Box Office: ‘The Marvels’ Gets Grounded With MCU’s Second-Lowest Opening Day Ever
Box Office: ‘The Marvels’ Gets Grounded With MCU’s Second-Lowest Opening Day Ever
I'm guessing the fact that no one could even talk about the movie until like 5 minutes ago didn't help. I had no idea it was even coming out until a couple of days ago because the SAG strike kept everyone from doing press.
It's almost like people are getting sick of the constant Marvel drip feed of content that's been going on for years now.
I remember when they had a big long-arc that was spread intelligently across all of the movies that built up to Endgame. I think they've forgotten this.
Phase 4 lost the plot. It's like they didn't know what to do after Endgame.
For the plot going forward, you have to see:
Wandavision (Disney+, Blu Ray this month)
Loki Season 1 (Disney+, fresh on Blu Ray)
Spider-Man: No Way Home
Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness
Ant-Man: Quantumania
Loki Season 2 (just finished)
Jonathan Majors has really screwed up any plans they had for the current arc.
It didn't help you need to watch hours of TV shows and X previous movies to have a superhero movie make sense.
That's my point, you have to turn a hobby into a chore so that you can keep up.
It's the same reason popular game franchises have also failed. 343i messed up the Halo franchise when they started putting plot critical events and information in side media like novels and comic books. The moment you cater to the hardcore fans who have no other interests, you alienate the more common fans that enjoy it but don't make it their entire personality.
So now if you play Halo 5 you might be confused at what happened to the Didact, you know he survived Halo 4 but where is he? Oh. Right. He got killed in a comic book. Onto the next villain! Cortana took over the AI's? Holy shit, this is going to fill up the whole next game! Just kidding, that conflict happened off screen and now you're fighting the banished.
Marvel is doing this with their TV shows.
I think the first captain marvel was horrible. I think that plays a huge part.
I thought the 1st Captain Marvel was pretty fun. I don’t have much of an interest in seeing this though.
That NIN shirt was enough for me to be into it
For what it's worth, I think this one is more fun than the first one. Or most recent Marvel movies except for Guardians of the Galaxy 3. And I haven't even seen Miss Marvel.
I struggle to think of a less likeable main character that wasn't some sort of anti-hero. It takes talent to be that smug and condescending for an entire movie.
You not liking the first movie means other people didn't go? Who are you to have such an enormous effect on the cinema going audience...
After seeing Dr. Strange and not understanding the entire movie engine because I don't have Disney+ I stopped watching MCU movies. I'd love to go see this movie now that I know it's out but why spend time and money watching actors in front of a green screen doing things I don't understand because I didn't watch multiple TV shows?
There was a new Marvel movie?
Of course, it's a day in y.
They havent remade the spiderman origin in a few weeks.. time for 5 more of those to get in the pipline
Same I only found out when my pirate site placed it there. I'm waiting for hd tho it's still in cam
I mean, it also opened during an ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike that severely hampered promotion of the movie. So there is that.
I took the family to see it and we all loved it. I thought it was great personally.
The SAG-AFTRA strike ended literally the day before it was released. Talk about irony.
I want to see it, been looking forward to it, and will when it comes out for home viewing. But if already basically stopped going to theaters before the pandemic except for the biggest films, and the pandemic killed off the last interest I had in any of the disgusting expensive theaters near my home.
And now they’re raising prices for all the services… so we’ll see if when it gets to home viewing it it’s affordable enough to watch or not.
Watched it. It is a pretty OK. Typical forgettable marvel movie. There is a villain and heroes do something, and the day is saved. That is all I expect from these movies t.b.h. Mild entertainment.
I don't understand the hatred received for it though. Most of them either seem to be on either their expectations not being met or they are tired of these superhero movies.
Well if it didn't meet your expectations, don't keep it so high for these movies. And if you don't like superhero movies, don't watch them. Solved.
Well if it didn't meet your expectations, don't keep it so high for these movies.
I've been seeing this sentiment a lot and it's such a shitty take.
Basically you're saying, "If a movie isn't liked, it's the fault of the viewer." since the only option it leaves is, "Continue lowering your expectations until you're happy with whatever you end up getting."
I mean, if you keep watching these movies, and you keep getting disappointed by them, it is your fault. You're still giving them money to make a movie you basically know you're not going to like, based on recent data. Either stop watching, lower your expectations, or just always be disappointed.
Do you think they make movies without caring if it would be good ? All those people, all that money invested and they don't care for returns. Obviously not. They want returns and they try to make a good movie.
In the case of Marvel movies people keep their expectations so high that even decent movies like The Marvels is shit to them. That's definitely the fault of the high expectations.
Again, I'm not saying it is the best movie. But it definitely doesn't deserve the hatred it is getting.
No it’s more like “I don’t need it to be a goddamn Oscar winner to enjoy it”. It’s not blaming the viewer, it’s just saying that it still has good reasons to exist and if you have higher standards, off you go instead of just shitting on it in its entirety
Idk. It’s a little bit of both right? I mean if you go see Pride and Prejudice because you want to see some epic fight scenes, you’re going to be disappointed.
For me it’s the way Captain Marvel was shoehorned into the MCU without any real development, and existed as what was basically a walking plot hole. Marvel movies have never been perfect but their whole thing was building characters into it over years. By Infinity War we’d been watching these characters for years and we wanted to watch the end of their stories. Then they just plopped Captain Marvel down into the series at the last second, had the existing legacy characters tell us the audience how to feel about her because the writers knew we wouldn’t care organically, made her disappear in Infinity war and most of endgame because they didn’t actually have anything for her to do except be a deus ex machine at the end of Endgame.
It also doesn’t help that Brie Larson just phones it in any time she’s on screen.
I agree that of the three lead roles I felt only Miss Marvel (Iman Vellani) seems to be the most developed character. And her portrayal alone is one of the positives of the movie too.
But as a movie it is still enjoyable like any other Marvel movie. It is a light hearted fun movie.
The level of hatred it received even before it got released is so cringy. They seen to just borrow someone else's opinion and spew it elsewhere.
You have to think of the general public and their patience for subpar serialized moviegoing experiences. Marvel hasn't had a standout movie since Endgame and the final movie of the Spiderman Home series. The last one I saw in theaters was Doctor Strange 2, but that was only because it was the "ending" for Wandavision. The last four movies since then have not been great, and Captain Marvel doesn't exactly get crowds excited. I'm not even going to bother because I've learned from the Marvel movie experience that is so serialized and there are so many references that I'll probably need to slog through the ones I missed to fully enjoy it without being confused. I have mild interest but not enough to change the position I'm in.
The MCU Golden Age is over. We'll have to get past Phase 5 and see where we end up, because Phase 4 only had a few enjoyable films, and Phase 5 so far has been pretty bad.
They keep trying to push Kamala Kahn, but I never found her to be a very compelling character. Even less so now that they changed her powers. I watch almost all the marvel stuff but I couldn't make it through that mini-series, and I'm not very interested in this movie either.
Maybe it was because I thought the examination of the American Muslim community was interesting and not something I'd really seen before, but I enjoyed it. It wasn't the best show ever, but it was interesting. The examination of The Partition was also interesting.
As someone who comes from a Canadian Muslim family, that's probably the thing that made me stop watching the show. It was just so over the top in terms of Muslim culture that it just seemed off. The way Islam was brought in to pretty much every discussion, no one actually talks or acts like that, at least no moderates. It's no different from people of Christian backgrounds who I am sure aren't talking about being Christian 24/7. It just felt like pandering.
Yeah the cultural exploration was probably the most interesting aspect of it, otherwise she just seems like a palette swapped Jubilee. They leaned pretty heavily into that. Honestly, I wish they'd just created a different Pakistani superhero to explore this, it might have been more interesting. Other countries should have superheroes too, right?
If I recall correctly, her original shape-shifting powers led to some interesting character development in the comics, which fit in with her thematically wrestling with her identity. That all got discarded when she got the power to summon purple glowing rock things instead, leaving behind the most interesting part of the character to me.
Also I recall there were a lot of "hello fellow kids!" cringeworthy attempts at appealing to zoomers in the miniseries.
Ms. Marvel is up there in terms of my favorite D+ series and what you mentioned had a lot to do with it. The end of the season felt extra corny and like some generic Netflix production but overall it was really fun.
Mostly because of her, I would like to check out The Marvels in theaters but I just don't think we'll have time and, realistically, it's going to be streamable in, what, a couple of months? That's probably the bigger issue - there aren't really movies I'm so excited to see that I can't wait that long.
And quite out of left field when it comes to a Marvel property.
Agree to disagree. I find the Kamala Kahn character to be an effervescent relief to a series that's taking itself way too seriously or trying too hard for slap stick. Does that make this particular movie great? No. The movie itself is a pretty flimsy plot. The main trope of the movie is someone makes a mistake, the group comes together to resolve the mistake, and develop themselves during that resolution. So with that said, it's not really good at delivering that, it's not Trolls bad (the original one which the plot sucks, the music is quite good) but yeah there was a lot of room for lots of character development that was just not included in what was delivered. To me the movie pulled its punches on what it could have delivered.
But in these kinds of tropes you see classic character stereotype traits, in this case Kamala Kahn plays the lighthearted comedic foil and does so quite well through the movie. Needless to say the Captain Marvel character is our person who brings the conflict to be resolved and towards the end you are left with a pretty unsatisfying result. Like the issue is indeed resolved, but it's about as exciting as how I might feel when I've completed my taxes. Hooray, I got that done. Maria Rambeau is our power character consistently pushing the accelerator for the characters to resolve the matter. And she's pretty good at it, but there was absolutely more opportunity for her to flesh that out that they kept sacking her personal past to keep that in check. Which at some point one might go, yeah we get it, she's troubled and doesn't want to talk about it. There's a degree of too much "I'm the aloof character in this movie". I will say the final fight scene is actually good for the level of just skirting the level of frenetic and follow-ability. I've gotten to a point where I just tune out superhero fights when it just becomes a lightshow and camera pandemonium (ala the most recent Ant Man movie).
Like I said, it's not a horrible movie. I went to the 10am showing of it on Friday (with one other friend) and that was $40 and that's where I would say "Do NOT go see this movie for $40". But I really enjoy the Kamala Kahn character and the level of energy the actress brings to the character. It reminds me a bit of how bubbly my twenty-two year old niece is sometimes and that serves as a nice refresher given the backdrop of generally everything else. So, I will acquiescence, there's a likely bias on my part for the character.
Again, absolutely not disagreeing with your position on the character. I think Marvel (and this touches just every so slightly on the superhero saturation) has gotten so big that not every character is going to be widely welcomed by everyone. I think there's a point that the Marvel Superhero movies get so numerous that you have to start considering sub-genres for the movies. And perhaps Marvel should pull back a bit on the distribution (it's their ship ultimately to sail and sink if need be). But I really enjoyed the Kamala Kahn character in the same way that I enjoyed the Katy character from the Shang-Chi movie. I good comedic foil is like pepper, you need just enough to flavor the food and not too much to over power the food and both of those characters have carried that role quite well thus far. But like anything, Disney has every chance to run that straight into the ground.
So just my two cents.
I saw it today and I thought that it was fun.
I thought that it was way better than the latest Thor and Guardians of the Galaxy films which a really didn’t like.
Genre fatigue. Too formulaic now as well.
Interesting to see the general negative impressions contrasted with the other column here saying how great it is.
I’m still deciding whether to see it in theaters - I’m a huge fan of the Marvel universe and still want more superhero movies. Iman Vellani does a great job with an excellent character, and I loved how the story connected with her culture. Fantastic. However Captain Marvel was pretty much a non-entity and we had no idea who Monica Rambeau will be yet - I hope the movie gave some much needed character development
What I don't really like is people telling me I shouldn't let myself be swayed by critics and should watch it and make up my own mind.
That's stupid. I'm reading the reviews to decide if I wanna watch it or not. I don't wanna spend my money and a couple hours of my life to decide if it was worth it if some people whose judgement I've trusted in the past tell me it's gonna be trash.
The "don't listen to the critics" argument sounds a lot like what I've heard for many IMHO terrible DC movies.
Don't get swayed specifically by critics. I swear most critics in the film and video game industry have the weirdest takes ever, while they should represent an average joe. There have been many movies which have been obliterated by critics, which have been quite popular and fun, as well as many awful movies, which have been praised by critics.
I am also a huge Marvel fan and I saw it Thursday night in a packed theater. My opinion is that all the pieces of one of the best Marvel movies are there, and just weren't put together properly. The leads have great chemistry, Iman Vellani is brilliant as always, the main plot point makes for unique and interesting fight scenes, and they let it get goofy in just the right ways (princesses and kittens, that's all I'm saying.)
But the overall pacing of the entire movie is SO bad. It feels so rushed. None of the fun or poignant things that are legitimately good are allowed to hang around on screen long enough to sink in. There are important plot points that move so fast they leave you wondering what just happened. Which is so disappointing. I was really excited that this might be the one that finally got Marvel out of their pandemic-induced production problems. Instead it's just another Marvel movie that I'll only see once.
Theatres are dead. The experience just isn't as good as home and the prices are disgusting now just like the theatres themselves.
Until I can spend many thousands of dollars on a home theater room it will be an inferior experience to going out. I don't need to pause to make snacks, or put captions on, or whatever. I'm happy to pay fifteen dollars for the occasional ticket and then fifteen more for eight cents worth of soda and popcorn loaded with salt and butter-flavored-oil because I know theaters don't see a pock of the ticket money.
I want a comfy recliner, a giant screen, outrageous sound volume, and two hours of uninterrupted movie. The places I usually go to are clean, I've never had a problem with rude patrons (the occasional restless child at family movies, sure), and I feel like I get good entertainment for the money. It's not a weekly thing, maybe monthly.
My local theater is packed almost every night of the week. There were flocks of entire families with kids dressed up in costumes to see both Mario and Barbie. I traveled an hour to see Oppenheimer in proper IMAX and there wasn't an empty seat in the house. Theaters definitely are not dead.
I have to agree, I hated Avatar 2 (liked the first one) and the theater experience made it 100 times worse. I went with an old friend that I havent seen in years, and a young guy in line behind us kept asking us if we were gay.. like literally 20 times, he was completely obsessed with it to the point of harassment. I will NEVER go to a theater again, ever.
If you are a big marvel fan then go see it. It is not a great MCU film but it is also not bad. You will get some good laughs and fight scenes and get some mild emotional moments. I enjoyed it in theaters, but recognize that it is not as good as say GOTG3 or Spiderman NWH.
It was a legitimately awful movie. If you asked chatgpt to make you a superhero movie for teen girls and the plot didn't matter, this is what it would be. I'm hoping that's the audience they're trying to pull into the giant universe, because everyone else is going to be left underwhelmed.
Other diagnostics on The Marvels: 65% male leaning, with 45% men over 25, 22% women over 25 (giving it the best grades at 82%), men under 25 at 20%, and women under 25 at 14%.
https://deadline.com/2023/11/box-office-the-marvels-1235599363/
I saw the movie a few days ago and while I didn't think it was bad, I'll admit the script is a mess. Some parts are a little hard to follow or poorly explained. Someone either got a bit lazy with the writing or did a poor job cutting it all together.
It feels like an editing issue. The film was fast paced and a lot of scenes just ask you to assume that they make sense. In truth they probably do, but they need a little bit of explanation.
Let's talk Flerkins for example. Early in the film Goose eats some bad guys, teleports to Kamala's living room, then spits them out. No one really comments on it. No one found it weird. We just defeat the bad guys and move on.
Next Goose spits up some science equipment. We learn that they've been missing for a while. They look fine but no one mentions that they still work, or we're otherwise still preserved.
Finally we have the musical Memory scene. Ignore for a moment the eggs that hatched. Ignoring for a moment it happens when they've run out escape pods. We have "kittens", we've established that Flerkins can eat people and they can hold what they've eaten for a while. So while the solution makes sense, and on paper they've earned the moment, it takes a moment to really put it all together. As a result it feels rushed and instead of just enjoying the scene you're left wondering if it makes sense.
We're only talking about cutting a few minutes here and a few minutes there, but it adds up.
My best friend is a total mark for Marvel and didn’t even know that a new one was out.
Really? I've been seeing advertising for this all over the place.
I mean, i have been seeing the same damn trailer for it before every movie i’ve seen in theaters for months, and I still didnt realize it was coming out now.
I have a rule. You get 3 movies of a thing and then I stop paying attention. Marvel, star wars, fast and furious, I don't care, 3 of the "same" story and I'm out.
Just let it die. Start making original scripts.
WNBA of movies.
How do you feel about Barbie being the top grossing film of the year and one of WB's top grossing films of all time?
They love to blame flops like this on things like feminism, but generally it's just because Disney has no idea what they are doing anymore after killing off the A-listers and then releasing nothing but wet farts for the last five years.
That and they've oversaturated the market and made it hard for non fans to keep up. When you have to watch 2 5-8 hour Disney plus shows just to understand who the characters are in the movie (Maria Rambeau and Kamala Khan) then Disney as a company is probably doing something wrong. Comic people might love it but everyday joes not so much.
Not to mention how expensive it is to go to the movies! For us, this has less to do with how medium the marvel movies have been and more that a single ticket is a month of a streaming service and I already cut all our streaming services. If I decide to splurge, it's going to be on a month of content, not two hours.
We should break into their bedrooms and whisper Barbie's box office figures in their ear while they sleep.
Who asked for this? I also heard they are reshooting the next Capt America, which was almost complete and now moved from 2024 to 2025, to take out a new hero called Sabra, a zionist superhero who works for the Mossad (I am not kidding.) Gosh, I wonder why. Who green-lit this?
This movie was already catching heat because they went with Black Falcon as their next Capt America, instead of, or I don't know, rebooting Steve Rodgers, the original Capt from decades of comics. This is why we can't have nice things.
I don't disagree, there have been more than a few questionable decisions made by Disney execs on the MCU.
But....
I'm pretty sure Sam Wilson has been Captain America in the comics, more than once I think. I don't think it's a bad move for them to make this change, especially with how well they wrapped up Steve's arc in Endgame. Actors age and using canon replacements is a great way to continue a franchise and introduce new stories.
Also: it's not Black Falcon, it's just Falcon. Gonna give you the benefit of the doubt that you weren't being racist about it.
Throw it on the pile with the others. I'll get to it, probably never.
They spent $220 million to produce the movie…
This is literally the first I'd heard of the movie. If it's anything like the other marvel movies, it'll be overwhelmingly OK (not terrible, not great).
Superhero movies are infantile comfort films, art is supposed to be challenging and interpretable. When you know the ending from the genre it's a bad movie.
Yet pseudo-nerds will sperg out over the meaningless cameos and "cannon implications."
I'm not sure I've seen somone so proud of being a snob.
Well done.
It's called having taste.
Oooh. What are your favourite films?
ew wtf lol
Why only make series, when you can make siries out of movies? right?
I get it, there are fans who still follow and watch the movies and series, but for normal people, like me, wont watch all this.
They expect to make money, like they did with the big ones, but IMO it has gone far away from that, the only ones interested are the ones who like this content. In the end, its more like a machine making, where they have to make more movies and more.
The series would have been fine had they not been needed to understanding what is happening in the movies.
Cue me wondering where I'd missed that Elizabeth Olsen is a villain again in Dr Strange 2.
I can deal with watching a movie every few months on the off chance that some of them are entertaining popcorn guff, but I'm not sitting through endless shows where you see 10 hours of characters you don't care about and their extended families you also won't care about.
Don’t worry, I watched wandavision and still have no idea why the hell she was like that in MoM. It was extremely clear the writers of WV and MoM never once talked to each other, despite one being a somewhat continuation of the other.
MoM left such a bad taste in my mouth after being the only Phase 5(?) movie I was even remotely interested in that I haven’t bothered going to the theaters for anything marvel since.
It's the lowest adjusted for inflation, not sure why they aren't doing that that. They mention it in the article body.
I haven't gone to see any movies for a while now. The effort to go to a theatre and all that just feels not worth it. I'd rather wait for the films to be available on something I can watch at home.
I feel like Disney already knew and was expecting this. The original Captain Marvel wasn't very well received, and they seem to understand now that not everyone wants to consume every piece of MCU media all the time with the new "Spotlight" tag. I expect it'll get a fast turnaround onto streaming.
I think people over estimate the Marvel brand. You can't just keep unearthing dozens and dozens of niche characters and comics and expect them all to have an established fan base.
Think, Disney.
Ironman? Yeah no shit. It's fucking Ironman.
Thor? Duh
Hulk? Yes, but get it right.
Antman? Pushing it but yeah he dope.
Captian America? Might as well said superman.
Gaurdians? Wonderful.
Captain Marvel. You lost me.
Eternals? ...
It's no mystery as to why not every franchise is going to be a hit. Just think about it.
I think your view is clouded by hindsight.
When the first iron man movie was announced, the character was a solid b-lister
The guardians of the galaxy were even more obscure during a comparable timeframe and had a different roster.
So b-listers can be elevated by good movies and at the same time a-listers in the comics can bomb (Thor 2, Thor 4, non-mcu: Spiderman 3)
How well-known a character is in my opinion not the deciding factor for the success of a movie. I'd say the quality of a movie and the ability to build hype (which gets harder with what appears to be superhero fatigue) play a bigger role
Hmm.....maybe we should talk about Secret Wars and see if that doesn't make a huge hit? Sure we want to see Marvel split into three people with quirky outtakes and cats that are aliens. But watching the Wrecking Crew take on the X-Men and Ultron fight Thor with Dr. Doom and Ultron facing off against Cap and the Fantastic 4 and Venom being born.....nah. They are making it now, but it looks like they are going a different direction than the comic.
It was actually a really fun film
Marvel fatigue, superhero saturation and the death of cinema.
No, no, and maybe yes.
There is no Marvel fatigue. There is no superhero saturation. What there is, is simply trash. Make a shit superhero movie and the movie will just be shit. It has nothing to do with there being superheroes.
Hollywood doesn't get it. People don't seem to get it either. But these phases are just repeating itself. It used to be cowboys. It used to be cops. Then pirates. It used to be sword and sandals.
Cowboy movies are fun. So are pirate movies and superhero movies. If they're made well!
The moment some execs look at a bunch of numbers and think "Oh, people will pay money to see X", THAT is when things go wrong. No, people pay to see good movies. And Marvel used to be hype when they made good movies.
Youre mostly right but personally there is definitely superhero fatigue. I used to watch most marvel movies but nowadays the formula is sort of played out.
You couldn't have explained it better, there is still Super Heroes stuff worth it, I like The Boys and Invincible for example.
And The Marvels wasn't that bad honestly, I liked it more than most recent marvel products lol.
so dumb there's literally great superhero and marvel movies coming out lol
Like what?
I mean, a massive chunk of it is that I had no idea it was coming out, likely due to the actor’s strike preventing all sorts of advertising.
Yeah, now all the studios will have is remaking all the movies from 20 years ago.
The strike...