DC might break the superhero genre before James Gunn can even ATTEMPT to turn the company around. Blue Beetle was an unmitigated box office DISASTER for DC and Warner Bros. as the film has only grossed $25M during its domestic box office debut weekend.
What a disaster this movie is.
In no real surprise, Blue Beetle has completely failed at the box office and is going to go down as one of the WORST EVER SUPERHERO MOVIE DISASTERS in the entire history of the genre as it only made $25M during its domestic box office debut weekend. And, to be perfectly honest, this failure is completely deserved given how DC and Warner Bros. just can’t figure out how to make their OWN DISTINCT superhero movies.
Now, before I get into why I think this movie failed so spectacularly, let me just put the scale of this disaster in perspective.
Not only did this film, which carried the name, legacy, and marketing appeal of a DC Comics superhero (albeit a little known one) and was being produced by a Hollywood titan in Warner Bros., just BARELY beat out Barbie ($21M gross this weekend), a movie that came out a month ago now, at its own domestic box office showing, but it also achieved the near impossible: it had a worse debut box office weekend than the entirety of the DCEU.
Only Wonder Woman 1984 ($16.7M), a film released dead set during the COVID-19 pandemic (December 20, 2020), had a worse opening weekend at the box office than Blue Beetle as flop films like The Flash ($55M), The Suicide Squad ($26M), Black Adam ($67M), Shazam 1 ($53M), Shazam 2 ($30.1M), and Birds of Prey ($33M) all saw more people turn up.
Sure, Blue Beetle is a little know DC superhero and was always going to struggle garnering casual and mass appeal fan interest, but this is a new level of shame, disappointment, failure, and just downright incompetency from DC and Warner Bros.
Not only was the film POORLY marketed with very little online presence (I don’t think I saw one add for Blue Beetle on any social media platforms at all), minor T.V. adds, and zero big name actors to boost a global appeal (you don’t need A-listers to make a great film, but George Lopez and a 76-year-old Susan Sarandon are your biggest names? Really?), but, in the few adds and trailers I did see, the film marketed itself as an even MORE GOOFY version the current version of the MCU.
Maybe DC and Warner Bros. haven’t gotten their heads out of their, respective, assess of late, but modeling your movie to an even more extreme version of the MCU and its slapstick, parodying humor is a really bad idea. Mainly because the MCU is FAILING!!!
Haven’t they seen that ever since Endgame, the MCU has produced dud after dud and seen millions of people leave the franchise due to the quality of storytelling, character growth, character development, VFX effects, and the dramatic stakes of the franchise getting shoved down a porta potty? And a main reason for that is the stupid, over-the-top level of slapstick, parody/4th-wall breaking humor injected in EVERY STORY!
So, as an executive of DC and Warner Bros., you really thought it would be a good idea to go even further with those story beats with a character that doesn’t have any of the name recognition credentials that your main superhero cast does? Seriously?
(Warner Bros./DC-Blue Beetle-Official Trailer)
I know Blue Beetle is a sillier character in the comics compared to Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, etc., but he didn’t have to be a legit parody of a superhero that nobody wants to see as it pretty much signals the end of the superhero genre as we know it. As the old saying goes for storytelling mediums, once you reach the parody version of the genre, the genre has well and truly run its course.
There’s a reason why Warner Bros. is now in servitude to overlords at Discovery and AT&T, and this is one of the most obvious reasons why. They just don’t understand storytelling and the trends within genres and audiences appeal for them anymore…which is why Blue Beetle might go down as the worst superhero movie failure of all-time.
Images Source: Featured Images: (Warner Bros./DC) (Blue Beetle – Official Trailer – YouTube)
In Text Image 1: (Warner Bros./DC) (Blue Beetle – Official Trailer – YouTube)
