Will Donahue ‘24
Chief Copy Editor
Barring some kind of box office miracle between the time I’m writing this article and the time it’s published, things aren’t looking too hot for “The Marvels.” According to Deadline’s projections, the film is eyeing a $75M–$80M domestic opening weekend – roughly 50% of the $153M run of the first “Captain Marvel” in 2019. This underperformance may stem from a number of factors, from the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike preventing a full marketing tour to audience burnout on tentpole superhero movies. But regardless of the reason, one fact appears more certain than ever: Marvel’s fifteen-year reign over the box office is at an end.
That’s not to say the studio has never known a flop until now; “The Incredible Hulk” (2008) remains the lowest-grossing entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, earning only $264M on a $150M budget. But in recent years, the flops are flopping one after the other. Back in February of this year, “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” failed to break even with a worldwide gross $476M. Four months later, only 994k households viewed “Secret Invasion” within the first five days of its premiere, marking the second-lowest viewership of any Marvel Disney+ show since “Ms. Marvel” in 2022. There have been hits here and there; “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” and “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” all saw critical and commercial success. But the misses are more frequent than ever.
And that’s only in terms of the box office; critically, the MCU is in another dire position. Having barely consumed any Marvel media since 2019, I cannot personally vouch for the middling reviews as of late, but I can vouch for my own disinterest in jumping back on the Marvel train. Like it or not, “Avengers: Endgame” was a natural stopping point for the MCU. Eleven years of build-up culminated in the second-highest grossing movie of all time, complete with send-offs to all of the franchise’s major characters. But now, that decade of buildup – that overarching sense of direction – is a thing of the past. And understandably so: I can’t imagine a satisfying way to continue a franchise after a movie so climactic that its title is literally “Endgame.”
Despite Marvel pumping out three movies and three seasons of TV every year now, I don’t think they will ever recapture the lighting-in-a-bottle that was the MCU pre-2019. At the beginning of the month, Variety published an inside scoop on the behind-the-scenes issues rocking the studio, including overworked VFX artists, inflated budgets, and domestic abuse allegations against one of their biggest stars – all of which have been co-existing with an unprecedented string of superhero movies bombing at the box office. With all of these factors at play, I can’t help wondering: will the MCU ever bounce back? Or is this franchise doomed to fade deeper and deeper into irrelevance until it collapses under the weight of its own legacy? Until Marvel seriously reevaluates their habits, I’m leaning towards the latter option.
Featured image courtesy of Deadline
Leave a Reply