MCU - This Thread Wasn’t Made For You

[JGP]

31 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

For those who have seen it: did Black Adam offer anything interesting?

Black Adam was comedy fool's gold kind of bad. 

1 hour ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

Ahem, @JGP

I said if The Marvels crosses $750 mil WW ($380 mil down from Captain Marvel) I’d eat my hat. 

Holy shit I wasn’t even close. 4 days of domestic box office numbers and The Marvels is down $13 million on The Flash FFS. There’s something going on here beyond just “anti-woke” nonsense or bad word of mouth. 

It’ll be a miracle if this thing touches $300 million WW. And if reshoots did actually balloon the production budget to $270 mil (as has been reported), this is a legit, massive bomb; on the order of Green Lantern. 

BTW, it’s true that I wasn’t a fan of the first Cap. Marvel movie, but I take no pleasure in this and I’m not gloating. I would never actively root for a movie to fail. This is just… wow. 

https://www.the-numbers.com/movies/custom-comparisons/Marvels-The-(2023)/Flash-The#tab=day_by_day_comparison

 

 The girls and I didn't end up seeing it on the weekend, life is great. Should be interesting.

[williamjm]

32 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

For those who have seen it: did Black Adam offer anything interesting?

It wasn't a terrible film (it is at least reasonably coherent which puts it ahead of several other DC films), but it was mostly a bit dull. I thought Pierce Brosnan's character was the most interesting in the story, Black Adam himself is so serious that he's not that interesting and The Rock tends to be better when playing more comedic characters.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

3 minutes ago, williamjm said:

It wasn't a terrible film

It was a terrible film. Some good moments but you feel every second of that runtime.

39 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

For those who have seen it: did Black Adam offer anything interesting?

If the Rock makes you horny, DC: League of Super Pets is way more entertaining. 

[Jaxom 1974]

Most of the Marvel shows have been just fine in the overall. I acknowledge that there are some issues here and there with most of them, but that happens with so many shows. The biggest issues with the shows remains the streaming service model of pumping out shows, often without the kind of production oversight you used to have on a 24 episode season of an older network show.  So many of those old shows mentioned above, that started out "poor" but got better? They had people who believed in them, and more importantly, they had time to tell their stories...not 6 episodes of 45 to 50 minutes per episode, or maybe 10 or 13 episodes that ran maybe 23 to 25 minutes...fox the streaming model, fix a lot of televisions woes, not just Marvel's...

 

(And Guardians 3 was still just as meh as the first two, regardless of how much money may have been made...)

[Kalbear]

I think a problem is that previously people would go and pay to see 'fine' knowing that they would get some big payoff with Avengers down the road that they'd want to make sure that they knew what the heck was happening. And now I think that they don't really have that care for that payoff. 

There are lots of other problems - tie-ins with characters that they've never seen and have no idea about, superhero fatigue in general, lower star power and popularity, lower name recognition in the superheroes, the strike reducing promotion and marketing, not incredibly compelling stories or word of mouth...lots. Also, releasing a superhero movie in...November? Not exactly a big time for movies. 

[IlyaP]

11 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Also, releasing a superhero movie in...November? Not exactly a big time for movies. 

Does Avatar 1/2 coming out in December as a kind of SFX counter-programming count in this kind of scenario? Or not so much? 

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

6 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

Does Avatar 1/2 coming out in December as a kind of SFX counter-programming count in this kind of scenario? Or not so much? 

OMG! This thing was supposed to open with DUNE PART 2 IN THEATERS!!! 

It got pushed back because the actors strike killed the marketing. It was supposed to have just finished its second weekend. 

[Kalbear]

10 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

Does Avatar 1/2 coming out in December as a kind of SFX counter-programming count in this kind of scenario? Or not so much? 

December is better, especially around the holidays. Titanic was done around that time too. Harry Potter, Hobbit...quite a few big tentpole movies. Lots of kids out of school at or around that point, people looking for things to do with relatives that involve NO TALKING TO THEM EVER, that sort of thing. 

 But November? Not a ton of movies then, especially before Thanksgiving. 

That said, it's also when a whole lot of Marvel movies were released and they did at least okay. Eternals, Dr Strange, Thor - the dark world - all came out about the same time (a bit earlier) and did better. Ragnarok did much better, and Wakanda Forever is the best November release ever. So it's certainly possible, but it isn't doing any favors. 

[Caligula_K3]

5 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Star Trek: TNG, Babylon 5, Farscape, Star Trek: Deep Space 9, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, The Wire, Oz, Treme, West Wing, Deadwood, Blackadder, Red Dwarf, Round the Twist, 30 Rock, Community, The Expanse, Fringe, Blake's 7, The Critic, all good shows that got increasingly better with each season. 

Slander!!! Deadwood season 1 is a perfect season of television. I could see someone prefering season 2, but season 3? No way. Hoopleheads...

It is pretty wild that this movie is performing so badly. I can't say I've seen a Marvel movie in theatres since Endgame, and have only watched a few of the Phase 4/5 movies and shows. So I'm part of the "problem" and very much understand the superhero fatigue. But damn, the first Captain Marvel was so succesful.

[Rhom]

2 minutes ago, Caligula_K3 said:

Slander!!! Deadwood season 1 is a perfect season of television. I could see someone prefering season 2, but season 3? No way. Hoopleheads...

It is pretty wild that this movie is performing so badly. I can't say I've seen a Marvel movie in theatres since Endgame, and have only watched a few of the Phase 4/5 movies and shows. So I'm part of the "problem" and very much understand the superhero fatigue. But damn, the first Captain Marvel was so succesful.

The first Captain Marvel was the palate cleanser between Infinity War and Endgame.  Of course it did better!

[Caligula_K3]

4 minutes ago, Rhom said:

The first Captain Marvel was the palate cleanser between Infinity War and Endgame.  Of course it did better!

Definitely a big part of it. There was also a lot of hype from the fact that it was the first female fronted Marvel movie. I think that's mainly why me and my friends saw it. I expected some of that hype (or love for the character) to carry over, kind of like how Love and Thunder still did pretty well because of goodwill from Ragnorak and the use of Thor's character in Infinity War/Endgame.

[IlyaP]

43 minutes ago, Caligula_K3 said:

Slander!!! Deadwood season 1 is a perfect season of television. I could see someone prefering season 2, but season 3? No way. Hoopleheads...

To be fair, it's been a while since I've seen it, so forgive me my sins.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

42 minutes ago, Rhom said:

The first Captain Marvel was the palate cleanser between Infinity War and Endgame.  Of course it did better!

Also Captain Marvel was teased in the post credit scene from Infinity War. I could think of worse ways to kick off the marketing campaign for her movie.

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

56 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

To be fair, it's been a while since I've seen it, so forgive me my sins.

Here let me refresh your memory:

 

 

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

1 hour ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Here let me refresh your memory:

 

 

It has a dramatic arc all its own. The poetry. I feel transported. Breathtaking.

 

[BigFatCoward]

9 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Star Trek: TNG, Babylon 5, Farscape, Star Trek: Deep Space 9, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, The Wire, Oz, Treme, West Wing, Deadwood, Blackadder, Red Dwarf, Round the Twist, 30 Rock, Community, The Expanse, Fringe, Blake's 7, The Critic, all good shows that got increasingly better with each season. 

WTF? 

[IlyaP]

1 hour ago, BigFatCoward said:

WTF? 

Well the Wire did (arguably) get better with every season. 

[Heartofice]

8 hours ago, Ran said:

I think bringing in a TV show teenage character into the mix made the whole thing seem like a cheap crossover that didn't have a lot appeal.

I heard somewhere that an original version of the script didn’t have Ms Marvel, and it was a true sequel to the first movie in tone and story. 
 

It does seem like a movie that has been heavily fucked with by the studio to integrate with the rest of their products.

Even if, by all accounts, Kamala Khan is the best character in the movie, and I’m not surprised as she was good in Ms Marvel, but the audience for that show was tiny and Disney tried to hawk it to other platforms to get people to watch it and failed. Why build a movie and marketing around a character there is little interest in. 
 

Again it feels like individual talent and decision making is being crushed by the Mouse Machine.

[BigFatCoward]

30 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

Well the Wire did (arguably) get better with every season. 

S5 is universally accepted to be the least amazing. 

 

[mormont]

9 hours ago, Ran said:

I think bringing in a TV show teenage character into the mix made the whole thing seem like a cheap crossover that didn't have a lot appeal.

But that character (and actor) is not only acknowledged as the best thing in the film, and the heart of it, but is also being set up to be a core part of the Avengers franchise going forward. And she's the audience identification character.

I guess it's possible that audiences reacted to that, but I'm doubtful. After all, Monica was also effectively a TV show character and a side character at that. It's clear that the film relied on Carol as the main attraction.

Also, anecdotally, the theatre I watched the film in had a large proportion (I'd say maybe 40%) of young teenage girls, folks a year or two younger than Kamala herself. I strongly doubt they were primarily there to see Carol and Monica. Kamala is in the movies what she is in the comics: a rarity for Marvel, an original character that appeals to a demographic outside their core fanbase, a demographic that does write Avengers fanfic and all the rest. They want that demographic. But they too often chicken out of it and revert to type.

This is one of the problems I think Marvel do have. They can't decide if they want a variety of projects with a different tone appealing to different audiences, or if they want every film to make a billion dollars. They can't do both. The former needs a strategy of releasing many films that will inevitably make less money, the latter slowing the release schedule down and cutting down to a core five or six characters with supporting cast. They need to pick one, and while the latter is probably going to make more money short term, it's creatively less interesting and less future-proof.