Amid a lackluster opening Friday, with a reported $27.5 million gross at the box office, The Marvels continues to underperform expectations, putting it on track to have the lowest Marvel Cinematic Universe opening ever.
Disney didn’t have high hopes for the movie, reporting it was likely to open around $55-60 million in gross just before its release, but now box office projections have been cut again to expect $47-52 million after its opening night.
With popular reviewers like Nerdrotic coming out of the film calling it “god awful," Disney scrambled to get positive coverage of The Marvels as advance reviews had a 56% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes going into the release, with those numbers boosting to 62% after some of the less trusted access media reviewers came in for the film. The Top Critics on the site, who are considered the most trusted by audience members, rate the movie a dismal 42% as of this writing.
About The Marvels#TheMarvels pic.twitter.com/Ny39EycS3B
— Nerdrotic (@Nerdrotics) November 9, 2023
The reason for failure seems obvious — Disney has done everything it can to gut the MCU over the last couple of years and create what online critics call an M-She-U, replacing beloved characters like Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor with female and minority knockoffs which don’t inspire the audience to come out and see the movies.
Couple the diversity castings with writers and directors who don’t seem to understand the superhero genre, and it spells disaster. Disney’s seen a string of failures since critics panned the first Captain Marvel movie. At that point, Marvel’s brand from Avengers: Endgame was strong enough that the film was lifted to more than $1 billion gross anyway, but those days are long behind as moviegoers don’t trust Disney Marvel to produce anything entertaining.
It doesn’t stop the access media from making excuses for Disney. Already, we’re seeing the playbook of different outlets saying it’s merely “superhero fatigue” or calling critics of the film “misogynist” if they don’t like it. One Screen Rant critic wrote a tweet trying to blame men for the film’s lack of success, implying the female casting somehow made men unobjective in their disdain for the film.
It's really interesting to me that it's all men who very are actively hating on The Marvels. 🤷♀️
— Tessa Smith - Mama's Geeky (@MamasGeeky) November 8, 2023
The movie isn't perfect (read my review for my thoughts) but it doesn't deserve the hate many (men) are giving it. pic.twitter.com/DrRkJWeFVn
The truth is audiences are sick of the forced diversity knockoffs co-opting the intellectual properties they love. South Park recently made a scathing special “Joining The Panderverse” where they spent an hour mocking Disney’s diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies in recent films. The satire show called the writing lazy multiple times and made a complete mockery of Disney executive Kathleen Kennedy, which has since spawned a viral meme of “Put a chick in it and make it lame and gay!”
Kathleen Kennedy: "Put a chick in it and make it lame and gay".
— timuyin none (@Timuyin_None) November 8, 2023
Kevin Feige: "Yes sir, I obey sir."
hahahahahaha pic.twitter.com/SjSHTzriYH
Whether Disney is paying attention to the endless amount of online mockery from fans remains to be seen. Still, The Marvels’ failure at the box office is a major wake-up call for producers of these movies, which cost hundreds of millions of dollars. If they don’t get their act together soon and stop with their identity politics, Disney might see itself bankrupt before too long.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member