When does $46 million look like chump change? When you’re talking about the opening weekend gross of a new movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the superhero crossover event that has consistently dominated the global box office over the past 15 years. While plenty of movies would kill to make that kind of cash out the gate, it’s a new low for the house that Tony Stark built—and a bad start for a blockbuster that cost nearly $300 million. Yes, The Marvels is the studio’s first true flop, and also the most concerning evidence yet that the once-bulletproof Marvel brand is showing serious signs of wear and tear.
Executives at Disney will surely spend the next few weeks wringing their hands about what went wrong. Was it the SAG strike? The vocally sexist fanboys complaining that their favorite toy factory went “woke,” with woke in this case meaning “three women”? The mixed-to-negative reviews that began dropping last week? Or is the failure of The Marvels just a symptom of what pundits have been identifying as “Marvel fatigue” for the last few years—the growing sense that there’s just too much cape-and-cowl fare on the market, that the supply is starting to seriously outpace the demand? In all likelihood, there isn’t one single reason that the 33rd entry in this forever franchise flamed out.
Still, there are theories, and the most persuasive acknowledge what the trailers couldn’t hide: The Marvels is a big-screen blockbuster that just about requires some small-screen homework. These days, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to watch a Marvel movie without feeling like you’ve missed something crucial—something that happened between the movies, on one of the various Disney+ shows that now tie directly into the overarching narrative of the franchise. The Marvels might be the apotheosis of this trend. It’s the first Marvel movie that functions more like a sequel to a TV show—or rather, to two TV shows, WandaVision and Ms. Marvel. That’s a new precedent of prerequisites for this franchise, and maybe a bridge too far for audiences.
