Wow, this movie is extremely, extremely bad. The Marvels is continuing the trend of the MCU being a complete and total waste of space as the movie has opened to one of Marvel’s WORST EVER box office openings!
The MCU is dead.
In what should come as no surprise whatsoever, The Marvels has opened up to one of the WORST box office openings and critical and audiences scores in the MCU’s history. And, as you could probably guess, I think this is just another sign that the MCU has absolutely nothing left in the tank.
Now, this really is the perfect movie to represent the MCU post Endgame.
Not only did this movie open to horrible critical scores of 50% and less on Rotten Tomatoes and then magically have its score go up to 60% and fresh as soon as the movie’s release date came nearer (because…Rotten Tomatoes is a scam website), but the movie also opened up to one of the worst MCU opening-day performances ever with the film racking in just $7M at the box office. Yeah, just $7M for a film that had a budget of $220M…and that doesn’t include the $200M+ spent on marketing and other expenses.
That’s a bit of a far cry away from the $157M Avengers: Endgame raked in on its opening day.
Okay, it may be A LITTLE disingenuous to compare this crapshoot to Avengers: Endgame as this film doesn’t have 1/1000th of the actor star power, compelling narrative structure, narrative tension, character investment, and production quality Endgame and the entire MCU had in 2019.
But I must be able to compare this film to its predecessor, right? I mean, how can we compare a Captain Marvel sequel to anything other than the first Captain Marvel film to have an honest, one-for-one comparison.
Not only has The Marvels had a worse opening-day release than Captain Marvel ($61M opening-day), but it also is projected to have a significantly worse opening-weekend (Captain Marvel 1: $153M; Captain Marvel 2: $60-$65M), a significantly worse worldwide box office haul (Captain Marvel 1: $1.1B; Captain Marvel 2: $350-$400M), Captain Marvel 2 is just the third MCU film (Ant-Man 1 & The Incredible Hulk being the other two) to be projected to open to just $60M or worse, and Captain Marvel 2 is currently ranked as the 3rd WORSE MCU film on Rotten Tomatoes.
Oh, and The Marvels is also the first MCU film since 2015, which was smack dab in the middle of Phase 2, to be projected to bring in $60M or so from its opening day box office. Or, in other words, this is a once in a decade box office bomb for Marvel…and this was supposed to be one of the foundational pieces for the MCU.
Captain Marvel was set up right at the end of the Infinity Gauntlet saga to be the next driving mega-hero in the MCU as she was instrumental in defeating Thanos, saving Tony Stark from death at the opening of Endgame, and very important in restoring the balance of the universe after Thanos’ defeat and the reverse Snap.
Hell, just watch all of Brie Larson’s interviews prior to the release of Endgame to see how HEAVILY she and Captain Marvel was pushed by Disney and Marvel.
Yet, just four years later, her movies can’t even stand up against half of what her original film brought in, and nor can her films become audience or even critical successes to the general and critical publics. And that’s the Death Star design flaw that will be Marvel and the MCU’s undoing.
The MCU has replaced all of their beloved heroes and actors with some of the most unlikeable, unsellable, and complete flat and boring characters to ever grace a big or silver screen, while the dreadful regression in quality in pretty much all aspects of a Marvel movie production, such as directing, writing, VFX, CGI, practical effects, acting, etc., has exacerbated their protagonist’s likeability problem by tenfold.
If I was you who is reading this, I would avoid this film at all costs as it’s a complete waste of time…despite being under 2 hours.
At the end of the day, Marvel is completely screwed and the MCU probably needs to be put down as it’s just becoming an oversaturated mess at this point.
Images Source: Featured Image: (Disney/Marvel) (Marvel Studios’ The Marvels | Official Trailer – YouTube)
