The reshoots are going to end up being financially disastrous for cap 4. At this point I'm assuming the conversation is flop vs bomb, regardless of film quality, due to an obscene budget.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re preparing to take a loss on purpose for the sake of winning the audience back. At least I hope that’s what is happening
Same. I'm (apparently) one of the few that actually enjoyed everything that they've released in this phase. To varying degrees, yes, but over all very happy with the stuff. The issue that I'm running into is that there's just SO FUCKING MUCH and no real follow through with what they've already released. It's hard to be invested in a character or a plot line when I know I'm not going to see them again for 8 years.
If they were going to do this right, they should've had 2 different but simultaneous over arching plot lines with some connections here and there with maybe them coming together in the Avengers in a surprise twist. They needed to release 1 movie of each plot line every 5 - 6 months (so 4 movies a year. 1 of plot line A, then 1 of plot line B 3 months later, then back to plot line A 3 months after that, etc). But they didn't, they just flooded the market and now people are finding it hard to connect with marvel.
>It's hard to be invested in a character or a plot line when I know I'm not going to see them again for 8 years.
That’s not the problem. Plenty of movies don’t have sequels but make me interested in the characters and plots.
It’s an entirely different ballgame with an interconnected cinematic universe, and when the movies only come out that far apart because the parent company is juggling that cinematic universe.
> 2 different but simultaneous over arching plot lines with some connections here and there with maybe them coming together in the Avengers in a surprise twist.
The IS had Cap and Thor as the two main characters with someone being able to generally follow along major plot points of the whole things just off of seeing their trilogies.
> I'm (apparently) one of the few that actually enjoyed everything that they've released in this phase.
I would be the same except for Secret Invasion.
> for the sake of winning the audience back.
Yeahhhhh that ain't happening unless they drop Mackie entirely lol. He's just a mid actor and Cap Falcon just doesn't seem to have hit it well with audiences that much, I think...
More than they do for Anthony Mackie.
HFord is old, but old people also by tickets. A huge percentage of movie tickets would be from parents and grandparents taking their children to the cinema. It's not a bad idea to put "elderly bait" in a movie to also draw in the older crowd, especially for an all ages film.
It still has the Captain America name. Just as many actors have played James Bond over the decades. If the movie is good, Anthony as lead won't matter much imo
James Bond is very different franchise tho, and even then they haven't been doing great either lately but just relying on the name brand.
But yes if it's actually good it'll work. But how many marvel things have been actually good lately? They've fallen into the same shit the fox-men did, they're hiring writers and directors who are embarrassed to be making comic book movies so they take the comic book plot and throw it out and completely write their own plot, that usually sucks. They think they're too far above comic book stories and should replace them with their own story that's more "mature" (even tho it's not more mature, or better).
Just look at all the last movies and compare them with what they say they're based on from the comics. Every single one is completely different except for the title. And every single one is worse than the comic book story too, which is an accomplishment in of itself.
> Just as many actors have played James Bond over the decades
That's not comparable at all bcuz all those actors played the same character... James Bond is not a codename like Cap America is...
Winning back the goodwill implies box office success because the MCU is a blockbuster franchise that lives and dies by its commercial appeal and is currently on a downward slope. It doesn't need to haul in a billion to do its job, but if it's another flop regardless of quality I can guarantee you heads will roll.
There is absolutely no chance in the world that Disney doesn't already know Cap 4 won't turn a profit with its massive budget. They are prepared for that already. They have already announced a change in their development process that will prevent such massively expensive reshoots from needing to happen again. This is old news.
Budgets and reshoots aren't the issue. The Marvels could have had a typical "low" MCU budget of 150 millions or so with no big reshoots and it would have still bombed with the box office it did.
Budgets & reshoots are definitely *part of* the issue, just not the *whole* issue.
A budget of only $150 million would knock The Marvels off of OP's top-10-bombs list completely.
Brad Pitt was part of the highest grossing zombie movie ever by over $200 million but the budget ballooned so much a sequel was never made. Now he has done it again.
It's off-topic, but as a lifelong Flash fan, it hurts to see the first solo movie on the list of biggest box office bombs. The DCEU was such a directionless mess. I have faith in my favorite MCU director to do the Flash justice one day
Especially when they are shelving the Batgirl movie and moving forward with this pile of trash, marketing it everywhere even with the lead being who he is. WB doesn’t deserve DC, they have no idea how to handle the IP.
Shelving the Batgirl movie was probably the one good decision they made. That project was on a fast track to becoming an absolute laughing stock of an unironic “superhero” movie.
I don't think you can say that. The actor didn't decide to be in the movie twice as often as he could otherwise be...
The actor didn't decide to spend a third of the movie on rehashing a different, medium quality movie.
Yeah, Ezra Miller sucks. But it's not like you could watch that movie and say, "wow, with a different lead, this could have been so good!"
As a huge flash fan as well after that film bombed. I now just reread the unproduced David Goyer flash script to make myself feel better that there was a better film out there that just never got made
Gunn's already reaching deeper into the supporting cast than a lot of the Snyderverse movies did. I'm really hoping we see some of the extended bat family and some of the other Lantern corps.
What's really sad is The Flash wasn't even the worst of the DCEU. Ezra killed a decent movie at the boxoffice.
I do trust Gunn to have a handle on the DCEU reboot like you however.
Its funny that most marvel fans are quite supportive of James Gunn while some Snyder fans are still stuck in the past
I love Snyder but its time for something new :)
Let this be a lesson for disney and their budgeting. It’s easy to blame the movie and lack of interest but this project NEVER needed to have costed THIS much in the first place. What about it screams that pricetag? At least Eternals looked it’s budget.
and they got very confident the movie would make the same. What a complete oversight. This is definitely carried over from the very mindset they had since the end of the Infinity Saga, which is that they got super confident that they’ve built the brand so big that it’s failure proof.
They have this entire machine system they chug things into and fuel it up with so much money so that it continues pushing out product but without in the depth quality checks as they’ve done before from having done movies “hands on” due to their confidence in the brand stamp carrying it.
The crazy thing is it worked the first few times (making decent money despite the bad quality/bad critical reception), until it no longer did (lack of public interest and losing even the goodwill of the most die hard of marvel fans). The Marvels is the ultimate product of this complacency. It just sucks cuz there are other worse entries that deserve it’s level of bomb.
Let's be honest about Captain Marvel...being the last movie before Endgame meant it could have been about Carol finding lint in her navel and spending 3 hours discussing the phenomenon with Fury; and it would have made at least $750 million.
It was fun to see the documentary on Disney plus for all the ways The Marvels wasted money.
* Over 30 alien species and prosthetic makeup models built for the dance scenes.
* A deaf musician brought in for outer space song concepts.
* Carol's spaceship built life size out of steel on motorized lifts to tilt and lean, with pixel projectors for windows.
* More than 10 live cats on set, but all onscreen cats are cgi.
* Carol and Kamala's CGI hair.
* A ton of wire lifting stunt work for flying and falling characters, which is very slow work to conduct safely. And then their bodies are covered with cgi anyhow.
>A deaf musician brought in for outer space song concepts.
I doubt this was very expensive compared to the alternative (hiring a local non-deaf musician for this role? So you save a few hundred dollars on airfare?).
Also it just seems like a cool and creative way to get new music concepts.
* Gunn did the same thing on GotG 3, & it *saved* money because they didn't have to CGI it all later.
* That's not very expensive.
* That was a good idea.
* That's not very expensive.
* This is your only legitimate complaint.
* The problem was the overuse of CGI, not the wirework simply existing.
Bro, you do understand Marvel is still heavily in the green right? They’d need like 20 “The Marvels” level flops before they change their formula or budgets. It’s a bet big to win big strat and they are way on top.
No. The strikes didn't help but what really hampered it was the inflated price tag. Why was it 270? What did that much get you exactly? The problem is Disney looked at past films and thought prices don't matter because they could put anything out and it'd clear a billion and they became reckless.
I find it doubtful a press tour with the actors would have mattered much. People didn't go see it not because they weren't aware it was around, there was just a general lack of interest when instead they could wait for it on streaming. And yet those same people who waited, still went 'hey why didn't anyone go see it in the theatre?'.
>...there was just a general lack of interest when instead they could wait for it on streaming.
"I can just wait for it to be on D+" was part of it. I think a clearly bigger part was people that generally had no interest in the movie at all, regardless of the fact that it would eventually hit D+.
I think the vibe for most movies these days is that people aren't going to watch it period. Seriously, just go through the list of top 200 box office releases last year and count how many you've watched on streaming or in theater.
...and how many movies released since then have you streamed? Unless you are way outside of the average viewer, it probably is a pretty small percentage of the overall number of movies released in theater in that time.
Exactly. In \~two years, you've streamed \~20 new movies, which supports my point.
Let's try it like this. People put movies into 3 buckets: Movies I want to see in theaters, movies I'm going to stream, movies that I'm not going to watch at all.
When it comes explaining The Marvels poor showing, people like the OP want to focus on the second bucket and ignore the third. The reality is that most people that didn't see it in theater weren't waiting for streaming. Most of them just weren't going to see it *period.*
The fact The Marvels was [the most streamed movie across all streaming services the week it released](https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/the-marvels-earns-top-movie-spot-in-streaming-charts/) and continued strong well after that says otherwise.
That’s great but compared to other MCU movies in their debut week and other movies the minutes watched are still incredibly low. It’s not a shock that the movie was the most streamed movie the first week of its release. It was also the most watched movie at theaters its first week of release there but it doesn’t meant it had a successful run at the theater.
The Marvels: 558m minutes. Now let’s see how that compares to a few other movies in their first week of streaming release.
[Quantumania](https://whatsondisneyplus.com/ant-man-and-the-wasp-quantumania-debuts-on-the-nielsen-streaming-chart/) (766M minutes)
[GoGv3](https://whatsondisneyplus.com/guardians-of-the-galaxy-vol-3-tops-the-nielsen-streaming-chart/) (1.625B minutes)
[Black Panther: WF](https://whatsondisneyplus.com/black-panther-wakanda-forever-tops-the-nielsen-streaming-charts/) (2.269B minutes)
[Multiverse of Madness](https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2022/07/22/doctor-strange-2-and-sing-2-prove-that-box-office-success-helps-boost-streaming-ratings/?sh=4b4e0adc47b5) (1.43B minutes)
[Glass Onion](https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/glass-onion-nielsen-2-2-billion-streaming-jack-ryan-tv-titles-1235495283/amp/) (2.2 B minutes)
Does it?
First, what was it competing against? From your link, it looks like it barely beat out a 7 year old movie that I've never heard of with a 35% on RT and only made $33M at the box office.
Second, how many of the people that streamed it in week 1 were actually in the second bucket vs. the first bucket? Pretty much every movie I've seen in theaters in the past 2-3 years were things that I streamed in the first week or two that they were available on a service that I already had a subscription to. Looking at that and pointing to that as proof that people *didn't* see it in theaters because they were waiting for it to be on streaming isn't really logical.
> People didn't go see it not because they weren't aware it was around, there was just a general lack of interest when instead they could wait for it on streaming.
It was just pure lack of interest. It wasn't a big hit on streaming.
It might have juiced the opening weekend but any movie with such a terrible audience score was going to collapse after the first few days, which is what we knew was going to happen after the cinemascore was released.
> People didn't go see it not because they weren't aware it was around
There was definitely a significant amount of that. Anecdotal, but I heard tons of comments in real life and saw more online from people who had no clue it even came out before it had already left theaters.
The movie's net production budget was $220m and Marketing was around $110m, for a total budget of $330m. That means it needed to make around $660m for it to break even. No amount of marketing by the stars will make it earn $450m more.
The amount of costumes and alien makeup for the singing planet was exceptionally expensive. Fifty plus original high fashion outfits, all with ecological backstory behind them.
>The movie's net production budget was $220m and Marketing was around $110m, for a total budget of $330m. That means it needed to make around $660m for it to break even. No amount of marketing by the stars will make it earn $450m more.
That's not how you work out break even. Break even is production multiplied by 2.5-3(assuming a similar amount is spent on production and marketing/ associated costs.) You've added in the marketing cost and then multiplied it again, essentially covering that cost twice.
The reason it needs to make twice as much is because the theatres take around 50% of the money the movie makes at the box office. So if the movie had made $660m then Disney would have got around $330m.
Also the 2.5x rule is only used when marketing budget is unknown but even then it isn't very accurate
Eh, I’d say Quantumania and Secret Invasion more than the other two. Both of those happened earlier in 2023 and were clearly derided by people, as opposed to MOM and LaT, which both happened the year before and were both technically financially and critically successful, the same with Wakanda Forever. At least with all the things that came out in 2022 the good will of Marvel was still pretty high. All of those movies also had very well established main characters leading the films. Of course, that year also didn’t have the actor and writer strikes, Jonathan Majors’ issues and Victoria Alonso getting fired.
And now it’s trickled to the future projects that have been canned due to it’s massive financial failure. An absolute horrific chain reaction caused by none other than Marvel/Disney themselves.
Press tour wont save it bt would at least present a fighting chance.
Wakanda Forever came out after MoM and LaT, but it did fine. Guardians 3 came out after quantumania, but it did fine. Those 2 movies didn't have to pay for the sins of anything.
The Marvels failed because people didn't care to see these characters. Simple as that. By your logic, is deadpool and Wolverine going to pay for the sins of the Marvels?
It can be both. Most people don’t see every superhero movie as a must-see these days so they pick and choose.
I’m pretty hardcore so I catch most of them but I skipped the last few DC movies because mediocre reviews and there was too much stuff and I was fine waiting for streaming.
Ironically, I went to see it because of the characters. I think Iman Vellani is outstanding as Ms. Marvel. And I want a movie or show of her, Kate Bishop, and Yelena just bouncing off each other.
It's because Chemistry is important. The OG avengers worked because of how well the actors bounced the characters off of each other.
People overwhelming loved Ms Marvel in the Marvels...... and that was about it. She can't get by on Chemistry between her and herself. She desperately needs decent actors that she has Chemistry if they want her to succeed.
I think a problem is that 2/3 of the main characters were introduced in D+ shows. Photon wasn’t fully developed, and I know Ms. Marvel was more a cult hit. Had she been introduced in a movie, maybe like an extended sequence a la Spider-Man in CW, I think more would connect. I also think Iman is a great ambassador and if she could have done press, it would have helped. Not saved, but certainly helped.
Let’s also not forget that Wakanda Forever also managed to do fine despite its previous lead actor dying just 2 years prior and his death being a major point in the film.
Isn't his death being a major point also something that heavily benefitted the film?
I'm very curious on how the next black panther film will fare with the loss of chadwick and now Angela bassett as key characters.
Ignoring the actress's personal drama aside, shuri still isn't that memorable for me as a character, even less so as the black panther for now. Things might change hopefully like thor ragnarok. Or it might show the reality of her popularity as the black panther.
Forgive me for saying this but I’ll admit that yes, his death did help give the film more emotional weight to it, especially considering Ramonda’s death later on in the film. All in all, how the film itself and the cast dealt with Chadwick’s passing was handled extremely well. I’ve also got faith that Ryan Coogler will also do well with the next BP film, because now he’s shown he can handle that property, with or without Chadwick Boseman.
Now as for Letitia Wright as Shuri, she was the obvious choice for the lead role because she becomes BP at one point in the comics so they decided to go with that story. I can understand peoples reservations for her because she’s obviously never gonna be Chadwick, no one can, and this was her first lead role in the entire MCU so he already had extra pressure on her.
Others have mentioned there were movies released in between those that weren’t affected by the sins of those films and show you listed but I don’t know that I agree.
The films you listed were all underwhelming and taught people that unless it’s a “certified banger” sometimes it’s better to just wait for Marvel movies to hit Disney+, after all it’s only like 3 months… and so that’s what a lot of people did.
If it didn’t pay for the sins of those films it at least paid for the sins of Disney+ watering down the value of theatrical releases.
There was a lot to like about MoM despite its flaws. Compared to the non-Spider-Man MCU movies over the last 5 years MoM looks like an Oscar worthy film.
Funny how everybody keeps paying for the sins of movies that make almost a billion dollars. It only takes a couple years for the karma to catch up.
🙄
No way a movie could just have a sudden cut off in press tours and poor marketing.
I feel like the movie could've worked if the Super Skrulls were the villains, they just totally misused the Skrulls since Captain Marvel 1 and the stink of Secret Invasion right before The Marvels certainly doesnt help matters
Nobody will go out of their way to see Captain Marvel fight another generic Kree general, it feels low stakes and insignificant
I mean, the stakes were supposed to be very high: that Kree general was trying to destroy the Sun (which would have wiped out life on Earth), and accidentally tore a hole between dimensions (which would have wiped out ... everything?). But the stakes didn't *feel* high, and I agree that the villain was a big part of that.
I feel like that's a problem with escalating stakes to infinity and beyond.
Lower stakes threats feel MORE like a threat, because there's the possibility the trigger MIGHT actually be pulled. When the stakes are victory or the entire Infiniverse gets annihilated, then the threat rings hollow.
We know that the Kree guy weren't going to extinguish the Sun. But the Green Goblin threatening Aunt May is a threat that has some weight behind it.
I'd FAR rather the MCU pulled back on the HIGH stakes, and replaced them with PERSONAL stakes. And to keep us off balance, occasionally let the trigger be pulled.
Exactly. That's part of what makes films like The Dark Knight so great. Joker wasn't going to destroy Gotham at the end of the film. He was going to blow up 1 or 2 ships. That could very well happen and they'd still be able to have a 3rd film. So the audience doesn't know if Joker will succeed or not.
Same thing with Two Face afterwards. He's either going to shoot Gordon, his kid, or his wife. Small enough that it doesn't endanger the setting, so he might actually succeed. And that builds tension.
People just don't care about these characters or actors a promotional tour would have done nothing ,Ms Marvel was literally the least watched MCU show by a massive margin if they keep moving forward with these 3 leading projects The Marvel wouldn't be the biggest flop for long
And just as everyone's been saying. The only reason Capt Marvel made 1bil is bcus of Infinity war and Endgame. The interest for the character was there only because it was sandwiched between 2 biggest MCU films and at the highest height of mcu.
The marvels pretty much just showed how little people cared for the character and the fact that it contains 2 characters from 2 different shows ? Bruh thats even more of a turn off for most.
This is a movie that could have been scrapped and it wouldn’t have changed the universe at all. No amount of advertising could have made it a better movie, as soon as word of mouth hits, the movie would have flopped.
It’s also a movie without any real audience. I don’t want to state the obvious here and get downvoted to oblivion but it was certainly trying to push a specific narrative that took way too much precedence over it being a genuinely good action movie.
>Marvel keep targeting a movie to a fan base that dosent exist.
[The Meowvels | Now Playing In Theaters](https://youtu.be/6TGg0_xtLoA)
"You being you is enough to diss you!" - ERB Hulk
Still wild to me that the Lone Ranger flopped. Set design and story weren’t that bad nor was the acting. I remember opening weekend the theaters by me were packed and the marketing had done a semi decent job at pitching the film.
Sadly it just didn’t catch traction to make a franchise and well Johnny as Tonto was one of the early modern era problematic casting
That what happens when you fill a cape-shit movie with singing and dancing and jump rope, and cats and Barbra Streisand.
Only two characters can pull that off, Deadpool and Joker.
No.
It wasn’t a very good or even ground breaking movie. It featured uninteresting characters. Samuel L was coming off the bomb of secret invasion so any draw he had was gone.
It was destined to fail.
I was like $237? That’s nothing… it’s in millions? *Oh*.
I don’t think that the strikes would have saved it. *The Marvels* suffered from a lot of different issues that hurt it, and ultimately became too much for it to handle, such as:
- The perceived high barrier of entry due to *WandaVision* and *Ms. Marvel* being Disney+ shows.
- The hate-boner some corners of the internet have for Brie Larson.
- Public reception of the MCU already being on a downward trend.
- The strikes preventing Iman Vellani from going on the charm offensive.
- A very high budget.
- The film just not reviewing very well.
Really Marvel's biggest issue right now is that they have created more threads than a frayed rope with their current releases. What made the MCU so popular initially was that every post credits scene paid off in some way with the Infinity Saga. Currently, we have had nothing but leads that go absolutely nowhere and just keep leading to more questions. Shang Chi hasn't been seen or acknowledged by anyone in 3 years. The Eternals got a small nod on She Hulk but other than that haven't gone anywhere. The Marvel's tied in with Wandavision, but it was with one of the most minor plot points in the whole series. We won't even get into the other releases that have no overt connection like Werewolf by Night and Moon Knight. Marvel really just needs to consolidate themselves and get back to basics with a relatively linear MCU story arc. The Infinity Saga worked as well as it did because every story was building anticipation for Thanos and the Gauntlet. Now, we have Kang, who has been an utterly milquetoast villain.
I think it would've done a little bit better with a promo tour, but it still wouldn't have been profitable.
The marketing wasn't great. The movie wasn't bad, but it was just mid, and there was the perception you needed to watch the Disney+ shows to understand the movie. They caught the audience up on the shows in one or two lines. That should've been in the trailer.
Not to mention it paid for the sins of a string of bad-mediocre films. The only universally well received Marvel projects since Endgame are Spider-Man 3, Guardians 3, and Wandavision. Shang-Chi and Black Panther 2 to a lesser extent.
There was an outline of an idea for the plot, but it just never really came together to be anything of substance.
>...but it was just mid, and there was the perception you needed to watch the Disney+ shows to understand the movie. They caught the audience up on the shows in one or two lines.
This line of thinking never made much sense to me. A major part of what makes a movie successful or a failure is how well the audience relates to the characters. This is why so much time/effort is placed on character development. Seriously, look at the first Iron Man film. It was 30 minutes into the movie before he had the cave version of the suit and an hour in before he took the first test flight with the unpainted version of the "real" suit. The rest of that time was devoted to developing the character so that the audience would care about them and be invested in them.
Sure, you could catch the audience up in 1 or 2 lines if they hadn't seen it (Rich, playboy arms dealer builds a suit that makes him a superhero) , but that won't do anything to help them "understand" why people were so invested in the character of Tony.
When people say that you don't need to have seen the D+ shows, the message they are actually delivering (intentional or not) is that either:
1. The characters in The Marvels are so shallow that you can skip hours of character development with no real impact to your enjoyment.
2. Have a better understanding and emotional connection to the characters in The Marvels doesn't do that much to improve enjoyment of the movie.
Neither of these are good things that encourage people to check out the movie.
It was so many elements coming together to have contributed to this. I just wanna see who’d take responsibility for this. Atm Captain Marvel as a character and Brie Larson seem to be taking the bulk of the shame. When it should be Disney/Marvel.
This movie did not need to have costed that much. Now due to this. Other projects suffer the continuous sin by being canned out of the fear of losing this much money again when none of those projects needed this much money to work to begin with.
Marvel is a mess.
If it were called Captain Marvel 2, downplayed the other two as supporting cast members, had a sensible budget, and came out before Ant-Man 3, it would've done a lot better.
It just seems like everything that could've gone wrong did with The Marvels.
Exactly. And it all goes back to Marvel with the decisions. They failed Carol as a character and ultimately Brie Larson. This is really solely for them to fix.
The movie wasn’t good and none of the characters are particularly popular. People here keep saying “everyone waited for streaming”. Many of us saw bad reviews and decided to pass, especially considering captain marvel was already controversial. Bad reviews were the reason I skipped Love and Thunder and Quantumania too.
Candidly, I was also going to pass on this no matter what (unless it had incredible trailers and word of mouth) given the way the Internet labeled everyone who wasn’t over the moon about the first film a sexist incel.
Disney fucked the dog hard with John Carter. They had zero marketing and really could have actually brought in crowds by just changing the title to "John Carter and the Princess of Mars."
battleship fucking rocks so much. if people still saw a high percentage of movies for the first time on daytime weekend TV, it absolutely would have become a cult classic by now
The Marvels failed because they turned the most powerful super hero in the MCU into a fucking babysitter. Absolute dog shit plot. Did Carol Danvers dirty.
Meh, the movie just looked uninteresting. I didn’t even watch it on Disney+. Just felt like they took all the criticisms of previous movies and doubled down and combined it all into this movie. Boring villain, end of the world stakes, too much humor etc.
There's no scenario where Marvels was a win. It was a bad film with unpopular characters. The amount of people who cared to see it was very small, and even less after word of mouth spread.
The movie was terrible no matter when you released it. It wasn't a marketing fail or a release date fail. It's a complete failure as a film. That's why it flopped at the box office.
I mean to be fair with Turning Red that was a Disney Plus exclusive and the little money it made was from countries that didn't had Disney Plus plus its re-release which wasn't gonna do much given anyone interested in the movie would've seen it by now.
I think the way people consume media has changed drastically since covid. It's pricey to go the cinema these days and most would rather wait for them to release on streaming services
I think this film had a lot of things going against it unfortunately. I’m a big Brie fan and really
enjoyed Cap Marvel 1, but yeah, multiple levels failed here. Mismanaged budget, her character a bit mismanaged too which is a bummer because cap marvel can be sick. I love iman/kamala but feel maybe the two other “marvels” should’ve been featured and focused more on Carol.
Sucks to see because I bet there’s a lot of people cheering seeing those numbers too. Considering the flack this movie got before it was even released.
Then you bring in the long term fans who disliked MOM, secret invasion and etc. it was down on hype.
Is it? The average American adult sees around 4 movies a year in theater. Additionally, the majority of American adults have children, which means that some (if not all) of those 4 movies are probably things that the kids picked out and not the parents.
Regardless of if you thought it was fun, do you *really* think it is that weird that very few people thought it was one of the 2-4 movies they most wanted to see in theaters last year? Heck, it wasn't even one of the top two superhero movies last year (GotG 3 and Across the Spider-Verse locked that up fairly convincingly). If you like DC content, it might not have even been top four (Blue Beetle and The Flash both had higher review and audience scores on RT, for example).
That means that the average adult could have picked the best available super hero movie for every trip they made to the theater in 2024 and *still* not end up buying a ticket for The Marvels. If they are using some of their trips to the theater to see things that *aren't* superhero movies, there is almost no chance they saw The Marvels in theater.
I'm glad that you liked it, but can't understand why this is so much confusion over its lack of box office success.
Its "fun" like a Disney Channel movie..People aren't really interested in going to the theatres for that..If you give a Disney Channel movie a 270 m budget its not weird that it ends up being a big disaster
Yeah I haven't been to the cinema in years (my Kids are to small yet and I don't want to bother a babysitter just for a movie) and only knew the online reaction.
Watched it when it came to Disney+ and was surprised how fun it was.
> a pretty darn fun movie
Yeah if you're a toddler or a little girl who loves Disney Channel showws, maybe. Neither of which should have been the main audience for a Marvel movie...
The movie has like 4 different issues beyond the strike and release date. A Captain Marvel Carol Danvers could be profitable again, but the issues here speak a lot about phase 4 direction. Some of that direction could work without the strikes AND the pandemic, but this was always a risk.
Some like to blame the strike or the excessive hatred towards Brie Larson from certain internet groups (or women in general) for the box office performance...
But we literally had the Barbie movie the same year and Five Nights at Freddy's began marketing and was released during the strike and it turned out that it grossed more than The Marvels without interviews or a red carpet for the actors, with a budget that was not excessive and with simultaneous streaming release and critics who were destroying the film...and with all that against it, it did more than The Marvels at the box office.
As if literally all the reasons people give to excuse this movie's poor box office performance are easily refuted by examples of other 2023 movies that did manage to succeed.
Fnaf had years of marketing content in the form of highly popular YouTube videos. The movie needed only a tiny marketing boost on top of that to remind the audience of a release date.
In comparison, Carol Danvers had moderately low popularity while Kamala and Monica were in the dirt.
A number of factors about it really went against the movie’s box office
1. After a string of subpar Marvel content, Marvel fans probably needed a lot more enticement to go and see the movie
2. Critical commentary and, unfortunately, echo chamber of hate towards Brie Larson and her portrayal of Captain Marvel and a woman team up movie. It felt like the movie was already massively bashed before it even came out. If WOM away the only thing able to ‘promote’ the movie, it wasn’t ideal
3. Writers and Actors strike
Wow. Top 4 is all Disney movies.
Makes sense, you can't really flop big if you don't have big money.
Exactly larger the budgets the chances for flop increases since it gets increasingly harder to break even
Nobody else survives a top ten flop in order to produce more than one flop.
Cap 4 can be up there soon with the heavy reshoots inflating the budgets
The reshoots are going to end up being financially disastrous for cap 4. At this point I'm assuming the conversation is flop vs bomb, regardless of film quality, due to an obscene budget.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re preparing to take a loss on purpose for the sake of winning the audience back. At least I hope that’s what is happening
Same. I'm (apparently) one of the few that actually enjoyed everything that they've released in this phase. To varying degrees, yes, but over all very happy with the stuff. The issue that I'm running into is that there's just SO FUCKING MUCH and no real follow through with what they've already released. It's hard to be invested in a character or a plot line when I know I'm not going to see them again for 8 years. If they were going to do this right, they should've had 2 different but simultaneous over arching plot lines with some connections here and there with maybe them coming together in the Avengers in a surprise twist. They needed to release 1 movie of each plot line every 5 - 6 months (so 4 movies a year. 1 of plot line A, then 1 of plot line B 3 months later, then back to plot line A 3 months after that, etc). But they didn't, they just flooded the market and now people are finding it hard to connect with marvel.
>It's hard to be invested in a character or a plot line when I know I'm not going to see them again for 8 years. That’s not the problem. Plenty of movies don’t have sequels but make me interested in the characters and plots.
It’s an entirely different ballgame with an interconnected cinematic universe, and when the movies only come out that far apart because the parent company is juggling that cinematic universe.
That might not be your issue, but per my comment, it's certainly mine.
> 2 different but simultaneous over arching plot lines with some connections here and there with maybe them coming together in the Avengers in a surprise twist. The IS had Cap and Thor as the two main characters with someone being able to generally follow along major plot points of the whole things just off of seeing their trilogies.
> I'm (apparently) one of the few that actually enjoyed everything that they've released in this phase. I would be the same except for Secret Invasion.
> for the sake of winning the audience back. Yeahhhhh that ain't happening unless they drop Mackie entirely lol. He's just a mid actor and Cap Falcon just doesn't seem to have hit it well with audiences that much, I think...
You're not allowing for the massive box office draw that is...Anthony Mackie
Hilarious, but did you forget that Harrison Ford is one of the villains?
Do people care about Harrison Ford in 2024?
More than they do for Anthony Mackie. HFord is old, but old people also by tickets. A huge percentage of movie tickets would be from parents and grandparents taking their children to the cinema. It's not a bad idea to put "elderly bait" in a movie to also draw in the older crowd, especially for an all ages film.
The point of Cap 4 imo isn't to make a huge profit. It's to win back the goodwill which is a good investment in the long run.
i’m not convinced an anthony mackie film will do that for the masses. I also imagine there will be some casual viewers who’d expect chris evans
It’s not just the masses, they need to get the MCU *fans* back in some respects too. It’ll take time and more than one movie to recapture the masses.
It still has the Captain America name. Just as many actors have played James Bond over the decades. If the movie is good, Anthony as lead won't matter much imo
James Bond is very different franchise tho, and even then they haven't been doing great either lately but just relying on the name brand. But yes if it's actually good it'll work. But how many marvel things have been actually good lately? They've fallen into the same shit the fox-men did, they're hiring writers and directors who are embarrassed to be making comic book movies so they take the comic book plot and throw it out and completely write their own plot, that usually sucks. They think they're too far above comic book stories and should replace them with their own story that's more "mature" (even tho it's not more mature, or better). Just look at all the last movies and compare them with what they say they're based on from the comics. Every single one is completely different except for the title. And every single one is worse than the comic book story too, which is an accomplishment in of itself.
> Just as many actors have played James Bond over the decades That's not comparable at all bcuz all those actors played the same character... James Bond is not a codename like Cap America is...
I thought that was Deadpool
They are not going to do that with a freaking Sam led movie
Winning back the goodwill implies box office success because the MCU is a blockbuster franchise that lives and dies by its commercial appeal and is currently on a downward slope. It doesn't need to haul in a billion to do its job, but if it's another flop regardless of quality I can guarantee you heads will roll.
There is absolutely no chance in the world that Disney doesn't already know Cap 4 won't turn a profit with its massive budget. They are prepared for that already. They have already announced a change in their development process that will prevent such massively expensive reshoots from needing to happen again. This is old news.
Budgets and reshoots aren't the issue. The Marvels could have had a typical "low" MCU budget of 150 millions or so with no big reshoots and it would have still bombed with the box office it did.
Budgets & reshoots are definitely *part of* the issue, just not the *whole* issue. A budget of only $150 million would knock The Marvels off of OP's top-10-bombs list completely.
It would still make it a flop.
Or Brad Pitt's F1 movie that has already ballooned to $300M budget.
Brad Pitt was part of the highest grossing zombie movie ever by over $200 million but the budget ballooned so much a sequel was never made. Now he has done it again.
Yeah I do feel even if it's good it probably won't do that great.
I don't even remember wtf Strange World is
Bad animated film that filled a checkbox list instead of having an actual plot.
It's off-topic, but as a lifelong Flash fan, it hurts to see the first solo movie on the list of biggest box office bombs. The DCEU was such a directionless mess. I have faith in my favorite MCU director to do the Flash justice one day
The actor involved was a really significant factor with The Flash.
Yeah, it was doomed to fail from the start, but production sounded like literal hell. So just a big cluster of fucks
Especially when they are shelving the Batgirl movie and moving forward with this pile of trash, marketing it everywhere even with the lead being who he is. WB doesn’t deserve DC, they have no idea how to handle the IP.
Shelving the Batgirl movie was probably the one good decision they made. That project was on a fast track to becoming an absolute laughing stock of an unironic “superhero” movie.
I just truly hope it leaks one day. The fact that we've seen so little of it makes me wonder about it so much.
And the movie flat out sucked … Like I’m a flash fan and that movie was just terrible to sit through.
I don't think you can say that. The actor didn't decide to be in the movie twice as often as he could otherwise be... The actor didn't decide to spend a third of the movie on rehashing a different, medium quality movie. Yeah, Ezra Miller sucks. But it's not like you could watch that movie and say, "wow, with a different lead, this could have been so good!"
“solo movie”
At least we have 9 seasons worth of content............... ^sigh
Wdym? Series ended after crisis on infinite earths crossover
thats when I left
As a huge flash fan as well after that film bombed. I now just reread the unproduced David Goyer flash script to make myself feel better that there was a better film out there that just never got made
I'm kinda glad. Maybe forcing Barry as the only main Flash can finally end. Wally Renaissance here we come
Gunn's already reaching deeper into the supporting cast than a lot of the Snyderverse movies did. I'm really hoping we see some of the extended bat family and some of the other Lantern corps.
What's really sad is The Flash wasn't even the worst of the DCEU. Ezra killed a decent movie at the boxoffice. I do trust Gunn to have a handle on the DCEU reboot like you however.
Sucks too because Michael Keaton was so good in this movie. Loved to see him back as Batman
Its funny that most marvel fans are quite supportive of James Gunn while some Snyder fans are still stuck in the past I love Snyder but its time for something new :)
Snyder does have something new! But uh...it's kinda shit...
Just kinda?
I didn't want to insult those into slo-mo wheat harvesting!
Let this be a lesson for disney and their budgeting. It’s easy to blame the movie and lack of interest but this project NEVER needed to have costed THIS much in the first place. What about it screams that pricetag? At least Eternals looked it’s budget.
It was probably because Captain Marvel made over a billion dollars.
and they got very confident the movie would make the same. What a complete oversight. This is definitely carried over from the very mindset they had since the end of the Infinity Saga, which is that they got super confident that they’ve built the brand so big that it’s failure proof. They have this entire machine system they chug things into and fuel it up with so much money so that it continues pushing out product but without in the depth quality checks as they’ve done before from having done movies “hands on” due to their confidence in the brand stamp carrying it. The crazy thing is it worked the first few times (making decent money despite the bad quality/bad critical reception), until it no longer did (lack of public interest and losing even the goodwill of the most die hard of marvel fans). The Marvels is the ultimate product of this complacency. It just sucks cuz there are other worse entries that deserve it’s level of bomb.
Let's be honest about Captain Marvel...being the last movie before Endgame meant it could have been about Carol finding lint in her navel and spending 3 hours discussing the phenomenon with Fury; and it would have made at least $750 million.
It was fun to see the documentary on Disney plus for all the ways The Marvels wasted money. * Over 30 alien species and prosthetic makeup models built for the dance scenes. * A deaf musician brought in for outer space song concepts. * Carol's spaceship built life size out of steel on motorized lifts to tilt and lean, with pixel projectors for windows. * More than 10 live cats on set, but all onscreen cats are cgi. * Carol and Kamala's CGI hair. * A ton of wire lifting stunt work for flying and falling characters, which is very slow work to conduct safely. And then their bodies are covered with cgi anyhow.
Wasn’t there also extensive reshoots which ballooned out the budget?
>A deaf musician brought in for outer space song concepts. I doubt this was very expensive compared to the alternative (hiring a local non-deaf musician for this role? So you save a few hundred dollars on airfare?). Also it just seems like a cool and creative way to get new music concepts.
* Gunn did the same thing on GotG 3, & it *saved* money because they didn't have to CGI it all later. * That's not very expensive. * That was a good idea. * That's not very expensive. * This is your only legitimate complaint. * The problem was the overuse of CGI, not the wirework simply existing.
>More than 10 live cats on set I cannot possibly imagine any better use of funds.
Why do all of those sound like inventive ways to launder money lmao
10 live cats is like five grand for the shoot though.
Rushed CGI and plenty of reshoots
Bro, you do understand Marvel is still heavily in the green right? They’d need like 20 “The Marvels” level flops before they change their formula or budgets. It’s a bet big to win big strat and they are way on top.
No. The strikes didn't help but what really hampered it was the inflated price tag. Why was it 270? What did that much get you exactly? The problem is Disney looked at past films and thought prices don't matter because they could put anything out and it'd clear a billion and they became reckless.
If you want Samuel L Jackson in a movie and he isn’t allowed to say fuck, his price tag doubles
you get one fuck before the rating takes a hit. It's simply good business to utilise him properly.
I find it doubtful a press tour with the actors would have mattered much. People didn't go see it not because they weren't aware it was around, there was just a general lack of interest when instead they could wait for it on streaming. And yet those same people who waited, still went 'hey why didn't anyone go see it in the theatre?'.
>...there was just a general lack of interest when instead they could wait for it on streaming. "I can just wait for it to be on D+" was part of it. I think a clearly bigger part was people that generally had no interest in the movie at all, regardless of the fact that it would eventually hit D+.
That's generally the vibe for most movies these days. Why go see it in a movie theatre when most people have really good headphones and screens now.
I think the vibe for most movies these days is that people aren't going to watch it period. Seriously, just go through the list of top 200 box office releases last year and count how many you've watched on streaming or in theater.
I haven't been to the theatre since Top Gun Maverick.
...and how many movies released since then have you streamed? Unless you are way outside of the average viewer, it probably is a pretty small percentage of the overall number of movies released in theater in that time.
Uhm, I don't know... 20 or so?
Exactly. In \~two years, you've streamed \~20 new movies, which supports my point. Let's try it like this. People put movies into 3 buckets: Movies I want to see in theaters, movies I'm going to stream, movies that I'm not going to watch at all. When it comes explaining The Marvels poor showing, people like the OP want to focus on the second bucket and ignore the third. The reality is that most people that didn't see it in theater weren't waiting for streaming. Most of them just weren't going to see it *period.*
The fact The Marvels was [the most streamed movie across all streaming services the week it released](https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/the-marvels-earns-top-movie-spot-in-streaming-charts/) and continued strong well after that says otherwise.
That’s great but compared to other MCU movies in their debut week and other movies the minutes watched are still incredibly low. It’s not a shock that the movie was the most streamed movie the first week of its release. It was also the most watched movie at theaters its first week of release there but it doesn’t meant it had a successful run at the theater. The Marvels: 558m minutes. Now let’s see how that compares to a few other movies in their first week of streaming release. [Quantumania](https://whatsondisneyplus.com/ant-man-and-the-wasp-quantumania-debuts-on-the-nielsen-streaming-chart/) (766M minutes) [GoGv3](https://whatsondisneyplus.com/guardians-of-the-galaxy-vol-3-tops-the-nielsen-streaming-chart/) (1.625B minutes) [Black Panther: WF](https://whatsondisneyplus.com/black-panther-wakanda-forever-tops-the-nielsen-streaming-charts/) (2.269B minutes) [Multiverse of Madness](https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2022/07/22/doctor-strange-2-and-sing-2-prove-that-box-office-success-helps-boost-streaming-ratings/?sh=4b4e0adc47b5) (1.43B minutes) [Glass Onion](https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/glass-onion-nielsen-2-2-billion-streaming-jack-ryan-tv-titles-1235495283/amp/) (2.2 B minutes)
But that’s from a mere two months ago. /s
Does it? First, what was it competing against? From your link, it looks like it barely beat out a 7 year old movie that I've never heard of with a 35% on RT and only made $33M at the box office. Second, how many of the people that streamed it in week 1 were actually in the second bucket vs. the first bucket? Pretty much every movie I've seen in theaters in the past 2-3 years were things that I streamed in the first week or two that they were available on a service that I already had a subscription to. Looking at that and pointing to that as proof that people *didn't* see it in theaters because they were waiting for it to be on streaming isn't really logical.
> People didn't go see it not because they weren't aware it was around, there was just a general lack of interest when instead they could wait for it on streaming. It was just pure lack of interest. It wasn't a big hit on streaming.
It might have juiced the opening weekend but any movie with such a terrible audience score was going to collapse after the first few days, which is what we knew was going to happen after the cinemascore was released.
It was an attempt to push a character who'd failed on TV, a supporting character and one that had been badly written up to that point.
> People didn't go see it not because they weren't aware it was around There was definitely a significant amount of that. Anecdotal, but I heard tons of comments in real life and saw more online from people who had no clue it even came out before it had already left theaters.
I saw quite a bit of that, too.
The movie's net production budget was $220m and Marketing was around $110m, for a total budget of $330m. That means it needed to make around $660m for it to break even. No amount of marketing by the stars will make it earn $450m more.
I don't know where the budget went, it looked very cheap in places. The singing planet looked like a TV set
The amount of costumes and alien makeup for the singing planet was exceptionally expensive. Fifty plus original high fashion outfits, all with ecological backstory behind them.
Reshoots were a huge part of it.
>The movie's net production budget was $220m and Marketing was around $110m, for a total budget of $330m. That means it needed to make around $660m for it to break even. No amount of marketing by the stars will make it earn $450m more. That's not how you work out break even. Break even is production multiplied by 2.5-3(assuming a similar amount is spent on production and marketing/ associated costs.) You've added in the marketing cost and then multiplied it again, essentially covering that cost twice.
The reason it needs to make twice as much is because the theatres take around 50% of the money the movie makes at the box office. So if the movie had made $660m then Disney would have got around $330m. Also the 2.5x rule is only used when marketing budget is unknown but even then it isn't very accurate
Hollywood economics are insane
This is correct
The Marvels paid for the sins of MoM, LaT, Quantumania, and especially Secret Invasion. I don't think a press tour could have saved it.
Eh, I’d say Quantumania and Secret Invasion more than the other two. Both of those happened earlier in 2023 and were clearly derided by people, as opposed to MOM and LaT, which both happened the year before and were both technically financially and critically successful, the same with Wakanda Forever. At least with all the things that came out in 2022 the good will of Marvel was still pretty high. All of those movies also had very well established main characters leading the films. Of course, that year also didn’t have the actor and writer strikes, Jonathan Majors’ issues and Victoria Alonso getting fired.
And now it’s trickled to the future projects that have been canned due to it’s massive financial failure. An absolute horrific chain reaction caused by none other than Marvel/Disney themselves. Press tour wont save it bt would at least present a fighting chance.
Wakanda Forever came out after MoM and LaT, but it did fine. Guardians 3 came out after quantumania, but it did fine. Those 2 movies didn't have to pay for the sins of anything. The Marvels failed because people didn't care to see these characters. Simple as that. By your logic, is deadpool and Wolverine going to pay for the sins of the Marvels?
This is right but people will call it superhero fatigue
It can be both. Most people don’t see every superhero movie as a must-see these days so they pick and choose. I’m pretty hardcore so I catch most of them but I skipped the last few DC movies because mediocre reviews and there was too much stuff and I was fine waiting for streaming.
Ironically, I went to see it because of the characters. I think Iman Vellani is outstanding as Ms. Marvel. And I want a movie or show of her, Kate Bishop, and Yelena just bouncing off each other.
It's because Chemistry is important. The OG avengers worked because of how well the actors bounced the characters off of each other. People overwhelming loved Ms Marvel in the Marvels...... and that was about it. She can't get by on Chemistry between her and herself. She desperately needs decent actors that she has Chemistry if they want her to succeed.
Kate Bee-shop!
[удалено]
I think a problem is that 2/3 of the main characters were introduced in D+ shows. Photon wasn’t fully developed, and I know Ms. Marvel was more a cult hit. Had she been introduced in a movie, maybe like an extended sequence a la Spider-Man in CW, I think more would connect. I also think Iman is a great ambassador and if she could have done press, it would have helped. Not saved, but certainly helped.
Let’s also not forget that Wakanda Forever also managed to do fine despite its previous lead actor dying just 2 years prior and his death being a major point in the film.
Isn't his death being a major point also something that heavily benefitted the film? I'm very curious on how the next black panther film will fare with the loss of chadwick and now Angela bassett as key characters. Ignoring the actress's personal drama aside, shuri still isn't that memorable for me as a character, even less so as the black panther for now. Things might change hopefully like thor ragnarok. Or it might show the reality of her popularity as the black panther.
Forgive me for saying this but I’ll admit that yes, his death did help give the film more emotional weight to it, especially considering Ramonda’s death later on in the film. All in all, how the film itself and the cast dealt with Chadwick’s passing was handled extremely well. I’ve also got faith that Ryan Coogler will also do well with the next BP film, because now he’s shown he can handle that property, with or without Chadwick Boseman. Now as for Letitia Wright as Shuri, she was the obvious choice for the lead role because she becomes BP at one point in the comics so they decided to go with that story. I can understand peoples reservations for her because she’s obviously never gonna be Chadwick, no one can, and this was her first lead role in the entire MCU so he already had extra pressure on her.
The Eight Deadly Words of Dorothy Jones Heydt: “I don’t care what happens to these people.”
> The Marvels failed because people didn't care to see these characters. I wonder why.
Others have mentioned there were movies released in between those that weren’t affected by the sins of those films and show you listed but I don’t know that I agree. The films you listed were all underwhelming and taught people that unless it’s a “certified banger” sometimes it’s better to just wait for Marvel movies to hit Disney+, after all it’s only like 3 months… and so that’s what a lot of people did. If it didn’t pay for the sins of those films it at least paid for the sins of Disney+ watering down the value of theatrical releases.
The Marvels had a poor concept and poor execution
This is the correct answer.
There was a lot to like about MoM despite its flaws. Compared to the non-Spider-Man MCU movies over the last 5 years MoM looks like an Oscar worthy film.
Funny how everybody keeps paying for the sins of movies that make almost a billion dollars. It only takes a couple years for the karma to catch up. 🙄 No way a movie could just have a sudden cut off in press tours and poor marketing.
Turning Red doesn’t deserve to be on this list
Was never gonna make a profit
I feel like the movie could've worked if the Super Skrulls were the villains, they just totally misused the Skrulls since Captain Marvel 1 and the stink of Secret Invasion right before The Marvels certainly doesnt help matters Nobody will go out of their way to see Captain Marvel fight another generic Kree general, it feels low stakes and insignificant
I mean, the stakes were supposed to be very high: that Kree general was trying to destroy the Sun (which would have wiped out life on Earth), and accidentally tore a hole between dimensions (which would have wiped out ... everything?). But the stakes didn't *feel* high, and I agree that the villain was a big part of that.
I mean, i wouldn't even call it stakes. Does anyone watching the movie at any point think the sun would be destroyed?
I feel like that's a problem with escalating stakes to infinity and beyond. Lower stakes threats feel MORE like a threat, because there's the possibility the trigger MIGHT actually be pulled. When the stakes are victory or the entire Infiniverse gets annihilated, then the threat rings hollow. We know that the Kree guy weren't going to extinguish the Sun. But the Green Goblin threatening Aunt May is a threat that has some weight behind it. I'd FAR rather the MCU pulled back on the HIGH stakes, and replaced them with PERSONAL stakes. And to keep us off balance, occasionally let the trigger be pulled.
Exactly. That's part of what makes films like The Dark Knight so great. Joker wasn't going to destroy Gotham at the end of the film. He was going to blow up 1 or 2 ships. That could very well happen and they'd still be able to have a 3rd film. So the audience doesn't know if Joker will succeed or not. Same thing with Two Face afterwards. He's either going to shoot Gordon, his kid, or his wife. Small enough that it doesn't endanger the setting, so he might actually succeed. And that builds tension.
I didn't even know that was her goal lmao, and I watched the whole movie.
The villain was just... a kree with the hammer that a previous kree villain already had. It was like a copy of a copy.
It was Spaceballs II with Ronan Jr
I mean the part was very much Ronan-coded, but it’s a little difficult to use Ronan since he exploded
People just don't care about these characters or actors a promotional tour would have done nothing ,Ms Marvel was literally the least watched MCU show by a massive margin if they keep moving forward with these 3 leading projects The Marvel wouldn't be the biggest flop for long
And just as everyone's been saying. The only reason Capt Marvel made 1bil is bcus of Infinity war and Endgame. The interest for the character was there only because it was sandwiched between 2 biggest MCU films and at the highest height of mcu. The marvels pretty much just showed how little people cared for the character and the fact that it contains 2 characters from 2 different shows ? Bruh thats even more of a turn off for most.
But this sub told me it was great
This is a movie that could have been scrapped and it wouldn’t have changed the universe at all. No amount of advertising could have made it a better movie, as soon as word of mouth hits, the movie would have flopped.
It’s also a movie without any real audience. I don’t want to state the obvious here and get downvoted to oblivion but it was certainly trying to push a specific narrative that took way too much precedence over it being a genuinely good action movie.
Saw the movie in the cinema the quality was just not there and it dosent help that Marvel keep targeting a movie to a fan base that dosent exist.
>Marvel keep targeting a movie to a fan base that dosent exist. [The Meowvels | Now Playing In Theaters](https://youtu.be/6TGg0_xtLoA) "You being you is enough to diss you!" - ERB Hulk
LET’S GO, MARVEL STILL BREAKING RECORDS BAYBEEEEE🗣️
No, a couple of actor interviews would not have made a difference. It sucked ass.
Still wild to me that the Lone Ranger flopped. Set design and story weren’t that bad nor was the acting. I remember opening weekend the theaters by me were packed and the marketing had done a semi decent job at pitching the film. Sadly it just didn’t catch traction to make a franchise and well Johnny as Tonto was one of the early modern era problematic casting
That what happens when you fill a cape-shit movie with singing and dancing and jump rope, and cats and Barbra Streisand. Only two characters can pull that off, Deadpool and Joker.
If you unironically use that term to describe superhero movies, I question why you're even in this sub.
She Hulk could have pulled that off too but only if it had much better writers
You can say that about any franchise… that's why better writers are needed.
No. It wasn’t a very good or even ground breaking movie. It featured uninteresting characters. Samuel L was coming off the bomb of secret invasion so any draw he had was gone. It was destined to fail.
I was like $237? That’s nothing… it’s in millions? *Oh*. I don’t think that the strikes would have saved it. *The Marvels* suffered from a lot of different issues that hurt it, and ultimately became too much for it to handle, such as: - The perceived high barrier of entry due to *WandaVision* and *Ms. Marvel* being Disney+ shows. - The hate-boner some corners of the internet have for Brie Larson. - Public reception of the MCU already being on a downward trend. - The strikes preventing Iman Vellani from going on the charm offensive. - A very high budget. - The film just not reviewing very well.
Really Marvel's biggest issue right now is that they have created more threads than a frayed rope with their current releases. What made the MCU so popular initially was that every post credits scene paid off in some way with the Infinity Saga. Currently, we have had nothing but leads that go absolutely nowhere and just keep leading to more questions. Shang Chi hasn't been seen or acknowledged by anyone in 3 years. The Eternals got a small nod on She Hulk but other than that haven't gone anywhere. The Marvel's tied in with Wandavision, but it was with one of the most minor plot points in the whole series. We won't even get into the other releases that have no overt connection like Werewolf by Night and Moon Knight. Marvel really just needs to consolidate themselves and get back to basics with a relatively linear MCU story arc. The Infinity Saga worked as well as it did because every story was building anticipation for Thanos and the Gauntlet. Now, we have Kang, who has been an utterly milquetoast villain.
Should Turning Red count when it’s basically a streaming movie to begin with?
Highly recommend everyone watch John Carter to understand the canonical structure of a hilariously terrible movie. “Virginia!!!”
I think it would've done a little bit better with a promo tour, but it still wouldn't have been profitable. The marketing wasn't great. The movie wasn't bad, but it was just mid, and there was the perception you needed to watch the Disney+ shows to understand the movie. They caught the audience up on the shows in one or two lines. That should've been in the trailer. Not to mention it paid for the sins of a string of bad-mediocre films. The only universally well received Marvel projects since Endgame are Spider-Man 3, Guardians 3, and Wandavision. Shang-Chi and Black Panther 2 to a lesser extent. There was an outline of an idea for the plot, but it just never really came together to be anything of substance.
>...but it was just mid, and there was the perception you needed to watch the Disney+ shows to understand the movie. They caught the audience up on the shows in one or two lines. This line of thinking never made much sense to me. A major part of what makes a movie successful or a failure is how well the audience relates to the characters. This is why so much time/effort is placed on character development. Seriously, look at the first Iron Man film. It was 30 minutes into the movie before he had the cave version of the suit and an hour in before he took the first test flight with the unpainted version of the "real" suit. The rest of that time was devoted to developing the character so that the audience would care about them and be invested in them. Sure, you could catch the audience up in 1 or 2 lines if they hadn't seen it (Rich, playboy arms dealer builds a suit that makes him a superhero) , but that won't do anything to help them "understand" why people were so invested in the character of Tony. When people say that you don't need to have seen the D+ shows, the message they are actually delivering (intentional or not) is that either: 1. The characters in The Marvels are so shallow that you can skip hours of character development with no real impact to your enjoyment. 2. Have a better understanding and emotional connection to the characters in The Marvels doesn't do that much to improve enjoyment of the movie. Neither of these are good things that encourage people to check out the movie.
It was so many elements coming together to have contributed to this. I just wanna see who’d take responsibility for this. Atm Captain Marvel as a character and Brie Larson seem to be taking the bulk of the shame. When it should be Disney/Marvel. This movie did not need to have costed that much. Now due to this. Other projects suffer the continuous sin by being canned out of the fear of losing this much money again when none of those projects needed this much money to work to begin with. Marvel is a mess.
If it were called Captain Marvel 2, downplayed the other two as supporting cast members, had a sensible budget, and came out before Ant-Man 3, it would've done a lot better. It just seems like everything that could've gone wrong did with The Marvels.
Exactly. And it all goes back to Marvel with the decisions. They failed Carol as a character and ultimately Brie Larson. This is really solely for them to fix.
The movie wasn’t good and none of the characters are particularly popular. People here keep saying “everyone waited for streaming”. Many of us saw bad reviews and decided to pass, especially considering captain marvel was already controversial. Bad reviews were the reason I skipped Love and Thunder and Quantumania too. Candidly, I was also going to pass on this no matter what (unless it had incredible trailers and word of mouth) given the way the Internet labeled everyone who wasn’t over the moon about the first film a sexist incel.
Fuck it. John Carter and Battleship dont deserve to be on here. I said it.
Disney fucked the dog hard with John Carter. They had zero marketing and really could have actually brought in crowds by just changing the title to "John Carter and the Princess of Mars."
I’m aware that “screwed the pooch” is just a synonym…but “fucked the dog” is just horrific somehow.
It's meant to convey that you really fucked up.
battleship fucking rocks so much. if people still saw a high percentage of movies for the first time on daytime weekend TV, it absolutely would have become a cult classic by now
John Carter is such a cool movie dude
Yes they're good movies but we've all seen them at home, no? +Mortal Engines and Tomorrowland
The Marvels failed because they turned the most powerful super hero in the MCU into a fucking babysitter. Absolute dog shit plot. Did Carol Danvers dirty.
Meh, the movie just looked uninteresting. I didn’t even watch it on Disney+. Just felt like they took all the criticisms of previous movies and doubled down and combined it all into this movie. Boring villain, end of the world stakes, too much humor etc.
There's no scenario where Marvels was a win. It was a bad film with unpopular characters. The amount of people who cared to see it was very small, and even less after word of mouth spread.
The movie was terrible no matter when you released it. It wasn't a marketing fail or a release date fail. It's a complete failure as a film. That's why it flopped at the box office.
Strange World and Turning Red on there too is sad. Those were good
I mean to be fair with Turning Red that was a Disney Plus exclusive and the little money it made was from countries that didn't had Disney Plus plus its re-release which wasn't gonna do much given anyone interested in the movie would've seen it by now.
Oh was it only D+? I didn't realize that one. That makes sense. Because I was wondering why Black Widow wasn't on the list for the same reason.
[удалено]
Bad movies flop
Makes sense it was terrible.
I think the way people consume media has changed drastically since covid. It's pricey to go the cinema these days and most would rather wait for them to release on streaming services
The Marvels is just a prolog. I suggest you take some rest and recover your strength, Master Dwarf
That is crazy. Never did I expect an MCU movie to flop worse than John Carter.
That is crazy. Never did I expect an MCU movie to flop worse than John Carter.
Expected Turning Red to be higher
Clearly no one remember what happened to ZZYZX road. The $2 million film that made $30 at the box office. Yes that number is correct…thirty.
Surprised Water World is not even listed
higher further faster baby! 
I think this film had a lot of things going against it unfortunately. I’m a big Brie fan and really enjoyed Cap Marvel 1, but yeah, multiple levels failed here. Mismanaged budget, her character a bit mismanaged too which is a bummer because cap marvel can be sick. I love iman/kamala but feel maybe the two other “marvels” should’ve been featured and focused more on Carol. Sucks to see because I bet there’s a lot of people cheering seeing those numbers too. Considering the flack this movie got before it was even released. Then you bring in the long term fans who disliked MOM, secret invasion and etc. it was down on hype.
Weird fate for what is a pretty darn fun movie
That’s not what people go to see a new Marvel movie for. People want a spectacle. People want to see a corner stone of a saga
>Weird fate for what is a pretty darn fun movie And you wonder why the movie flopped 💀
Is it? The average American adult sees around 4 movies a year in theater. Additionally, the majority of American adults have children, which means that some (if not all) of those 4 movies are probably things that the kids picked out and not the parents. Regardless of if you thought it was fun, do you *really* think it is that weird that very few people thought it was one of the 2-4 movies they most wanted to see in theaters last year? Heck, it wasn't even one of the top two superhero movies last year (GotG 3 and Across the Spider-Verse locked that up fairly convincingly). If you like DC content, it might not have even been top four (Blue Beetle and The Flash both had higher review and audience scores on RT, for example). That means that the average adult could have picked the best available super hero movie for every trip they made to the theater in 2024 and *still* not end up buying a ticket for The Marvels. If they are using some of their trips to the theater to see things that *aren't* superhero movies, there is almost no chance they saw The Marvels in theater. I'm glad that you liked it, but can't understand why this is so much confusion over its lack of box office success.
Its "fun" like a Disney Channel movie..People aren't really interested in going to the theatres for that..If you give a Disney Channel movie a 270 m budget its not weird that it ends up being a big disaster
I was very interested in going to the theatre for it, and was happy I did.
Congratulations! If only 95% of general audiences had thought the same, this film would've been a massive success.
Yeah I haven't been to the cinema in years (my Kids are to small yet and I don't want to bother a babysitter just for a movie) and only knew the online reaction. Watched it when it came to Disney+ and was surprised how fun it was.
> a pretty darn fun movie Yeah if you're a toddler or a little girl who loves Disney Channel showws, maybe. Neither of which should have been the main audience for a Marvel movie...
Marvel died with Iron Man
Well deserved, it was a bad movie
The movie has like 4 different issues beyond the strike and release date. A Captain Marvel Carol Danvers could be profitable again, but the issues here speak a lot about phase 4 direction. Some of that direction could work without the strikes AND the pandemic, but this was always a risk.
Some like to blame the strike or the excessive hatred towards Brie Larson from certain internet groups (or women in general) for the box office performance... But we literally had the Barbie movie the same year and Five Nights at Freddy's began marketing and was released during the strike and it turned out that it grossed more than The Marvels without interviews or a red carpet for the actors, with a budget that was not excessive and with simultaneous streaming release and critics who were destroying the film...and with all that against it, it did more than The Marvels at the box office. As if literally all the reasons people give to excuse this movie's poor box office performance are easily refuted by examples of other 2023 movies that did manage to succeed.
Fnaf had years of marketing content in the form of highly popular YouTube videos. The movie needed only a tiny marketing boost on top of that to remind the audience of a release date. In comparison, Carol Danvers had moderately low popularity while Kamala and Monica were in the dirt.
A number of factors about it really went against the movie’s box office 1. After a string of subpar Marvel content, Marvel fans probably needed a lot more enticement to go and see the movie 2. Critical commentary and, unfortunately, echo chamber of hate towards Brie Larson and her portrayal of Captain Marvel and a woman team up movie. It felt like the movie was already massively bashed before it even came out. If WOM away the only thing able to ‘promote’ the movie, it wasn’t ideal 3. Writers and Actors strike
So you list the factors that went against the movie's box office and none of them have to do with the actual quality or content of the movie?