(IMAGE: Marvel Studios)
RAY GREENE SAYS:
Despite THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER’s “third biggest opening of the year” headlines today, if I’m Marvel or Disney, I’m a bit scared after this weekend. LOVE AND THUNDER seems to have opened at around $143 million, and everyone is reporting that as “mighty.” But I say: for a franchise title featuring one of the Marvel mainstays who goes all the way back to the AVENGERS Phase One build out, that is extremely bad news, because it continues and even accelerates an ongoing negative trend.
Here’s my logic:
A lot of what you’ll you’ll hear today is: “The previous THOR movie THOR: RAGNAROK opened with just $122 million in 2017, and LOVE AND THUNDER just crushed that!”
Actually it didn’t. When you factor in that a 2017 dollar is worth $1.15 in 2022’s money owing to the effects of five years of inflation, the openings for the two movies are basically tied, with RAGNAROK’s gross translating to $140 million in 2022 bucks.
The TOP opening of the year is DR. STRANGE AND THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS. Great for Marvel, because they’ve got slots one and three, with a Tom Cruise shaped slab of beefcake in the center of the sandwich, right?
Yes. Sort of.
But we can now conjecture that a big chunk of that MULTIMAD gross was created by a halo effect shimmering off of 2021’s SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME, in which Strange was a major secondary character, with a lesser halo effect radiating off the Scarlet Witch and WANDAVISION, though Wanda fans were infuriatingly poorly served by having that previousy intricate character turned into MULTIMAD’s cliche Marvel Big Bad.
Disney doesn’t make a nickel off SPIDER-MAN movies btw, which happen at Sony, except insofar as they use Sony’s movies to sell Spider-Man toys. So I’m leaving NO WAY HOME mostly out of this discussion, even though it preceded MULTIMAD and opened with an insane $260 million at the boxoffice. But it’s worth noting that if you look at the openings of the last three Marvel Universe titles in a row, the trajectory is a straight line going down. Also: LA Times is reporting that LOVE AND THUNDER got a Cinemascore of B+ from audiences, which is very mediocre. Apparently, MULTIMAD got a B+ too. That’s two weak audience reactions in a row for the recent Marvel spectaculars, which used to waltz away with “A” and even “A+” scores (looking at you BLACK PANTHER) time after time.
Still, MULTIMAD earned $185 million its opening weekend. So with Thor following it up at the absolute apogee of the summer movie season, there isn’t any way for me to interpret a $42 million drop-off from the previous Marvel release except as a sign people are losing interest.
Here’s my theory of why:
Too much product.
Like STAR WARS, Marvel now has a GLUT of episodic programs available at the all you can eat buffet of Disney+, including the new and rave-reviewed MS. MARVEL series and WHAT IF…?, neither of which we’ve even gotten to at my house. There are also 30 Marvel MOVIES on Disney+, all competing with LOVE AND THUNDER for my attention. If I’m one of the handful of Americans who actually do math, I might forgo the cost of gas, and of tickets and snacks, and the potential cost of a COVID infection that comes with a movie in a theatre, and stay at home and watch JESSICA JONES or, heaven forfend, STRANGER THINGS 4.
Or I might just be getting a little bored with a franchise that seems rather rudderless now that it has no discernible overarching plot at work (like that one about Thanos and the Infinity Stones). The formula feels ever-more formulaic, and instead of real growth and conflict between the various heroes, they cameo each other now, in the needless way Chris Pratt’s Star Lord shows up in LOVE AND THUNDER. Super-powered hunks of meat materialize unexpectedly, crack wise, insult each other for ten minutes, and then say the Marvel equivalent of “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” Then they’re off. They’re like the Rat-Pack, with capes.
The critics are turning on Marvel too. I don’t know if LOVE AND THUNDER is a disappointment, but I know it’s got a mediocre RottenTomatoes ranking of 68 percent, and that the reviews are spiteful and irritated. There’s a myth that big popcorn movies are critic proof, but Disney already knows better. ETERNALS was crushed by its press. Now it’s Taika Waititi’s turn in the barrel.
Or am I wrong and a curmudgeon?
What do you guys think?
TIM COGSHELL SAYS:
Sounds cromulent to me.
I also say that what they all are is critic-proof. Even when they “fail” they fall of their own weightlessness. Doesn’t matter what critics think – at all.
And… as rough as it may be, I’d rather be in the Multiverse than over at Hogwarts. They’re repossessing stuff over there.
Anybody heard the word on Elvis – this weekend? Cuz I haven’t.
Everybody I know is watching that little ass-kicking Princess movie over on Netflix.
(“LOVE AND THUNDER is the second MCU film in a row to see a dramatic box office fall-off from its predecessor.”)
MARK KEIZER SAYS:
Ray, you’re right and you’re not the only one to have these blasphemous thoughts.
I’m the first person to shower infinite huzzahs onto MCU Ringmaster Kevin Fiege. What he did with the MCU up to and including AVENGERS: ENDGAME was historic. And, oddly, that’s part of the problem. ENDGAME was tantamount to the entire moviegoing world climaxing at the same time. How do you follow that?
The answer to that is decidedly not what Marvel has been doing lately. BLACK WIDOW was a simultaneous theatrical and Disney+ release, which means the surprisingly not-bad SHANG-CHI AND THE LEGEND OF THE TEN RINGS and the awful ETERNALS were the first two Phase Four purely theatrical releases. If Marvel thought that ENDGAME would create an automatic head of steam that would propel us into caring about any damn character they carted out in Phase Four, well, they were wrong. Fans are still in love with these OG MCU characters, which accounts for the massive $260M opening weekend for SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME and the almost-as-impressive openings for DR. STRANGE AND THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS and THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER.
If Fiege thinks that the entire MCU is too big to fail at this point, financially if not creatively, he might be right. There is a cultural incentive to see these films, not for their individual merits (because MULTIVERSE and LOVE AND THUNDER are a mess), but to see where they fit into his overall plan.
Right now, there doesn’t seem to be an overall plan, although, to be fair, Thanos wasn’t introduced until 2012’s THE AVENGERS, which was the sixth MCU film. So there’s still time for Galactus or Succubus or my girlfriend’s dog to be introduced as the universe-threatening baddie that Fiege is building up to. So I’m not quite ready to consider this lack of direction a mission critical problem at this moment.
The real problem is one that Ray and I agree on: things seemed more manageable when it was just films we had to keep track of. Now we have a bunch of Disney+ content that scratches the itch at a lower price point but confuses the viewer and has us drowning in a sea of characters we’ve barely heard of but are being told to care about. That’s dangerous.
The reason STAR WARS became STAR WARS is because for 22 years, there were only three films. Now there’s lots of STAR WARS meaning there’s less good STAR WARS. Currently we’ve got 29 MCU films released since 2008 and seven MCU TV shows released since only last year. Can even the heartiest among us remember more than two scenes from any one of those films?
It’s possible that flooding the zone with content will make Disney shareholders happy. Disney+ is poised to leave a reeling Netflix in the dust. But for us common poor folk, everything up to ENDGAME was like experiencing our first love. It was filled with excitement and discovery and we’d never seen or felt anything like it.
Everything subsequent was like trying to fill that void with computer porn. There’s lots of it, it’s easily accessible, it’s satisfying enough but it’s just not the same.
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