MCU News & Notes

I've been waiting for the Eternals box office numbers to settle. The film currently sits at 368k with a chance to catch Black Widow's box office (379), although not its gross including Disney+ (which remains the MCU/Sony Marvel's 2021 high, which No Way Home will certainly top). Unlike Shang-Chi, whose box office was stronger domestically (it is still the #1 domestic box office film thus far, despite being #8 overall or #6 when Chinese exclusives are removed), Eternals is being floated by the foreign box office (almost 60%) and I find that interesting (it isn't as slanted as Dune, which is close to 73%, or No Time to Die at 79%). Anecdotally I've noticed critically panning tends to impact the domestic market more than the foreign one. All pandemic releases seem to have featured mediocre to bad writing, such that spectacles are dominating the box office (Fast Saga, No Time to Die, etc).

As for the reception of Hawkeye (which I haven't seen yet), from ancillary figures it seems soft (eg, Charlie at Emergency Awesome is trying to draw eyes with clickbait titles about Daredevil rather than leaning on the IP itself), albeit seemingly better than the failure that was Falcon and the Winter Soldier (Google Trends numbers are still coming in, but Hawkeye's initial peak is better than that show, albeit far lower than either WandaVision or Loki)--it is, amusingly, garnering more discussion than Amazon's Wheel of Time, whose adaptation looked like a dumpster fire from the beginning.

Not long after Youtube's terrible decision to remove the downvote button, Twitter's new CEO is initiating his own round of censorship on the platform, as he hilariously let it be known that he doesn't feel bound by the First Amendment. I think giant conglomerates are immune from governmental interference, but public perception does matter to their advertisers, and it will be interesting to see if backlash will force any change or not. That kind of backlash was never going to be the case with Youtube, since hiding information actual benefits selling to advertisers, but Twitter's situation is different. My guess is the CEO won't be swayed, but I do think the verbal dance required is going to be more delicate than Youtube's.

It seems as though the honeymoon for Syl Abdul (someone I quite like) as a primary conduit for Mikey Sutton material on his channel has changed, at least judging by the frequency he's had Sutton on. It's a bit confusing to unpack, since Syd now writes for Geekosity, but given his channel's slow decline (alongside the enthusiasm for Snyder), it doesn't serve Mikey well to focus on his channel. This decline seems even more pronounced for Small Screen, which (as I warned months ago) has lost a lot of viewership after Edward stepped away from engaging roundtable discussions. I'm not sure where Sutton puts his YT focus now (perhaps LotLB, even if their YT growth ended long ago), but he's certainly still out there in the ether. Unfortunately for Mikey and all the other scoopers, what positive news can they report on? Star Wars is still a clusterfuck, the WB still hasn't figured out DC, and the MCU has been slamming its face against the wall throughout Phase Four. This situation has been perfect for outrage YTers, whose numbers had been falling in 2020 (eg).

Periodically I check-in with personalities who have come and gone in the scene and I was surprised to note that Matt Jarbo, who imploded a few years ago in a non-MCU context, has largely fallen off the face of the earth--nuking his main channel by not posting on it, largely giving up on his second largest channel (3 Buck Theater), let another ancillary channel die, and is focused on his Forbidden Knowledge channel which doesn't get much traffic. He seems to be trying to transition into podcasting, although his Patreon is essentially dead (12 patrons). It's a fascinating if crazy fall for a guy who was a known figure in a number of different scenes. Around the time I was associated with Small Screen he was trying to break into the DC scene (after trying and failing to ingratiate himself with Mikey Sutton--for those with long memories he did the same with Midnights' Edge), but he can't stop himself from feuding with personalities (for DC he was anti-Snyder, which in some ways mirrors his prior pro-Disney stance with Star Wars). While he's had ethical issues all along the way, plenty of people have survived that so I think what's destroyed his career is his unending combativeness and hostility (perhaps emphasized by the fact that he tends to attack larger channels). It's one thing to 'stick it to the man' when taking an ethical stance, but Jarbo's views all seem calculated to find a niche that's unoccupied in a fandom--unfortunately for him, this only leaves being pro-corporate and traditional media already does that, leaving him no space whatsoever.

This article was written by Peter Levi