How many box office bombs does Warner Bros. need to suffer through to learn its lesson? In light of scary news the DCEU might be resurrected, Shazam 2 has gotten off to a cold, sluggish reception at the box office.
Does Warner Bros. need any more proof that the DCEU was a failed experiment and should never be resuscitated, even if the clangoring of diehard fans and directors becomes overbearing?
Now, to be fair to Shazam 2 or Shazam! Fury of the Gods, I’ve not seen the film yet and I’m basing this article only off early box office totals, critical reviews, audience reviews, and reviews I’ve watched online so far.
Nevertheless, Shazam 2 has drastically underperformed expectations as its only generated app. $30M from its opening box office weekend (about $5M or so less than its already low $35M projection), the film currently has a bad 54% critical score on Rotten Tomatoes (though it also has an usually high 87% audience score), an average 6.7/10 score on IMDb (which is far more realistic than Rotten Tomatoes’ audience score), and it may not even be able to beat out Creed III or Scream VI in box office revenues.
You don’t need me to tell you that’s bad.
Even worse, Shazam performing this poorly is an indication of how unpopular the DCEU is to the vast majority of comic book, regular DC, and general audiences as similar superhero films have greatly outperformed this movie this year.
Ant-Man’s superhero star power is on a similar basis to Shazam in the comics in terms of character popularity (sort of), yet comparing the opening weekend totals of the two character’s movies would have you thinking I’m some sort of madman for even suggesting such a comparison.
Ant-Man 3 or the ridiculously long Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantamania (who seriously thought that was a good name?) grossed over $100M dollars at the box office during its opening day weekend this past February, despite the stiff competition in theaters. Sure, comparing the relatively stable (but not for long) MCU to the absolutely dysfunctional DCEU is somewhat misleading, yet these two are the two biggest superhero comic-line movie producers on the market.
And if one companies C-level superhero can gross over $100M from the box office in a weekend while the other’s can only scrape by $30Mish, you know there’s a massive problem.
Especially so when you consider that popular movies like Avatar: The Way of Water (box office gross: $2.296B), M3gan (box office gross: $172M) and Cocaine Bear ($70M) released at most three-months prior to Ant-Man 3’s opening, while that hasn’t been the case for Shazam 2.
Shazam has been competing against junior middleweights (if the box office was an actual boxing promotion) in Creed 3 and Scream VI, while a heavyweight in John Wick: Chapter 4 is coming for its domestic weekend crown March 24th. And that’s not a fight a C-level DC superhero can win.
(Warner Bros. Pictures/DC-Shazam! Fury Of The Gods-Official Trailer 2)
Simply put, the DCEU has never and will never be able to compete with the MCU, which is yet another reason why the DCEU must be put to rest permanently. Obviously, the fact that Shazam 2 has been called (from what I’ve seen in reviews) a bland, pointless, average, and boring movie hasn’t helped the DCEU’s fleeting cause either, but that’s been the standard for DCEU movies in the past.
I mean, Black Adam, Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey, Wonder Woman 1984, Justice League, Suicide Squad (2016 version), and Batman Vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice are movies defined by their abject blandness and logic-devoid plots. And these movies actually have A+ tier superheroes/villains attached to them!
So, I pray this movie’s bad performance will finally convince the executives at Warner Bros. the DCEU is nothing but bad news and should be put out to pasture as quickly as possible, but I have a feeling there’s more DCEU stupidity to come.
Images Source: Featured Image: (Warner Bros. Pictures/DC) (SHAZAM! FURY OF THE GODS – Official Trailer 2 – YouTube)
In Text Image 1: (Warner Bros. Pictures/DC) (SHAZAM! FURY OF THE GODS – Official Trailer 2 – YouTube)
