The Variety article thar came out last week has led to a cavalcade of takes about the MCU and where it’s all gone wrong. And while it’s full of anonymously sourced stories that read like they were planted by people with axes to grind, that hasn’t stopped people from taking them as gospel truth and seeing this as an opportunity to get off their personal grievances about the whole enterprise. One thing that’s being pushed is the idea that the MCU has been failing at the box office ever since Endgame finished it’s run in the theaters.
But what’s really going on here? Is the MCU taking on water as it heads to a movie ocean grave, or is this much ado about nothing? Have they been failing at the box office because they gave into the ‘woke mob’ or is that a bunch of hooey? (It is) What about all the stories of backstage drama, isn’t that evidence of how the ship isn’t being run as tight as it used to be? Not really, but I’ll get to that in Part 2.
But first let’s get some honesty about how the MCU is doing financially since Endgame. In order to do that we need some historical context about the way things were vs how they are now.
Look at the box office grosses for Phase 1:
- Iron Man: $586 million
- Incredible Hulk: $264 million
- Iron Man 2: $624 million
- Thor: $449 million
- Captain America The First Avenger: $370 million
- The Avengers: $1.5 billion
Not a single film other than the first Avengers team up film brought in the level of receipts that anyone would call a success today, but the only one that was called a failure at the time was The Incredible Hulk. Why is that? Well, mainly because we weren’t hyper focused on box office numbers back then. All but one of those films were profitable, and once you passed that threshold a film was considered a success with sequels all but guaranteed. It wasn’t until Phase 2’s Ant-Man that some bad faith arguments began to surface that it’s $519 million take was somehow a sign of doom because it was lower than all the other Phase 2 films, but those were quickly smacked down by people with common sense.
But then 2016 happened.
That’s when Captain America: Civil War because not just a box office smash to the tune of $1.155 billion but a cultural phenomenon. Between the MCU introductions of Black Panther and Spider-Man and the ‘who you with, Cap or Tony?’ debate which rages on to this day, Civil War took over the movie zeitgeist and was the film that claimed the Hollywood throne for the MCU and Marvel Studios. And to make things even bigger, this all happened while every other studio that was making superhero movies was failing to get the same kind of universal approval from audiences or consistently good box office results. Sony, in shambles after the infamous Sony Hack revealed all of their messy inner workings, had been forced to make a deal with Marvel to essentially make Spider-Man movies for them. Fox had put out an abysmal Fantastic Four movie in 2015 and kept making X-Men films that were diminishing in quality after 2014’s successful Days of Future Past. And Warner Brothers’ slate DC films ran into a major obstacle when Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice fell short of box office expectations and was trashed not just by traditional movie critics but the cadre of podcasters, YouTubers and bloggers that was gaining more of a voice during that time. Marvel stood alone as the studio who could do superheroes right, and reaped the rewards.
While DC sputtered along and was unable to shed it’s bad reputation (even though three of it’s next four films were profitable) Marvel went on an unprecedented run at the box office. The 10 films that followed Civil War averaged $1.2 billion grosses, with nothing lower than Ant Man and the Wasp’s $622 million and getting as high as Endgame’s $2.8 billion in 2019. Not only did these films make a ton of money, they were almost all received highly by audiences (Captain Marvel was notoriously reviewed bombed by angry ‘fans’ after Brie Larson made the grave error of calling for more diversity in whose opinions were solicited to talk about these films). From 2016 to 2019 Marvel Studios was infallible and seemingly bulletproof, incapable of doing anything wrong. And that would lead to ridiculous expectations going forward for future box offices.
Which brings us to the post-Infinity Saga era.
A lot has been written about how the Phase and 5 films are supposedly underdelivering at the box office. But are they really? Depends on when you start counting. Yes the first three films of Phase 4 – The Eternals, Shang Chi, and Black Widow – had grosses that were far below what was the MCU norm. But if you’re not going to acknowledge that pandemic restrictions were the number one factor in those lower numbers then you’re not a serious person. Yes if you average them all up you get an average of $781 million, a 33 percent decline from Phase 3. But if you look at it like an honest person, and count the films that had proper theatrical releases, then you get a much different picture. Those six films averaged $969 million, much closer to what was customary for the MCU. By comparison Phase 1 averaged $632 million, which was skewed up by the first Avengers film, and Phase 2 averaged $878 million per film. So when you compare similar films under similar circumstances they haven’t missed much of a beat. Yes it’s a drop from Phase 3 but that was bound to happen regardless given that Phase 3 was the home stretch to the big finale.
Now is there cause for concern? Sure. The Marvels is projected for some not great box office numbers, and should it finish like Quantamania then that would be two flops in a row which would make it really hard to dismiss any growing narratives. 2024 looks to have some surer bets with films centered around Captain America and the anti-hero/villain comprised team the Thunderbolts, but you never know in a world where a Mission Impossible film got taken down by Barbie and Oppenheimer. It is very possible that the MCU could be in its legacy band era, where it remains successful but it’s biggest days are behind it. Or we could be reading through endless ‘the MCU is back at the box office!’ pieces next year.
The most important thing to see right now is that barring one film (Quantamania), things have gone about as any level headed person would expect – down from Phase 3, but line with or better than Phases 1 and 2. Seriously folks, the worst film from Phase 4 or 5 outgrossed half of the Phase 1 films. Let’s keep things in perspective here. And as for the ‘woke mob’ claims one should note that the film with the worst box office was also the one where the heroes were a white family and the villain was a black man, while the ones that had diverse casts did much better.
But what about the underwhelming Disney+ show numbers? What about them? You already paid for it, so if you didn’t watch a show they still got your money. At the end of the day what matters is how many people sub to Disney+ and how many people pay to go see the movies at the theater. And as of right now those are both fine so you can ignore all the hyperbole about that. Are those numbers, whatever they are, a sign of things to come? Well, Guardians 3 came out the same year as the not very good Secret Invasion and after several of the series that have been trashed online. Looks to me like people go see movies they think will be good, and don’t pay any mind to TV shows.
So there you have it, folks. Don’t let dishonest people give you a false idea of what’s really going on here.
Stroke of Genius 