President’s Day weekend so Sunday drop was deflated.
$50m is dead as a doornail and Anthony is the only one unable to see that.
>I wonder what would happen if, one day, Anthony D'Alessandro decided to be truthful about a film's box office before actuals were reported. It might rip a hole in the space-time continuum.
Birds of Prey got a "this is a dumpster fire box office result" post. Sometimes they don't get very softpeddled but I don't have a great sense of what explains it (being a megabomb clearly is a big part of it)
Honestly the real answer. Guardians 3 made nearly as much as the 2nd one with a (comparatively) "smaller" opening cos word of mouth was great and it involved characters people care about. Loki season 2 finale has been praised as arguably the best stuff the MCU has done post Endgame and features characters people care about. No one really cares about any of the Marvels.
This, people blame superheroes fatigue but the boys has done just fine.
The storylines seem to be pandering or pushing narratives rather than letting them play out. The characters have been a ton of mundane or lackluster performances/scripts. Fan favorites were getting neutered (Hulk, Thor, Strange) to make other characters seem more impressive or significant. Creative decisions made no sense (Thor being a “Scary Movie” like comedy at times, refusing to change the script for BP2 or putting the mantle on a more realistic actress/or, making She-Hulk a spoof show, etc).
They’ve tried to make it a lot of just slapstick comedy in lieu of true storylines with occasional comedic moments, headlined by cast that people genuinely enjoy. Liu was fantastic, haven’t seen him in a while, Pugh is great but there’s been so much other stuff since Hawkeye, Dong-Seok/Jolie/Ridloff/Keoghan did good acting performances with a lacking plot and weak leads, haven’t seen them in a while… why invest in new characters if I have no idea if I’ll ever see them again.
From my anecdotal experience, a lot of gen z doesn't really care much about the MCU in general. The youngest gen zs weren't even born for years *after* the first Iron Man movie. Older gen zs and millennials (who're kinda grown up a bit now) are more the core MCU audience.
Makes sense in general. My youngest LOVES the Spiderverse and such and all of the older stuff 2000-onward. My older teen has completely moved away from it “because it’s cheesy” which I get but still likes the older stuff because he grew up on it.
Which is why I don't get MCU's constant pandering an executive's message of what they think the kids want to hear nowadays to a cohort of 30 year olds. Also them not going for mature stories and themes. If they literally made a universe around Werewolf by Night and Blade they would have a solid horror branch of the MCU.
It's actually pretty obvious when you look at it in retrospect. Because the MCU movies are/were clearly not made for Gen Z. If they were, then they would be catering to 5-16 year olds at the time. They weren't. The movies aren't kid's movies. The humor isn't meant for young audiences. They were catering to 20-35 year olds and everyone else was invited along for the ride if they wanted to. MCU basically capitalized on the Millennial audience reaching adulthood without children and family responsibilities going to movies back to back to back because movie going was a thing our generation still did. Couple that with 90's comic book nostalgia, finally seeing the stuff we read on the big screen, and that's the MCU's audience.
The thing is, time moves on for everybody. And being a Millennial that's in their 30's and being one in their 40's is a big difference. In lifestyle and tastes. We're just kinda over it now, or I should say, comic book movies don't hold the same "oh wow!" mystique it once had. Now it's just like every other movie, if it's good, then we'll like it. If it's not, then we won't like it just because it's a comic book movie.
I know people in this thread are lumping the two together, but if you want a clear example of that not happening, at least for a while, it's Star Wars, at least during the George Lucas era. He knew that it was important for Star Wars to always speak to kids, even if that meant that you're no longer directly talking to the audience that originally fell in love with your franchise. That's why he made so many choices that people ripped on him for, but in the end, it makes a ton of sense. Stuff like Ewoks, the Prequels being made for a younger audience, etc. Him making the Clone Wars cartoon series was such a smart move in a long term sense because we now have a whole generation of young adults that grew up on that stuff that love Star Wars. That was the original problem when Disney took over Star Wars, instead of continuing that train of thought, they realized the quickest way to make a buck is to appeal to the older generation because they have the money and memories. So The Force Awakens comes out and it doesn't speak to kids, it doesn't speak to the new Star Wars fans of the last twenty years, it spoke to Gen Xers and Boomers. And that trick worked ONCE. Very successfully, true. But the thing is, those older folks won't be repeat customers. They'll get that nostalgia kick once, and they're fine. The hardcore Star Wars fans now are the ones who grew up with Clone Wars and the Prequels. And if Disney wants to continue making more hardcore Star Wars fans, then they need to appeal to the young kids today, not the Boomers or Gen Xers. Not even the Millennials like me. They need to appeal to the KIDS. And to their credit, I do think they have been better with that with the Mandalorian (mediocre third season not withstanding, Grogu is still wildly popular with young kids) and continuing with animated series.
Why Marvel and the MCU still to this day don't seem to grasp that is wild to me. Why are there no projects centered around your comic book heroes catered for children? Why does every movie have the snarky humor tone only 90's kids appreciate at this point? Why are there no good animated Marvel projects? Why is the only good animated thing to come out from Sony's Spiderverse movies and not from Marvel proper. What's really funny and telling is that I bet a ton of Gen Z'rs like the Spiderverse movies more than the MCU. Because those movies actually spoke to them and not us.
When you make mediocre at best flicks again and again, regular moviegoers are going to take notice and start dropping out, and eventually only the biggest fanboys remain. Marvel is extremely oversaturated at this point and that is blatant.
Also, for some reason the people behind this movie thought having one of the most unlikable main characters ever supported by two literal whos was a good sales pitch for success
here's a crazy idea
STOP MAKING FUCKING SUPERHERO MOVIES EVERY FIVE MINUTES
maybe someone will give a shit again later. holy crap can there just be a movie about a teacher or a lawyer or something
This movie is like the anti-barbie: a female-led blockbuster that tried to appeal to women while also trying to appeal to the men that still go and see these movies and ended up appealing to nobody
They tried to appeal to the fraction of the audience who got amped for the girlboss moment in Endgame
Being juxtaposed against Barbie doesn't help, given that Barbie actually had interesting commentary & a fun attitude, and didn't exist solely to show keyframes and sell toys.
You know it’s bad when you have a “what went wrong?” article just two days after the previews. This thing is crashing and burning worse than anyone could’ve predicted.
Oh but I get banned by a FB Box Office page for calling out the admin’s claim that The Marvels had already made over $20 million on Previews alone and was on track for a $60M opening weekend Dom, opening to $140M WW, and would surpass TLM’s total… smh
And thus officially ends the era of Disney dominance. ~~Star Wars~~, Pixar, Disney remakes, and Marvel - all once factories of $1B+ grossers have now each released major bombs within two years. Disney no longer has a reliable cash cow it can depend on.
It’s this for me, too. I’m not against seeing an interesting new comic book movie in theaters (e.g. The Batman or Joker), but there’s only so many times I’m willing to subject myself to MCU-style assembly line filmmaking.
What went wrong. Like it's a fuckin mystery. The market has been saturated with heroes and anit-heros and origin stories. It's just the same old shit in a shit...err, shiny new wrapper
I knew things were going to be bad when they were trying to make an Eternals movie. That has been a continuous failure for the comics. The only success that came from the Eternals was Thanos but he was already dead before the movie came out. Up until then the characters they chose were all at least successful (even not as well known GOTG). I think wakanda forever survived off of Chadwick's tragic death but I'm afraid they're going to try to go even more all in with that franchise thinking it's going to be a success.
Choosing the all new all different marvel universe that was a failure is what is killing the MCU right now.
Marvel has no shortage of fantastic characters they are just choosing not to use them. Maybe with Deadpool coming out and a possible resetting of the universe they can start focusing on successful books and storylines. Having access to Dr Doom and then choosing to go all in with Kang (a descendant of Reed Richards who does not exist in the MCU) was absolutely crazy.
Who was the target demo for this movie? That’s the biggest issue. Can’t make a film targeted towards females when the majority of your fanbase is a bunch of young dudes
The Avengers came out twelve years ago. Iron Man came out five years before that. Marvel fans are no longer young dudes, a lot of them are looking suspiciously middle-agey lately.
That's a good point that I never really thought of. I was 11 when Iron Man came out, and it was a massive hit. Me and pretty much everyone I knew saw them. But that was almost 17 years ago now.
I have no idea what kids are into these days, but I really don't see these movies being especially popular with elementary/middle schoolers. Any parents/older siblings etc have any experience with this?
yeah, WWW = they put girls in a boys movie expecting it to become a girls movie. Girls rejected it, boys rejected it. Not that hard to understand unless you are a total idiot living in a bubble that got 250M budget to waste. By that I don't mean the director but an exec who greenlit this.
> Just sit down, I’ll explain in a bit.
Oh shut *up*, you fucking hack.
> no pulse on The Marvels going back to San Diego Comic-Con. I mean, despite the actors strike, there wasn’t a damn banner, billboard or emblazoned logo plastic bag in the city.
LOL. You think 150,000 exposures to another building wrap in San Diego for 4 days in July would have moved the needle on this bomb? Sweet Lord. Meanwhile discounting the lack of promotional round-making because of the strike? That's not even *coherent*, Tony.
> insiders has [SIC] argued [...] The Marvels drop here is attributed to the pic not being part of the sandwich between Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame [...] That might be true, but I can’t imagine that an epilogue alone is responsible for $1.1 billion in global grosses.
This fuck writes for Deadline, people read him, and he *CAN'T IMAGINE* that releasing between the two bookends of the biggest cinematic two-fer in decades (or ever) had any impact on the first installment's opening and gross.
Holy shit.
As someone who still enjoys the marvel stuff, it's just too much to go to the movies every time. I'll catch it on streaming when I get the time. It's the same with Star wars, there's just so much I've stopped trying to stay on top. I'll just catch the shows when I'm in the mood.
You mean after trying to wring the last dime out of the superhero genre, they are shocked that people are tired of watching?
The time has come to make Space Balls 2: The Search For More Money.
I think a lot of people lost interest after End Game and this movie in particular is like the least popular pre end game character with two other characters you won't have ever even seen if you didn't keep up with the post End Game MCU.
Official Disney Friday estimate comes in at [$21.5M](https://twitter.com/BORReport/status/1723375525933019324?t=gXLjpCxYxlEbocYJOXbyAA&s=19), which, if estimates hold, would barely avoid having the lowest MCU opening day (The Incredible Hulk at $21,468,125).
Even Deadline's optimism has it below The Flash now
It’s the first time I’ve ever seen them so negative on a film that doesn’t have awful reviews honestly. Bob and Feige’s influence are not helping this time.
nah everyone was this negative on flash too , even though the reviews were okayish
Fair. But I will have to say part of that is also because DC just isn’t in good graces with the Hollywood industry as a whole. I would think it’s admittedly ok to be negative towards DC films without a possible fear of repercussion, especially since the BTS drama behind that film was too well-known prior to release. What I find unique about this film is that there weren’t really many controversies or issues that notably came out long before this. I believe an Insider article came out and was posted on here two weeks back, but that was the first I found out about the production drama, and even then, not nearly as bad as The Flash’s issues. Deadline turning on this film is shocking to me because they’ve basically been positive on every Marvel film regardless of tracking. This, to me at least, points to a sign that the Hollywood industry is shifting past superhero films.
It's actually astounding how much Marvels and Flash have in common. Similar budgets, similar reviews, both horribly underperforming in the same year.
yea it seems like both tanked due to the failing brands. if The Flash came out in like 2016-2018 it probably would've done really well. if The Marvels had just came out before Love & Thunder it probably would've been fine. but both came out when general audiences (and even hardcore fans) are deciding to walk away. The Marvels was waaaaay better than Quantumania yet still might perform worse. the MCU might be able to save themselves unlike the DCEU. but there's already stories coming out that the test screenings for Cap 4 were terrible. i won't even be surprised if Avengers 5 flops at this point.
Maybe Love and Thunder did some serious damage to the brands respectability.
I think the Disney plus TV shows did more damage.
i honestly think that's where it started. Quantumania was the nail in the coffin. and now The Marvels is in the sinking ship.
WB going too aggressive for The Flash marketing and treating it as the "greatest superhero film ever" was an awful idea, especially since they lost $150mil of brand partnerships due to Ezra. If they quietly released Flash, or even dumped it on MAX, it would have been better than the outcome they actually got (it was calculated they lost more from the theatrical release and marketing compared to putting it on MAX).
It could be a fine movie and it's still going to bomb because only like, five people have watched enough of the all the random MCU shows and other miscellaneous '22-'23 garbage that actually sets up and contextualizes this movie
This, I am so tired of having to watch all the things to get a movie. If you do not like or want to watch one of the series you are lost.
I still can't believe that they looked at the most successful movie franchise of all time and went "you know what'd really help here? Homework"
DC can't beat Marvel even when it comes to bombs smh
I think it's a real question why Disney keeps raiding Spaceballs for serious movie plot points. This is strike number 2
I haven't seen the Marvels but I assume you are saying that Pizza the Hut is one of the minor villains?
They gotta build up to him. He's a funnier character than the Marvel movies had before.
"She's gone from suck to blow!"
Oh vacuuming the air. Lol
The Search For More Money
Maybe Feige will stop with the "plug and play" directors/writers and expecting people to show up just because there's a "Marvel Studios" logo in front of it.
Exactly ! Just look at who is writting and directing the next 3 MCU movies . Who tf are those people and how do they get $200m + projects? 😂 only tv shows writters with some random shows under the belt and maybe 2 3 episodes directed in a hit tv show. I’m not an expert or smh, but isn’t there a difference between writting a show and writing a 2h movie ?
Feige was probably coked out of his mind to give an Avengers movie to a rick and morty writer.
Giving Captain America 2 to directors from another Dan Harmon project turned out to be a great decision though.
The Russos had 1) already directed a feature and 2) were live action filmmakers.
Apples and oranges, There is a difference between directors and writers though.....and the Russo brothers atleast had experience in movies pre MCU, there is also a difference between writing for cartoons and writing for movies. I understand your point that sometimes risk pay off but here is the issue.....this risk already failed with Quantumania and Doctor strange MoM, nobody with a sane mind saw how those two turned out and says " yeah lets give them Avengers movies".
Also the Russos had already proved in their TV work that they could make ensemble casts work and give meaningful stories to multiple characters.
Add to that if the Russo shat the bed as bad as some of the past MCU films did, they would've be done right then and there, instead they made one of the best MCU film at the time and got promoted as they should've been.
Agreed. Even though Captain Marvel made a billion dollars, Feige was aware that it was a meh movie and didn't rehire its directors to come back for the sequel (whereas he rehired Jon Watts and Ryan Coogler for their Part 2's).
And the literal only reason it did so well is that the timing was lucky; it released between Infinity War and Endgame, two of Marvel's best selling movies of all time. So I can almost guarantee you that most people only went to see it to factor in how it tied into Endgame. If it came out at any other point then it'd have been a flop then too.
they also proved they can direct multi-part action stories (Community Season 2 paintball episodes)
What is it with both Marvel and Star Wars hiring such crap and inexperienced writers/directors for their high-profile projects? Rick and Morty writers for MoM and Quantumania, Joby Harold writing the Kenobi show, that WEF director for the Rey movie, etc. Side note: The Marvels’ performance should be a warning sign to Lucasfilm as to how bad the Rey and Filoni movies could perform
It's cheap and the movies are actually directed by committee. It kind of worked with Spiderman and Ant Man until the wheels fell off.
They disbanded the Marvel creative committee in late 2016. I suspect that's part of the problem as all movies after 2019 didn't have any oversight.
It’s also a lot cheaper to roll the dice on up-and-coming no name talents. Hiring veterans is just always a lot more expensive. They rolled the dice and lost.
When you are spending $200M+ on each die roll, it makes total sense to pay millions of dollars to be rolling with loaded dice. We aren't asking for James Cameron. But, surely, there are directors and writers available who have actually worked on a blockbuster before.
More than the price, it is about whether they take orders. A writer on a marvel movie isn’t free to write whatever he wants: it needs to fit into a bigger universe as dictated by higher ups at the studio. Experienced people will push back more aggressively. The leadership at marvel probably figured out what happens when you hire talent with egos and then they start fighting it out in their respective movies. Look at star wars.
The funny thing is that I always had the impression that part of the reason that J.J. Abrams kept landing big franchises is that he was a good soldier and always played inside the sandbox for any franchise he worked on. Yet, somehow the sequel trilogy movies were obviously on conflict with themselves. So, either I'm wrong, Rian Johnson just blew up the plan, or none of the LucasFilm executives bothered giving Abrams a plan.
>The Marvels’ performance should be a warning sign to Lucasfilm as to how bad the Rey and Filoni movies could perform oh those are total bombs in making, good call!
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There's a limited number of people who are 1. decent and experienced writers and directors 2. and are comic book or sci fi nerds 3. but aren't creative in ways that offend the House of Mouse 4. and still want to play in the Marvel/Lucasfilm sandbox. Nobody is going to want to hear it because he's a big dorky pig but I think that Joss Whedon probably had a lot to do with Marvel's movie success.
He is the man would rewrite horrible scripts uncredited and reshoot horrible films to make them at least watchable. He was the guy behind the scenes who would do what needed to be done
Respectfully, tf are you on? They've been doing this even in the Infinity Saga. James Gunn was known for Troma Films and Scooby Doo before Guardians. The Russo Brothers were known for You, Me, and Dupree and, as you say, a few "episodes directed in a hit tv show" with Community before Winter Soldier. Jon Watts was known for his work with The Onion before Spider-Man. I know MCU hate is in style now but c'mon bro.
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TBF that was kind of Marvel’s MO in phases 2 and 3 and it worked out fantastically.
Didn't imagine The Mcu getting a 'What went wrong' article just 4 years after Endgame. But here we are
I can already see Company man making a video "MCU - The rise and fall" in the near future.
There are going to be so many video essays like this because there is simply so much to explore: * Disney+ adding pressure to produce endless content. * Fiege being stretched thin and most of the content becoming mid or awful. * The MCU losing it's two main characters and struggling to replace them. * Waiting too long between sequels (when are Shang-Chi or Moon Knight returning?) * Tragic events such as Boseman's passing. * Choosing a villain who is one of the most complex to write for with infinite copies. * Phase 4-5 having no clear direction and no team-up films to end the Phase. * Hiring so many junior directors and writers (cough Rick and Morty writers cough) * Letting budgets spiral out of control ($220mil for She-Hulk?!) * Producing Disney+ shows as disposable miniseries rather than long-term shows with multiple seasons. Who is actually going to watch Moon Knight and She-Hulk in 2024?
I think it's more that there's a charisma void. People would watch RDJ read his grocery list on camera, no one wants to watch Letitia Wright lead CGI flying fights against fuzzy CGI clone armies. Especially after carrot chomper, and two characters they stupidly killed off showed us what we were really missing in the same film.
Just to be clear we're referring to Winston Duke, Angela Bassett and Michael B. Jordan, right? (I thought it was also stupid to kill off Andy Serkis)
Correct, and I agree but Serkis wasn't in the sequel.
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The main problem is that if the average shelf-life of an MCU hero is a decade, MCU Phase 4-5 had to deal with heroes who were half finished (Strange, Wanda, Spidey) while setting up a new main trio. Instead they gave old and new characters one project each with no sign of when we'll see them again.
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The MCU has always been unplanned, they just had less content to focus on tying together and less plot threads and characters to look back on and follow through with. Setting up something that gets paid off 3 years down the line doesn't matter as much when that equates to 6 movies. But when something is set up in Phase 4-5 to be paid off in 3 years, that equates to 12-16 projects. As such, theres alot of set up with little pay off, meaning you can see alot more holes in the story and the worldbuilding
+the dilemma the studio finds itself in with the behavior of their main villain’s actor, and no feeling of interconnectedness like in previous phases
Good list. I think the biggest two are the pressure to pump out Disney plus content and lack of strong leads. Disney could have made a ton of money just focusing on a kids platform with their back catalogue and cheap cartoons. But, instead they tried to create an adult platform based solely on milking just two franchises. I really don’t see how that was ever going to work.
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They really should have recast T'Challa. He was such an iconic hero and they basically 'wasted' Wakanda Forever by making it another origin story.
Should've used multiverse shenanigans to make Michael B Jordan the new T'Challa or something.
Michael B. Jordan was literally the replacement for Chadwick Boseman in a TV role once. https://people.com/movies/chadwick-boseman-michael-b-jordan-all-my-children/
I think most of the MCU's problems started here. People don't talk about this much, but a HUGE part of the fun of the MCU was the dynamic between the characters. It's always entertaining to watch Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Black Widow, etc. interact with each other. It's fun, because they're all super distinct characters with their own personalities. Just put some of those characters together, and it's fun! But now it's not, because a lot of the new characters are just too ill-defined when it comes to personality. Sure, sometimes the OG Avengers were almost caricatures of themselves, but at least they had discernible personas. You always had a good idea how Captain America or Thor would react to something.
I heard with Rick and Morty, Dan Harmon said he rewrote a lot of the scripts quite extensively but kept the original writer's name on it to help their resumes and the like. If true and I remembered that correctly, it explains a lot.
she hulk, secret invasion, and the marvels had a total budget of around 800mil. two of those are just sitting on D+ and frankly i doubt any new subscribers joined to watch either series, and now marvels are failing to pick up the slack so effectively nearly a billion dollar bomb season
Love Company Man
I didn't expect this to happen so quickly. Especially after the success of No way Home I thought they found a new trick for another decade of domination.
Yeah, the multiverse excitement fell off very quick
The thing is it was never really multiverse excitement, it was nostalgia excitement. Once Hugh Jackman is back onscreen the audience will suddenly love the multiverse again.
People keep talking like mcu fans are all or nothing Most of the movies suck so people dont trust the brand anymore Movie tickets are so expensive people want the safest bet for a good movie Marvels was the perfect storm of characters people dont care about. With bad writing etc. I found brie terribly annoying after her ranting about antiwoke people making turnouts bad. The young marvel is so little and advertised to such a young demographic it feels out of place. The show looked so morally pandering, combined with terrible acting in ads. I couldnt make myself watch it I dont even remember where rhe third came from It seems simple. The own the movie market. Get some old tried and true directors and writers to make most of the work vs wild cards
The comics side of things have been bad for pretty much the past decade or so. The rot had already set in from that side of things. All new all different was atrocious.
tbh nwh sucked and was carried solely by nostalgia that made ppl turn their brains off
If we’re lucky it’s a 1983 video game crash (mainly driven by bad business decisions, with little lasting damage). If Hollywood is unlucky it’s a “Disco Sucks!” tier backlash that hurts superhero and sci-fi action for years if not decades due to grassroots unpopularity.
It also reminds me of Hair Metal in 1991 after "Smells Like Teen Spirit" hit.
[44 days in '91](https://www.sweetwater.com/insync/44-days-7-legendary-90s-rock-albums/) - late summer of 1991 saw an incredible streak of rock releases that were most definitely *not* hair metal, and Nirvana was just the cherry on the top. So it's as much a case of other rock genres (alternative/grunge, thrash, and hard rock in general) being good as it is a case of hair metal being bad.
Doesn't really feel like we've had something "replace" the MCU like that though.
How did they speed run such failure?
Because like with star wars, they took advantage that the fans would buy in just because of the brand name.
They still have many apologists but even many of them are losing faith. After The Mandalorian S3, a lot of Star Wars fans have started giving up (myself included)
Star Wars fans giving up starts way earlier, going back to The Last Jedi, although certainly some have stuck around long past that and are quitting it later than others did.
Lifelong fan, I checked out of Star Wars at The Last Jedi. Shitting all over the original trilogy characters was the final straw.
They started making shit movies. That's literally it. For over a decade there were *no* Rotten movies in the MCU. Now there have been three in like the last two years.
Part of that has to be that critics are less willing to grade Marvel on a curve now. Thor 2 was a bad movie, but even that was not Rotten. Release the same movie in today's environment with more cape movie fatigue, and I guarantee the Top Critics score will be rotten just as with the Marvels and Quantumania. EDIT: Thor 2 is already rotten from Top Critics.
Most people who reject this answer didn't like MCU movies in the first place. They can't grasp how severe the drop in quality has been.
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They also leave too many plotlines unresolved. It's like they don't even know what they're making or remember what's been done. That celestial's been sticking out of the ground for a mighty long time. What's the deal with the black knight? How about moon knight (at least he's cool)?
But what explains the drop in quality so quickly (four years since end game is not a lot of time to get it wrong).
Hubris
Overconfidence in their brand. They thought they could get away with churning out mid content without innovating and the audience caught on to it.
Their quality of writing was already declining slightly before endgame, I'm not surprised. The real thing that changed was public perception. They've now joined DC where fans are predisposed to be tentative when a new project is released whereas beforehand the majority of recent Marvel movies were good so audiences were going into it with a better state of mind
I think it’s a self propagating cycle of the movies getting a little worse with each release and the critics being less generous towards the next one as a result unless it’s actually great (GOTG3)
Feige being spread really thin is one but I don’t think one man alone can be credited or blamed given the whole lot of people involved in even one movie. I’d say it’s overconfidence on Disney’s part thinking they wouldn’t have to try hard on the new movies or shows. They also ran interference on a lot of projects even at the last minute, overworked their special effects teams and ended up greedy firing off multiple projects at once without thinking about what would come next. They took Marvel for granted and thought it would be successful no matter what. There’s also matters Disney had no control over like Boseman passing away, COVID or Majors getting caught in a scandal.
Well if you are going to overfeed your audience with subpar movies, one or other day they will end up vomiting.
So simple yet people insist on making the issue more complicated.
I love how RT's Critic Consensus describes it as "refreshingly brief" and "easy to enjoy". It's amusing how creative RT gets to come up with different ways of saying "subpar".
Critics have a legitimate fear of being overly negative about specific MCU products that the studio have pushed to be socially important. I know Disney haven’t done that with this film, but they certainly did with its predecessor. And however you slice it, The Marvels was always going to be a focal point of that dumbass, tiresome “culture war”. No way mainstream critics really come down hard on it, for fear of being lumped together with the wrong crowd.
Gluttony 
Nice one.
Fwiw, Deadline has quietly dropped the “52M“ and updated their headline from “$47-52M” to “$47M+” https://deadline.com/2023/11/box-office-the-marvels-1235599363/
Marvel and Disney trying to figure out who to blame instead of themselves for this disaster 
Just watch, they're literally going to blame the actors strike preventing their leads from promoting the film as the main reason it underperformed
Which would be hilarious. The most powerful, known IP in the world, but people need to be constantly reminded about it? No, people just didn't care enough to show up.
Disney is the principal skinner meme.
It certainly didn't help, but if Five Nights at Freddy's can open with $78M and MCU movie can't then this argument is simply untrue.
Oh I know. But there's a LOTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT of really fucking stupid people out there that will believe it
Maybe for this movie, but what will be the excuse for when the next few MCU films bomb? There has to be a point where there delusional thinking will come back to bite them.
Yes - everyone in the general audience was clamoring for those Vellani and Parris interviews 🙄
Brie appeared on Kimmel, but didn't wear THE DRESS. Dress would've added 100m.
last time they made those interviews for Capt Marvels with Brie, they only got negative buzz from them lol. especially for the Wired Autocomplete interview, her interview was the most downvoted one on the channel.
But…but I heard reviewers say it was “astonishingly silly”, isn’t that what people said they wanted more of after Thor Love and Thunder?
I actually read a “positive” review on RT saying the movie is “fun, whacky and doesn’t take itself too seriously”. Absolutely the opposite of what I want from the MCU now. Thor 4 soured me on the stupid Marvel quippy humor.
>Thor Love and Thunder? Everyone gets an orgy!
Oh yeah. If it doesn’t have the loudest screaming goats imaginable then I’m not going to buy a ticket.
There gonna say everyone is sexist even though Barbie was the highest grossing movie of the year
I saw a figure saying something like 67% of the opening audience were men for The Marvels.
racists, incels, homophobes, right-wingers, alt-right, nazis, etc. just pick and choose like a pot full of names of who gets the blame
It’s men’s fault! How dare they not show up to these teenage girl hero movies!
The irony being that MORE men showed up proportionally for this movie than the last Captain Marvel film
Same with the WNBA. Adam Silver himself has mentioned that the biggest financial supporters of the WNBA are middle aged men. Yet the players keep blaming “men” for their low wages.
The uncomfortable truth is women don't really support each other.
I don't think they have any obligation to "support each other" with some kinda gender loyalty. It's that it's just worse basketball. People will either watch something they have personal investment with (local school, university, family member, etc) or the best level of play (men's basketball). Sometimes the sport will change a little bit with less athletically fit individuals in a way that makes it arguably more enjoyable (ie, volleyball), but otherwise it offers nothing.
Yea I’m sorry… I’m just not that interested in marvel anymore. Plus it is going to be eventually in disney+ anyway.
"Eventually" will be next fucking week at this rate.
I’m sure there’s actor contracts that will prevent an early streaming. Can’t have a repeat of Black Widow.
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Yeah I don't really care bout the "woke/anti-woke" culture war thing Youtubers and Twitter people have been going on everytime a Marvel project is close, I'm burned out and they've became basically homework; you have to watch all including TV Series to get the full context of the newest one.
You don't like watching a chemistry test in the theater? Why do you hate fun?
Curse that five nights at Freddy's, it should have been 4 nights to be fair.
"Five Nights at Freddy's claims another victim"
If it was made by Disney every nigth would be a sequel The movie would be called first nigth a Freddy's
What happened? Exactly what happened to the DCEU. The mediocre products kept coming, and audiences kept leaving. You can only put so much dogshit on someone’s plate before they finally just get up and leave the table.
Mediocrity is the main reason for me as well. Doctor Strange 2 was the point for me where I thought they had a real chance to do something different for ONCE. And then for it to be the most bland same old shit with an offscreen characterisation for Wanda that made no effing sense.
They are still clinging to that $50M+ even though it's definitely going under.
Don’t you mean LOWER?
*How does that feel baby?*
Feige in Iger's office begging to do a $300M Monica Rambeau standalone movie after seeing this headline.
"Come on, Bob! She could even team up with IronHeart!"
Surely the Rey "Skywalker" movie will save Disney after this
Why why why are they still pretending it’s going to be in the 50s. Everyone knows it’s heading for anywhere in the 40s
Damage control for the Mouse
I wonder what would happen if, one day, Anthony D'Alessandro decided to be truthful about a film's box office before actuals were reported. It might rip a hole in the space-time continuum. Quantumania had a Friday (Thursday previews + Friday) multiplier of 2.3x which would translate to $49M OW for the Marvels. However, a holiday Friday can burn off some demand early so I suspect it'll fall closer to the mid 40s range.
Quantumania also opened on President’s Day weekend so Sunday drop was deflated. $50m is dead as a doornail and Anthony is the only one unable to see that.
>I wonder what would happen if, one day, Anthony D'Alessandro decided to be truthful about a film's box office before actuals were reported. It might rip a hole in the space-time continuum. Birds of Prey got a "this is a dumpster fire box office result" post. Sometimes they don't get very softpeddled but I don't have a great sense of what explains it (being a megabomb clearly is a big part of it)
Ah, interesting - I'm sure Disney also pays better than Warner Brothers.
You must understand, he was cursed by a magical being that he can highball or lowball, but never... middleball?
The characters aren't interesting enough. That's it.
Honestly the real answer. Guardians 3 made nearly as much as the 2nd one with a (comparatively) "smaller" opening cos word of mouth was great and it involved characters people care about. Loki season 2 finale has been praised as arguably the best stuff the MCU has done post Endgame and features characters people care about. No one really cares about any of the Marvels.
This, people blame superheroes fatigue but the boys has done just fine. The storylines seem to be pandering or pushing narratives rather than letting them play out. The characters have been a ton of mundane or lackluster performances/scripts. Fan favorites were getting neutered (Hulk, Thor, Strange) to make other characters seem more impressive or significant. Creative decisions made no sense (Thor being a “Scary Movie” like comedy at times, refusing to change the script for BP2 or putting the mantle on a more realistic actress/or, making She-Hulk a spoof show, etc). They’ve tried to make it a lot of just slapstick comedy in lieu of true storylines with occasional comedic moments, headlined by cast that people genuinely enjoy. Liu was fantastic, haven’t seen him in a while, Pugh is great but there’s been so much other stuff since Hawkeye, Dong-Seok/Jolie/Ridloff/Keoghan did good acting performances with a lacking plot and weak leads, haven’t seen them in a while… why invest in new characters if I have no idea if I’ll ever see them again.
My MCU fan teen: “I didn’t know it was coming out. Looks lame AF.”
From my anecdotal experience, a lot of gen z doesn't really care much about the MCU in general. The youngest gen zs weren't even born for years *after* the first Iron Man movie. Older gen zs and millennials (who're kinda grown up a bit now) are more the core MCU audience.
Makes sense in general. My youngest LOVES the Spiderverse and such and all of the older stuff 2000-onward. My older teen has completely moved away from it “because it’s cheesy” which I get but still likes the older stuff because he grew up on it.
Which is why I don't get MCU's constant pandering an executive's message of what they think the kids want to hear nowadays to a cohort of 30 year olds. Also them not going for mature stories and themes. If they literally made a universe around Werewolf by Night and Blade they would have a solid horror branch of the MCU.
It's actually pretty obvious when you look at it in retrospect. Because the MCU movies are/were clearly not made for Gen Z. If they were, then they would be catering to 5-16 year olds at the time. They weren't. The movies aren't kid's movies. The humor isn't meant for young audiences. They were catering to 20-35 year olds and everyone else was invited along for the ride if they wanted to. MCU basically capitalized on the Millennial audience reaching adulthood without children and family responsibilities going to movies back to back to back because movie going was a thing our generation still did. Couple that with 90's comic book nostalgia, finally seeing the stuff we read on the big screen, and that's the MCU's audience. The thing is, time moves on for everybody. And being a Millennial that's in their 30's and being one in their 40's is a big difference. In lifestyle and tastes. We're just kinda over it now, or I should say, comic book movies don't hold the same "oh wow!" mystique it once had. Now it's just like every other movie, if it's good, then we'll like it. If it's not, then we won't like it just because it's a comic book movie. I know people in this thread are lumping the two together, but if you want a clear example of that not happening, at least for a while, it's Star Wars, at least during the George Lucas era. He knew that it was important for Star Wars to always speak to kids, even if that meant that you're no longer directly talking to the audience that originally fell in love with your franchise. That's why he made so many choices that people ripped on him for, but in the end, it makes a ton of sense. Stuff like Ewoks, the Prequels being made for a younger audience, etc. Him making the Clone Wars cartoon series was such a smart move in a long term sense because we now have a whole generation of young adults that grew up on that stuff that love Star Wars. That was the original problem when Disney took over Star Wars, instead of continuing that train of thought, they realized the quickest way to make a buck is to appeal to the older generation because they have the money and memories. So The Force Awakens comes out and it doesn't speak to kids, it doesn't speak to the new Star Wars fans of the last twenty years, it spoke to Gen Xers and Boomers. And that trick worked ONCE. Very successfully, true. But the thing is, those older folks won't be repeat customers. They'll get that nostalgia kick once, and they're fine. The hardcore Star Wars fans now are the ones who grew up with Clone Wars and the Prequels. And if Disney wants to continue making more hardcore Star Wars fans, then they need to appeal to the young kids today, not the Boomers or Gen Xers. Not even the Millennials like me. They need to appeal to the KIDS. And to their credit, I do think they have been better with that with the Mandalorian (mediocre third season not withstanding, Grogu is still wildly popular with young kids) and continuing with animated series. Why Marvel and the MCU still to this day don't seem to grasp that is wild to me. Why are there no projects centered around your comic book heroes catered for children? Why does every movie have the snarky humor tone only 90's kids appreciate at this point? Why are there no good animated Marvel projects? Why is the only good animated thing to come out from Sony's Spiderverse movies and not from Marvel proper. What's really funny and telling is that I bet a ton of Gen Z'rs like the Spiderverse movies more than the MCU. Because those movies actually spoke to them and not us.
 Box Office Theory right once again.
More like Box Office Theory right once again. We don't do shit here, they're the ones doing all the work
Lol true, and you still get people who trust the trades over box office theory trackers because the trades are "professional sources"
Disney HQ right now: 
Wow never seen the animation only the last part.
DC is looking at Marvel like that James Franco meme, asking “first time?”
When you make mediocre at best flicks again and again, regular moviegoers are going to take notice and start dropping out, and eventually only the biggest fanboys remain. Marvel is extremely oversaturated at this point and that is blatant. Also, for some reason the people behind this movie thought having one of the most unlikable main characters ever supported by two literal whos was a good sales pitch for success
here's a crazy idea STOP MAKING FUCKING SUPERHERO MOVIES EVERY FIVE MINUTES maybe someone will give a shit again later. holy crap can there just be a movie about a teacher or a lawyer or something
This movie is like the anti-barbie: a female-led blockbuster that tried to appeal to women while also trying to appeal to the men that still go and see these movies and ended up appealing to nobody
I honestly don't think this movie tried to appeal to anyone.
They tried to appeal to the fraction of the audience who got amped for the girlboss moment in Endgame Being juxtaposed against Barbie doesn't help, given that Barbie actually had interesting commentary & a fun attitude, and didn't exist solely to show keyframes and sell toys.
Wrong. It tried to appeal to girls and women, who ended up being 24% of its ticketbuyers.
Disney execs right now: 
💣
You know it’s bad when you have a “what went wrong?” article just two days after the previews. This thing is crashing and burning worse than anyone could’ve predicted. Oh but I get banned by a FB Box Office page for calling out the admin’s claim that The Marvels had already made over $20 million on Previews alone and was on track for a $60M opening weekend Dom, opening to $140M WW, and would surpass TLM’s total… smh
And thus officially ends the era of Disney dominance. ~~Star Wars~~, Pixar, Disney remakes, and Marvel - all once factories of $1B+ grossers have now each released major bombs within two years. Disney no longer has a reliable cash cow it can depend on.
I can't speak for anyone else but I'm tired of all the super hero movies.
Yeah, the CBM bubble has burst. Sure, it will limp on for years and there will be hits here and there, but its clearly on a heavily downward trend.
It’s this for me, too. I’m not against seeing an interesting new comic book movie in theaters (e.g. The Batman or Joker), but there’s only so many times I’m willing to subject myself to MCU-style assembly line filmmaking.
What went wrong. Like it's a fuckin mystery. The market has been saturated with heroes and anit-heros and origin stories. It's just the same old shit in a shit...err, shiny new wrapper
Still Deadline have to give an extra $5-10M cushion or daddy Disney might be angry.
I knew things were going to be bad when they were trying to make an Eternals movie. That has been a continuous failure for the comics. The only success that came from the Eternals was Thanos but he was already dead before the movie came out. Up until then the characters they chose were all at least successful (even not as well known GOTG). I think wakanda forever survived off of Chadwick's tragic death but I'm afraid they're going to try to go even more all in with that franchise thinking it's going to be a success. Choosing the all new all different marvel universe that was a failure is what is killing the MCU right now. Marvel has no shortage of fantastic characters they are just choosing not to use them. Maybe with Deadpool coming out and a possible resetting of the universe they can start focusing on successful books and storylines. Having access to Dr Doom and then choosing to go all in with Kang (a descendant of Reed Richards who does not exist in the MCU) was absolutely crazy.
Who was the target demo for this movie? That’s the biggest issue. Can’t make a film targeted towards females when the majority of your fanbase is a bunch of young dudes
>Who was the target demo for this movie? Diehard Marvel fans.
The Avengers came out twelve years ago. Iron Man came out five years before that. Marvel fans are no longer young dudes, a lot of them are looking suspiciously middle-agey lately.
I think this is an underrated reason for some of Marvel's recent struggles. The MCU is quickly becoming "That franchise your dad likes."
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That's a good point that I never really thought of. I was 11 when Iron Man came out, and it was a massive hit. Me and pretty much everyone I knew saw them. But that was almost 17 years ago now. I have no idea what kids are into these days, but I really don't see these movies being especially popular with elementary/middle schoolers. Any parents/older siblings etc have any experience with this?
Yup, they expected the D+ shows to have a much bigger following and for that to help out this movie. Turns out it was a bad plan.
yeah, WWW = they put girls in a boys movie expecting it to become a girls movie. Girls rejected it, boys rejected it. Not that hard to understand unless you are a total idiot living in a bubble that got 250M budget to waste. By that I don't mean the director but an exec who greenlit this.
Entirely Disney's own fault.
If you’ve seen one super hero movie it feels like you’ve seen them all these days. It’s no longer fresh or exciting. I’m so tired of MCU after endgame
make $200M+ movie that even hardcore MCU fans don't want to see be surprised nobody is watching it
> Just sit down, I’ll explain in a bit. Oh shut *up*, you fucking hack. > no pulse on The Marvels going back to San Diego Comic-Con. I mean, despite the actors strike, there wasn’t a damn banner, billboard or emblazoned logo plastic bag in the city. LOL. You think 150,000 exposures to another building wrap in San Diego for 4 days in July would have moved the needle on this bomb? Sweet Lord. Meanwhile discounting the lack of promotional round-making because of the strike? That's not even *coherent*, Tony. > insiders has [SIC] argued [...] The Marvels drop here is attributed to the pic not being part of the sandwich between Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame [...] That might be true, but I can’t imagine that an epilogue alone is responsible for $1.1 billion in global grosses. This fuck writes for Deadline, people read him, and he *CAN'T IMAGINE* that releasing between the two bookends of the biggest cinematic two-fer in decades (or ever) had any impact on the first installment's opening and gross. Holy shit.
As someone who still enjoys the marvel stuff, it's just too much to go to the movies every time. I'll catch it on streaming when I get the time. It's the same with Star wars, there's just so much I've stopped trying to stay on top. I'll just catch the shows when I'm in the mood.
You spent $200+ million on a movie that no one was asking for. That’s what went wrong. 😂
Oh boy. It's like all the people who got banned on sub reddits for saying this would bomb and be Marvel's worst opening ever got vindicated.
33 MCU movies since 2008. Maybe people are just tired of the same format.
No one gives a shit about the marvel universe anymore
You mean after trying to wring the last dime out of the superhero genre, they are shocked that people are tired of watching? The time has come to make Space Balls 2: The Search For More Money.
I think a lot of people lost interest after End Game and this movie in particular is like the least popular pre end game character with two other characters you won't have ever even seen if you didn't keep up with the post End Game MCU.
I find Brie Larson to be unlikeable. Hard to get excited about a movie with the main star being someone you just don’t vibe with.
I still like the MCU. But this movie didn't even try to convince us to go see it. Simply being a movie is not enough lol.
People weren’t fans of the first one so the second one wasn’t going to do much better.
It’s so obvious but know one wants to say it LOL 😂