The DC sequel “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” may have difficult times to match its predecessor. It is still too early to tell. Whatever the outcome of that movie, though, nothing has unsettled major studios in 2023 more than the very poor, very bad year superhero movies have had, underperforming as a whole as abruptly as Superman facing a big block of Kryptonite.
In retrospect, the underwhelming box office performance of “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” back in February proved to be the warning sign, revealing an unanticipated weakness in Marvel’s defenses. Since then, Warner Bros.’s DC adaptations of “The Flash” and “Blue Beetle” (such as CNN, a division of Warner Bros. Discovery) have fallen well short of the mark, leaving more red ink than red blur.
The true surprise, however, came in November with the total collapse of “The Marvels,” the follow-up to the 2019 blockbuster “Captain Marvel,” which has only made $84 million in North America, less than 5% of what its predecessor brought in. This is the first Marvel film to fail to make $100 million in its home country.
Only the third “Guardians of the Galaxy” film, which made around $850 million worldwide, defied the pattern for Marvel and DC, with the animated “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” receiving a special mention.
What took place? A number of reasons seem to be at play here, as is often the case with such situations, but the suddenness with which spectators stopped going to the multiplex was akin to a racing locomotive. Additionally, any attempted remedy will take time and akin to trying to reroute an ocean liner that is already well out to sea because these movies are labor-intensive to construct and cannot be produced (yet) on a shoestring due to their reliance on digital effects.
Marvel Studios
It goes without saying that the coronavirus outbreak caused some moviegoers to become less inclined to watch movies in cinemas and more at ease watching them at home, regardless of concerns about spoilers or FOMO.
If Hollywood was unable to resolve that problem, then nearly all other moves that devalued these comic-book properties can be linked to them. One such mistake was the ordering of many series to support the launch and increase the number of subscribers for streaming services such as Disney+ and Max. Disney CEO Bob Iger said that his company’s films were becoming less good because there were “too many” sequels.
Even though there were undoubtedly too many bad films, the problem with “The Flash” wasn’t so much that the public disliked it (though some did), as it was that they didn’t attend in the kind of large enough quantities for the film to be financially successful.
Star Ezra Miller’s and Jonathan Majors’s legal troubles undoubtedly didn’t help either in that sense. Prior to his conviction for assault and harassment of a former girlfriend, Majors was supposed to play a significant part in Marvel’s next phase.
In retrospect, “Avengers: Endgame”‘s epic pre-pandemic high, which was an impossible-to-replicate cherry on top of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, probably marked the superhero movie’s 2019 apex.
Add in “Black Panther” and “Infinity War,” two more blockbusters (the latter even nominated for an Oscar), and DC was experiencing its best-ever box office performance with “Aquaman” in 2018, taking home $1.15 billion worldwide. It was inevitable that some excessive euphoria would follow.
Whatever the reasons, major studios now have to confront some difficult decisions as their once-invincible cash cows—superhero movies—appear surprisingly fragile after serving as the cornerstone of their box office endeavors.
Although some films, such as “Barbie” and “Avatar 2,” have shown that audiences are still willing to attend what they perceive to be major events, Marvel and DC face a significant obstacle. They can only handle that, unlike the conclusion of “Endgame,” by making decisions moving forward and not looking back.
