Me have one more intangible in Marvels' favor: a way forward for MCU.
Me have written about this before in these comments (and would happy to flesh these thoughts into essay, pro bono, if Myles ever want more Monster-American representation on writing staff!). But me think biggest reason for MCU's decline is one that is least talked about: it too disconnected.
From 2011-2019, Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, and Captain America each appear in 7 movies (not counting post-credits stingers). These were characters who interacted, had history, had strong opinions about each other. In fact, they fit in to classic matriarch-patriach-craftsman-clown structure (Cap/Tony/Bruce/Thor). They were main characters, and entire 24-film arc that wrap up with Endgame was their story.
Whose story is current phase of MCU? We have more movies, and TV shows, and Doctor Strange is only character we have seen twice on big screen, and only character who has interacted with other lead character (Spidey). So who are main characters? Where are connections? It just bunch of disconnected stories about people throwing CGI blobs at each other, with no real emotional throughline.
So of course everyone lost interest. And first time that spark of interested started to rekindle — for this monster, anyway — was in Marvels' post-credit scene. Me also enjoyed movie on own merits. But Young Avengers team, led by winsome Iman Vellani, would get me invested again. Young characters are currently MCU's biggest asset, and me would be perfectly happy if Kang Dynasty, or whatever it get renamed post-Jonathan Majors, finds way to retire Dr Strange and Ant Man and we get clean slate with Kamala/Kate/Ironheart/Shuri/Spidey. Make them all hang out. Make them get on each other's nerves. Give them *some* interpersonal dynamic people will pay money to see. Because Shang-Chi doing one entertaining film and then disappearing forever not really doing it for me.
So going back to original premise, me love Brie Larson as much as next monster, but Iman Vellani was clearly star of Marvels. She have *it*, as they say in Hollywood, and that worth more than better headlines in Variety, as far as keeping this unwieldy enterprise going. (And whether that good thing in itself whole separate conversation for other day. Me have overstayed welcome and have some Christmas cookies to eat!)
This was an excellent discourse, many thanks to you both. Others have already covered my initial thoughts, and Cookie Monster got at the heart of what my biggest issue is with the current state of Marvel in that each movie used to be a solid stand alone story that was objectively good and could stand on its own, with maybe an errant line here or breadcrumb there hinting at bigger things coming. Nowadays, it's like a version of the comics where it's just *editors notes* plastered across every panel telling you what other issues to read. I enjoyed the Marvels but it is a flawed film for many reasons, and everything that lead up to it was more of the same. Between the Multiverse as a whole being too large and vague of a storytelling structure, and the Majors/Kang fiasco, there was simply too much money being spent and not a clear enough vision. I'm not nearly as excited for a Young Avengers simply because half the people they have introduced so far are barely characters, and the real stand-outs (Kate Bishop, Kamala) never even debuted on the big screen until a month ago. Now we've got the Marvel Spotlight banner which just feels like a fresh coat of paint on the Netfix Marvel show model which...not progress. I don't know if there's an easy answer here other than for them to slow down, plot out what the hell the overarching story actually is supposed to be (vague things like Multiversal War and Secret Wars are not compelling or enough of a draw to the average person), and focus on making good, standalone films again, hopefully on smaller budgets. The cost per episode of Secret Invasion still blows my mind because that show was absolutely terrible. The gulf between that and how good season 2 of Loki was surely is a good starting point for tearing this thing apart and rebuilding it from scratch. I did laugh out loud at Myles' shoutout to the Taylor Swift flack he caught; as we are all consummate consumers of pop culture, I am fine with TS making her way into some of these discussions, but it's fun to give you shit from time to time. Happy New Year to everyone, looking forward to another year of comments and reviews.🍾
Thank you for this. I was really tired of all the frankly asinine takes on the Marvels vs. Aquaman box office situation. From the context, I do believe P&A costs are part of Soderbergh's 'cost of putting a movie out.' I am very grateful for this, btw, as I wrote about the commercial failure of Shyamalan's Knock at the Cabin earlier this Spring and there were still people thinking the movie made money because its box office was twice the size of the budget.
This was a fascinating read. Thank you both. I don’t typically follow the Hollywood trades. I do work in finance / accounting in a very different industry and am no stranger to massive amounts of money flying around with a lot of hands in the pot.
I think the online criticism of the trade press for supposed bias in how they talk about these films' performances is not actually about that, as such. I think it's really about the larger story of backsliding inclusion in Hollywood. We're in the middle of a contraction that will only continue now that the drunken sailor era of streaming spending is over. But it's hard not to notice that the wave of cuts has mostly targeted projects about/by women, people of color, and the LGBTQ community (lookin' at you Max!). I think you have to evaluate this reaction within that context. These marginalized communities are seeing projects aimed at them overwhelmingly shelved, while projects that cater to straight white male audiences live on. Many TV/culture critics have already pointed out this trend. Streaming allowed for some amount of progress in inclusion and the feeling, as evidenced by all these cuts, is that the contraction will erase it all and we'll go back to the way things were where white/straight/male is the default and anything else is Other. People got a taste of what it means to see themselves reflected in mass media and now it's being taken away and they're *mad*. So this anger about this story, specifically, is reflecting that much larger issue. And the fact that Disney so despicably threw The Marvels' Black woman director under the bus, in a way they've done for *no one else*, just primed that anger.
People don't evaluate these things in a vacuum, nor do I think they're necessarily wrong about that. I look back at the big news coming out of Hollywood and here's what it looks like: a constant stream of shows/movies about women/POC/LGBTQ people are canceled/shelved in historic ways, then the Disney CEO is out there saying The Marvels' Black woman director needed more supervision on set (blaming her for the failure instead of the man really in charge of Marvel: Kevin Feige), now the entire Hollywood press is calling The Marvels a bomb when films like Aquaman and the last Ant-Man were not tarred with that analysis even with similar BO performance. While I acknowledge that your analysis of why the standards are different is sound, I think people are actually responding to this troubling trend, as opposed to just this one story.
I think the core of my and Kristen's resistance to this discourse is that attaching these efforts to the economic dimensions of this struggle is both misguided and on some level counterproductive. I agree with everything you're saying about the larger trends going on, but the second we try to suggest that the box office dimensions of the story are part of the same process we enter a realm of objectivity where the industry logic is immutable.
For instance: while Quantumania was no doubt a disappointment in its own right, it also grossed over twice as much as The Marvels globally. And Aquaman's performance is still in flux, for one, but there's also the reality that the "story" of the DCEU has already been written by the Warner Bros. decision to bring in James Gunn and effectively clear the decks after past misses like Black Adam, The Flash, and Shazam 2 (which were certainly treated as bombs by the trade press).
All of this to say that if people want to respond to that troubling trend, they would be best served responding to that troubling trend as opposed to suggesting that factual reporting about OTHER movies' box office is somehow related to it. It's just not helping anything, understandable as the underlying impulse might be.
(And for the record, I think The Marvels objectively needed more supervision only insofar as Sam Jackson was literally the only person on set who had any idea what happened in Secret Invasion, which is INSANE to me).
I completely hear this and agree that it's counterfactual and probably counterproductive. I also think it's not rational; people are in their feelings about it. For a moment there it looked like we were on the cusp of achieving a beautiful inclusive dream...and now that dream has been stolen away and the dominant power structures reinforced. The anger about that is visceral. Targeting this movie discourse specifically may be an unhelpful reaction, but I get the emotion driving it.
Thanks for engaging. If it’s helpful, the hope marginalized folks had in streaming was always going to disappoint because the profit motive was never going to be found outside of what was discovered with legacy television and film. Moreover, the folks who knew how to cultivate that revenue are the same folks that streaming hired to build it for them. So to be honest nothing was going to be different. In the same way that blue skies rhetoric was sold for cable as a democratizing, pluralistic possibility that ultimately became the opposite of both (because of what Myles talks about re fynsyn and deregulation), streaming is the same. Here’s a short piece that goes a little more in detail: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/blue-skies-again-streamers-and-the-impossible-promise-of-diversity
I appreciate the math but the big hand wave here is that 2x factor. The film's budget and marketing adds up to 380 million, but it needs 560 million to be profitable? Why? Profit is income minus expenses. What are the 380 million of additional expenses that need covering? That's a huge number to toss in the category miscellaneous.
I don't follow movie press very closely so I don't know how fair that was overall. My big thing is in the stories I did read about The Marvels' poor box office, virtually none of them mentioned what to me was the most obvious explanation, which is that the stars weren't allowed to do a big promotional push due to the strike. Now maybe I'm wrong and that wasn't a big factor in how the film did, but not mentioning it as a hypothesis feels disingenuous.
If you go look at any of the stories in the trade press, they all mention the SAG strike and the limited press they were able to do.
And the answer is that studios only get roughly 50% of box office revenue—less in China and some foreign territories—due to needing to pay theaters to rent the screens necessary to exhibit the film.
Me have one more intangible in Marvels' favor: a way forward for MCU.
Me have written about this before in these comments (and would happy to flesh these thoughts into essay, pro bono, if Myles ever want more Monster-American representation on writing staff!). But me think biggest reason for MCU's decline is one that is least talked about: it too disconnected.
From 2011-2019, Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, and Captain America each appear in 7 movies (not counting post-credits stingers). These were characters who interacted, had history, had strong opinions about each other. In fact, they fit in to classic matriarch-patriach-craftsman-clown structure (Cap/Tony/Bruce/Thor). They were main characters, and entire 24-film arc that wrap up with Endgame was their story.
Whose story is current phase of MCU? We have more movies, and TV shows, and Doctor Strange is only character we have seen twice on big screen, and only character who has interacted with other lead character (Spidey). So who are main characters? Where are connections? It just bunch of disconnected stories about people throwing CGI blobs at each other, with no real emotional throughline.
So of course everyone lost interest. And first time that spark of interested started to rekindle — for this monster, anyway — was in Marvels' post-credit scene. Me also enjoyed movie on own merits. But Young Avengers team, led by winsome Iman Vellani, would get me invested again. Young characters are currently MCU's biggest asset, and me would be perfectly happy if Kang Dynasty, or whatever it get renamed post-Jonathan Majors, finds way to retire Dr Strange and Ant Man and we get clean slate with Kamala/Kate/Ironheart/Shuri/Spidey. Make them all hang out. Make them get on each other's nerves. Give them *some* interpersonal dynamic people will pay money to see. Because Shang-Chi doing one entertaining film and then disappearing forever not really doing it for me.
So going back to original premise, me love Brie Larson as much as next monster, but Iman Vellani was clearly star of Marvels. She have *it*, as they say in Hollywood, and that worth more than better headlines in Variety, as far as keeping this unwieldy enterprise going. (And whether that good thing in itself whole separate conversation for other day. Me have overstayed welcome and have some Christmas cookies to eat!)
This was an excellent discourse, many thanks to you both. Others have already covered my initial thoughts, and Cookie Monster got at the heart of what my biggest issue is with the current state of Marvel in that each movie used to be a solid stand alone story that was objectively good and could stand on its own, with maybe an errant line here or breadcrumb there hinting at bigger things coming. Nowadays, it's like a version of the comics where it's just *editors notes* plastered across every panel telling you what other issues to read. I enjoyed the Marvels but it is a flawed film for many reasons, and everything that lead up to it was more of the same. Between the Multiverse as a whole being too large and vague of a storytelling structure, and the Majors/Kang fiasco, there was simply too much money being spent and not a clear enough vision. I'm not nearly as excited for a Young Avengers simply because half the people they have introduced so far are barely characters, and the real stand-outs (Kate Bishop, Kamala) never even debuted on the big screen until a month ago. Now we've got the Marvel Spotlight banner which just feels like a fresh coat of paint on the Netfix Marvel show model which...not progress. I don't know if there's an easy answer here other than for them to slow down, plot out what the hell the overarching story actually is supposed to be (vague things like Multiversal War and Secret Wars are not compelling or enough of a draw to the average person), and focus on making good, standalone films again, hopefully on smaller budgets. The cost per episode of Secret Invasion still blows my mind because that show was absolutely terrible. The gulf between that and how good season 2 of Loki was surely is a good starting point for tearing this thing apart and rebuilding it from scratch. I did laugh out loud at Myles' shoutout to the Taylor Swift flack he caught; as we are all consummate consumers of pop culture, I am fine with TS making her way into some of these discussions, but it's fun to give you shit from time to time. Happy New Year to everyone, looking forward to another year of comments and reviews.🍾
This was a joy to read! Thank you for diving into box office numbers.
Kristen, I'd love to hear more Fifty Shades' box office, if you are so inclined.
Thank you for this. I was really tired of all the frankly asinine takes on the Marvels vs. Aquaman box office situation. From the context, I do believe P&A costs are part of Soderbergh's 'cost of putting a movie out.' I am very grateful for this, btw, as I wrote about the commercial failure of Shyamalan's Knock at the Cabin earlier this Spring and there were still people thinking the movie made money because its box office was twice the size of the budget.
This was a fascinating read. Thank you both. I don’t typically follow the Hollywood trades. I do work in finance / accounting in a very different industry and am no stranger to massive amounts of money flying around with a lot of hands in the pot.
I think the online criticism of the trade press for supposed bias in how they talk about these films' performances is not actually about that, as such. I think it's really about the larger story of backsliding inclusion in Hollywood. We're in the middle of a contraction that will only continue now that the drunken sailor era of streaming spending is over. But it's hard not to notice that the wave of cuts has mostly targeted projects about/by women, people of color, and the LGBTQ community (lookin' at you Max!). I think you have to evaluate this reaction within that context. These marginalized communities are seeing projects aimed at them overwhelmingly shelved, while projects that cater to straight white male audiences live on. Many TV/culture critics have already pointed out this trend. Streaming allowed for some amount of progress in inclusion and the feeling, as evidenced by all these cuts, is that the contraction will erase it all and we'll go back to the way things were where white/straight/male is the default and anything else is Other. People got a taste of what it means to see themselves reflected in mass media and now it's being taken away and they're *mad*. So this anger about this story, specifically, is reflecting that much larger issue. And the fact that Disney so despicably threw The Marvels' Black woman director under the bus, in a way they've done for *no one else*, just primed that anger.
People don't evaluate these things in a vacuum, nor do I think they're necessarily wrong about that. I look back at the big news coming out of Hollywood and here's what it looks like: a constant stream of shows/movies about women/POC/LGBTQ people are canceled/shelved in historic ways, then the Disney CEO is out there saying The Marvels' Black woman director needed more supervision on set (blaming her for the failure instead of the man really in charge of Marvel: Kevin Feige), now the entire Hollywood press is calling The Marvels a bomb when films like Aquaman and the last Ant-Man were not tarred with that analysis even with similar BO performance. While I acknowledge that your analysis of why the standards are different is sound, I think people are actually responding to this troubling trend, as opposed to just this one story.
I think the core of my and Kristen's resistance to this discourse is that attaching these efforts to the economic dimensions of this struggle is both misguided and on some level counterproductive. I agree with everything you're saying about the larger trends going on, but the second we try to suggest that the box office dimensions of the story are part of the same process we enter a realm of objectivity where the industry logic is immutable.
For instance: while Quantumania was no doubt a disappointment in its own right, it also grossed over twice as much as The Marvels globally. And Aquaman's performance is still in flux, for one, but there's also the reality that the "story" of the DCEU has already been written by the Warner Bros. decision to bring in James Gunn and effectively clear the decks after past misses like Black Adam, The Flash, and Shazam 2 (which were certainly treated as bombs by the trade press).
All of this to say that if people want to respond to that troubling trend, they would be best served responding to that troubling trend as opposed to suggesting that factual reporting about OTHER movies' box office is somehow related to it. It's just not helping anything, understandable as the underlying impulse might be.
(And for the record, I think The Marvels objectively needed more supervision only insofar as Sam Jackson was literally the only person on set who had any idea what happened in Secret Invasion, which is INSANE to me).
I completely hear this and agree that it's counterfactual and probably counterproductive. I also think it's not rational; people are in their feelings about it. For a moment there it looked like we were on the cusp of achieving a beautiful inclusive dream...and now that dream has been stolen away and the dominant power structures reinforced. The anger about that is visceral. Targeting this movie discourse specifically may be an unhelpful reaction, but I get the emotion driving it.
Thanks for engaging. If it’s helpful, the hope marginalized folks had in streaming was always going to disappoint because the profit motive was never going to be found outside of what was discovered with legacy television and film. Moreover, the folks who knew how to cultivate that revenue are the same folks that streaming hired to build it for them. So to be honest nothing was going to be different. In the same way that blue skies rhetoric was sold for cable as a democratizing, pluralistic possibility that ultimately became the opposite of both (because of what Myles talks about re fynsyn and deregulation), streaming is the same. Here’s a short piece that goes a little more in detail: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/blue-skies-again-streamers-and-the-impossible-promise-of-diversity
Well, that was a sobering read. Thanks for sharing.
I appreciate the math but the big hand wave here is that 2x factor. The film's budget and marketing adds up to 380 million, but it needs 560 million to be profitable? Why? Profit is income minus expenses. What are the 380 million of additional expenses that need covering? That's a huge number to toss in the category miscellaneous.
I don't follow movie press very closely so I don't know how fair that was overall. My big thing is in the stories I did read about The Marvels' poor box office, virtually none of them mentioned what to me was the most obvious explanation, which is that the stars weren't allowed to do a big promotional push due to the strike. Now maybe I'm wrong and that wasn't a big factor in how the film did, but not mentioning it as a hypothesis feels disingenuous.
If you go look at any of the stories in the trade press, they all mention the SAG strike and the limited press they were able to do.
And the answer is that studios only get roughly 50% of box office revenue—less in China and some foreign territories—due to needing to pay theaters to rent the screens necessary to exhibit the film.
Fair enough. The stories I saw in the popular press didn't mention it.