‘The Marvels’ Meltdown: Disney MCU Seeing Lowest B.O. Opening Ever At $47M+
‘The Marvels’ Meltdown: Disney MCU Seeing Lowest B.O. Opening Ever At $47M+ — What Went Wrong
Adding TV shows into the mix that were average made it too much to bother keeping up, and I haven't watched MCU since then.
I saw it today. It was fine. It's far from "the worst movie in the MCU" like some reviews I've seen. And I didn't watch Ms. Marvel or Secret War, either. Still followed the story fine (I am a casual comics fan so I'm already vaguely familiar w/ Ms. Marvel and the Kree/Skrull war, in fairness).
Biggest contributor to the low B.O. in my opinion was the studios dragging out the writers & actors strikes and not being able to mount any publicity for the movie. I only remembered it was opening this weekend when I saw all the negative headlines about it coming out.
Ms. Marvel was pretty good. The villains were entirely forgettable, and some of the CG was phoned in. But the heart of the show, the main characters, and the humanity of it were all pretty good.
The villains were entirely forgettable
As most of the Marvel villains, sadly.
Yeah I really loved Ms Marvel but damn the ending was rushed.
Just like every marvel show the ending was rushed. That's the only thing it suffered from.
Ms. Marvel was fine, but it was, basically, a Nickelodeon kids show and most adults aren't going to want to sit through that.
Were they trying to keep the movie release a secret for a reason?
Seems like a lot of us had no idea it was coming out this weekend…
Writers strike and actors strike, meant that only minimal promotion was possible
studios should've caved faster
Wrong. It was absolutely possible. Just not possible while sacrificing absolutely everything for their profit-focused timeline. I want movies to be profitable, but most studies won't accept anything lower than "wildly popular with opportunities for sequels and spinoffs".
much less what its even about. pass.
Right?
I have a few Capt Marvel fans in the house and if they’d invested in any kind of pre-release promotion I would probably have gotten release weekend tickets.
Where I live there were ads everywhere and on tons on TV.
I haven't watched broadcast or cable TV in over a decade.
All the MCU marketing I've gotten has been through hype, and after dozens of films the hype just isn't there anymore.
Though I think what really killed it for me was the Disney Plus shows. It started to feel like homework just to watch Marvel stuff.
Maybe is a good time to go back and get good stories scripts and hire good directors.
That's just putting a bandage on a bigger problem. They need to get rid of "the Marvel method". Changing entire scripts in post production doesnt work anymore, Marvel isnt some small studio like in 2008.
I don’t understand that to begin with. They tout the whole “connected universe” angle but then if you look even slightly behind the curtain it’s obvious there’s nobody overseeing the lore between projects. Not when one is beginning while another is undergoing reshoots and rewrites. It’s not possible and it shows, just like how Tiamut has been sticking out of the ground in universe for like 2 years and all we’ve gotten is a joke reference in She-Hulk lmao.
I didn't know they did that, it sounds pretty crazy. Almost amateurish tbh.
Great my fucking YouTube feed is gonna be drowning in so many "go woke go broke" posts from now til the end of goddamn time thanks Disney you fucks.
At this point they're doing this shit on purpose to get more people voting red so they won't ever pay taxes again ever.
It has higher user score than critics score on RT, so at least they cannot complain about biased journalists.
How do I turn off those posts on my feed. All I want there is videos literally nothing else.
I use freetube which doesn't have a algorithm so avoids that issue, and let's you block channels from appearing in even searches.
But, if insistent on using YouTube.com turning off watch history gets rid of recommendations and blocktube extension allows for channel blocking.
Never had luck with don't recommend this video to me option even though Id go out of my way to avoid visiting any of the videos posted by certain channels. They'd still after a while post the channel content in recommendations, since I guess they are highly trending.
I got one "Disney woke" video in my feed yesterday. Clicked "No Interest" and hope the algorhythm sorts it out.
I've actually done a fair job of it but it did require erasing my entire watch history and being extremely generous with the "don't recommend this content/channel" when it allows me to select that.
Can't wait for the neckbeards to blame the show being about de wimmens as the cause rather than increasingly nonsensical oversaturation
literally my dipshit friend's Letterboxd was 'straight guys enjoy something not about them challenge: impossible' and I just had to roll my eyes. I don't take his opinions on movies seriously (besides a tiny niche).
de wimmens lmfao
goe wok go brork
I honestly believe Captain Marvel was the start of the downfall of Marvel. Not because of the cast, sex, or anything along those lines.
I believe they over did the character. They made her way to damn strong which made all the other characters pointless.
Remember when a literal god, the most advanced mech, and the super soldier with all the stats struggled with Thanos? Then Cpt Marvel swoops in destroys a couple of ships and takes one on the chin like nothing, that was the moment. The first movie benefitted from a month release from Endgame. Everyone thought it would have something major in it.
The movie wasn't horrible, it followed most of the other mediocre movies. Origin story where we meet a villain that we will never see again and some powers we will never see again. The acting and the cast were good but it was just ok.
I honestly believe Captain Marvel was the start of the downfall of Marvel. Not because of the cast, sex, or anything along those lines. I believe they over did the character. They made her way to damn strong which made all the other characters pointless. Remember when a literal god, the most advanced mech, and the super soldier with all the stats struggled with Thanos? Then Cpt Marvel swoops in destroys a couple of ships and takes one on the chin like nothing, that was the moment.
I don't understand this criticism at all.
First of all, it was Wanda who had Thanos almost beaten, which is why he had his ship fire on the ground. So Wanda presented a greater threat to him than Captain Marvel did; so great a threat that he was willing to sacrifice his entire army to try to take her out. I think it was Feige who said, around the time of Endgame or maybe shortly thereafter, that Wanda was the most powerful character in the MCU. But people don't criticise Wanda for being overpowered and making all the other characters pointless.
Second of all, while Danvers did take down one ship (not two, not that it makes a difference), they could have found ways for several other characters to do the same (eg Doctor Strange via illusions, Wanda or Thor through sheer power, Iron Man through nanotech magic) - they just wanted Captain Marvel to make a big entrance because she had been teased at the end of Infinity War (and then also in her own movie prior to Endgame), and we hadn't really seen her manifest her full power earlier in Endgame.
But the whole point of that her late intervention in the final fight was that Captain Marvel was NOT the overpowered deus ex machina that many fans falsely deride her to be. Because in a one-on-one fight with Thanos, Thanos disposes of her easily - they trade a few punches, he throws her into the ground. She comes back, and he punches her out of frame and out of the film (until the epilogue). The final fight came down to Captain America, Thor and of course Iron Man, which it was always going to - those being the three keystone Avengers of the MCU.
That's also why all the founding members of the Avengers went unsnapped at the end of Infinity War. Markus and McFeely and the Russos knew they were making an Avengers movie, not a Captain Marvel movie. Markus and McFeely knew that fans would have felt rightfully betrayed if a character, who had only been introduced to the MCU a year or so before, had swooped in and saved the day after a decade-long build up. So they made sure she didn't. But more fool them - they still cop the same criticism.
And I say all this as someone who thinks that both Captain Marvel movies (and most of Larson's performances in the MCU) have been decidedly mediocre, though not for any reasons related to her power level.
Wanda wasn't an issue because we seen her grow overtime with her power. She started off with simple tricks then demolished a large number of enemies when her brother died then showed she could hold her own against Thanos. That was a character with growth.
Cpt Marvel never showed growth. It was overpowered from the get go. They showed her overpower Thanos as well until he blasted her into the next scene.
But you bring up a great point, the Wanda/ Cpt Marvel sequence was a massive middle finger to anyone that wanted something great from a decade of world building. The whole female sequence was a "hey, we have strong.... females too, but we don't give a shit about them." Most of the female characters are a joke because either they are overpowered or underpowered. Wanda is the best flushed out one. All the others are a " we had to hire them" vibe. I always believed they should have divided up the characters into different worlds for better stories.
"The final fight came down to .... It was always going to be"
But there was no reason too. The problem wasn't that they created an overpowered character who saved the day, it's that they created an overpowered character who couldn't save the day because the weaker popular characters had to.
There is zero consistency in powerscaling even scene-to-scene within a single movie. I appreciate a good galaxybrain take but I think you aren't correct here.
Remember Strange participating in a ~5 v 1 vs Thanos and losing before going one on one and almost drawing? Absolute "conservation of ninjutsu" shit. That's without even considering the fundamental brokenness of the Time Stone, which he never properly uses in Infinity War, but Thanos actually does use it somewhat properly to basically negate a third of the movie.
I saw the movie with my kids and they really enjoyed, but I completely agree with you on all points. I stay up with all MCU releases because I enjoy them, but Captain Marvel has the same problem DC has with Superman: they're virtually invincible. There's no real physical struggle and therefore the fights are just eye candy with nothing really on the line.
So now the writers have to figure out how to make them vulnerable and it's always personal moral conflict or relationship challenges. Those can work if the writing is actually deep and developed, but not when the core expectation from audience is action and explosions. There's just not the time to develop the story.
Personally I was done at the scene in winter soldier where Nick Fury digs a tunnel and gets away in a cut away that takes less than a second. The movie then expected me to take it seriously after it used the narrative get out of a looney toons cartoon
To build on this now we also have a Super Skrull with capt Marvel's powers and those of a several other superheros/villains.
(Or was I the only one able to make it through Secret Invasion?)
Also, I never watched the Ms. Marvel show, so I have absolutely no opinion or frame of reference for that now supposedly marquee character so I'm just not all that drawn to watching it. Plus... super hero fatigue
Ms. Marvel was good, you should give it a go if you have the chance. I agree it felt a little …how do I put this…for the kids(?)…but it’s heart was absolutely in the right place and it made this straight old white guy feel things, which is always the mark of a good story in my humble opinion.
Pretty sure you and maybe one other person made it through secret invasion.
Ms. Marvel was fine but it felt like a Disney XD show and not part of the MCU of the last decade. I'm still fine with that. You need younger people to watch and not just older ones. Fox did a lot of ahit wrong but the one thing that was great was Logan. It dealt with serious shit and was more realistic. Not like Deadpool which was dick and fart jokes with violence.
I would still love a dark marvel. More realistic and violent with serious stories. A light marvel for younger kids and families. Last an Average marvel, the big over the top combination where nothing really matters.
@neme I remember the advertising for The Marvels was pretty bad. You had commercials that felt like advertisements for the Marvel Cinematic Universe in general. One ad I got was like “Remember when Tony Stark built his first suit and became Iron Man? The Marvels, in theaters this November”
I think I saw one trailer months ago that I looked up on YouTube. I'm pretty sure I never saw an actual ad for it. The first I heard it was out this weekend is articles like this. Doesn't that lack of advertising usually mean the studio has already written it off?
Where I live I was inundated with Marvels advertising, it's been everywhere.
Haven't seen the new movie. Even though it was panned I liked the first.
The biggest issue is just Marvel OVERLOAD in general, people are finally starting to get tired of it.
We've had so much Marvel for so long. People are just losing interest in general.
The movies have also significantly declined in terms of quality as well. I'm still not convinced super hero fatigue, or something similar, is actually a thing. If you start serving up crap people stop coming.
No. I wish people would stop repeating this marvel overload/fatigue idea - I'm not convinced it's a thing respectfully. The truth is, lately Disney has been pumping out a lot of mediocre content. A good story is a good story, period. This movie was not really good, and it required someone to have watched a bunch of other not-great Disney+ shows.
Marvel has sooo many good stories and content they can dig up from their comics, but ultimately the business side of picking the content and shaping it for maximum profitability is sort of where shit gets weird. One theory is little kids want to go to the movies and make the parent bring them, so the movies are produced (catered) with that goal in mind.
Rather than marvel/superhero fatigue, I think it's more of Disney dropping the ball (like they did with the star wars movies, inb4 they made billions, we all know the movies sucked).
Post infinity war, my opinion is This entire parallel worlds/timelines/dimensions storyline is a bit confusing on what exactly the endgame plan is
It is absolutely true for me, and the people saying it aren't making it up.
You hear it so often because those people believe it. And there are a lot of people saying it.
I know you're a super fan that wants ALL your stories. But you don't make up the movie watching population.
Everyone has different thresholds I imagine, I got tired of the marvel universe after iron man 2 personally.
The issue I think is the crossovers. This movie requires you to have seen Captain Marvel, Wanda vision and miss marvel. They need to go back to making movies of a single character and doing a crossover movie every once in a while. I love the MCU but I'm already skipping movies and shows, so I don't wanna watch a movie and not have any idea who the characters in seeing are
Are these newer movies really that much worse in general or has the audience just finally gotten tired of the entire MCU? I saw every single one up until the second Spider-Man flick and many of them were just sort of lame. Movies like Doctor Strange, Captain Marvel and Black Panther and the Ant-Man movies which all released in the MCU's most dominant period leading up to and in between the Thanos movies were pretty bad and they still made a lot of bank.
I watched all those mid movies because I was invested in the shared continuity and wanted to see the different branches of the universe collide with each other. When they finally did, that investment just kind of dissipated, but I think the final nail in the coffin for me was when they announced the Disney+ Marvel shows at which point it just became too much of a time commitment to keep up with.
It just depends on the movie. A good superhero movie will still pull more money than anyone can spend in a lifetime.
All of the articles are about a movie that wasn't promoted at all, and it's the sequel to a movie that didn't do good anyways. There's zero surprise to anyone with a level head. It's all clickbait rage bs.
They're bad. Multiverse of Madness was alright. The Spider-Man movies are pretty fun. Everything else since Endgame has been utter shit, though I will say the end of Loki season 2 gave Loki a great "out" as a character, despite being dumb for two seasons, and its a shame they'll definitely not just let him go.
its a double edged sword, re: shows.
like on the one hand, i think if they had just done spin-offs, people could decide what they were into or not. but on the other hand, they NEED to have everything tied deeply together, or else no one but the actual die-hards would actually watch the shows.
like it was so frustrating watching the third Guardians movie (snuck into the theatre screening, didn't pay for that shit), and literally was like 'who the fuck is that?' 'i thought that person died' 'etc'. and it's like... oh right, didn't watch this or that season of this or that show, or special or whatever.
I only watched until iron man 3 but for me personally the military propaganda was always way too strong in these movies to get into them.
I wouldn't personally say that it has anything to do with fatigue or oversaturation. I think the reality of it is that the majority of these movies have no heart, feeling, or direction. The obvious counter example to this trend is the Guardians of the Galaxy films, all of which are dripping with heart and are obviously thoughtfully crafted, and are all around good moving despite being in the MCU. If this universe of films were all given the same amount of care and thought as those films, I think they would all be successful. But alas, capitalism.
I think the fatigue is a product of the fact they have no heart or feeling
irony is fun and all but ultimately people want sincerity. Irony and wit are like icing people like them but there has to be something more substantial there or you just walk away feeling unsatisfied and slightly sick
Terry Pratchett's work is a good example of how this can work he's very ironic and uses a lot of witicisms but underneath it all there is a clear depth of feeling and the books are also full of profound and sincere statements and moments
My buddy always summed these movies up as cheeseburgers. Everyone loves a cheeseburger but no one really wants one at every meal.
I'll take that $47M if they don't want it
Good. Less marvel movies, the better.
I actually had no idea this was out already. I've been watching Loki. It really seems like they should have spaced these further apart.
Loki is fantastic.
I don’t even want to go see a good Marvel movie in the theater. I’m certainly not going to go watch some mid bs.
Last time I did it was for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and honesrly, I've seen Everything Everywhere all At Once before that and I was shocked how lame Dr Strange wad in comparison with the idea of the multiverse.
Who could have ever guessed audiences would start getting disinterested in these movies? 😱
I don’t know about that I actually really want to see this movie but ever since Covid I’ve stopped going to theaters.
They might just need to reevaluate for this new era.
100% not going to the theater anymore. I said it back when COVID started and it's still true.
Most theaters I would have considered barely cleaned prior to the pandemic. Management only giving employees a few minutes between shows to clean to maximize shows each day. I will never trust the major theater companies to properly clean or sanitize anything.
Isn't $47 million dollars for one weekend pretty good? What did they spend to make the movie?
Or, realize that after 33 films, we have superhero-fatigue.
Hmm, almost every story type has been done to cliche. Having a superhero flavor makes no difference, at least to me. I don't know much about the hero so I don't have much interest in this instance.
I don't think so, I just think these movies have largely not been very good. Like, I really liked Loki S2, have rewatched NWH a hundred times, I liked the Marvels, etc. The problem isn't superheroes, you can use that as a backdrop for just about any type of story you want to tell and it can be great. For example, WandaVision tells a very different kind of story than anything else and it was really good. But of course, Marvel decides (I'm guessing late into post-production) they're going to fuck up all of that character development in a post-credits scene and then ignore it entirely in the next movie.
I think they're going to have to get a lot more creative about what types of stories they want to tell and what themes they want to get after and stop making them feel like cookie cutter properties. The early phases I think managed this a little better. Like, I remember walking out of TWS and thinking "damn, that was a really good Bond film with a Captain America skin on it" which is a compliment. Somewhere in there the whole thing got really generic.
People already didn't care for Captain Marvel, so it'd have to be a really good movie to convince people to watch it. The fact that it's even worse and more generic than that is the nail in the coffin. I'm surprised it managed to get almost $50 million at all.
Captain Marvel grossed $426.8 million in the United States and Canada, and $701.6 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $1.128 billion.[4] It had a worldwide opening of $456.7 million, the sixth-biggest of all time, and biggest opening for a female-led film
But go off then
I'm talking about reviews, not revenue. Suicide squad earned $750 million worldwide. The sequel underperformed because nobody wanted to watch a sequel for it. Revenue doesn't matter, Captain Marvel is regarded as one of the worst marvel movies and it would need convincing to get people to watch more of it.
Capt. Marvel got an artificial boost being sandwiched between Infinity War & Endgame, that was peak Marvel and CM got extremely fortunate placement, literally any Marvel movie would’ve done well with that timing. The Capt. Marvel movie itself though was probably one the weaker movies in the franchise. It didn’t contribute anything meaningful to the lore and, if anything, it made Fury worse off and ruined the Skrulls. Had they planned it out better, they could’ve made Secret Invasion the epic conclusion to an ongoing Skrull conspiracy storyline, instead they had to backtrack by making Skrulls into villains again and turning Fury into one of the most pathetic characters in Marvel.
There’s just so many issues with the character showing up on the big screen. You have an omnipotent super hero that can show up on screen and is already stronger than every super hero in the mcu. She was immediately able to go toe to toe with thanos and while I think they handled it well she was effectively the deus ex machina ish for the film.
Then add in how they basically just rushed a movie out to get her relevant and caught up within the context of the infinity war saga. It felt rushed, she had the whole, ‘people don’t like the movie because they’re sexist’ rant, and it just didn’t end up mattering in the larger scheme of things.
Doing this movie was just building on an already lukewarm reception for the character and it arrives just as audiences have completely stopped giving a shit about box office super hero movies.
The mcu algorithm is dead in the water. You’re only finding real success with it when things are either super well done like Loki or if it’s abnormal enough that it’s new and refreshing like the waititi Thor movie (although love and thunder went too over the top and blew it).
They need to shelve superhero movies for a bit, then come back and focus on quality over quantity. I’m ok with the whole atmosphere if it’s done like Loki, but it’s clear that just trying to ram through as many movies as possible isn’t going to work anymore.
I'll be honest, I actually loved Ms. Marvel and will definitely watch The Marvels as soon as it hits streaming, but pretty much the only movie I can think of on the horizon that could get me to physically go to a filthy, disgusting movie theater filled with horrible annoying movie-goers is Dune part 2. The experience of going to see films in theaters lost all of its appeal to me in recent years, and there's always one motherfucker on their phone the whole time that no one will do anything about.
a filthy, disgusting movie theater
Maybe it's because I live in a nice area, or maybe it's because you haven't been to the movies in a long time, but your description doesn't match my recent experiences at all. Even AMC here has a really nice theater now, with big plush reclining chairs, great sound, and nice screens.
AMC's are usually good, but yeah, mileage may vary and I'm in a rural market.
Yeah that didn't ring true at all for me, I definitely don't live in a nice area but the cinema is always extremely clean?
Dune 2 is definitely going to be my next keto break. I'll be having a large popcorn and twizzlers while watching my favourite story come to life.
Fortunately my local theater has recliner chairs and reasonable cleanliness for a movie theater.
I don't mind the sticky carpets. I don't mind the shitty seats. I don't mind other people making certain noises, eating etc. And if a person is looking at their phone then I don't mind as long as that's it, just looking.
What I do mind, what I absolutely cannot abide, what I find completely unacceptable is the person behind knocking my chair. Once or twice when first sitting down, or when getting up to go to toilet etc is fine. But that's it.
There is no acceptable reason to keep on doing it. NO REASON.
"But I get numb and need to fidget." Then sit behind an empty fucking chair.
"But I'm freakishly tall." That's your problem, but when you continually knock other people's seats it is now their problem as well. Move to an aisle seat, or sit behind a seat that's empty.
"But I'm oblivious to other people, also I selfishly don't care if I'm an annoying twat." Exactly. Don't be like that.
"But I (insert any fucking bullshit you want to try to bullshit about here). SIT BEHIND A FUCKING EMPTY SEAT. It's that fucking simple.
Bro why is everything in US so shit? Theaters here even the cheap ones are clean, fine seats and pretty ok screens and most people will stfu except for maybe kids sometimes
Because production companies found out that we don’t need any new IP anymore. America will pay large sums of money to be fed remakes, reboots, and rehashed bullshit from the past.
I think they’ve just gone back to the well too many times and it’s starting to run dry. Prior to Marvel reinventing the genre, I was never a big fan of superhero movies. Other than the occasional ones like Watchmen or Unbreakable, I found them formulaic and vapid. The MCU combined a sense of humor with outstanding sfx and excellent casting. I think I’ve seen all of them, many multiple times, and I own most of them.
For me, the Avengers conclusion was disappointing. It wasn’t as bad as GoT S8, but it really felt like everyone just wanted to be done with it. It’s kind of ruined the franchise for me, but honestly I was probably getting close to done anyway. I did think the new Guardians was okay, but the rest of them have once again become vapid and formulaic.
It has nothing to do with wokeness. I think Our Flag Means Death is one of the greatest tv shows of all time, and I’d rather watch Barbie again than those last few Marvels - I actually enjoyed that one.
Look, I just don't feel like sitting in an enclosed space for a couple hours breathing the same air as a bunch of randos these days.
Also, fuck Disney.
So a couple of points...
Marvel has really felt like it's lost it's vision since Endgame. Everything from Iron Man forward had been building to that point and once they hit it, it's like they forgot what they were doing.
The current big bad didn't get introduced until Loki, a Disney+ show, and if you look at the properties:
Endgame - 4/26/2019
Spider-Man: Far From Home - 7/2/2019
Wandavision - 1/15/21
Falcon and Winter Soldier - 3/19/21
Loki - 6/9/21
That's a full 2 year gap and three properties before anyone gets a sense of where the next phase is going. Then:
Black Widow - 7/9/21 (unrelated flashback)
What If? - 8/11/21 (unrelated)
Shang Chi - 9/3/21 (unrelated)
Eternals - 11/5/21 (unrelated)
Hawkeye - 11/24/21 (unrelated)
Spider-Man: No Way Home - 12/17/21
Using Spider-Man to crack open the multiverse first announced in Loki 6 months previously was a good idea, but there was no mention of Kang or what threat he represented. There were also FIVE unrelated properties between Loki and Spider-Man making it easy to forget Kang was even a thing, assuming people even caught the Disney+ show in the first place.
Moon Knight - 3/30/22 (unrelated)
Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness - 5/6/2022
A direct follow on what was done with Spider-Man, 5 months later, again, no reference to Kang.
Ms. Marvel - 6/8/22 (unrelated)
Thor: Love and Thunder - 7/8/22 (unrelated)
She-Hulk - 8/18/22 (unrelated)
Werewolf By Night - 10/7/22 (unrelated)
Wakanda Forever - 11/11/22 (unrelated)
Guardians Holiday Special - 11/25/22 (unrelated)
Phase 5:
Quantumania - 2/17/23
First film in Phase 5 makes it clear (finally) that Kang is the next big bad, almost 2 years after the character was introduced in a TV show, but it's not the years that were the problem...
It was the hours of unrelated content spread across 11 movies and TV shows, 14 if you count What If, Spider-Man and Doctor Strange hitting the multiverse angle but failing to mention Kang.
Guardians of the Galaxy 3 - 5/5/23 (unrelated)
Secret Invasion - 6/21/23 (unrelated)
Loki Season 2 - 10/5/23
Marvels - 11/10/23 (unrelated)
And here we are... I haven't actually seen Marvels yet, so I don't know how it fits in to the overall plot. Alternate universe hole. No Kang. I've heard rumors of an X-Men stinger similar to what they did with Xavier and Reed Richards in Doctor Strange.
2 and a half years of churning out unrelated properties after having three phases of tightly integrated continuity is NOT how you keep your existing audience.
So all of that being point 1.
Point 2 is this... In the comics nobody really cared about Carol Danvers. She didn't become interesting until the modern Captain Marvel reboot in 2012. In fact, they replaced her a couple of times. Before that, her major story arc was getting her powers stolen by Rogue who would later join the X-Men using both her own power stealing mutant abilities and Carol's flight, invulnerability and super strength.
I think the problem is not that they didn't have a clear direction for the big bad (look back at the Infinity Saga, Thanos is barely spelled out and there is very little overarching continuity towards leading up to IW/EG) I think the problem is that most of what you listed are just mediocre to not good. Out of all of those, I would probably only count the following as being good to great:
Out of roughly 22 on the list there, that's a just impressively bad hit rate. Not everything I left off of my list is "bad" per se, but it's mostly just mediocre and I have about a zero percent chance of rewatching it (Falcon, Ant-Man 3, MoonKnight, Dr Strange, Wakanda, etc.) compared to the Infinity Saga, where I've seen just about everything multiple times. And then there is the problem that quite a lot of it is bad (Eternals, Thor, Secret Invasion...) I think doing this much TV really hurt them as quite a lot of the TV properties were poorly thought out and didn't have 6 hours worth of good story.
I don't think that the idea that having all of the tie-ins really hurt them as much as the perception that all of the tie-ins were required watching hurt them. For example, The Marvels you can totally go in without having watched either of the TV properties, or probably even Captain Marvel. The movie guides you through what you need to know, which is very little, but that is a theme on basically any comment page or article when you talk about the film's box office draw. I mean, we're not talking about Breaking Bad or the good seasons of Game of Thrones where if you didn't watch from the beginning you're going to miss big moments.
and re: your point 2, this is also the case for the MCU Carol. The movie was among the worst in the IS, and while Brie Larsen is a fantastic actress, we're several outings in before you can even kinda care about Carol in the Marvels. Ironically, I counted this as a plus for the movie when I was telling my buddy if he should go see it. I saw Endgame opening night, and the audience was right there for all of the big moments, which you can tell they intended Carol's destruction of the ships to be, and while it wasn't quite crickets, you could tell that didn't hit the way they wanted it to. Even this movie, I went to see in spite of it being a CM movie if anything.
This one might be recency bias or maybe just that the MCU has been so disappointing that I'm grading on a curve a bit, but I would give this one a solid 3/5.
I think if the movies and shows were better, no one would mind the lack of direction. I didn't see anyone complaining about "the big picture" with WandaVision or even Falcon & The Winter Soldier (which I'm seeing people souring over now but I kinda liked it, despite its ill-advised Israel vs. Palestine analogous plotline). No one complained about it with Black Widow, Shang Chi, or Hawkeye either.
It's where the movies include Kang or the Multiverse but rules are different or there's no sense of progress on Kang's part like we saw with Thanos, where the real Multiverse Saga problem exists.
I'm a fan of Alan Moore's comments on superhero media's relation to fascism. Quoted bit below:
And he now looks with dismay on the way the superhero genre in which he once worked has eaten the culture. “Hundreds of thousands of adults [are] lining up to see characters and situations that had been created to entertain the 12-year-old boys – and it was always boys – of 50 years ago. I didn’t really think that superheroes were adult fare. I think that this was a misunderstanding born of what happened in the 1980s – to which I must put my hand up to a considerable share of the blame, though it was not intentional – when things like Watchmen were first appearing.
The relevant bit in bold:
He thinks that’s not just infantile but dangerous. “I said round about 2011 that I thought that it had serious and worrying implications for the future if millions of adults were queueing up to see Batman movies. Because that kind of infantilisation – that urge towards simpler times, simpler realities – that can very often be a precursor to fascism.” He points out that when Trump was elected in 2016, and “when we ourselves took a bit of a strange detour in our politics”, many of the biggest films were superhero movies.
Maybe because they basically keep making the same movie over and over again. Stop beating the horse.
I completely disagree with your take, but it’s not the first time I’ve heard it. I’m interested to understand why do you think these are basically all the same?
I like them, but there is a very defined formula.
I like the MCU movies, but this format becomes incredibly obvious especially in the newer movies. I wish they'd just get a bit more creative.
Because there are superheros probably.
Not one I'm planning to see at the theater, although I watch it later just to keep up-to-date with the timeline.
This wasn’t the point of the article at all, but all I could think was “Quantumania got a B? Whaaaaat?”
Record Marvel B.O.
Garbage franchise finally suffering, good. This shit needs to die. Endless seas of trash.
great. hope it sticks until the CiNeMaTiC uNiVeRsE is a thing of the past.
Brie Larson shouldn't have gotten that nose job.
The MCU is Guitar Hero. Im sure we all remember what happened to that.
My guitar broke and I couldn't play anymore
