Marvel's missing magic
With "Captain America: Brave New World," the MCU is at a crossroads. Plus: A check in on Marvel's comics business.
The Gist
“Captain America: Brave New World” continues a trend of MCU movies receiving disappointing audience reaction.
It showcases how the fanbase has shifted so dramatically in such a short time, and how much the gap has widened between diehard and casual fans.
Plus: Marvel’s comic business has also lost some magic, evidenced by a decline in market share.
It’s been seven months since Marvel’s “Deadpool and Wolverine,” and 15 months since the last “proper” MCU movie with “The Marvels.” That’s by design: After a rapid-fire post-pandemic release of content with arguably more misses than hits, Disney decided to retrench, focus on a surefire thing with Deadpool, and hope the slowdown led to a recalibration.
That brings us to “Captain America: Brave New World,” the 35th MCU film, which hit theaters this weekend. As of this writing, it’s looking at an opening four days around $100 million. Years ago, an MCU movie barely breaking $100 million over a four-day holiday would have seemed unthinkable. But a lot can change in a short time in the movie business.
It’s too soon to call “Brave New World” a financial whiff. A 100 million opener in February would excite most other studios, and the movie has little competition in the coming weeks.
But as I wrote in my box office predictions for the year, it might be time to start having lower expectations for Marvel, closer to phase two than phase three. For most other franchises, those numbers would be more than fine. But the MCU dominated the 2010s, becoming the biggest movie franchise of all time and the center of mainstream movie culture. So when box office slips, it’s noticeable.
With that in mind, the cynical argument against “Brave New World” would be that this opening is worrisome; if we’re really comparing it more to phase two Marvel, then “Winter Soldier” earned that much in a three-day span a decade ago. The audience for these movies is clearly dropping. The optimistic argument would be that “Brave New World” introduced a new Captain America to the big screen and still earned a healthy amount despite poor critic reviews.
But I don’t want to focus too heavily on box office itself; we’ll know more in the coming weeks whether “Brave New World” is a success or not (and if you want my thoughts on the movie, read my Letterboxd review). What I want to focus on is the audience evolution for the MCU overall. Like I said, what was once the center of movie culture is shifting into something a lot less shiny. Is that sustainable for a franchise that relies on sustained interest to support a steady output of movies (and TV shows, for that matter)?
I wrote in 2022, when I reported at Business Insider, that cracks in Marvel’s armor were starting to show. I wrote that as the franchise grew, audiences would likely become more selective about what they consume. And that appears to be exactly what’s happening.
The audience divide was evident on social media this weekend, where diehard fans were falling over themselves to convince people that “Brave New World” is “good, actually” in the face of a 50% Rotten Tomatoes critic score, calling attention to the 80% audience score and questioning “fake fans” who dislike the movie.
In reality, a Rotten Tomatoes audience score, that users can willingly try to juice or sabotage, is nowhere near the indicator of audience perception that CinemaScore is, which surveys moviegoers in theaters on a movie’s opening night. And “Brave New World” received a B-, the worst of any Marvel Studios movie. CinemaScore grades can typically tell us a lot about word of mouth, and whether a movie will have strong legs at the box office over time. For a franchise tentpole that is engineered to be a crowdpleaser, a B- isn’t what studios are looking for; to put it in perspective, “Heart Eyes,” a gory horror movie that invites polarization, also received a B-.
Again, I don’t want to get too much into this specific movie’s box-office prospects. But I’ll say that this has been a trend for the post- “Endgame” MCU. “Marvels,” “Eternals,” “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” all received a B. They are also some of the worst-reviewed and financially disappointing Marvel movies. Before the pandemic, no MCU movie had received below an A-.
We’re seeing a franchise’s audience morph in real time, and the gap widening between the diehards and the casual moviegoers. That must be what happens when you release multiple movies a year (for the most part) over nearly two decades: it’s easier to track.
The diehards can only take Marvel so far, and they didn’t make the MCU the center of pop culture for a decade. Casual moviegoers will still come out in droves for the “big” ones and their favorite characters, like Deadpool and Spider-Man. But the MCU’s backbone was built on casual fans that saw only a few movies a year, and decided that those movies were going to be Marvel movies. Now, trusting them to remember “The Incredible Hulk,” one of the least celebrated MCU entries from nearly two decades ago, and to keep up with “Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” a TV series, is a stretch.
I wrote in last week’s edition, about the layoffs at Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, that the theater industry’s health is directly tied to the decisions of movie studios — whether that’s putting movies on streaming, buying a cinema chain, or developing a character into Captain America for a TV show rather than a movie.
Another thing that’s happening: Nostalgia for the “old MCU” seems to already be creeping in. One Threads commentator summed it up pretty well: “The Infinity Saga was all bangers? I remember a lot of you singing a different tune back in the day.” It reminds me of the newfound appreciation for the Star Wars prequel trilogy. Much maligned when originally released, they have been “reclaimed” by a not-insignificant portion of Star Wars fandom in the wake of the sequel trilogy (and the larger disaster that is Star Wars’ current management crisis).
It’s a testament to how popular the MCU became, and how quickly “Endgame” changed everything, that fans are already longing for the days of the Avengers. “Brave New World” seems to actually recognize this, as it goes out of its way to set the stage for a potential new Avengers team.
With “Avengers: Doomsday” set to release next year, is it too little, too late?
RELATED: Marvel’s comic slump
Marvel hasn’t just lost its magic touch in movies. It’s got a comics problem, too.
As an avid comic reader, my pull list has gravitated more and more towards DC over the last year. Sure, I’ve always considered myself more of a “DC guy,” at least with comics, but there is typically a healthy balance between the two. Not recently. I’m mainly only reading Marvel’s Ultimate line right now, consisting of an alternate universe separate from its core titles.
It seems like that’s what most readers are buying from Marvel these days. Of the top 50 most-selling comic issues last year, Marvel’s mainly consisted of Ultimate and X-Men comics.
Granted, most of DC’s best-sellers were from its new Absolute line, which is also a separate universe of new versions of classic characters. But DC has been behind Marvel in sales year-after-year, and Absolute — along with its publisher-wide All-In initiative — injected much-needed life into its comics. Meanwhile, Marvel’s publishing efforts seem hamfisted, worried more about lining up comics with their film counterparts, from Deadpool/Wolverine to a new Sam Wilson series (it’s worth noting that Marvel creative chief and Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige was given oversight of all of Marvel’s creative efforts five years ago, including comics).
The quality of Marvel’s comics output, like its movies, can be seen in sales: While it’s still ahead of DC in market share, the gap closed in Q4 for the second quarter in a row and was a notable difference from a year prior.
Have a Marvel story tip, or anything else? Contact me at travclark2@gmail.com.
Beyond the Traverse
💥 It seems like Marvel’s “Armor Wars” movie, starring Don Cheadle, isn’t getting made any time soon.
🗡️ Deadpool creator Rob Liefeld throws hissy fit, says he’ll no longer work with Marvel
💍 Amazon finally renewed “Rings of Power” for a third season, four months after season two concluded.
Amazon has said that there’s a five-year plan for the show. My prediction: It doesn’t get there. Here’s why.
🧟♂️ Meanwhile, an HBO exec says that “The Last of Us” could run for four seasons.
🎮 Bloomberg reported on the trouble at Warner Bros. Games, including a struggling Wonder Woman project.
I'm curious to see what they do with 4 seasons of The Last of Us considering they already went through 1 game. I'm not mad at it though. There is so much that can be done to tell some stories the game didn't have time to focus as much on!
Strongly agree with Marvel being at a nadir. The MCU at its best, adapted and respected the best comic book storylines. - Civil War, The Infinity Gauntlet, even the alien invasion from "The Ultimates". Now the comics and the movies are bland, uninspired and recursive. The new UItimate Universe - as you rightly point out is moving things forward. Pete and MJ are married, Reid is Doom. It's still Stan Lee's "Illusion of change" but acknowledges diminishing returns of the status quo.