MCU News & Notes

Back in October I failed to mention the delay for Ms. Marvel. Originally scheduled for late 2021, Hawkeye took its place--bumping it to early 2022--and then the overall shift in the MCU's schedule pushed it down to mid-2022. I bring this sequence up because I've seen it suggested that this has been done to allow for emergency reshoots (something that's true for Doctor Strange 2, incidentally). On a functional level I don't see the same signs of panic that's clear in the case of the Indiana Jones 5 (which was pushed back an entire year--the sort of thing that happened to the New Mutants to allow reshoots that never happened, or No Time to Die where the reshoots did happen). While there may be planned tweaks to the show given the extra time, I'm not sure this is as wholesale as some are suggesting.

One thing thing I missed when discussing the show was showrunner Bisha K. Ali deleting her old social media posts in 2019 for the same reason as Nia DaCosta and others (although apparently Ali had much more inflammatory material than what I could find from DaCosta). According to the coverage I've seen, you can boil down Ali's comments to the very standard upper class rhetoric that 'white man bad' (Richard Madden filling that role for us in Eternals), which wouldn't impact Ms. Marvel's content much (given that there are few male Caucasian characters attached to it). Whatever one's opinions of Ali or the IP, the show is likely to be the exact same clusterfuck of terrible writing that's plagued Phase Four (there are rumours that directors El Arbi and Fallah were not happy with the scripts, but without further substantiation that has to remain rumour). It's a show I had no interest in when it was announced, so on a personal level this is simply interesting trivia and follows a Phase Four hiring trend.

At the end of the day money trumps everything, so with Eternals opening weekends in the books, how did it do? The film picked up 71 million in the opener, so here are the relevant comparisons:

• Venom 2 90 (Oct)
• Black Widow 80 (July)
• Shang-Chi 75 (Sept)
• Eternals 71 (Nov)
• The Suicide Squad 26 (Aug)

We can kick James Gunn's flop out of the equation as an outlier, but Eternals (as expected) opened lower than any other similar film, if not by a massive amount. While Black Widow's gross tumbled after a strong opening (keeping in mind its simultaneous release on Disney+), both Shang-Chi and Venom lingered like a bad smell (the latter having passed the former). None of these films will reach the top-five for the year (although if we cut out the Chinese exclusives, they are #4 and #5 currently), but can Eternals eek out numbers approaching the others? It's unlikely, both because of upcoming competition and given its low Cinemascore. Unlike Shang-Chi, Eternals has received more of its box office internationally, albeit those numbers are still well below both Chi and Black Widow.

The above brings up comic book box office grosses since 2020, something I find very interesting given that from 2016-19 we had at least two films a year making 800k+ (topping out in 2019 with 4 films hitting a billion). Since then the bottom has fallen out:

• Birds of Prey 201k (WB)
• New Mutants 49k (Fox)
• Wonder Woman 2 166k (WB)
• Black Widow 504k (379k/125k) (Disney)
• The Suicide Squad 167k (WB)
• Shang-Chi 430k (still in theaters) (Disney)
• Venom 2 441k (still in theaters) (Sony)
• Eternals 281k (still in theaters) (Disney)

You can argue--and I would--that these films are all bad to awful, however, poorly made films used to make a ton of money regardless (Captain Marvel, Aquaman, the first Venom, etc), so what's happened? There's obviously a certain depression of the market due to Covid--I argued awhile ago that it's 20%-25% lower than it ought to be, although that excuse gets less and less valid as time goes on. Let's pick the high side of that and see what we get for the post-Covid releases:

• Black Widow 630k
• The Suicide Squad 208k
• Shang-Chi 536k
• Venom 2 551k

These are still atrocious numbers (particularly when you factor in inflation for earlier films) and even upping it to 30% (which I think is too much) they are far below their expectations. I think the first Venom's box office was essentially a fluke (buoyed by when it was released and the rub-off element from the MCU) and what we see now is far more appropriate to its quality; the WB has no idea what it's doing, so their DC films are a hodgepodge of mediocre to awful; for the MCU however, this is all Feige's fault. To go from a poorly written film like Captain Marvel making a billion to something only slightly worse making half that is embarrassing. To my mind it's all down to the writing. While I think the cast choices for Shang-Chi and Eternals are an issue, good writing could have helped that, but Marvel simply won't hire people who can do the job. Just like with other genre media (fantasy, sci-fi, etc), people who aren't native to that space routinely bomb adapting it (Wrath of Khan remains the exception that proves the rule).

One thing to point out from the above, and I haven't seen it discussed, is that Black Widow's simultaneous release on Disney+ has performed better than both Shang-Chi and Eternals appearing exclusively in theaters. Mindboggling.

I've mentioned this before, but I think it warrants it's own section. Critics and fans will throw around the comment that a film has 'bombed' without explaining what they mean. The problem is that term can be used to describe a number of situations:

1. Most commonly used when comparing a film's listed production budget (which is often inaccurate and low, but all we can use barring investigative journalism) to its gross; so a film that cost 50 million and made only 25 is a net negative and therefore, a financial bomb
2. Less common among fans, but seen a lot with critics/commentators, is when someone compares a film's gross to its listed production plus the expected marketing budget (a figure we rarely know accurately, with the same caveat as above, but is averaged to be half the production budget); ergo a film costing 50 million is expected to have a 25 million marketing budget, such that it's gross of 25 million is even worse
3. Very rarely you get commentators who factor in not just the total gross but the expected studio take; studios do not get 100% of the box office and how much they get varies considerably (China is notoriously low in that regard, with the usual figure quoted at 25%; so a film that makes 100 million in China earns the studio 25); while this is an important element to how profitable a film is, it's rarely considered
4. Performance vs expectations: each studio has an expected gross from its film, a total that's used to drum up financial support for making it and to pitch to stock holders; this figure is unrelated to any of the math above and can include sundry elements like merchandising or how it impacts other company elements (like theme parks); when a studio makes an art film, they often expect a loss, so it is budgeted accordingly (the reward is awards and prestige for the studio/executives); the flip side of this is a movie like Batman v Superman, where at the #1 level is profitable, but came nowhere near expectations and is therefore a failure (resulting, ultimately, in Zack Snyder's removal from future projects); this, to me, is what really matters, although it's not always easy to know what a studio wants from a film (barring leaks/stock holder meetings); when I talk about performance, this is how I'm doing it by making an educated guess on expectations--based on the past and what we know from the business

I'll reiterate that none of these factors are related to the quality of the film. Plenty of terrible films are successful, just as many landmark films fail financially. So when I talk about performance, I will offer my opinion on its quality, but I consider that irrelevant to the matter of whether the project has been successful.

Idris Elba's window as a leading man seems to have closed. This isn't a dig at the 49-year old actor, who I quite like (I was first exposed to him in The Office), but simply an observation about how charisma and talent isn't enough to make it as a movie star (Nathan Fillion is another example). Despite opportunities, Elba was never in the right vehicle to make his mark and I think the failure of The Suicide Squad marks his last chance. Elba's had two very different A+ chances to make that breakthrough (Fillion never got that opportunity). The first was 2017's disaster The Dark Tower. The box office for both his films is abysmal, as somehow Dark Tower only made 113k, while The Suicide Squad earned just 167k. Neither failure is due to Elba's performance, but instead due to the weak material around him. Of the two roles I think the latter was a better vehicle for him (and, indeed, it was more successful), as the hill to climb for Dark Tower was much, much higher. Unfortunately for him, his golden opportunity was in the midst of James Gunn's downward arc as a director. This isn't that dramatic an outcome for Elba, who will continue to get plenty of work as long as he wants, but it's interesting to see just how fickle all of this is (Jason Momoa had his bomb when he was young enough to wait for better second chance, that early failure being 2011's Conan film). Granted, Momoa isn't a great actor so much of his draw is due to his physique--I don't know how long he can realistically maintain that.

Apparently I missed Midnight's Edge drama from back in May (and beyond), where comments by outrage YTer MechaRandom42 about Zack Snyder spiraled into accusations that ME sidekick Tom conflicted with most (all?) the female personalities on the unwatchable Midnight's Edge After Dark. The subsequent attempt to cancel Tom failed (that's the wrong audience to try that with). ME has never addressed the issue, simply removing those involved from their network, which is in line with Andre's approach to drama (ergo booting Matt Jarbo when he imploded a few years ago, something Mundane Matt is still triggered about up to this day). This is all very trivial, but I bring it up because it's the kind of drama that's rampant in fandom and gives you an idea of why so few people want to say something controversial within that space (it isn't that long ago that Jeremy Conrad got booted from the MCU space, albeit his issues aren't a matter of conjecture; this is why Mikey Sutton's reviews of virtually everything are incredibly positive, but in conversations about the same material there's plenty of criticism).

Youtube plans to remove the dislike button from videos is a naked attempt to encourage advertisers to spend as well as a way to protect corporate channels from embarrassing reactions. Indirectly this helps a certain kind of controversial creator (disproportionately big ones, since they get large amounts of votes in both categories). YT claims it's protecting smaller creators, but I (and most people) recognize this as utter bullshit and believe it's a terrible idea. Vote brigading does happen from time-to-time, but small creators don't matter enough to generate that kind of attention and if your content is good isolated attacks make no impact. Whether YT will stick with this unpopular decision I don't know, but given that it benefits big companies I expect they will. At least for me, I still see the button.

This article was written by Peter Levi