Box Office Bomb: ‘The Marvels’ Opening to $47M-$52M in New Low for Marvel Studios

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The movie's performance fuels the theory that superhero fatigue is a real thing if a pic doesn't deliver on every front.

The Marvels is anything but marvelous so far at the box office.

Based on Friday earnings of $21.5 million, the Marvel Studios and Disney superhero tentpole is headed for a domestic opening of $47 million to $52 million to rank as the worst start in the history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The Marvels marks a new low for Kevin Feige‘s Marvel Studios, which for years was unrivaled in its success, and bolsters the theory that superhero fatigue is a real thing as fanboys grow weary of a glut of titles and are far less forgiving.

Until now, rival DC was the superhero studio that endured the biggest ups and downs, with a good number of its films opening to $50 million or less (in comparison, many MCU releases started with $100 million or more domestically). This summer, DC’s The Flash debuted to a dismal $55 million domestically on its way to topping out at a paltry $270.6 million globally.

Word of mouth is already hurting The Marvels, which is only the third MCU title to receive a B CinemaScore from audiences after Eternals and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantamania. The vast majority of MCU releases have earned some variation of an A. Its Rotten Tomatoes critics’ score of 62 percent is likewise on the lower end.

The 33rd installment in the MCU is a sequel to the 2019 Brie Larson starrer Captain Marvel, which opened to $153.4 million in North America on its way to earning a massive $1.13 billion worldwide, not adjusted for inflation. That movie had a clear advantage in that it was teased in the post-credit scene of 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War, while its titular star was a player in 2019’s Avengers: Endgame (it was released between the two Marvel mega-blockbusters).

To date, 2008’s The Incredible Hulk holds the record for the lowest domestic opening of any MCU title at $55.4 million, not adjusted for inflation (Marvel, which wasn’t owned by Disney at the time, partnered with Universal for Hulk). The next lowest MCU opening belongs to Marvel/Disney’s Ant-Man, which started with $57.2 million domestically in 2015.

In the new movie, Larson is joined by Iman Vellani, the breakout star of the Disney+ series Ms. Marvel, as well as Teyonah Parris as the grown-up version of Captain Marvel character Monica Rambeau. The actor made her Marvel debut with WandaVision, which counted The Marvels screenwriter Megan McDonnell among its writers.

The Marvels is unique for a superhero film in that it stars three female leads. It was directed by Nia DaCosta, who is the first Black woman to direct a Marvel Studios movie, as well as the youngest director of an MCU film (DaCosta turns 34 on Nov. . Marvel has taken pride in fostering such indie directors as Ryan Coogler, Taika Waititi and Chloé Zhao.

The cast of The Marvels wasn’t able to do any promotion or publicity because of the SAG-AFTRA strike, although Larson and her co-stars sprung into action Thursday after the strike ended. Larson appeared on The Tonight Show on Friday, while she and her co-stars will surprise fans at various screenings of the movie in New York City.

Overseas, The Marvels is pacing to open to $60 million for a global start of $140 million, compared to nearly $190 million for Captain Marvel.

 

[sheepworldvizor]

It's not really burn out on the MCU - it's still a really solid IP. It's burnout on garbage.

One of the things that the early MCU had was better story writing and much smaller and relatable, scales. The whole "ENTIRE UNIVERSE HANGS IN THE BALANCE" stuff was relegated to the 'Avengers' movies - and not even all of them were huge scales conflicts.

When people think of momets they enjoy, it's usually a smaller scale character interaction. Ironman and Spiderman, Ironman and Captain American, Thanos and anyone, Thor and Loki, and so on. It's not about the huge scales or stakes - sometimes a solid interaction is just a conflict between two characters who have an interpersonal issue.

The new MCU thinks "higher stakes" means "better movie" when the bigger steaks are just washing out any character building they could be doing instead.

Shazam 2 had this exact problem. If it’s larger than saving a fun fair, I simply do not care.
I think Hollywood writers are confused about how people view stakes. Your family and community are MORE important to you than the entire world/universe. By “upping the stakes” to make the potential
destruction biggest, they are effectively diluting audience involvement.

 

[Alexander Thaut]

Shazam 2 had this exact problem. If it’s larger than saving a fun fair, I simply do not care.
I think Hollywood writers are confused about how people view stakes. Your family and community are MORE important to you than the entire world/universe. By “upping the stakes” to make the potential
destruction biggest, they are effectively diluting audience involvement.

universal stakes should only be at play if it's a big team movie or if the characters are mythological. . . maybe.

 

[Articles and Nudes]

That's where The Farce Awakens went wrong with its stakes. Blowing up dozens of planets in a single shot is so absurdly over the top it loses any impact - that it didn't actually seem to do anything anyway was a cherry on top.

 

[God of Nothing]

That's where The Farce Awakens went wrong with its stakes. Blowing up dozens of planets in a single shot is so absurdly over the top it loses any impact - that it didn't actually seem to do anything anyway was a cherry on top.

TFA's very inception was tainted. If an ST had to exist, had to be anything but a rehash of the OT.

 

[sheepworldvizor]

universal stakes should only be at play if it's a big team movie or if the characters are mythological. . . maybe.

Agreed, it needs to be a part of a long pay off.

 

[mlanguishi]

TFA's very inception was tainted. If an ST had to exist, had to be anything but a rehash of the OT.

I thought Lucas' idea of going into a micro midichlorian style world was a bad idea, but it might've actually been crazy enough to be better than the sequels. I legit liked TFA pretty well, but they got just worst each time. Opposite of how the prequels were to me, which got better and by Revenge of the Sith about equal as ROTJ.

ETA: For me the biggest sin was wasting Poe away. He had the potential to be a likable and heroic guy, but they cucked him out so bad in TLJ that nobody cared.

 

[Me and My Tiny Penis]

Pfff, of course it bombed. Who sincerely still watches superhero movies? They should be grateful to have enough eternal children to even see $52 million in the first place. The suiperhero movie generation should have ended a decade ago.

 

[Alexander Thaut]

Agreed, it needs to a part of a long pay off.

I yearn for the return of the Yostverse with Avengers: Earths Mightiest Heroes, Spectacular Spider-Man, and Wolverine & The X-Men.

Marvel's stories/events work better with steady buildup. DC was better at big flashy shit. We somehow wind up in the timeline where marvel makes the big flashy movies and DC's relegated to making solid animated shows/etc.

 

[God of Nothing]

Revenge of the Sith

My favorite of the entire series. Just too much narrative payoff, however poorly setup, and good moments in one movie. Empire is the best written, but it wouldn't exist without Hope, which was great save for a few question-raising elements (Luke believing the Force straight off, Han coming back, and the Death Star weakness. These are arguably nitpicks though.)

Spectacular Spider-Man

Dear fucking god, was that show great. Best animated Spider-Man show period. Josh Keaton is the definitive voice for Spider-Man. Fuck Yuri Lowenthal.

 

[dick brain]

Marvel doesn't really get the audience at all. The 10 year push into Endgame was brutal with some of the movies just being dogshit (most of Thor's) or not existing (Black Widow) at the correct time. Endgame landed perfectly and should have been a time to look at what they're doing and course adjust. They've decided to triple down on the fatigue by just diarrhea shitting out new movies, TV shows, concepts, etc and now they're going to rush into the X-Men/Mutant arc instead.

They saw the "superhero fatigue" coming and decided to pivot their target audience away from existing fans to try to scoop up the people who, allegedly, aren't interested because they're not represented. So they hurried to push out Captain Marvel and Black Widow, hyped the fuck out of Black Panther, started killing off all the white men and replacing them with women and minorities (Sam Wilson Captain America, Jane Foster Thor, Ironheart), rolling out Shang Chi and Ms Marvel and She Hulk and generally racelifting or genderswapping anyone they can get away with. The response? Crickets, because nobody actually cared; none of the people complaining about representation are actually interested in the IP, they just want to make things about themselves.

But the wild part, for those who don't know, is that they're doing exactly what they did with the comics in 2010-2011. They already tried sacrificing their existing fanbase to appease the wokemob, killing off existing heroes to pass the mantles to teenage minorities and women, that's where half these IPs came from. They had a pregnant Spider Woman, for fucks sake. And when the transexual gay retards of jewish and indigenous descent on tumblr didn't buy any of it, what was the verdict? That comics just aren't a viable medium for zoomers, and they should focus on movies.

In either case they could have stayed the course and there would be a loyal contingent of faggots like me who would've kept lapping up the capeshit slop indefinitely, but they bet it all on woke, lost it all, doubled down and lost again.

The funniest thing is, the only thing I'm still actually looking forward to is Echo -- the series where they cast a deaf native woman to play a deaf native woman, introduced in 1999. A decade plus of planned and orchestrated attempts at diversity and inclusion, and your most compelling minority character is from the fucking Liefeld era.

They will not learn from this.

 

[Overly Serious]

Brie was super cute in community and in that Danny Devito film, and most of her pre-captain marvel work. Amber heard might have been better looking but was clearly a bitch. Brie would have been an amazing girl sidekick, like if Captain Marvel was about jude law's character and Brie was the newbie with powers and she was the plucky rookie teamed up with the captain it would have worked. They just wrote her really badly, the problem with superman style powers is you need to focus on the internal struggle to make it relatable but people that write comic book movies are too stupid to realize that. Imagine if they wrote her as more insecure and neurotic with her just pretending to be a badass that knows what they're doing, that would have been extremely relatable to women, every teacher or nurse or manager i've met just has this near "superhero" persona and is a mess once they're away from their underlings.

A key weakness in the Captain Marvel movie, and it stems directly from culture-politics, is that of her arc. In nearly every MCU hero movie there is an arc of the hero(es) discovering and overcoming their weakness:

• Iron Man - is confronted by his moral failings and profiting from others' misfortune, becomes a good man and ultimately sacrifices himself (twice). His arc is Selfish -> Selfless
• Thor - is brash and ignores advice of others, this leads to hurting his friends and banishment. His arc is Pride / Ignoring Advice -> Humility / Working with others.
• Captain America - mild exception kind of. He started out as a good person. But he has an arc about falling in love and putting taking action ahead of following orders.
• The Avengers. A bunch of alpha people learn through loss that they must work together, not squabble. Loki is practically the embodiment of division and distrust as their enemy. But even the most chaotic and loner of them is brought into the team and accepted ("We have a Hulk").

There are exceptions and variations, particularly in follow-up movies, but there's our common baseline to which we will now contrast Carol's arc in Captain Marvel.

In this movie she begins limited and through the power of no longer listening to others, realises that she was awesome all along. That's her arc - to discover she was perfect and mighty to begin with.

Believing in yourself isn't the worst message, not letting others keep you down is a laudable moral to promote. But... it feels slightly off in their implementation and it's subtly different to the other arcs which are about self-improvement and moving past your character flaws. Carol's arc is quite literally discovering she was perfect and shouldn't have listened to anybody else.

I didn't hate the movie the way some did, but I greatly disliked elements of it. Nor do I hate Brie Larson the way some do. She can act and she's very easy on the eyes. You could have kept the movie more or less the same and if you'd just extracted a little of the politics and if we'd just had less ham-fisted "this isn't a movie for White men" statements, it could have been a decent film. Instead of the solid 2/5 it was.

 

[God of Nothing]

I didn't hate the movie the way some did, but I greatly disliked elements of it. Nor do I hate Brie Larson the way some do. She can act and she's very easy on the eyes. You could have kept the movie more or less the same and if you'd just extracted a little of the politics and if we'd just had less ham-fisted "this isn't a movie for White men" statements, it could have been a decent film. Instead of the solid 2/5 it was.

She's average at best and had probably one of the worst interviews ever. I don't hate her either, but Disney insists on her, like it does for all its progressive posturing. Captain Marvel was a straight up 1. Not even a so bad it's good. It actively hurts the cinematic universe it was made in and has a horrible, boring plot.

 

[Echo_Ender]

They probably just fucked up her "we spend 9 months getting you in shape" regiment. If they were going do it at all.

Which is a thing they just stopped doing apparently - most of the modern heroes just look like normal people wearing cosplay. It's weird that Iron Man was more jacked than Captain Marvel was.

That makes sense. But holy fuck, I can't get over how bad she looks in all the Marvel's photos I've seen. Shitty-looking costume, no curves, and the actress herself looking to have put on a lot of weight. Plus terrible hair and makeup.

It really looks like they put no effort into her or Photon and gave most of the costuming/CGI/makeup budget to Larson.

That, coupled with Larson apparently having another cringe-inducing singing scene, almost makes me think that she had enough sway to make sure the other two female leads couldn't upstage her.

 

[IAmNotAlpharius]

That's where The Farce Awakens went wrong with its stakes. Blowing up dozens of planets in a single shot is so absurdly over the top it loses any impact - that it didn't actually seem to do anything anyway was a cherry on top.

It would’ve been a lot more impactful if we got to know the people on a planet that got wrecked. It doesn’t even have to be destroyed. It could just be a city that gets leveled by a star destroyer. But if they show the city and why it matters to Rey, it could’ve had a bigger impact on the audience than the dozens of planets that were destroyed.

 

[Crex Crex]

That's where The Farce Awakens went wrong with its stakes. Blowing up dozens of planets in a single shot is so absurdly over the top it loses any impact - that it didn't actually seem to do anything anyway was a cherry on top.

This is why you can't convince me the nu-star wars movies weren't written by 10-year olds. I am certain the script was like "And then the bad guys shoot a huge death laser from a big big cannon that is big like a planet and then the laser hits the good planet and the good planet explodes and everybody dies!!!!!".

 

[Corpun]

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I'm only half kidding. Sooner or later Hollywood will find out that they can cash in on the anime craze by doing actual big budget non bullshit live action movies. But probably rather later than sooner.

No way current year will adapt Berserk into any sort of Live Action show or movie without girlbossing Casca into being unrecognizable from her manga counterpart.

 

[mlanguishi]

This is why you can't convince me the nu-star wars movies weren't written by 10-year olds. I am certain the script was like "And then the bad guys shoot a huge death laser from a big big cannon that is big like a planet and then the laser hits the good planet and the good planet explodes and everybody dies!!!!!".

It's the same problem Star Trek Generations had. It didn't even bother to show any of the populated planet that Soren destroyed. To be fair, neither did ANH with Alderaan, but at least in 1977 the concept of a planet killer was impressive.

 

[Haramburger]

One more thing: does Brie Larson have it in her contract that if she's in a Captain Marvel-centric performance, that she needs to be singing on screen? (because as I understand it, having seen neither Captain Marvel movie, she sings in both). I'm not sure if that's a girl thing or a Brie Larson thing,

Brie Larson thing. I often listen to this:

 

[God of Nothing]

No way current year will adapt Berserk into any sort of Live Action show or movie without girlbossing Casca into being unrecognizable from her manga counterpart.

getting raped was a defining aspect of her character: that's impossible in this day and age

 

[Kane Lives]

It's the same problem Star Trek Generations had. It didn't even bother to show any of the planet that Soren destroyed. To be fair, neither did ANH with Alderaan, but at least in 1977 the concept of a planet killer was impressive.

In ANH, the audience has a proxy via Leia (and to a lesser extent, Obi-Wan). By contrast, none of the TFA cast even knew what planets were being blown up until much later.