There’s no other way to put it. It’s not a good day for Marvel Studios as their third film of 2023, “The Marvels,” opened to just $47 million at the U.S. box office—the lowest-grossing opening weekend of any Marvel movie ever (yes, even lower than 2008’s “The Incredible Hulk” and lower than all of the 2021 pandemic-affected films like the poorly-received “Eternals”). Internationally, the film grossed just $63 million for a low and weak haul, which makes for a not-super $110 million worldwide total. Compare that to “Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania,” an opening already seen as a big disappointment in February this year but earned $106 million in its domestic box office opening alone, and it looks even worse.
And unlike ‘Ant-Man 3’ which scored rotten on Rotten Tomatoes with the lowest MCU score ever on the critic aggregation site, “The Marvels” at least received a fresh 63% score (though that is the third lowest RT score for Marvel ever; read our review here) which suggests the cumulative burden of diminishing results working against it.
Arguably, this poor opening makes for a disastrous day for the company. The box office flop comes on the heels of a terrible fall for the company in the press. First, “Daredevil: Born Again” was scrapped, the production fired most of its creators and started over, and all of Marvel’s TV problems were laid bare (in what we call The Marvel TV Reckoning). Then Variety dropped a prescient “Marvel In Crisis” cover story that outlined a litany of ways how Marvel was failing or underperforming in 2023, how their reign could be over, and how “The Marvels” was tracking to poor numbers that obviously came to pass.
Even DC Studios’ “The Flash,” a similarly big-budget, high-cost superhero movie that was called a disaster earlier this year, opened higher than “The Marvels” with $55 million. The film’s Cinemascore was a B-grade, which isn’t terrible but not exceptional for what’s supposed to be a four-quadrant movie of this ilk.
A $47 domestic million opening for a 200+ million dollar costing movie is bad in any context. Still, it’s even worse when it’s a Marvel film—the last time a Marvel movie didn’t open over $100 million was “Spider-Man: Far From Home” in 2019 ($92.5 million), but even that film went on to gross $1.1 billion worldwide, so it’s almost a non-comparison.
What does it say when “Ant-Man: Quantumania” was the “uh oh” of early 2023 with an “worrisome” opening that was only $106 million, and “The Marvels” can’t even open to half that figure nine months later? It’s just not good any way you try to parse it.
2019’s “Captain Marvel,” the film’s predecessor, opened to $153.4 million in its opening weekend, a steep drop of nearly 70% compared to “The Marvels” a film that featured four superheroes in total, an MCU cameo and three more MCU cameos in the post-credit scenes (‘CM’ only featured Danvers and Fury).
So, the true culprit here? Well, it’s never just one thing, right? But the film had so many things working against it. First, you had an actors strike ongoing for the majority of the film’s promotion—none of the cast, Brie Larson, Iman Velli, Teyonah Parris, or Samuel L. Jackson, were able to promote the film until the last minute when it was too late.
Then there was the aforementioned negative Marvel narrative that started early in 2023 with the middling reception and underperforming box office of the aforementioned ‘Quantumania.’ While “Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3” was a big, solid hit, it failed to turn around Marvel’s narrative, especially when Disney+’s “Secret Invasion” was the worst-reviewed Marvel product ever (it features Marvel’s lowest-rated Rotten Tomatoes score of any film or TV project) and “The Marvels” release date was pushed from the summer to the fall, in what was the fourth release date delay (never a good sign). “Loki” season two seems to have been better received but ended too late (also this week) to help change the narrative.
By the time “The Marvels” hit theaters, enthusiasm for Marvel and superhero films seemed to be at an all-time low for every company and studio. As bad as this opening is, Marvel’s 2023 was still much better than the outright debacle that was DC Studios year (three films that collectively barely grossed over $500 million worldwide and a fourth that already has bled bad buzz all year).
And what does it say about Hollywood’s diversity regression that a film directed by a black woman (Nia DaCosta) starring three women flops? Nothing good, really, and to that end. The incel faction against this film—that has been warring against it ever since the first film’s release in 2019—was loud, vocal, and working daily to depress the narrative on this film all year (look at the online gloating today from Marvel’s “failure,” as pointed out by Stephen King below).
“The Marvels” simply bared the burden of a really bad year, both for Marvel and superhero films in general—the dreaded “superhero fatigue” accusation that has been used often but hasn’t really felt like a true, numerically reflective reality until this year.
Bob Iger himself, in 2023, said that Disney+ had inadvertently “diluted” the Marvel brand, and perhaps he was simply echoing what fans were feeling, especially as there arguably hasn’t been a great Marvel Disney+ show since its first-year launch when “WandaVision” and “Loki” premiered in 2021.
And given the post-pandemic era of moviegoing, which is depressed, lower, and seemingly never going back to the way it was, it is increasingly becoming incumbent on big movies to be executed perfectly; an ok or good film isn’t enough any longer, and perhaps the days when audiences saw the Marvel logo and thought, “that’s enough” are gone.
It certainly doesn’t help that “The Marvels” is Marvel’s 33rd film. Audiences are possibly growing tired of the same stories and or won’t accept anything that’s just alright (Personally, I think “The Marvels” is pretty decent and much better than ‘Quantumania,’ but that’s almost neither here nor there and irrelevant to the box office results).
One thing is certain: this ends Marvel’s 2023 with a big black eye and puts a bigger target on their back for the future, where pundits and armchair critics will be looking to over-analyze their every misstep. Marvel’s 2024 looks a bit barren— only one movie in “Deadpool 3” in the summer because the strikes delayed two other films. Perhaps that’s for the best; maybe audiences need a break from Marvel, and it could give the company time to recalibrate and rethink its approach.
The writer of the recent (and very entertaining book), “MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios” has described the company’s uneven year as the “Marvel Wobble,” but after this weekend, there’s an argument to be made it’s now turned into a buckle and the mighty MCU has fallen down on one knee for the first time ever.
