“The Marvels” is a flop. Narratives as to why greatly differ. Yet when male-directed and led films like “Napoleon” and “Killers of the Flower Moon” perform even worse with similar budgets, they’re lauded as successes. Why is this? Let me quote a writer from two sentences ago: “male-directed and led films”.
Could it really just be that? Aren’t both “Flower Moon” and “Napoleon” part of an Apple TV+ 5-dimensional-chess marketing strategy that’s totally OK with them losing millions? Even if that were the case – instead of being massively overstated as an argument in publications like Forbes and Deadline – it still doesn’t change the resulting box office measure of audience interest.
Let’s dive into a bunch of numbers. They’re fun, I promise:
The Marvels
Budget: $220 million
Opening U.S. weekend: $46 million
Global to date (3 weeks): $187 million
Box Office Narrative: Flop
Killers of the Flower Moon
Budget: $200 million
Opening U.S. weekend: $23 million
Global to date (6 weeks): $151 million
Box Office Narrative: Moderately Positive
Napoleon
Budget: $200 million
Opening U.S. weekend (+Thanksgiving): $32 million
Global to date (1 week): $79 million
Box Office Narrative: Triumphant
All three had very similar budgets after their various tax breaks. “The Marvels” cost a bit more at $220 million to $200 million. It also had double the opening weekend compared to “Killers of the Flower Moon” and a 40% higher opening weekend than “Napoleon”, which got the benefit of an extra day in Thanksgiving.
“The Marvels” performance has spurred a lot of conversation about whether there’s an audience for women in superhero movies. First thing’s first – what I’m about to write isn’t an assessment of the quality of any of these three films. This is about how we measure audience interest and describe a woman-directed and led film as a flop when two others of similar budgets, directed and led by men do worse and are called successes.
Women-Led Superhero Films
Since a sample size of one is pretty meaningless, let’s set the stage with other women-led superhero movies. “Captain Marvel” is the 8th highest earning MCU movie domestically, and 10th worldwide. That means it outpaces 25 other films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe domestically, and 23 globally. This is even more impressive when you consider it has just the 20th highest budget of all MCU films.
To put this in perspective, “Captain Marvel” made more domestically than any single Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Guardians of the Galaxy, Doctor Strange, or Ant-Man movie. Only Spider-Man, Black Panther, and the Avengers themselves have had films that earned more.
“Captain Marvel” is the fourth-highest solo outing in the MCU, and that’s only if we’re really considering “Spider-Man: No Way Home” as a solo outing. It is the second highest debut solo outing after “Black Panther”. Does it ever got talked about this way, or analyzed for its success? Is it referred to as proof that women-led superhero movies make money. Not really.
“Black Widow” is harder to assess for two reasons: It came out during the height of the COVID pandemic, in 2021. It also had a day-and-date release on Disney+, meaning it launched in theaters and streaming on the same day. While it’s a popular target as a failure narrative on social media, it had the fourth highest domestic box office of 2021. It made $183 million in theaters, but its simultaneous online premiere earned it at least another $125 million. This would give it $308 million domestic, or 21st out of 33 films – reasonably average.
Perhaps more revealing is that as a debut solo film, it would be behind Black Panther’s, Captain Marvel’s, Iron Man’s, and Spider-Man’s – if you consider Spider-Man as only debuting within the MCU. It would be ahead of debuts by Doctor Strange, Shang-Chi (which came out the same year but had a dedicated theatrical window), Captain America, Thor, and every single Ant-Man movie. Some of these you’ve got to take with a grain of salt – Captain America and Thor were building a franchise that wasn’t established yet. Others, you’ve got to look at and admit that if 3 Ant-Man movies get Paul Rudd the face of an Avengers sequel, “Black Widow” star Scarlett Johansson should’ve gotten a little more than having to sue Disney for stealing her profit cut.
That’s the MCU. For The DC Extended Universe, “Wonder Woman” remains the highest earner by a wide margin at $412 million domestic. It’s third in global earnings behind “Aquaman” and “Batman v Superman”.
“Birds of Prey” is a favorite to bash on conservative social media. It places 10th in the DCEU with $201 million globally. Sure, its run was truncated by the beginning of COVID, but it’s still not great…until you consider it had the smallest budget of any DCEU film at $82 million. Only “Shazam!” had a similar budget at $85 million – everything else has cost $120 million+. The smallest budget doing better than several other films, including two that cost 50% more and released this year? That places it higher than expectations, at least by a small margin.
“Wonder Woman 1984” is the worst performing DCEU movie, but came out mid-pandemic. HBO Max (now Max) argued that the movie accelerated its subscriber forecast to hit goals two years ahead of their forecast. Hold on to that argument, it’s going to become important in a minute.
But It’s a Marketing Strategy, Babe!
Where are we going with this? Women-led movies in the MCU have demonstrated that they can at the very least hold par with male-led ones. They have had successes. They have had average performances. Does “The Marvels” undo all of that as a failure? Let’s apply that logic across the board: if under-performing to the extent of “The Marvels” indicates women shouldn’t lead superhero films, then two films under-performing to the extent of “Killers of the Flower Moon” and “Napoleon” should also indicate men shouldn’t lead historical epics. It’s the same logic, double the sample size.
But that’s a ridiculous argument? Yes, that’s the point. It’s all a ridiculous argument. Let’s get into how ridiculo–
BUT WAIT – Apple TV+ made both “Killers of the Flower Moon” and “Napoleon” as part of a marketing strategy of original content with a theatrical window where it doesn’t matter if they lose money so long as they something else goes here no one can tell me what exactly.
I’ll let Anthony D’Alessandro at Deadline carry the water:
“Wake up to the fact that Apple and Disney’s goals couldn’t be more separate. One is a tech business with a streaming service, and the other is a content-driven conglom that extends into travel lifestyle and merchandising. Two very different businesses. Film finance sources tell me that a $200M production cost on Killers of the Flower Moon is literally an advertising expense for Apple, and its P&L is different from the way that The Marvels would be assessed. At the end of the day, it’s not Apple’s goal to make money in the theatrical business. They don’t care about profit in TV and motion pictures. Disney’s goals and plans are similar to Max, Paramount+, Peacock, etc., and they’re beating the aforementioned.
“However, all streaming services associated with the majors are still losing money. For Apple, theatrical is a bonus on Killers of the Flower Moon, and they didn’t make the movie for theatrical, rather, locking people into their ecosystem. This compared to the fact that Disney institutional shareholders demand short-term profitably from their OTT service and content.”
He loses sentence structure at the end there, but the passion is evident. If you’re looking for a precedent that’s similar to Apple’s approach here, consider what Epic Games Store started doing within the gaming industry in 2019 by providing games to consumers at a financial loss in exchange for building market share. That storefront has yet to turn a profit. In fact, there was one organization that hated the strategy so much they once argued in court that sacrificing profits for market share on a digital platform was dishonest and a dealbreaker for business partners. That baby’s name? Albert Einste- I mean that organization’s name? Apple Inc. So they’re hypocrites. Of course, that’s not big news. It just amuses me.
But you know what, it’s a beautiful November day outside, let’s just let ’em have this one. Let’s pretend producers don’t care about making money and corporate loss projection is a replacement for box office when measuring audience attendance. What? Yeah, let’s just do it anyway. If you accept all this at face value, then you also have to consider the two shining examples of it: what “Black Widow” did for Disney+ and “Wonder Woman 1984” did for HBO Max. If you excuse “Killers of the Flower Moon” and “Napoleon” for doing far worse despite the pandemic being a lesser obstacle at the box office, then you’ve got to include these two as triumphs and yet further demonstrations of the success of women-led superhero films. Making more would be one of the biggest no-brainers in film history. You cannot argue this is the strategy for this year’s films while ignoring the two films that best succeeded with that strategy.
Now, the argument that’s made about “The Marvels” is that it proves a lack of audience interest. How would “Flower Moon” and “Napoleon” not prove the same while having worse numbers? People are not deciding to see or not see a movie in the theater because Apple’s marketing strategy might be OK with a loss.
“Oh babe, I’m sorry, I don’t feel like seeing ‘Napoleon’ cause Apple’s OK with a financial loss as a marketing expense.”
Date says that, tell them you forgot to return some videos. It’s a red flag, they’re a psychopath, get a cat. No one makes a movie-viewing decision that way. Audiences make viewing decisions based on – get this – whether they want to see the movie.
The argument against women-led superhero films is based on a lack of audience interest in “The Marvels” as measured by box office, the same metric that shows worse performance for the similarly budgeted “Killers of the Flower Moon” and “Napoleon”. If the lack of audience interest is true because of a metric, it’s not solely true for the one film where you want it to be true, but no others. It’s either an accurate metric, or it isn’t. Box office is the most accurate metric we have for paid audience attendance.
If audiences don’t attend “The Marvels”, and that one statistical outlier is an argument to not make women-led superhero films, then its doing markedly better than two male-led historical films of similar budgets is also an argument to not make male-led historical films. Both arguments are ridiculous, but they are consistent with each other. If you think both kinds of films shouldn’t be made anymore, I disagree, but at least you’re consistent. If you make the first argument and excuse the second, you’re just playing pretend.
The Streaming Side
I’d add that “The Marvels” also feeds into Disney+ and is going to sell a lot more branded content than “Flower Moon” or “Napoleon”. Its indirect profits will be exponentially greater.
In terms of streaming, it’s not even a contest. It’s estimated that globally, Disney+ has about 150 million paid subscribers. Apple TV+ has about 25 million paid. Those numbers both expand when including free promotional subscriptions, but even with this, Apple TV+ numbers pale in comparison to those of Disney+. That means in the end, a lot more eyes are going to see “The Marvels” than “Flower Moon” or “Napoleon”.
If just 10% of Disney+ paid subscribers watch “The Marvels”, that’s 15 million subscribers. To equal that number, 60% of Apple TV+ subscribers would have to watch “Killers of the Flower Moon” or “Napoleon”. If 20% of Disney+ paid subscribers watch it, Apple is incapable of matching that number. So what are we using to gauge lack of audience interest in “The Marvels” that isn’t also true for the two historical epics? More people have seen “The Marvels” in the theater. It’s had a much better opening weekend. It’s made more globally than “Flower Moon” in half the time. Both its U.S. and international totals outpace the others. Far more people will see it on streaming.
Matthew Beloni puts it bluntly on Puck:
“Will Killers of the Flower Moon help bring people to Apple TV+ when it debuts there? Sure, though that service has only about 15 to 20 million subscribers in the U.S., according to Parrot Analytics. In all likelihood, The Marvels will also be very meaningful to Disney as a Disney+ title because it will satisfy the Marvel fans who subscribe for exactly this kind of content. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, the most recent Marvel “flop,” debuted at No. 2 on Nielsen’s streaming top 10 for movies when it dropped on Disney+ in May; it was top 5 overall that week. Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3 debuted at No. 1 on the film chart, and No. 3 overall. The Marvel movies do really well on streaming, and arguably do more to add value to Disney+ than a Scorsese limited series masquerading as a movie will ever do for Apple TV+, given the greater scale of Disney+ and the importance to its bottom line.”
So what measure are we using to judge “The Marvels” as failing in a way that “Flower Moon” or “Napoleon” won’t? By extension, what measure are conservatives using to argue women-led superhero movies shouldn’t be made, that wouldn’t count double for male-led historical epics. They each cost about the same. It’s not audience attendance, where “The Marvels” outpaces both. It’s neither domestic nor global take, where “The Marvels” outpaces both. It’s not streaming viewership, where “The Marvels” will enjoy an enormous advantage. Where is the argument that it uniquely lacks viewer interest in a way the others don’t?
If “Flower Moon” and “Napoleon” perform worse, how can you argue that women-led superhero movies shouldn’t be made if we still believe in male-led historical epics?
But we’re measuring superhero films – which are currently much more popular – against historical epics, whose heyday has passed? That’s not the flex they think it is. The argument’s based on audience interest. Reminding us that women-led superhero films tend to have a higher ceiling than male-led historical epics runs counter to the idea that we should make fewer women led-superhero films.
Other Films We Shouldn’t Make, I Guess
I’ll mention again I’m not judging the quality of any of these films, their genres, or these streaming services. I tend to like historical epics better than superhero films. I tend to think Apple TV+ is a much better value than Disney+, their original content has much more consistency, and my series of the year last year was “Pachinko”, one of their originals. But we’re talking about numbers, how those numbers define our narratives of success, and who is offered opportunity as a result of those narratives being accurate or inaccurate. My point is that treating measurements like they’re teams instead of measurements is ridiculous. Doesn’t matter if I like one better than the other – my preference doesn’t magically change numbers.
What numbers indicate doesn’t change based on how we want to feel about them. I’m talking about how numbers represent audience interest, and the justifications being used to argue against one type of film – and thus argue against who makes or leads them. We haven’t even addressed those historical epics having the added advantage of household names like Martin Scorsese and Ridley Scott behind them, or A-list stars like Leonardo DiCaprio and Joaquin Phoenix leading them. They are names and selling points in a way “The Marvels” director Nia DaCosta and star Brie Larson aren’t yet – and those bigger names and selling points are performing worse.
You don’t say this audience’s lesser attendance magically doesn’t count as a negative, but this audience’s greater attendance does. You’re not going to stop making male-led historical epics because of two flops any more than you should stop making women-led superhero movies because of one. They are all flops. Either that indicates something for all of them, or we look at all the other precedents we have and decide it’s a bit soon to overreact based on an infinitesimal sample size.
By the way, what was the film already in its second weekend that “Napoleon” couldn’t beat in its first? The Rachel Zegler-led action movie “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes”. But that’s an established franchise? Sure, and it cost $100 million to make, or half the budget of either “Flower Moon” or “Napoleon”. And Zegler is hardly as household a name as DiCaprio or Phoenix…or Scorsese or Scott for that matter.
For that matter, Hunger Games will easily turn a profit while Indiana Jones and Mission: Impossible struggle to break even this year. By the logic being applied to “The Marvels”, I guess that means we should only make action-adventures with women leads from now on.
Every argument about how “The Marvels” proves audience disinterest in women-led films fails to hold up. The best performing movie of the year is “Barbie”. “Captain Marvel” and “Wonder Woman” are among the best performing superhero films in their respective universes. If you’re going to excuse under-performance by “Killers of the Flower Moon” and “Napoleon” as part of a marketing strategy to accelerate streaming subscriptions, then the effect “Black Widow” and “Wonder Woman 1984” had on Disney+ and HBO Max are the shining examples of that marketing strategy succeeding, and must be considered further examples of the success of women-led superhero films. If you’re going to consider the singular failure of “The Marvels” as overriding that mountain of previous evidence, then you must also consider double the number of similarly budgeted, worse performing films as evidence that male-led historical epics can no longer succeed and shouldn’t be made.
If you’re going to use a measurement, apply it consistently, not just when you feel like. If you cannot do that, what point does your argument have? If you cannot make an argument without replacing evidence with your feelings, what good are you? I am sick of this bullshit. It may only be box office narratives, but that gives men more public shielding to keep handing off larger budgets to other men regardless of terrible performance. That impacts who has opportunities, the art we get to see, and the art that shapes our cultural and political norms.
We pretend like this doesn’t matter, after 20 years of seeing ESPN debates about dudes’ feelings overriding evidence, a presentation format that then overtook 24 hour-news networks so they do the same, so the country does the same at the voting booth. Then we scratch our heads wondering how it happened, as if this nonsense doesn’t test in entertainment circles where there’s little consequence before being mainstreamed everywhere else. Let’s not forget that Trump never becomes president without Steve Bannon, Milo Yiannopoulos, and the extensive testing of social media brigading and disinformation campaigns through Gamergate. They always test normalizing this shit on movies, on games, in sports, in the places where they think others are least likely to push back. When it’s mainstreamed in these places, it’s easy to then mainstream in the news and in politics. Then we’re shocked and wonder how it’s so sudden when we had plenty of warning and just ignored those early chances to push back.
Why write 3,000+ words about it? Why write these articles pushing back on these narratives multiple times a year? Because if the argument is that women can fail only once, and that’s it, that’s their chance, we shouldn’t give them work anymore – and men can fail harder and repeatedly but be praised and rewarded for it and given more chances – then we are shutting out half of our talent in any field – filmmaking, engineering, governance, whatever it might be. That narrative has no place anywhere. Imagine shutting out half your possible talent and thinking you can make progress in this world. What a narcissistic theft of the things we could accomplish.
I should wrap this up in a more streamlined way, end on some kind of high note, but that’s it, that’s the sentence. That’s the everything I can say about these constant right-wing narratives that seek to dismantle the opportunities for so much talent in this world: what a narcissistic theft of the things we could accomplish.
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Gabriel Diego Valdez 
Love this analysis. Mainstream media coverage on The Marvels and Nia DaCosta has been utterly vile.
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Great article!
I think the whole The Marvels argument has been audience failing interest in Marvel or moreso Superhero films in general. Considering both Shazam & Flash this year we’re met with the same kind of reporting of their flops.
Anyone making the argument that female led films can’t fill seats isn’t worth listening to cause like you state in this article the highest grossing film this year is Barbie.
As for Napoleon and Killer; I feel like everyone is lenient cause they’re both not only historical dramas but Rated R. Not really your typical box office bait. Unless you’re an anomaly like Oppenheimer. But no one really expected those films to make a ton of money — especially with the budget so Apple just making an attempt to get more subscribers made the most sense. Especially with the apparent Napoleon extended cut the app is suppose to have.
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Everyone has already pointed out the first Capt Marvel movie made that box office because it was released between Infinity War and Endgame and it was advertised as a must see due to the integral role Capt Marvel would play in the upcoming Phase finale and the future MCU universe. She barely did anything in Endgame so it felt like a huge con. She was in the beginning scene prior to the opening credits and she punched through Thanos’ ship at the end and had a role in the keep away portion of the final fight scene. She felt totally pasted into the plot and the movie could have easily happened without her and it wouldn’t of changed anything.
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As we all know, Captain Marvel is the only MCU movie to ever be interlinked to other MCU movies. No other movie in the franchise has been tied to others in ways that are expected to drive box office, nuh-uh, and it remains the only MCU movie to ever get an end scene tease that suggests audiences see the next one, super totes mega promise.
I mean, what’s the argument here? That the MCU did the lead-in to the next movie that they’ve done with every single one of their films, heroes, and villains, but somehow it only magically uniquely applies to Captain Marvel because a movie about a woman could have only set records if it was because men something something? That argument is some words strung together, I guess.
I also offer a half dozen examples, but please don’t let that bother you.
Last half of your comment seems more like a problem with Endgame, and kind of accidentally wraps around to its awful plot treatment of women. Weird how that’s posed as somehow her fault while the box office she directly achieved as a lead is…because of men? So plot failures in the thing made by men and starring men that sidelined women is women’s fault, but the successes of the thing made by women and starring women is cause dudes? You even proofread, bro?
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While I agree the Marvel hate is real especially against those that are women and non white BUT I think the Apple beast is different. Apple made a movie and like was said, the theatrical release is marketing. Put it out there, recoup some money and then get some Oscar Buzz. Then hopefully it will bring in some eyes to our streaming platform.
This is not what Disney does. I still don’t consider Marvels a flop as it was relevant. It pushed Ms Marvel and further showed women can lead movies in front of and behind a camera and make a quality movie. The movie was good, not great, but still good and it will make money back in merch and dvd/blu sales. And may bring some people to D+.
The biggest difference between movies now and movies 10 years ago is that the screaming noise from fanbois is a lot louder
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Click bait headline. Read a little before deciding you have no clue what you are talking about. Apple’s movies are a success to them. The boxoffice to them is different than for other studios.
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This point is extensively addressed in the article. You might want to read a little of it before deciding.
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I didn’t go see the Marvels, but it’s not because I didn’t like the idea of women in the lead role. I thought the trailers looked pretty awesome, but of the 3 heroes in that movie, 2 of them get the super origins in a streaming service that I do not subscribe to. I didn’t originally think this is a problem, but when I saw Multiverse of Madness, I didn’t understand what happened with Wanda’s character. Why did this hero nearly destroy multiple universes to be with these previously non-existent children.
Maybe I’m in the minority here, but I hate walking into a story part way through. I’m sure eventually I’ll switch streaming services and watch them, but I can’t subscribe to all of them at the same time.
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For what it’s worth, all of the information from those 2 shows that is relevant to the plot of The Marvels is recapped in the film. I brought people who hadn’t seen Ms. Marvel to see the movie, & they not only had no trouble understanding it, but they also enjoyed it tremendously.
The Marvels is primarily a sequel to Captain Marvel. If you’ve seen that movie (& Avengers: Endgame), then you’re good to go.
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I rarely see any Marvel films (or superhero films in general for that matter) and had no problem following the story. I had seen Captain Marvel, so that helped, but beyond that, I went in blind. LOVED the movie and don’t understand the hate at all.
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Great post!
I think the reason some journalists and youtubers are pushing so hard against female led super hero movies with these dishonest narratives is because female super/action heroes are becoming more popular and more common in media and this scares them. I’m sure a lot of it is for clickbait too to get views from insecure men who will click on these sensationalist misogynistic headlines.
There are still a lot of men that want to preserve the patriarchy and think women should just stay at home, take care of the children and keep quiet. They are becoming less and less but they still exist. They are terrified with what they are seeing in media with more female-led movies being made and so they will shit on it whenever the opportunity arises. Whenever one does below expectations they will say “You see women-led movies don’t do well, you gotta stop making them if you want to make money!” While they ignore all the male-led films that have flopped and the female-led films that have done extremely well. What they are really saying is “I’m terrified of female super heroes being successful and becoming a norm. Look, Marvels flopped! Can we stop making them now before my balls fall off?”
Unfortunately for them Hollywood is not stopping. We got Furiosa that’s coming out next year and it looks bad ass. Ballerina is suppose to release sometime next year as well. A Supergirl is in the works. We got Echo being released on Disney+ soon as well as Rebel Moon on Netflix. Also Madam Web is coming to theaters in February but I have less faith in that one since it’s being written by arguably two of the worst screenwriters in hollywood (both men btw) but I’m still hoping to be pleasantly surprised.
But without a doubt the woman-haters will be stomping their feet and throwing a temper tantrum the entire way while journalists hacks use them for clickbait.
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If you think it’s bad to shut out half of the population, then imagine how bad it is when you factor race into the equation as well!
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The debate of male vs female is counter productive. Firstly, I highly doubt people are deliberately strategizing against female success in any way. Wether a movie is good or not simply does not depend on wether a male or female has directed the film. If the movie, storyline, or characters suck, people will not want to watch it. Remove all the propaganda from the films, and get back to the art of storytelling. Those are the best films. It’s rather annoying to not be able to watch a movie nowadays without having your mind and/or thought life provoked by emotionally damaged people’s opinions and outlooks of life. If you’re a male director or a female director, just get back to the basic art of storytelling minus the propagated narratives, so audiences can spend their money on a pure, untainted film.
Additionally, a comparison between the movies mentioned in this article cannot provide readers with the opportunity to obtain a fair assessment. The films are of completely different genres. Hence, the people who are interested in said films will also differ. This will affect how well they do in the box office. People may be more or less interested in an historical epic than a marvel-hero action film, and vice versa.
Minimizing the craft of storytelling to a debate of gender is beneath the human race’s contribution of gifts/skills. I’m afraid the industry has been abused by the need to use it as a catalyst for toxicity masked as being positive and “progressive”.
From person to person, be the change you want to see. Refrain from abusing the entertainment industry as a means to control the way others choose to live their lives.
Side note: narcissism goes both ways. It’s not an illness only caught and carried by males.
Seek peace, obtain peace, and be peaceful. ✌🏾
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Nobody needs to be deliberate about misogyny when it’s ingrained. I really feel sad for men when our gender is so cowardly that we won’t even confront making things a little more fair.
The Marvels contains nothing political in it. It is remarkably sapped of that commentary, so it’s hard to know what you mean when you call even something that stripped of potential commentary too much. We really are the snowflakiest of snowflakes, aren’t we? We jump at the shadows of commentary when it’s not even present, we anticipate overreacting so much that it doesn’t matter if there’s something to react to – we’re already too set in our anticipation to do anything else. It’s such a sad, panicked way of being.
Consider that when you tell people to seek peace, they are. Men still get larger production budgets, more films, larger marketing budgets, better coverage, and more excuses when we fail. There’s nothing wrong with admitting that, and failing to is simply hoarding opportunity. Hoarding isn’t peace, and it doesn’t engender peace. That much should be obvious. As men, we simply panic at every little thing and act insulted because, well, throw enough chaff into the wind and what’s obvious becomes harder to recognize. That seems to be our only tactic, and it’s such a sad, frightened, and weak way of living.
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The Marvels stunk and the other two will get nominated and/or won Oscars. It has nothing to do with men or women. That’s the real story that is being ignored here.
At the end of the day all three will lose hundreds of millions dollars, but two will get gold and the third will be forgotten.
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“At the end of the day all three will lose hundreds of millions of dollars”.
Not sure why you’re arguing with the article when you agree with the article. I’m not even sure how to argue back, since you agree with the argument I’ve already made. So thank you.
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I appreciate the post but what are you talking about? Nobody is saying stop making woman led super hero films. Audiences are just tired of being force fed characters nobody knows or asked for. Ms. Marvel failed as a comic and as a tv show, yet they starred her in a movie. People barely remember the black girl from Wanda vision and the show finished years ago but yet they starred her in a movie. The general audience just doesn’t know or care about these characters. And to make up for that you need to make a good movie which Disney failed to do
I think people would have loved a 3rd Wonder Woman movie if the 1984 movie wasn’t so god awful. The first one was great and people were excited another the sequel and despite its streaming success (during the pandemic), people thought it was a horrible movie.
I get strong PMC vibes from you. You guys love to make everything about race and sex to take the focus off of class.
And I’m sorry but the Marvel movie flipping is obviously different than a biopic flopping. At one time, anything Marvel put out made a close to a billion or more. Marvel had a stronghold on the culture for 10-15 years. For a marvel movie to flop like Marvels did is a bigger cultural story than a biopic not making a profit.
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Sorry for the PMC vibes. If it helps to clear things up, I am not a Private Military Company. Nor have I ever been a member of the Pokemon Mystery Club, and I think it’s important to point out they are largely a duo. I’m not even sure they take applications. If what you’re saying is that I’m Potential Man Candy, I humbly thank you. It’s a huge compliment, but given some of your other opinions, I’ll have to decline.
As I say in the article, I’m working with numbers. If you’re assessing based on the quality of the film, that’s fine. Go check out my review. I do say several times here that what’s being measured is audience interest, as measured by box office attendance. If the argument is that fewer people are interested in The Marvels than those other films, there’s no proof when more people are attending The Marvels than those other films.
Finally, I didn’t realize racism was just a distraction from class. I suppose coming from a largely extinguished people who were aggressively annihilated was just a happenstance. Super totes mega sorry if our barely surviving distracted someone. I’d try to make amends by having my ancestral lines better annihilated so as to stop distracting you, but alas, I lack a time machine, or the funds to build one. If anyone passing by wants to help me address that, check out my Patreon, it’s in the article.
Speaking of the article, though, it’s so weird. I don’t mention racism anywhere in it. In fact, the Black or brown I mention most is “Black Widow”, who – SPOILERS! – is white. You’re the one who brings up race, and then you claim it’s a distraction. Well, you’re the one who brought it up, so…stop distracting yourself I guess? Or find somewhere private to do it?
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I’m pretty sure all 3 of the movies. Mentioned in this article are just very bad, annoying, and boring respectively?
Marvel – annoying/bad
Napoleon – boring/bad
Flower moon – boring/and
Am I crazy? They are just bad right?
Cant they just be bad?
I mean I dont think there is alot of people denying women can be good in movies. Obvious examples being alien, silence of the lambs. Hell even animated women are cool if you bother to write a good story. Ghost in the shell comes to mind.
But the story has to be a real story, where the story is the point. Not just “look how many woke points we have on screen” female 1 point, black 2 points, whoa black female that’s a solid 3 points. That shit never works and its demeaning to women I feel.
I remember when I was a kid the religious right was making the same mistake with content. Remember veggie tales lol? Putting your message way out in front of the story in terms of priorities never works.
Frozen is a great Disney movie about women, because the story is compelling. You could have swapped in young boys instead of princesses. It would still be good.
I guess the crux of my whole rambling preachy reply here is…. the movie needs to be actually good before you start popping off about what its failure means.
Captain marvel is very, excruciatingly bad.
Bad movies fail…. mostly
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It is kind of strange that the only people I ever see assigning point values to human beings are those objecting to assigning point values to human beings. You set up something that isn’t being done, certainly not in those terms, and then you object to the thing you just invented.
Moreover, your point seems unclear. You seem to be saying bad things fail because they’re messaging, using Veggie Tales as an example of failure within the Christian demographic. Now, I may not be fond of it, but Veggie Tales is the most popular Christian children’s franchise in history. I can come up with zero financial or popularity argument that it is a failure. It is a massive success, but it’s your primary evidence of messaging somehow equaling failure.
I also can’t find how The Marvels messages much of anything. I think it’s a fun but flawed superhero film, but if there’s one thing it does, it goes out of its way to not comment on anything. It plays things safe. It uses two genocides for character development while those characters don’t even acknowledging what should be a traumatic loss of life. I’m not sure what people who go around complaining about ‘woke’ all the time think ‘woke’ is, since no one else but them uses the word, but even if it were a thing, The Marvels ain’t it.
There’s a stronger argument in playing things safe and catering to people who complain about wokeness. The Marvels cuts out any messaging it could possibly make. Even the advertising focused on male figures instead of its women leads. When Star Wars shifted after Last Jedi and made films that truncated their supposedly ‘woke’ qualities, such as Solo and Rise of Skywalker, the franchise took a serious performance hit. We look around at things like The Flash, which kept a lead people on the left objected to for his behavior off screen – the film flopped. Zack Snyder’s Justice League cut failed to drive new HBO Max subscriptions. Obviously, catering to people whining about wokeness doesn’t work. That’s what’s not successful.
That doesn’t mean wokeness is or isn’t successful, since – like I said – it’s not even a thing discussed outside people who use it as a bogeyman. It just means that attempting to placate those people who are constantly whining about it leads to failures because there aren’t enough of you to make anything popular for long.
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Any time I see “woke” used in an argument, it immediately almost completely discounts the credibility of the argument because I know they’re trying to arrive at a desired conclusion, and every piece of so-called “evidence” is going to be shoehorned into the attempt to get there.
And assigning “woke points” as they go while watching a movie? It’s amazing that they can enjoy ANY movie if they’re looking so hard for “wokeness.”
I am not generally a fan of superhero movies. I just usually can’t seem to get into them. So I’m either one of the most objective people to offer an opinion on The Marvels, or you can discount my opinion because “I don’t know what I’m talking about,” since I don’t generally like superhero films.
That said, I went to see it in the theater as a kind of experiment because I wanted to see this movie that all the media was calling a “flop,” when other movies with a similar box office profile were being hailed as successes.
And I loved it. It was just a fun, entertaining movie without all the stupidity/slapstick of some of the other Marvel films I’ve seen or the banality of the DC superhero movies I’ve seen. I loved it. Loved the characters, loved the story, thought the humor was pitch-perfect for most of the film. I just don’t understand the hate, but most of the hate I’ve seen revolves around the so-called “wokeness,” so perhaps that’s all it is and I just will never understand it because I don’t understand peoples’ issues with being “woke.” I always thought being “woke” was a good thing, and I still do. It means you try to be conscious and empathetic and understanding. It’s as simple as that. If people want a huge backlash against empathy and understanding and striving for equality, I think they’re likely to always be miserable because in spite of them, we WILL move forward as a society. We always do. And our culture (film/television/books) will always try to reflect our ambitions.
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Just to strengthen your argument about catering to whiners, I’d point to “Barbie,” which had a VERY overt message for the most part (I’ll note it did somewhat downplay its main trans character – which is actually fine, since they were just, well, “them,” and weren’t made part of the overt message). It was only one of the most successful movies of the year – raked in massive dough at the box office and was also a critical success by both critics and viewers.
The 10% concerned about ‘wokeness’ are always going to whine. It’s time we just let them whine and ignore them and go about making our art.
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Killers of the Flower Moon and The Marvels are both “Fresh” on RT, by both critics & audience scores (in fact, the two films’ audience scores are only 1% off of each other). The vast majority of those who saw each of them liked them.
Napoleon is “Rotten” on both metrics. You could call that one a bad movie, but not the other two.
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