Meme - Ryan Long: "Enormous win went to treat myself to marvels and have the entire theatre to myself - San Jose Wednesday!"
‘The Marvels’ struggles at box office on opening weekend - "“The Marvels” finished No. 1 at the box office in its opening weekend but grossed just $47 million in domestic sales, according to studio estimates on Sunday. According to data from Comscore, the latest Marvel project is also the studio’s lowest-performing one. It finished below 2008’s “The Incredible Hulk,” the previous record-holder, which opened at just over $55 million... “The Marvels” is only the third Marvel movie to make less than $60 million during its opening weekend, and the first since “Ant-Man” opened with $57 million in 2015... Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore, said the movie’s performance can serve as a moment of reckoning and reflection for the superhero genre. “It may be time to take stock and learn lessons from other genres (such as horror) and some of the notable risk-taking superhero films (Logan, Deadpool, even Joker) that enjoyed both critical and financial success,” Dergarabedian said. “It may be not so much superhero fatigue, but more an issue of audiences who are looking for a more unique take on this tried-and-true genre.” The movie also tries to build on storylines and characters from the slew of Marvel television offshoots and miniseries on Disney+, such as “WandaVision” and “Ms. Marvel.” The catalog of shows, which Disney+ began churning out in 2020, “have backfired on the goal to expand the brand,” said Robbins."
'The Marvels' Review: Brie Larson Leads Sequel Loaded With MCU Baggage - "an energized if rather nondescript kick-ass fight. (There are a lot of those in “The Marvels.”)... The three “came into direct contact with some malfunctioning jump points.” (There are a lot of explanations like that in “The Marvels”; you may feel like you’re flashing back to the excitement of eleventh-grade chemistry class.)... Aladna, the planet where Carol has acquired a husband of convenience, Prince Yan (Park See-joon), and everyone speaks in musical numbers as if they were in a Bollywood version of “The Wizard of Oz” shot inside the multiverse’s largest Hilton Hotel atrium. As Taika Waititi established in his “Thor” films, there’s a place in the MCU for wackjob silliness. But in “The Marvels,” the bits of absurd comedy tend to feel strained, because they clash with the movie’s mostly utilitarian tone... The leaps in tone would be less jarring if “The Marvels” weren’t so skittery and episodic. You can weave the plot together in your head, but you may have a harder time pretending to know why it matters — not within the metastasizing mythos of the MCU, but simply on its own. This summer, “Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania” became the first occasion for the collective bashing of a Marvel movie that felt like something larger: a questioning of whether the MCU was dissolving into spare parts. The movie was way too jam-packed with CGI psychedelia, but, in its (mild) defense, it always gave you something to look at, and you never lost sight of what Ant-Man was up against. “The Marvel,” in its busy way, comes closer to feeling like a sequel mired in entropy... Dar-Benn feels like the generic version of Cate Blanchett’s Hela in “Thor: Ragnarok.” The movie is short enough not to overstay its welcome, though it’s still padded with too many of those fight scenes that make you think, “If these characters have such singular and extraordinary powers, why does it always come down to two of them bashing each other?”"
The Marvels is not that bad. Unfortunately, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is - "Media monsters usually come in cycles. Like a fashion trend, they'll often ride the wave of some totemic smash before diminishing returns and bored audiences relegate them to another period of obscurity. For vampires and zombies, Twilight and The Walking Dead franchises led to a box office and TV-scape littered with the ghouls, before they recently started to fade. But when it comes to the current Dr. Frankenstein of Marvel Studios, and its latest creation, The Marvels, it's hard to miss the difference. Instead of drifting off naturally, this mad scientist is harnessing some lightning — by pulling the strings behind virtually all the biggest productions propping up its superhero trend, Marvel can artificially extend the life of what would otherwise have died a long time ago. And when it comes to the doctor's eponymous monster, the chopped up, stitched-together creature is really starting to reek. For The Marvels, it's not that the movie is an outright failure. Instead, the buddy film space-romp following uber-hero Captain Marvel (Brie Larson), friendly neighbourhood "hard light"-manipulator Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani) and WandaVision's Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) is — much like Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 before it — actually a bit of a course correction. And in it director Nia DaCosta, a relative newcomer to Hollywood, was impressively able to solve one of the problems most endemic to the Marvel Cinematic Universe's now 15-year reign: the bloat. But the way DaCosta and co-screenwriters Megan McDonnell, Zeb Wells and Elissa Karasik sidestep that problem proves just how completely lost the once-exciting franchise has become... Vellani continues to prove herself the MCU's secret weapon and defacto Spider-Man replacement. Her undeniable onscreen presence, fantastic acting chops and always on-target comedic timing shine as she struggles not to embarrass herself in front of her idol, Captain Marvel. But this chemistry is far from balanced. While past Marvel productions like Eternals struggled to provide interesting character arcs for each member of its team, The Marvels takes the easy route. Danvers far overshadows the other two in terms of narrative, and her redemption journey reduces Rambeau to little more than a foil — a pathos machine designed to highlight the saddest parts of Danvers' arc. Virtually all opportunities to develop Khan's character are stripped away; no traces of the satisfyingly deep journey she went on in Ms. Marvel remain. Instead, the most interesting of the three Marvels is turned into an (incredibly competent) comic relief character on the outskirts of the action. Hauling her family along for an almost entirely unrelated B-plot shows how The Marvels is plotted more like a TV show than a movie."
The Marvels director Nia DaCosta becomes the first black woman to helm a film in MCU history - "Nia DaCosta, who made history as the youngest director ever to helm an MCU film after her success with Candyman."
Maybe no one dared to criticise her
'The Marvels' Review - The MCU's Formula Has Run Dry - "Perhaps the biggest problem with this movie is that it can’t determine what it wants to be. Written by DaCosta, Megan McDonnell, and Elissa Karasik, The Marvels is meant to be both a sequel to Captain Marvel and the Ms. Marvel Disney+ series while also picking up very important threads from WandaVision. To no surprise, this doesn’t work at all... take into consideration just how much homework is needed before starting this film. General audiences who only saw Captain Marvel cannot walk into this sequel without having watched two separate TV shows, and that disconnect is immediately felt. Viewers are rushed into the story in such a poor way that they are expected to already know every piece of lore and background information. And when the plot is already too complicated for its own good, this makes The Marvels a very tedious watch. Casual Marvel fans will have a rough time keeping up, leaving only the diehard fanatics as the ones who can enjoy the movie stress-free, and even then there are more hurdles to get over. There’s no other way to say this, but the screenplay is so butchered and the editing is so hazardous to the point where studio interference is just way too obvious. The first two acts of The Marvels are merely a string of scenes barely tied together by a loose thread. One can’t even tell when the first act ends and the second begins with there being no consistent flow whatsoever. The three leads aren’t given the proper time to grow as a team in this discombobulated edit, making it more disappointing for fans who have waited a long time to see this trio on the big screen together. The dynamic between Brie Larson and Teyonah Parris feels especially undercut given that Carol has known Monica since she was a child in the first movie. Iman Vellani is doing a lot of the heavy lifting with her natural charisma, though the script doesn’t offer her much growth when she isn’t playing the comedic relief by fangirling over superheroes... The villain is among the weakest of the entire MCU franchise, it’s hard to even remember their name throughout the movie because the role is written so by the books. Zawe Ashton’s talents are wasted... There hasn’t been an MCU film that feels this tampered with since the early days of phases one and two... Since Kamala doesn’t get much of a true arc that is more than just what’s on the surface with her powers, The Marvels doesn’t really work as a sequel to her show either. Monica’s character also doesn’t get presented with an interesting challenge until the very end. The switching places element with the three heroes is merely a gimmick for action overload (cinematographer Sean Bobbitt putting in some real work) rather than being thematically relevant too. There’s obvious turmoil running from the top to bottom of Marvel Studios right now, and it’s going to take a lot more than a cuteness overload with CGI cats to make these projects watchable. At this moment, things aren’t looking good for the future of Marvel films, yet there could still be time for Kevin Feige and his team to apply any lessons learned. Will that actually happen though, after all the continuous disappointments of phase 5? Who knows, but after sitting through the credits of The Marvels, I can say with certainty that any changes will come far later down the road as things might just be looking to get bleaker in the immediate future."
The Marvels - "In 1981, it took a misguided superpowered Rogue to drain the life force from Captain Marvel. In 2023, it was Brie Larson and The Marvels... No aspect of The Marvels is immune from either a complete lack of attention to detail or talent and often both. In a trend that seems to have started with Disney’s Star Wars: Ahsoka and continued to The Marvels, the film’s ill-fitting and occasionally garish costumes appear to be cosplay rather than something crafted by a multi-billion dollar studio. The practical sets, too, have a plastic and artificial feel that are unaided by CGI establishing shots that appear to have been generated in the year 2000. Regrettably, the CGI panoramas are not the only digital effects wanting. The Marvels is peppered with moments of laughable greenscreen and a host of poorly rendered scenes. Teyonah Parris’ first flight as Monica Rambeau looks like a homemade fan film lovingly made in someone’s garage. This subpar quality was the soup du jour, with nearly every special effects-laden shot (of which there were many) suffering by varying degrees, though admittedly without reaching The Flash level of incompetence. That said, the film’s utter lack of technical excellence is far from its greatest weakness. That honor falls to its story and main storyteller, director and head writer, Nia DaCosta, whose directorial feature-length film resume is limited to 2021’s poorly reviewed Candyman reboot. DaCosta seems to lack the most basic understanding of visual storytelling. In Captain Marvel’s first scene, the camera repeatedly and jarringly switches from steady cam to shaky cam and back again from one cut/angle to the next, giving the impression that each angle was shot with a different style in mind. When one wasn’t settled upon, the editor likely had no choice but to stitch it together with catgut and Scotch Tape. Were bizarre camera decisions the limit of DaCosta’s incompetence, we could all breathe a sigh of relief. Unfortunately, they are not. DaCosta’s script makes her direction look like Fellini in comparison. Mundane and underwhelming, if well-paced, action sequences are almost always bookended by the film’s leading trio standing around and talking about their feelings for minutes so long they still haven’t ended. Furthermore, every revelation that moves the story along comes to the group and secondary characters not from perseverance and organic discovery but via sudden and inexplicable understanding of the situation garnered by… you guessed it – more talking or by deus ex machina. The best example of this is the film’s finale (one that was unquestionably pulled out of DaCosta’s rectum). ***SPOILER In it, Parris’ Rambeau is able to look at a colossal space anomaly for a few seconds (without the aid of tools, superpowers, or experience) and completely diagnoses what it is, what has caused it, and what will fix it. Then, she becomes a magic MacGuffin in order to fix it, doing things she’s never done, thought of doing, or should have any clue how to do. ***END SPOILER*** All in all, the film feels like a ten-year-old girl’s fan fiction and is filled with slumber parties, girl-talk, debutante balls, a handsome prince who is in love with the lead, who is also a princess now… because. Oh, and a five-minute musical scene so dumb and out of place that Taika Waititi must have consulted. Even this hackneyed storytelling could be overlooked if the film’s characters were compelling or even remotely interesting. Iman Vellani, who plays Kamala Khan (aka Ms. Marvel), is both a delightful ball of energy and the only actor in The Marvels having any fun or who has anything approaching a sense of comedic timing or delivery, which could have come in handy had not most of the film’s characters attempted be its comic relief (think lady Ghostbusters). It’s a shame that DaCosta appears to be as clueless about comedy as she is about nearly every other aspect of filmmaking because Vellani’s comedic strengths are quickly mutated into the cinematic undead stumbling around looking for laughs as the rest of the cast clumsily does a bad impression of a charmingly befuddled 90s Hugh Grant character. Of the rest of the main trio, Teyonah Parris is serviceable as Monica Rambeau, which is high praise when you consider the material she was working with. This leaves us Brie Larson, who gives the weakest performance of the three. Apparently only capable of two facial expressions, blank and surprised confused concern, Larson is a black hole of charisma that sucks the energy, joy, and drama from the marrow of every scene... Captain Marvel is virtually invulnerable, and the other two are so accidentally good at what they do that neither gets so much as a bruise. There is never a sense of impending doom that the trio won’t be able to handle. In fact, their most significant hurdle to overcome, their switching places when they use their powers (except, of course, tje times that they don’t for no given reason), is easily overcome in a three-minute montage, in which the trio learns to gel while tossing a ball back and forth and playing jump rope... Ashton’s Dar-Benn is an underdeveloped goober who looks like a homeless witch and is performed with all of the imposing gravitas and presence of butter... DaCosta is the single biggest weakness of the film. So, one has to ask why a studio that has been hemorrhaging money over the last few years would put an inexperienced virtual unknown with a track record as questionable as it is limited at the head of an almost $300 million film."
Wilfred Reilly on X - "How could an action movie led by three strong different-race women, VERY CONSISTENTLY pitching a feminist and anti-establishment message, have failed? The Patriarchy, is my guess."
Meme - iamyesyouareno: "I wonder why Marvel Studios keeps losing money...
"Monica, you gotta fly."
"I don't know how"
"Use Black Girl Magic."
Actual dialogue from The Marvels"
Meme - "YES, BUT
"Don't Buy My Book"
Kelly Sue DeConnick: "PS Go see The Marvels, and do it this weekend if you can.""
‘The Marvels’ Highlights The Problems Plaguing The MCU - "Already, Marvel seems to have hit its nostalgia era; the final trailer for The Marvels featured vintage clips of Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man and Chris Evans’ Captain America, who do not appear in the film. The film’s post-credits scene even teases a character from Fox’s X-Men franchise, now rendered in uncanny CGI, devoid of texture... Marvel’s attempts to create a new team from more obscure comic book characters seem to have fallen flat, as fans still seem far more invested in the original characters... Anecdotally, when I take my kids to see a Marvel movie they tend to have fun, but they don’t express any interest in seeing these characters again. The movie evaporates from their memory the moment they leave the cinema, like pasta water draining through a colander. Frankly, I feel the same... The Marvel Cinematic Universe has grown so cluttered that Disney is expected to wipe the slate clean with the help of the popular, R-rated character Deadpool, using the upcoming Deadpool 3 as a cameo-filled nostalgia-fest and a timeline cleanse that resets the story back to simplicity... Kang is a relatively obscure villain who can die and respawn endlessly, because he has infinite variants. Which leads us to the next problem … The MCU Multiverse Was A Mistake... Marvel then tried to build on what came before by hiring Rick and Morty writers, but the MCU could never emulate what the animated series preached; that infinite realities lead to despair, nihilism and existential angst. Instead, Marvel used the multiverse to heighten the stakes—now the entire multiverse was at risk, instead of the universe, but the twist had the opposite effect; nothing seemed to mean anything, because there was always another variant, or another universe to take the place of the last."
Disney Marvel to reportedly fire "woke" writers as writers strike changes industry dynamics - "The new WGA deal has introduced clauses that could significantly impact hiring practices in the industry. The Minimum Basic Agreement (MBA) now clearly states that a showrunner must be a union writer. Subsequently, it gives them more authority in selecting the writing staff. This transformation, along with the requirement for company approval of selected writers, could lead to a more merit-based hiring system. As a result, diversity hiring may take a back seat."
Woke Is Just Part of the Problem Plaguing the MCU Now - "It’s undeniable that woke plays a role in the franchise downgrade, but it’s hardly the only reason for the MCU’s stumbles. You could blame less familiar characters for the downturn. Few people outside the Comic-Con crowd could name a single Eternal character before that film dropped. Yet the equally obscure “Shang Chi: Legend of the Ten Rings” earned better reviews and out-muscled “Eternals” at the box office. And the most recent MCU films featured fan favorites like Doctor Strange and Thor, still played by the original, beloved stars. Still, MCU maestro Kevin Feige put a heavy emphasis on woke for the fourth chapter in the superhero saga. And he’s delivered on his pledge. “Eternals” took a diverse superhero lineup and made it even more inclusive. “Love and Thunder” gives lip service to not one but two same-sex themes. “Multiverse of Madness” similarly adds a same-sex couple into the storytelling mix. None of this should matter, on paper. It’s notable that many woke projects either fail or fail to live up to the hype. Think “Charlie’s Angels,” “Men in Black: International,” “Terminator: Dark Fate” and “Lightyear” to name a few examples. Diversity can be both healthy and beneficial to a film franchise. The “Fast & Furious” franchise remains aggressively inclusive, but almost no one complains because the saga delivers on his high-octane formula. Nor does it draw attention to its casting choices. It’s diverse, not woke... It’s also obvious that Phase 4 lacks a cohesive spirit, let alone a prime directive. The earlier MCU films were building up to the Thanos challenge. They also cleverly overlapped to reinforce the “universe” in play. A cameo here, a post-credit sequence there, and the big picture slow came into focus. The Phase 4 films are all over the cultural map. “Black Widow” felt like a Jason Bourne adventure. “Thor: Love and Thunder” flirted with Adam West’s “Pow! Bam!” brand of superheroics. “Shang Chi” delivered the most traditional MCU thrills with a slick Eastern flourish. The less we think about the dour “Eternals,” the better. Where’s the master plan, the villain lurking in the shadows who can take the baton from Thanos? The quest to create more, more more content in our streaming age isn’t helping the MCU, either. We’re given a new “Star Wars” series every few months, and something similar applies to the MCU. There’s too much product right now, and none of it is particularly spellbinding. “WandaVision” proved bold and original, no doubt, but it lacks the addictive nature of a “Captain America: Civil War” or “Guardians of the Galaxy.” Bottom line? The MCU is no longer special. Fans don’t expect greatness from each new product, and they spend most of their energy debating all the super-flaws on YouTube and social media. The franchise hasn’t fallen as dramatically as the “Star Wars” theatrical model, now in dry dock seeking extensive repairs. The days of huge, de facto opening weekends for new MCU projects may soon be over."
Box Office: The Marvels $47M Lowest for MCU – What Went Wrong - “I can’t imagine that the complete absence of Brie Larson on The Marvels campaign tour has cost the sequel $106M in its opening from the first film. Surely, there’s something else going on.”
Meme - Stephen King @Stephenking: "Some of the rejection of THE MARVELS may be adolescent fanboy hate. You know, "Yuck! GIRLS!""
ThatUmbrellaGuy @ThatUmbrella: "Since you don't go to MCU movies and don't care for them, that means you rejected The Marvels, right? Does that mean you hate women?"
Stephen King: "I don't go to MCU movies, don't care for them, but I find this barely masked gloating over the low box office for THE MARVELS very unpleasant. Why gloat over failure?"
Woke Stephen King Mocked for 'Marvels' Defense - "King genuflects to the woke crowd, apologizing for saying talent should matter more than diversity when it comes to art. Rowling refuses to back down after sharing her opinions on the trans movement. He went woke. She stood up for free expression. Now, King knows he must continue appeasing the far-Left mob lest it turn on him in a New York minute. That explains why he ran to “The Marvels” defense on X... Whenever a mediocre (or worse) Comic-Con style project fails it’s always the fans’ fault. Remember how the Left and the media (but we repeat ourselves) reacted to the Lady Ghostbusters film? King’s comment is merely a variation on that theme, ignoring the fact that “Barbie” remains the year’s highest-grossing film. And it had many “yucky girls” in it. So did recent hits like “Wonder Woman” and, of course, the 2019 “Captain Marvel” blockbuster... exit polling showed 65 percent of the people who actually saw the film over the weekend were men."
Nolte: Survey Shows Women Failed to Turn Out for ‘The Marvels’ - "Now that the Disney Grooming Syndicate’s The Marvels is a bonafide box office catastrophe, we can expect the usual-usual lies about how this is all the fault of racist Trump supporters, all the fault of everything except a lousy movie with unappealing stars running around pointing at terrible CGI in a spent franchise that has worked overtime to alienate fans by taking a dump on everything they once loved about that franchise. Except. The science does not back that up... even though women outnumber men in the American population by a point or two, it is men — men! — who overwhelmingly went to see The Marvels while the ladies stayed at home. There are nearly 170 million women in this country; had just ten percent of them gone to see The Marvels, it would have been a smash hit. Men are necessary to keep the lights on, fill our bellies, ensure our safety, and kill barbarians, but we are not needed to turn a movie into a box office hit. Think about that… The audience for The Marvels, a movie sold as a female-empowerment superhero flick, was only 35 percent female. Hollywood continues to ignore human nature. Girls are girls. They like girly stuff like, oh, say, Barbie. They also like badass women who are women. Ripley from Aliens, Sarah Connor from Terminator 2, The Bride from Kill Bill, Pam Grier from Jackie Brown… These characters are iconic because they are 1) tough, 2) smart, 3) flawed, and 4) women! They behave like women. And when women behave like women, what happens, class? That’s right, women can relate to those characters, and when the audience relates to the characters, the audience becomes invested in the movie, and the movie becomes a hit. But… When you have women running around behaving like men, only female gym teachers can relate to them, and there are not enough of those to break even. And I hope that the Woke Gestapo can forgive me for what I’m about to say… Women who behave like women, even when they are killing aliens, whitey, and Bill, also appeal to men. Ripley, Sarah, The Bride, Pam, Diana Prince, and Alice are sexy… Listen, I know men are worthless… All we do is fight the wars, dig the coal, harvest the food, pave the roads, and keep everything running, but we do enjoy a little va-va-voom. Why not throw us a bone, especially when it improves your bottom line? What I’m trying to say is this… Normal people of both sexes cannot relate to this anti-human-nature content. Flying through space shooting CGI’d light out of your hands will never replace the wish-fulfillment that comes with watching two beautiful people fall in love… But thanks to the Woke Gestapo, romance and sex are now verboten (unless it’s gay romance and sex, which no one wants to watch). The New Puritanism reigns."
It's all racism and misogyny, which is why woman and minority-led Wakanda Forever failed
Meme - "Marvel Studio's
Thanos: Reality can be whatever I want.
THE CIRCLE OF ENTERTAINMENT
Find a beloved IP
Put a chick in it, make her gay and make her lame.
Product flops
Blame the "fans""
Meme - ""The Virgin
NIA DECOSTA
Director Nia DaCosta Says 'The Marvels' Haters Are "Virulent And Violent And Racist And Sexist And Homophobic"
Grosses
Domestic
$51,784,180
Worldwide
$114,702,018
THE CHAD
EMMA TAMMI
"Everyone knew they were stepping into something the fans were really excited
FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY'S
Grosses
Domestic
$128,314,475
Worldwide
$255,720,021"
Director Nia DaCosta Says ‘The Marvels’ Haters Are “Virulent And Violent And Racist And Sexist And Homophobic” - "Popular YouTuber, Ryan Kinel, reacted to DaCosta’s comments saying, “Those fans, in large part, it’s people that have legitimate criticisms of where the MCU has been going for the past several years. That’s what we’ve seen. That is exactly what they do time after time.” He added, “So you can continue to virtue signal people that are critical of your movie with those buzzwords that mean nothing anymore in the grand scheme of things, but the reality is people can see right through this.” “The Marvels” bombed at the box-office over the weekend, so it wasn’t just “racists” who didn’t want to support this movie."
Meme - "How Kelly Sue DeConnick Made 'C-List' Captain Marvel the Most Powerful Superhero in Hollywood"
"After 'The Marvels' Bombs at the Box Office, What's Next for the MCU?"
I find it interesting that there was a lot of cope about The Little Mermaid being a success, but there's none of it here
Age of Marvel Is Not Over, Even After The Marvels Bomb - "For all the flaws of Marvel’s Infinity Saga, it felt more focused. There was a set number of characters, whose stories all played out in films. Post-Avengers: Endgame, we’ve been introduced to a host of new characters who, for the most part, don’t interact with each other, whose projects all set up different storylines yet to converge, and who aren’t seen for years in between projects, making it hard for audiences to latch on to them as they did with the OG Avengers. The fact that there has been no New Avengers movie feels like a massive oversight. An Avengers film prior to The Marvels would likely have benefited the film, just as Captain Marvel greatly benefited from coming out between Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. Yet, Marvel seems intent on saving the Avengers for its Multiverse Saga conclusion with Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars, in a bid to create the next Infinity War and Endgame. But that was never the point of the Avengers. The point was to bring new characters together and solidify who they are amid their peers and global threats... Marvel Studios has also cannibalized projects that would have made great films in order to make “content” for Disney+. Secret Invasion, the ill-received Samuel L. Jackson series from earlier this year, could’ve easily been akin to Captain America: Civil War and played on the big screen, instead of becoming a haphazardly put-together show that disposed of valuable characters, didn’t share any similarities to the popular comic event by Brian Michael Bendis and Leinil Francis Yu, and actively damaged the MCU with a last-minute character power-up."
Why 'The Marvels' bombed at the box office and what it means for the future of the once-mighty MCU - "The box office wasn't the only bad news for the super-trio of Brie Larson's Captain Marvel, Iman Vellani's Ms. Marvel and Teyonah Parris's yet-to-be-monikered Monica Rambeau. Critics were divided in their reaction to The Marvels, and the movie's B-level CinemaScore pointed to a lack of fan enthusiasm as well... The Marvels was already flying into strong headwinds due to reports of behind-the-scenes troubles. Earlier this month, Variety reported that the $250 million movie went through four weeks of reshoots and noted that DaCosta moved to England during the lengthy post-production phase to begin work on her next movie Hedda, starring Tessa Thompson, while editing The Marvels remotely... several reviews noted that the film's abbreviated 105-minute runtime suggested editing room tinkering, with certain characters and storylines feeling shortchanged... While Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and Loki Season 2 provided much-needed bright spots, both also represent farewells to popular characters that Marvel maybe can't afford to lose right now."
The critics are racist and sexist too
Why 'The Marvels' Flopped at Box Office and What's Next for MCU - "Marvel has been showing recent signs of wear and tear, but “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” and “Eternals” weren’t labeled as disappointments until the end of their theatrical runs. “The Marvels” is concerning because it’s the rare misfire out of the gate for the MCU. Even in pandemic times, “Black Widow” ($80 million while landing simultaneously on Disney+), “Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” ($75 million) and “Eternals” ($71 million) landed far better starts even as the world grappled with a global health crisis. A disastrous liftoff is problematic because Marvel movies have become increasingly front-loaded, meaning these tentpoles tend to earn the bulk of their money in the first weekend of release. Fans want to be among the first to see them to avoid plot twists, cameos and other spoilers. With all the bad buzz, the $220 million-budgeted “The Marvels” may struggle to rebound as the holiday season picks up with the openings of “The Hunger Games” prequel “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” and Disney’s animated “Wish.”... It didn’t help that actors like Larson and her co-stars Teyonah Parris (as Monica Rambeau) and Iman Vellani (as Ms. Marvel) were unable to promote the film due to the SAG strike (which finally ended on Friday). But analysts believe that may have cut off only a few million in initial ticket sales. It doesn’t explain a $100 million difference from the first film... Does this mean that superhero fatigue has officially plagued the globe? Not yet. “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” ($845 million in total) and Sony’s “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” ($690 million) were hits over the summer, and 2022’s “The Batman” ($770 million) and 2021’s “Spider-Man: No Way Home” ($1.9 billion) were saviors the two prior years. But it’s been clear for the first time that fans aren’t necessarily going to reliably show up no matter what’s (or who’s) on screen. It points to a future where Marvel can no longer spotlight any ol’ superhero and expect a blockbuster smash in return. Disney, too, has proven its mortality after a remarkable stretch of sheer box-office domination. “The Marvels” joins a list of underperforming big-budget tentpoles in 2023, such as “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” “The Haunted Mansion” remake, “The Little Mermaid” and “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.”"