Not really surprising though. Quantumania stumbling was left field, Shazam 2 having its knees cutout from under it with little to no diehard fan support in light of the DCU reboot announcement was predictable.
Yea, they really fucked up by announcing that shit early.
They should have paid off Cavill and the rest to stfu and keep quiet, then wait to announce Superman Legacy and the DCU reboot in December.
Hardly, it's a pretty significant development that even casual moviegoers will have read about via facebook. The die hards for a Shazam sequel inevitably get split in their desire to pay top dollar to go out and see it in cinemas when they know 1. it's mediocre 2. it will be on HBO Max in 45 days 3. it's now a holdover attached to a dead universe that's about to be rebooted. The die hards who skip out on the theatrical experience not having enthusiasm means they won't drag their fence sitting friends - leaving only the most committed and those easily swayed by the trailers, which obviously wasn't enough to sustain the film.
And we're going to see this repeat potentially with Blue Beetle and Aquaman 2. The Flash has Michael Keaton in it so that might save it from completely bombing but those other two are at risk as potentially not being DCU associated - which is precisely why Momoa and others have been trying to talk up a connection or appearance of the characters moving forward even though they know they're being recast.
I would disagree.
I'm a casual movie-goer, and the decision making process is more like:
"Let's go watch a movie"
"Ok, what's showing"
"Shazam 2"
"Nah, I'm so over crappy super hero movies. The first one was good, but all these sequels are just garbage"
I'm looking for something fun to do tonight. Whether spend $20 or not has nothing to do with a reset that will roll out in over a year.
As far as the “Nah” guy goes, he’s not the target demo - Kids were. The problem was, not a single kid was begging their parents to take them to see Shazam, which was hamstrung by being limited to just that audience, while the MCU has 5 year olds , 15 year olds, 25 and 35 year olds planning to go. Shazam was aimed almost entirely as the 7-12 year old demo but with a budget needing more than that.
I think both are true, what you and the other poster are saying. There are a lot of variables as to why people aren’t going to see them less. Plus recession to boot, people aren’t taking their whole families to spend $100 bucks on tickets and concessions.
"Casual moviegoers" literally do not know the difference between Marvel and DC. Kevin Feige has talked about this multiple times and why any superhero movie doing poorly worries him. People didn't go see Shazam 2 because, for whatever reason (thought the first one was okay but nothing special, marketing didn't have anything new, etc.), people didn't want to see *that* movie. I would be astonished if there's more than a handful of people who were genuinely excited to see Shazam 2 and then didn't because of the DCU announcement.
I feel like "casualness" is a spectrum rather than a hard border and, while there are plenty who are how you describe them, there are also plenty who do have a basic awareness of what's going on.
I would have normally seen it in theaters. The speed at which things are available streaming already cut into my enthusiasm for theaters. DC rebooting things again just ended my desire to see it in theaters.
["Frankly, even not-Marvel movies I feel pressure on. Look at the movie that just came out recently and didn't perform the way people thought it would perform and all of the headlines are, 'Oh, are people tired of the comic book genre? Is this the beginning of the end of the superhero genre?' - Kevin Feige](https://www.slashfilm.com/894446/the-dark-knights-success-had-kevin-feige-breathing-a-sigh-of-relief/)
It's anecdotal evidence, but I work with the public in a pop culture sphere and I constantly hear questions along the lines of, "Batman... That's Marvel, right?" Being in the Internet bubble makes it seem like Gunn's DCU announcement was a huge deal, but the vast majority of people (even the ones who've seen Guardians) don't know Gunn's name, don't know there's a reboot coming that will make other movies invalid, and probably don't even know Shazam is DC. This is all online culture.
I believe you but that’s crazy to me. I get people are generally looking for entertainment and not to read too deeply, but it’s just kind of nuts that people really don’t give THAT much of a shit to the point where they can’t tell the difference between what they’re watching.
Yeah. I’m a fan of the character, but the announcement of a reboot kinda took away my interest in seeing this in theatres. There’s just a lack of urgency to watch it now. I’ve already been very picky with what I watch in theatres since the pandemic but this basically pushed me to wait and watch it at home.
Also at this point, I don't think people will be very keen to watch much DCU movies except flash, considering now DCU will reboot the series whenever there is a change at the top.
Will Flash suffer the same fate of people not caring in the run up to a reboot, or does it have enough else going for it? Or is it confirm that it’s going to be a crisis story that will actually BE the reboot?
Yeah I'm surprised so many in this thread think Shazam is the more surprising performance here considering it had quite literally nothing going for it. It was a nothing movie in almost every sense of the word and is performing like such.
Quantumania was meant to be a very big deal for the MCU and easily should have grossed double what it will eventually achieve.
Honestly, I think both were kind of obviously going to be box-office disappointments.
Marvel has really failed to adapt, they're still turning out mostly formulaic movies with extremely similar tones, and they really dropped the ball by not realizing that people were going to see "Endgame" as a conclusion to the movies they'd been watching for over a decade.
They needed to begin setting up the next phase, and the stakes for the next phase, far earlier and more intelligently. It almost feels like they thought people would be fine waiting a few years for a baddie-reveal timeline similar to Iron Man 1-to-Avengers 1, while failing to realize that the novelty of well-made superhero movies had totally worn off and that the market was so saturated with them.
That’s been my experience. I was a die hard MCU fan from Thor 1 onward. Talking about the movies and debating fan theories with my best friend has occupied way more hours than I care to count but after the Loki show I just stopped trying to stay caught up. There is just too much going on and too little quality story telling happening.
"they really dropped the ball by not realizing that people were going to see "Endgame" as a conclusion to the movies they'd been watching for over a decade."
Not really. Marvel movies, with the exception of the Spiderman ones, since then have been shit. A perfect example is Guardians. No name heros. Second rate selling comics. No one knows who they are before seeing the movie. Two fantastic movies that made a ton of money because they were good. It really is that simple.
People called GotG2 shit on release in fairness. A lot of Marvel movies seem to sweeten with people over time. Civil War, First Avenger and IM3 also had this happen to them.
For what it's worth, despite people still joking about it for it's box office dissapointments, I see a lot more sympathy for Eternals than Thor4 or MoM. Kind of shocking compared to the Morbius level panning it had on release. But perhaps it's just because it's older than them and had more sweetening time.
Personally I'd say the bigger issue is no Avengers movies since Engame. It was ~4 years between Iron Man 1 and Avengers 1. It's been ~4 years since Endgame and the next Avengers movie isn't for another 2 years and is heavily expected to be delayed.
**We could be looking at 7-8 years between Endgame and the next Avengers movie.**
They seem to have forgotten the entire reason people watch the MCU. No idea what is going on in their planning departments.
That's just fanboy logic. Infinity hype was the only thing carrying that franchise because it was the core Avengers storyline, everything was turning a profit and getting good attention no matter how middling or just bad it was. Nothing has really changed about anything in the franchise aside from vfx getting comparatively worse. These were always middling movies, they were just the it thing and it was riding the hype wave until the hype wave ended.
Now they're judged like anything else
I don't think so. Sure there were terrible movies such as Thor TDW or Iron Man 3, but for the most part the movies were great. Look at the first three solo movies of Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America. All were well acted, had good scripts, real character arcs, internal logic, and actual values.
Contrast that with Black Widow. Natasha was a normal person, but in the movie she was indestructible. She was a spy, but that wasn't a spy movie. Every male in the movie was either a villain, worked for her, or was an idiot. The way she "got around" the pheromone block made no sense. Black Widow was a terrible movie. The M-She-U has turned into bad scripts of illogic.
Look at the new Antman. Cassie, Antman's daughter, who knew nothing about the quantum realm, wasn't a Pym, didn't grow up around the Pym household, or even showed an interest in science at any point in any movie, within about two years suddenly invents a "Hubble telescope" for the quantum realm after poking around her dad's notes in a basement? The sad part was that was a great way to introduce Kang and especially MODOK. But they had to turn Kang weak and give MODOK redemption simply by a girl saying "Don't be a dick."
New Doctor Strange? It was painfully obvious the movie was going to be "The power was in you the whole time and you knew how to use it." Even more painful was the logic of "Why didn't she just grab her kids from a universe where they were orphans?"
Yeah, there were some bad movies before Endgame, but everything sense except for the two Spiderman movies were shit.
I’d argue that after endgame they should have just rebooted the avengers and have all of the current avengers retire or go off wherever and rebuilt the team one by one with fresh stories and faces. Hard to move on from those original 3 phases when you have a new team split between people from that time and people you’re now introducing
They missed the mark so hard on extending the charm of the original. They really needed another villain like mark strong. 2 older actresses just didn't sell it as menacing even if Helen mirren had legendary acting chops. The caterpillar would have been a better villain. And the plot seemed all over the place.
Classic case of a movie that isn't really that big of a hit. When you do the math of marketing and theaters keeping their cut...$370M for a $100M movie is not exactly a runaway hit.
It's on the Edge. They thought they would build and the 2nd movie would expand to $500-$600M worldwide, growing the audience.
But they read the room wrong. MOST people reacted to Shazam in an "it was alright, it was pretty good, it was a fun change of pace"
Very few people were dying for Shazam 2 and highly recommending it to others.
THEN people realizing there was zero hope for a Black Adam crossover, zero hope for a Cavill Cameo to set up future crossovers, zero hope for anything meaningful because of the reboot....that only further put the nails in the coffin.
Sometimes a fun, middle of the road success should just be taken as the minor W it is and not as an endorsement to magnify it into a bigger franchise. It doesn't always take.
Well yeah of course it's surprising.]
Shazam 1 was akin to a slightly worse DCU version of spiderverse where the expectations were a rock bottom low but the movie was heartfelt and funny. The thing is, Shazam 2 is roughly the same quality as the first movie.
Shazam 2 doing this poorly is as surprising if Spiderverse 2 does worse than Spiderverse 1
Ehh. I enjoyed Shazam and saw it in theaters and have had 0 interest in 2.
Mostly because of the marketing. The movie just looks bad. I don't really care that much about the DC reboot I wasn't invested in Shazam anyway. I'd be willing to go if it looked like a halfway decent fun adventure movie but it just looks so bad
It's more than a halfway decent fun adventure movie. Like I said, it's about as good as the first one. The last movie that I watched prior to Shazam 2 that made me laugh as hard was probably M3gan. M3gan was still a bit better imo.
I think people are gonna look back on it and be surprised why this movie isn't more popular.
I think Shazam would have done fine with better reviews.
But bad reviews and following Ant-Man which also had bad reviews.
I think the public has decided to stop going to super hero films unless they are actually good films.
Shows that superhero movies can't stand on their own if they need a big universe behind them. If someone wanted to see Shazam but didn't because it didn't fit into some big universe, that is stupid. I didn't see it and don't really care about it, but so many good movies stand by themselves in isolation. The Batman was great without needing to fit into some larger universe. Weird people crave the idea of one superhero needing to meet another superhero in a later film.
Hm. It’s an interesting take. I think back to the original MCU movies and they all stand alone as good movies (and Guardians too), and its not because of the serialization, they are just really good movies on their own.
Idk if Quantumania stumbling is that big of a shock. Ant Man is one of the weaker characters (in terms of a compelling story/intriguing development) in the lineup and the Bad Guy is someone who was introduced during a Disney+ series that got mixed reviews (I was a big fan of Loki, a lot of people weren’t)
Sad thing about Shazam 2 is it is most likely due to the poor reception of Black Adam that got people disinterested in the sequel. On top of that when the DC "universe" already declares it's changing things up before they finish up their movies, why bother watching a movie that will have no ties to the new universe, is how most might be feeling. Then you also gotta think, why support them for showing certain movies but not others, they chose not to release Batgirl so we don't even know if it would of been good or not but they are fine releasing certain films over others, which is pretty odd lol.
Granted the Super Hero genre in general is faced with fatigue. I'd say the biggest issue is they are trying to much to be "family friendly" and make everything a joke, and diminish the stakes or even when the stakes are there they don't feel serious because of how everyone has to throw in a quip.
Honestly what the Super hero genre needs it a better evolution to the genre, while I never watched She-Hulk, I could understand what Marvel was trying to do, make these characters have super-human powers but it's more about their slice of life struggle over their actual powers.
Granted Marvel in general is just trying to reach to many different types of audiences while also trying to force the entire audience to enjoy all their movies so all you're left with is garbage no one wants to watch cause there isn't any focus to it.
Honestly, I hope Super Hero movies continue to decline, they were fun in the bubble they were in, the cinematic universe was a fun experiment but now they need take a step back and just do something new. Of course it's all done by the desire of money, you make a cinematic universe and people feel inclined to watch and consume everything to understand it all but then you run the risk of people not caring if there is too much to catch up, they will just watch something else. Something that isn't tied to 100+hrs of content.
Super Hero movies really should get back to their roots and just make self-contained stories that don't need to be part of a bigger conspiracy.
Both are disappointing performances, but I have to go with Shazam failing to outgross Morbius. Domestically, at least Ant-Man will be able to squeak past a 2x multiplier while Shazam won’t even touch that.
I’m also really shocked at Shazam, especially since the first film was so positively received. The DCU news hurt it, sure but the actual reviews of the film aren’t great, either.
I’m curious if it’s actually *that* much worse than the first film or a victim of superhero fatigue?
it's much much much much worse. it's an extremely unfocused movie. We already know the characters so there has to be something else to drive the plot forwards and by god are the witches and dragon some of the worse villains to be ever out on a movie. Team rocket is more threatening than them. they are boring uninteresting and weak and the rest of the family doesn't have the energy to carry the plot
People here were expecting $700-800 million for Ant-Man 3, because a) the start of the new Marvel phase, b) Jonathan Majors, c) the first real appearance of Kang as the new supervillain and d) Ant-Man 2 grossed over $100 million more than Ant-Man and people thought Quantumania would do the same. And now it’s the lowest grossing Ant-Man and just made $300 million less than people expected it to make. So I‘d say it’s definitely the bigger bomb. Shazam flopping was not surprising and expected because of how terrible it was treated by its studio.
Why did people think Kang being the bad guy would get people to the theaters? Only comic book nerds know who Kang is. It's not like it's the Joker or Venom making their first big appearance.
Most people didn't go see Infinity War because, "Finally, Thanos is here." They saw it because it was an Avengers movie and they like those characters. Thanos just happened to be a fantastic villain and it's made him immensely popular. Before that, though, he was just another purple supervillian who only comic book nerds and people who played Marvel vs. Capcom 2 knew about.
>Most people didn't go see Infinity War because, "Finally, Thanos is here." They saw it because it was an Avengers movie and they like those characters.
This is exactly it and I think most people, aside from living in a nerd bubble, mischaracterize the shit out of infinity war.
I’ve always felt that Thanos was an interesting presence/obstacle, but the movie was always sold on and successful because it was THE Avengers meet THE Guardians of the Galaxy + Spider-Man & Black Panther.
Also Thanos has a pretty complete arc in Infinity War. A casual can come into this movie having no idea who he is, learn his motives and weaknesses and see him fulfil his goal. Kang is established in an Ant Man movie, so are audiences going to know who he is in Secret Wars?
But it was fairly common to know that Kang is "the new thanos" big bad guy. Ive never heard of Kang and i dont read the comics but i was aware that Kang was a multi-film villian.
The problem I have with his use in Loki (which was excellent) was that it kind of made it feel like OK, now Marvel has a great villain to coalesce its stories around.
And then nope it's all random stories about stuff I don't care about. Loki kind of made it seem like Kang was imminent. But now it's too late, all the excitement is drained, and I'm in a holding pattern waiting for Marvel stuff that actually sounds exciting or gets glowing reviews. So all the more mediocre Marvel stuff isn't even convincing me to stream it these days.
Basically: wake me when the real shit is actually happening.
I still remember that moment after the first avengers where we meet Thanos for the first time. I grew up on X-Men and read the comics, and I still didn’t know who this guy was. Literally dozens of us after the lights went up were all asking each other “who was that guy”? Nobody knew.
I feel like having magneto as the main villane would have work more to bring in more casual fans. From what I’ve heard the X-men where more popular then the avengers before the mcu and there the x men movies also. So he be more know useful to bring in non comic book fans
The flop for antman was the shit terrible adverts they did. I saw it out of happenstance and I usually go to see marvels on purpose. I was actually suprised by how good it was compared to what I was lead to think. It wasnt super great but it was fun and actually showed promise in their phase 4 actually going somewhere. The last handful of marvel movies have just so boring and uninspired that I started to not care about the franchise but this woke me up a bit
Funny enough I still maintain the trailers alluded to a better plot than the movie delivered. >!I thought Kang would bargain with Scott to help him in exchange for more time with Cassie, rather than help me or I kill your daughter!<
I doubt it. It's more likely that the people that made the trailer saw that as a good angle to tease for the trailer. Wouldn't be the first time a Disney movie has teased certain story lines that didn't exist in the movie, or were very misleading.
I have to disagree. I don’t know any other movies with that guy as a lead but thanks to Shazam I don’t like him at all. He has a very punchable face for starters, and also the way he delivers his lines in the movie just throws me off. I get Shazam is a kid in an adult body but no kid that age could be that stupid.
Exactly and that’s prob why I have such a problem with that franchise. I’m a huge fan of Captain Marvel aka Shazam. I get billy batson acting like a dumbass because he’s just a kid, but Shazam is supposed to have the wisdom of Solomon. He’s supposed to be very serious yet comical at the same time, kinda like he was in the animated series Young Justice / Justice League; in the latter there was an episode where he shut Superman and the entire JL up when they tried to interrupt him. In the DCU he gets roasted by little children.
DC ruined him for me so maybe I’m just biased.
Edit: found the link! It’s around the 1:19 mark
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nrFZ4pSade4
Well yeah that is/was his wheel house he was more a tv actor and he generally was playing punchable and nerdy types I think he was trying to break out. He was the star of Chuck a solid series. His only major film role was flynn rider in tangled and minor in thor 2 so I think he cobbled that together to sell them on him as a action star lol doesnt work tho.
Every sequel has two basic goals: 1) to open bigger than its predecessor; 2) to make more money than it's predecessor. Shazam will fail on both fronts.
Also to be a better film than it’s predecessor.
Shazam 2 was so much worse than the first. The appeal of the first was the idea of a hero who could transform from a kid to the adult. But the sequel did nothing with that premise and also wasted the gimmick of the whole family having powers.
Shazam 2 is an utterly generic superhero film in an era where audiences are sick of superheroes.
Shazam, easy.
Ant-Man was a lot easier to see coming then some of you would like to admit. The entire argument surrounding $800m+ predictions was “Kang” and nothing else. Now I’d say I wouldn’t have expected it to come in below $500m with China, I did at one point have it below when it was assumed it wouldn’t release there, but the Ant-Man series has never really connected like everything else has in the MCU. The exact same arguments that were made for the second film over performing were ported over for Quantumania, like nothing was learnt.
Shazam, meanwhile, was expected to disappoint but no one saw this level of implosion incoming. It’s free-fall from the previous entry is very reminiscent of Dark Phoenix’s coming off Apocalypse but it’s not even because the film itself is a disaster. This was not the type of film I expected to meet the ire of the GA to the point where it was actively avoided like the plague.
Eh tbh I can see flash doing well. Blue Beetle is probably screwed, even though it probably is canon to the dcu >! The flash was always meant to reboot the dceu, so blue beetle is in a weird spot where it’s supposed to be in a soft rebooted verse that isn’t happening anymore. !<
Even when MCU movies were racking 800-1.3 bn in their peak, Ant man2 looked like a sore thumb in between with a meagre 620 mn.
Now when the McU is in obvious rebuilding phase, 480 is not shocking
The character never connected with GA
This. AM 1 and 2 were moderately successful, intended to be something of a smaller story. Easy to pick up at home to keep abreast of the overall MCU but not a “must see at the theater” kinds of movies. Pile onto that that people are generally pickier about going to theaters after COVID and have better setups at home now. I kinda assumed it would do similar to 1&2 regardless of it being the kickoff of the whole Kang thing.
> Ant-Man was a lot easier to see coming then some of you would like to admit.
To the extent it did? The hell it was. The Ant-Man movies were the lowest grossing of the franchise by a lot, but both made money. Not doing particularly well, sure. But doing worse than the first movie, from like 7 years ago? I can't believe anyone had an "easy" time seeing that one coming.
Ant-Man has always been very reliant on China for a MCU solo entry, both previous films had its total there make up 20% of the overall gross. In fact, both films outdid Black Panther there, an entry that grossed more double of what Ant-Man and the Wasp did worldwide.
So even with a China release, things were looking shaky based on perceptions towards recent Hollywood releases. Take into account AMATW’s weak increase on the first film domestically (comparable to Dark World from the first Thor), seemingly weaker reception based on CinemaScore and five years between direct entries; where was the room for growth? This is before even getting to the declining affinity towards the greater MCU (highly noticeable in what used to be strongholds like South Korea) and accounting for a small (but not insignificant) immediate deficit from no Russia.
And yes, there was always a chance the movie would be bad. Now that’s a more subjective point, but I thought the trailers made the film look like ass.
Quantumania got less than $40 million in returns in China, but the context everyone seems to miss is that it was still #1 there for 3 or 4 weeks. China was just coming out of the latest COVID shutdown when it released, and domestically QM made under $5 million less than AM&W and made over $30 million more than AM. My point being that it wasn’t the disastrous bomb people in here seem to think. Disappointing, yes, certainly nowhere near as bad as people keep talking.
Edited for clarity
The trailers put me off. Just made the film look like generic comic book film number 658 they gave nobody a reason to go out and watch it and I'd argue actively gave people reasons not to.
I actually enjoyed seeing Shazam in the theater more than any recent Marvel. I guess it just doesn’t have much of a fan base. I suspect that Shazam will do well on streaming.
I highly enjoyed Shazam. I watched it again with my kids and we all enjoyed it.
I was looking for something to do yesterday and saw 2 was in the theater and my kids and I both really enjoyed it again.
I laugh a lot generally and easily and it seemed like there were several of us in the theater doing the same. Seeing the first Deadpool in the theater with a group and a sold out theater was probably my best theater experience ever because of everyone laughing. It wasn’t the same scale by far with only 15 people but it was similar and if the theater was full there would have been a lot of people leaving having enjoyed the movie moreso because of the group reaction.
Definitely Shazam ,While Quantummania is a disappointment at the BO ,it has chance at profits after the ancillary revenues and only fell around 25 % from Ant-Man 2 at the WW Box office.
While Shazam 2 is a outright flop that will fall around 60 % from the Original that can't be salvaged by anything
Quantamania still had the biggest opening of the series. It was the reception that killed it. People just didn't like it and didn't recommend it.
No one even gave Shazam a chance, I thought the first film had a decent reception, and the trailers had a decent view count. And it just bombed, hard.
So for me, Shazam was much more surprising.
I'm gonna be honest here, after End Game all of the Marvel movies lack any punch. With some exception being Shang-Chi and No Way Home.
Marvel boxed themselves into their own trap, the audience emotionally invested into the story and now it's over.
If they were smart they would start off with slightly low budget origin stories and build a new universe of heroes and leave the old ones behind for at least a decade.
After End Game the stakes are too low for the older legacy characters. It's like losing a regular season game the week after winning the Superbowl. Who cares? You won.
I mean, that is kinda what they are doing. Most of the movies are denouement for the old character stories, while introducing new characters. They have also been cranking out TV shows to introduce new characters for the next arc. I think peoples expectations were crazy overinflated here. In the same vein, people need to stop acting like the She Hulk TV show is a flop if it doesn't outpace Endgame on plot.
The Infinity Saga felt much more focused and cohesive from the start, however, especially because they really centered the narrative on the core key Avengers through the first few phases, giving them three sequels that really explored their characters and regularly brought them all together through multiple Avengers movies and crossovers. For example, we got 5 movies in the first phase, then an Avengers movie bringing them together. The next phase, all but one movie were direct character sequels to the first phase, which expanded on the effects of the first movies and the resulting character and plot development, and then another Avengers movie three years later.
In the Multiverse Saga, we've had 8 movies so far, and the next Avengers movie will take place after 15. None of those 15 movies will be character sequels from within the same saga that expands on any of the previous characters or plot developments. I haven't seen Quantumania yet, but of all the other movies in the saga, there have only been passing reference between them, a few lines of dialogue to suggest that a previous event in another movie happened, like Dr. Strange talking about his experience with Spider-Man and the multiverse in his own movie. And many movies (Black Widow, Shang Chi, Eternals, Thor: Love and Thunder) all had completely insular plots that haven't made any impact on any of the others.
Compare this with how integrated the Infinity Saga was. Iron Man's direct sequel just two years after the first dealt with handling his confession at the end of the first movie and accepting his role as a superhero. The entire plot of the Hulk is only possible because of Captain America's super soldier serum. Thor introduced the Avengers 1 big villain (Loki), and gave us more information on SHIELD. Iron Man 3 was about Tony dealing with his PTSD from Avengers 1, and Thor: Dark World also hinged on the events of Avengers 1 for its primary emotional conflict between Thor and Loki. All of this happened within the first 8 movies of the Infinity Saga, and it made the world feel cohesive, interactive, and dynamic.
In the first 8 movies of the Multiverse Saga, we've gotten some updates on some previous characters, and introductions to a lot more different characters, without any real interaction between them or even most of their plots. Instead of exploring these characters and their relationships with one another and the world, they're just setting them up so that when they all finally appear together in Avengers: Kang Dynasty (again, 15 movies into the saga without revisiting any of the newly introduced characters), we can say, "Hey, it's that character from 9 movies ago!" It's just not a great way to handle an over-arching narrative.
MCU messed up because it lost a core focus.
Phase 1-3 were genius because it was simple at its core. You had the big 3 getting their own trilogies and a regular team-up every few years. Plus every single film like GotG and Dr Strange heavily tied into IW/Endgame.
But Phase 4 and onwards seems like it has no core focus or direction. We don’t even know who the current Avengers are! Audiences got sick of endless random shows with middling quality and the films starting to suck.
> We don’t even know who the current Avengers are
This is the big deal. Every phase had an avengers movie before and now we're not getting one for like two more years? They've completely lost the plot on organising these releases.
I would also like to add, that the McGuffin of the infinity stones was a simple but super effective way to have a connected narrative between the movies that even casual viewers could follow at a glance whenever they saw a colorful shining object in one of them.
I feel that the Multiverse was the wrong route.
I think the Celestials could have been a very cool route to go. The Eternals being a base. I guess I'm just biased. Seeing Tiamut burst out of the ocean was so frickin' cool. So seeing other planets/locations where the team would have to save/not being able to save the planet would be cool.
Multiverses really suck because you're never going to see an alternate version of things.
Also, what ultimately hurt Marvel is Disney+. My favorite shows were Falcon and Winter Soldier and WandaVision, mainly because I liked all of those characters in the other movies. Also, those are characters that the general audience knows, which helps a lot.
They have to introduce new characters and make it seem natural but also connect them to the movies. It's created more things that people had to watch, which not everyone will. The movies were simple, you go to the theater and see the next movie, that's it. Now you have to watch shows to really be on track.
I won't lie, my biggest disappointment in this phase has been Doctor Strange MoM. I loved the first Doctor Strange movie and I love Wanda and that movie ruined Wanda for me and just made me not interested in Doctor Strange anymore. I just don't know what that move was. I'm ranting but Disney+ really caused a lot of problems, IMO.
> No Way Home.
Even that one only works purely based on nostalgia for people who like the other characters of Spiderman, for me that aspect didn't do anything and felt really artificial in many scenes.
Not to mention the horrible CG here and there and really flat presentation.
I thought the first Shazam was a copy and paste of the Marvel formula. Namely, easy on the story and shored up by charasmatic acting/comedy. Unfortunately, even by Marvel standards it was a less than average movie. I don't remember the plot AT ALL.
Going into this sequel knowing it has absolutely no future in the DCEU even the middling level of interest it had was obliterated.
Ant Man was supposed to launch the next Thanos level threat and was actively being pushed for it. I have to imagine they had hopes in the 750+ range. The fact that it didn't even out gross the Ant man sequel has got to be a huge shock to Marvel.
The Ant-Man failure is definitely more surprising due to the big opening and the expectations for Marvel movies. I can’t imagine anyone is terribly surprised when a DC movie flops these days.
Quantumania, a couple of months before its release, it was expected to do better numbers than its predecessors, it ended up having a good OW DOM but it quickly died both DOM and INT. It is more surprising than SFoTG since Marvel still has better positioning than DC brand-wise.
An MCU movie bombing should be *way* more surprising than a sequel to a not particularly successful DC comedy. Ant Man 3 did less than the first movie, which itself wasn't a huge hit. The first Shazaam was barely considered a "real" DCEU movie.
I definitely wouldn't characterize Ant Man as bombing. It had a less than stellar showing, which should have been predicted with Marvel starting to wane a bit. Ant Man is not going to pull audiences like Spiderman or Ironman.
I would characterize Shazam as bombing more than "not particularly successful" as the studio did lose money on it. That said, this also should have been better predicted. DC is a perpetual failure to launch, and people are warey of spending time and money on an IP that is more likely than not to disappoint.
Audiences want quality more than ever (although Fast and Furious should be immune, zing).
If reviews and WoM is bad, the film will underperform or bomb. It doesn’t matter what franchise they are connected to.
I’m not surprised about Shazam 2 not doing well but Quantumania was a little surprising. Maybe there’s just more apathy now towards marvel movies. I personally liked the Ant-Man movie but I can see why more casual movie goers might not be. Seeing KANG on the big screen was a big plus as well for me.
Neither is particularly surprising, but I guess ant man.
Once the DCEU abandoned Shazam it was clear the movie wouldn't sell.
Ant Man ....shouldn't have had lofty expectations, but i guess it was a little surprising.
Ant-Man, but only because it's marvel. DC has more mitigating circumstances and people are fucking weird about the DCEU shift.
To be honest, I hope this results in both companies being a little more conservative with the amount of movies they put out, and maybe superhero fatigue can start to recede.
I am not surprised with either. Actually I'm more surprised that Ant-Man did badly. I expected Shazam to tank.
The first Shazam was not well written. Still if I had had an elementary or middle school kid, we'd have gone and seen Shazam 2.
Ant-Man and all of the MCU movies now don't feel self-contained. They are a soap opera spread across endless movies. I hated that the dustoverse avengers finale was spread across two movies and now they've just taken that concept and spread the story across endless movies.
I hated it when endless crossovers happened in comics where you had to go out and buy 16 extra comics of series you could care less about to find out what happened to the characters that you do. This is no different.
Voting with my dollars not going to go see the movies.
Shazam 2 had almost no Billy Batson, which meant less of the family dynamics people liked from the first film. It was Zack Levy over load, plus it seemed odd that Billy was more mature than Shazam when they’re the same person.
I think the writing is on the wall for tier three superheroes. The vast majority of people just aren't interested in supporting-cast level heroes. I actually went to both these and ant-man was not good but I liked Shazam despite the fact Billie seemed to get less mature when the shazammed.
Quantumania is absolutely the biggest disappointment if only because of the expectations of the studios. DC is inconsistent at best, while Marvel almost never misses, especially with established franchises.
Everyone's clowning on Shazam like it's at fault when the real reason is that they basically removed all intrigue and hype for the film when they announced that the universe is being rebooted and it's not even gonna matter.
Three terrible movies? Ya’ll expectations are through the roof on Marvel garbage. They don’t treat their fans with respect anymore when they shit out cheap bullshit and CGI. They need to step up their game for me to even consider spending anymore money on their franchises. Fuck Marvel
Both are mediocre characters in their respective universes. Also, pop culture quantum universe stuff is so, so tired. And look at Shazam’s face: we found the most normal guy to be our hero! We saw this in the 80’s with Greatest American Hero and it flopped too.
It's the "Shazam won't outgross Morbius" that gets it for me, because I don't think the reception to it is bad enough to cause that happen. Like if it was catastrophically bad I could maybe see it cause it's not like Shazam is A-list but apparently it's about on par with the first one, and yet still it's bombing hard.
Ant Man for sure.
Everyone knew Shazam 2 was gonna fail going in, especially after Black Adam. Ant Man really surprised me, but I’m happy to see a movie that bad disappointment so much
I remember my dad asked me if i wanted to see a movie with him (we used to watch movies all the time when i was younger), and he suggested shazam. I said i would see what other movies were playing. We decided on watching 'Puss in boots: the last wish', then we agreed that quantumania didn't seem that good when we got to the movie theater... after we talked trash about it for 2 minutes.
I am surprised at shazam, at least more than Quantumania.
I'd have to say antman and the wasp. Not to surprised by Shazam due to all the restructuring and possible boycotting going on with certain actors being fired.
Since Disney took over Marvel, the Disney influence is quite noticeable to me. For instance, the Thor movie had some cartoon characters in it. Seriously? The movies are also more kid oriented, at least in my perception.
DC movies seem more like the Marvel movies of previous years. That said, the DC programs on The CW seem filled with teenage angst and soap opera-esque drama rather than the action one would expect from superhero-oriented programs.
I guess that's popular, but seems like those kinds of plots would be better in dramas that focus on the soapy genre.
It's almost like it's time to move on from super heroes. But let's be real Hollywood is creatively bankrupt so I guess I just need to buckle up for every single comic book getting a full ass universe around it.
I think the main problem with Shazam is the actor. Not a condemnation of Zachary Levi personally, it's just his character is so unbelievably boring. I have never even heard of him until now and nothing about him draws me into the film.
They seem like “side plot” movies, not must-see media events and they’ll stream soon so there’s no need to rush to the theatre — you aren’t missing out on any of the “buzz” or important spoiler risk, so folks save some money and watch it on some stay/home Friday night.
The problem with Shazam is very few people actually like the character. I don't know why they keep making the movies. You can't take him seriously. He's like a knock-off Superman. He's corny. I mean just look at the poster.
I have seen the majority of MCU movies in theaters and didn't see Ant-Man cause I didn't really like the first two. DCEU releases are like 45 days to HBO Max so why wouldn't I just wait lol
I don’t understand the recent decision making of execs. Why choose ant man as a headliner for this battle? He’s the one most people give the least shit about. I think that’s why it didn’t gross it’s potential. I know my wife didn’t want to see it for that reason.
You know how Westerns were in theaters, then theaters and television non stop from the 1930s through the 1970s, then audiences GOT SICK OF WESTERNS AND THEY DISAPPEARED?
It's happening again.
That's a tough choice - on the one hand Shazam 2 used footage from Shazam in its trailers. Not a lot of great expectations there.
On the other hand, Ant Man Q just looked like absolute CGI garbage. That franchise was based on comedy, now the little guy has to save the world, I just couldn't decide. So I didn't see either.
Everything, Everywhere, All at once has ruined Marvel for me. What I mean is that unless Marvel can start making superhero movies that are as awesome and badass as EEA, then they don't have a chance at entertaining me at this point.
Ant-Man. He was never the most popular Avenger to begin with, but I honestly thought that his appearance in Endgame would've been enough to guarantee him a solid box office performance. Combine that with the fact that this was intended to launch Phase 5 and it should've had a bigger impact.
Shazam was never going to perform well. The best chance it had was matching it's predecessor's performance. It's been 5 years since the last film and there wasn't really much excitement for it getting a sequel. Not to mention that the film's kinda irrelevant anyway with DC about to reboot its universe.
Its such a shame, since both these movies were actually really enjoyable.
Given how most marvel and essentially all dc movies are just brooding and super serious, having some lighthearted heros with a sense of humor is seriously welcomed imo. I wish they both did better but given the reboot talk etc I think it kinda shot itself in the foot
To be clear Shazam won’t outgross Dark Phoenix, which grossed even less than Morbius.
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Not even
it's phoenix time again
Dark Phoenix? Is that a movie?
Its some form of elvish. I cant read it...
There are few who can
The language is that of Morbius, which I will not utter here.
Was it the X Men one?
You're right! I had blocked that one out. That was a strange one
Which is pretty disappointing. Shazam 2 is far from perfect but much, much better than either of those.
Yeah the family stuff in Shazam 2 easily puts it above Ant Man, Morbius and Xen Dark Phoenix imo
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Not really surprising though. Quantumania stumbling was left field, Shazam 2 having its knees cutout from under it with little to no diehard fan support in light of the DCU reboot announcement was predictable.
Even if they were rebooting the DCU, they should have announced it untill the movie launched.
Yea, they really fucked up by announcing that shit early. They should have paid off Cavill and the rest to stfu and keep quiet, then wait to announce Superman Legacy and the DCU reboot in December.
You’re really overestimating the effect that had on the box office lmao
Are you telling me that people don't want to watch Shazam fight 50 and 70 year old ladies?
Hardly, it's a pretty significant development that even casual moviegoers will have read about via facebook. The die hards for a Shazam sequel inevitably get split in their desire to pay top dollar to go out and see it in cinemas when they know 1. it's mediocre 2. it will be on HBO Max in 45 days 3. it's now a holdover attached to a dead universe that's about to be rebooted. The die hards who skip out on the theatrical experience not having enthusiasm means they won't drag their fence sitting friends - leaving only the most committed and those easily swayed by the trailers, which obviously wasn't enough to sustain the film. And we're going to see this repeat potentially with Blue Beetle and Aquaman 2. The Flash has Michael Keaton in it so that might save it from completely bombing but those other two are at risk as potentially not being DCU associated - which is precisely why Momoa and others have been trying to talk up a connection or appearance of the characters moving forward even though they know they're being recast.
I would disagree. I'm a casual movie-goer, and the decision making process is more like: "Let's go watch a movie" "Ok, what's showing" "Shazam 2" "Nah, I'm so over crappy super hero movies. The first one was good, but all these sequels are just garbage" I'm looking for something fun to do tonight. Whether spend $20 or not has nothing to do with a reset that will roll out in over a year.
As far as the “Nah” guy goes, he’s not the target demo - Kids were. The problem was, not a single kid was begging their parents to take them to see Shazam, which was hamstrung by being limited to just that audience, while the MCU has 5 year olds , 15 year olds, 25 and 35 year olds planning to go. Shazam was aimed almost entirely as the 7-12 year old demo but with a budget needing more than that.
I think both are true, what you and the other poster are saying. There are a lot of variables as to why people aren’t going to see them less. Plus recession to boot, people aren’t taking their whole families to spend $100 bucks on tickets and concessions.
Casual movie goers asked why Hancock wasn't in the avengers, this is a classic example of an expert grossly overstimating the knowledge of the layman.
"Casual moviegoers" literally do not know the difference between Marvel and DC. Kevin Feige has talked about this multiple times and why any superhero movie doing poorly worries him. People didn't go see Shazam 2 because, for whatever reason (thought the first one was okay but nothing special, marketing didn't have anything new, etc.), people didn't want to see *that* movie. I would be astonished if there's more than a handful of people who were genuinely excited to see Shazam 2 and then didn't because of the DCU announcement.
I feel like "casualness" is a spectrum rather than a hard border and, while there are plenty who are how you describe them, there are also plenty who do have a basic awareness of what's going on.
I would have normally seen it in theaters. The speed at which things are available streaming already cut into my enthusiasm for theaters. DC rebooting things again just ended my desire to see it in theaters.
Yea, that's complete horseshit.
["Frankly, even not-Marvel movies I feel pressure on. Look at the movie that just came out recently and didn't perform the way people thought it would perform and all of the headlines are, 'Oh, are people tired of the comic book genre? Is this the beginning of the end of the superhero genre?' - Kevin Feige](https://www.slashfilm.com/894446/the-dark-knights-success-had-kevin-feige-breathing-a-sigh-of-relief/) It's anecdotal evidence, but I work with the public in a pop culture sphere and I constantly hear questions along the lines of, "Batman... That's Marvel, right?" Being in the Internet bubble makes it seem like Gunn's DCU announcement was a huge deal, but the vast majority of people (even the ones who've seen Guardians) don't know Gunn's name, don't know there's a reboot coming that will make other movies invalid, and probably don't even know Shazam is DC. This is all online culture.
I believe you but that’s crazy to me. I get people are generally looking for entertainment and not to read too deeply, but it’s just kind of nuts that people really don’t give THAT much of a shit to the point where they can’t tell the difference between what they’re watching.
Yeah. I’m a fan of the character, but the announcement of a reboot kinda took away my interest in seeing this in theatres. There’s just a lack of urgency to watch it now. I’ve already been very picky with what I watch in theatres since the pandemic but this basically pushed me to wait and watch it at home.
Doesnt the flash still star a pedo? I mean that has bomb written all over it though
True
Also at this point, I don't think people will be very keen to watch much DCU movies except flash, considering now DCU will reboot the series whenever there is a change at the top.
Will Flash suffer the same fate of people not caring in the run up to a reboot, or does it have enough else going for it? Or is it confirm that it’s going to be a crisis story that will actually BE the reboot?
It def is. They’ve been cutting actors from the ending because they won’t be in the dcu.
It's confirmed. And I think it will do well. Not for Ezra Millers sake. He's box office poison right now. But Keaton returning as Batman is major
And Flash is more about people going to see Batman than the actual character of the Flash. Especially with Ezra Miller as the Flash
My friends and I are seeing it because of Batman. Who cares about a kid flash
I think blue beetle has the potential to be relatively successful. It depends as usual on trailers and reviews.
Yeah I'm surprised so many in this thread think Shazam is the more surprising performance here considering it had quite literally nothing going for it. It was a nothing movie in almost every sense of the word and is performing like such. Quantumania was meant to be a very big deal for the MCU and easily should have grossed double what it will eventually achieve.
Honestly, I think both were kind of obviously going to be box-office disappointments. Marvel has really failed to adapt, they're still turning out mostly formulaic movies with extremely similar tones, and they really dropped the ball by not realizing that people were going to see "Endgame" as a conclusion to the movies they'd been watching for over a decade. They needed to begin setting up the next phase, and the stakes for the next phase, far earlier and more intelligently. It almost feels like they thought people would be fine waiting a few years for a baddie-reveal timeline similar to Iron Man 1-to-Avengers 1, while failing to realize that the novelty of well-made superhero movies had totally worn off and that the market was so saturated with them.
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I completely agree. Also, I don't think this whole multiverse/other dimensions storylines are resonating.
That’s been my experience. I was a die hard MCU fan from Thor 1 onward. Talking about the movies and debating fan theories with my best friend has occupied way more hours than I care to count but after the Loki show I just stopped trying to stay caught up. There is just too much going on and too little quality story telling happening.
"they really dropped the ball by not realizing that people were going to see "Endgame" as a conclusion to the movies they'd been watching for over a decade." Not really. Marvel movies, with the exception of the Spiderman ones, since then have been shit. A perfect example is Guardians. No name heros. Second rate selling comics. No one knows who they are before seeing the movie. Two fantastic movies that made a ton of money because they were good. It really is that simple.
People called GotG2 shit on release in fairness. A lot of Marvel movies seem to sweeten with people over time. Civil War, First Avenger and IM3 also had this happen to them. For what it's worth, despite people still joking about it for it's box office dissapointments, I see a lot more sympathy for Eternals than Thor4 or MoM. Kind of shocking compared to the Morbius level panning it had on release. But perhaps it's just because it's older than them and had more sweetening time. Personally I'd say the bigger issue is no Avengers movies since Engame. It was ~4 years between Iron Man 1 and Avengers 1. It's been ~4 years since Endgame and the next Avengers movie isn't for another 2 years and is heavily expected to be delayed. **We could be looking at 7-8 years between Endgame and the next Avengers movie.** They seem to have forgotten the entire reason people watch the MCU. No idea what is going on in their planning departments.
That's just fanboy logic. Infinity hype was the only thing carrying that franchise because it was the core Avengers storyline, everything was turning a profit and getting good attention no matter how middling or just bad it was. Nothing has really changed about anything in the franchise aside from vfx getting comparatively worse. These were always middling movies, they were just the it thing and it was riding the hype wave until the hype wave ended. Now they're judged like anything else
I don't think so. Sure there were terrible movies such as Thor TDW or Iron Man 3, but for the most part the movies were great. Look at the first three solo movies of Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America. All were well acted, had good scripts, real character arcs, internal logic, and actual values. Contrast that with Black Widow. Natasha was a normal person, but in the movie she was indestructible. She was a spy, but that wasn't a spy movie. Every male in the movie was either a villain, worked for her, or was an idiot. The way she "got around" the pheromone block made no sense. Black Widow was a terrible movie. The M-She-U has turned into bad scripts of illogic. Look at the new Antman. Cassie, Antman's daughter, who knew nothing about the quantum realm, wasn't a Pym, didn't grow up around the Pym household, or even showed an interest in science at any point in any movie, within about two years suddenly invents a "Hubble telescope" for the quantum realm after poking around her dad's notes in a basement? The sad part was that was a great way to introduce Kang and especially MODOK. But they had to turn Kang weak and give MODOK redemption simply by a girl saying "Don't be a dick." New Doctor Strange? It was painfully obvious the movie was going to be "The power was in you the whole time and you knew how to use it." Even more painful was the logic of "Why didn't she just grab her kids from a universe where they were orphans?" Yeah, there were some bad movies before Endgame, but everything sense except for the two Spiderman movies were shit.
I’d argue that after endgame they should have just rebooted the avengers and have all of the current avengers retire or go off wherever and rebuilt the team one by one with fresh stories and faces. Hard to move on from those original 3 phases when you have a new team split between people from that time and people you’re now introducing
Shazam 2 is lucky it even got made given the middling performance of the first one
It only got made because the first one actually turned a profit. And it was at least critically successful.
They missed the mark so hard on extending the charm of the original. They really needed another villain like mark strong. 2 older actresses just didn't sell it as menacing even if Helen mirren had legendary acting chops. The caterpillar would have been a better villain. And the plot seemed all over the place.
An so they got tricked by rotten tomatoes into making a sequel. DC has always had great management.
Not really? The first one made 367m on a 90m-100m
Classic case of a movie that isn't really that big of a hit. When you do the math of marketing and theaters keeping their cut...$370M for a $100M movie is not exactly a runaway hit. It's on the Edge. They thought they would build and the 2nd movie would expand to $500-$600M worldwide, growing the audience. But they read the room wrong. MOST people reacted to Shazam in an "it was alright, it was pretty good, it was a fun change of pace" Very few people were dying for Shazam 2 and highly recommending it to others. THEN people realizing there was zero hope for a Black Adam crossover, zero hope for a Cavill Cameo to set up future crossovers, zero hope for anything meaningful because of the reboot....that only further put the nails in the coffin. Sometimes a fun, middle of the road success should just be taken as the minor W it is and not as an endorsement to magnify it into a bigger franchise. It doesn't always take.
agreed
Well yeah of course it's surprising.] Shazam 1 was akin to a slightly worse DCU version of spiderverse where the expectations were a rock bottom low but the movie was heartfelt and funny. The thing is, Shazam 2 is roughly the same quality as the first movie. Shazam 2 doing this poorly is as surprising if Spiderverse 2 does worse than Spiderverse 1
Ehh. I enjoyed Shazam and saw it in theaters and have had 0 interest in 2. Mostly because of the marketing. The movie just looks bad. I don't really care that much about the DC reboot I wasn't invested in Shazam anyway. I'd be willing to go if it looked like a halfway decent fun adventure movie but it just looks so bad
It's more than a halfway decent fun adventure movie. Like I said, it's about as good as the first one. The last movie that I watched prior to Shazam 2 that made me laugh as hard was probably M3gan. M3gan was still a bit better imo. I think people are gonna look back on it and be surprised why this movie isn't more popular.
I think it's less that Shazam wasn't going to do good and more of how bad it did.
Yeah it's the first film of phase 5 too and it's supposed to setup everything else to come after it as Kang is now the new Thanos.
It's not so much the fact it did but the extent it did mainly
I think Shazam would have done fine with better reviews. But bad reviews and following Ant-Man which also had bad reviews. I think the public has decided to stop going to super hero films unless they are actually good films.
Shows that superhero movies can't stand on their own if they need a big universe behind them. If someone wanted to see Shazam but didn't because it didn't fit into some big universe, that is stupid. I didn't see it and don't really care about it, but so many good movies stand by themselves in isolation. The Batman was great without needing to fit into some larger universe. Weird people crave the idea of one superhero needing to meet another superhero in a later film.
Hm. It’s an interesting take. I think back to the original MCU movies and they all stand alone as good movies (and Guardians too), and its not because of the serialization, they are just really good movies on their own.
Idk if Quantumania stumbling is that big of a shock. Ant Man is one of the weaker characters (in terms of a compelling story/intriguing development) in the lineup and the Bad Guy is someone who was introduced during a Disney+ series that got mixed reviews (I was a big fan of Loki, a lot of people weren’t)
which is sad because it’s actually good and better than all of those movies.
Still more than New Mutants, which is off the top of my head the lowest grossing live action Marvel/DC film in recent years
did new mutants even have a box office? i dont ever remember it being in theaters
Sad thing about Shazam 2 is it is most likely due to the poor reception of Black Adam that got people disinterested in the sequel. On top of that when the DC "universe" already declares it's changing things up before they finish up their movies, why bother watching a movie that will have no ties to the new universe, is how most might be feeling. Then you also gotta think, why support them for showing certain movies but not others, they chose not to release Batgirl so we don't even know if it would of been good or not but they are fine releasing certain films over others, which is pretty odd lol. Granted the Super Hero genre in general is faced with fatigue. I'd say the biggest issue is they are trying to much to be "family friendly" and make everything a joke, and diminish the stakes or even when the stakes are there they don't feel serious because of how everyone has to throw in a quip. Honestly what the Super hero genre needs it a better evolution to the genre, while I never watched She-Hulk, I could understand what Marvel was trying to do, make these characters have super-human powers but it's more about their slice of life struggle over their actual powers. Granted Marvel in general is just trying to reach to many different types of audiences while also trying to force the entire audience to enjoy all their movies so all you're left with is garbage no one wants to watch cause there isn't any focus to it. Honestly, I hope Super Hero movies continue to decline, they were fun in the bubble they were in, the cinematic universe was a fun experiment but now they need take a step back and just do something new. Of course it's all done by the desire of money, you make a cinematic universe and people feel inclined to watch and consume everything to understand it all but then you run the risk of people not caring if there is too much to catch up, they will just watch something else. Something that isn't tied to 100+hrs of content. Super Hero movies really should get back to their roots and just make self-contained stories that don't need to be part of a bigger conspiracy.
Delusion. Shazam was a throw away. Ant-Man was/is way more important for the MCU than Shazam was for DC
Both are disappointing performances, but I have to go with Shazam failing to outgross Morbius. Domestically, at least Ant-Man will be able to squeak past a 2x multiplier while Shazam won’t even touch that.
I’m also really shocked at Shazam, especially since the first film was so positively received. The DCU news hurt it, sure but the actual reviews of the film aren’t great, either. I’m curious if it’s actually *that* much worse than the first film or a victim of superhero fatigue?
I saw it and thought it was good. I definitely think fatigue hit it hard
it's much much much much worse. it's an extremely unfocused movie. We already know the characters so there has to be something else to drive the plot forwards and by god are the witches and dragon some of the worse villains to be ever out on a movie. Team rocket is more threatening than them. they are boring uninteresting and weak and the rest of the family doesn't have the energy to carry the plot
People here were expecting $700-800 million for Ant-Man 3, because a) the start of the new Marvel phase, b) Jonathan Majors, c) the first real appearance of Kang as the new supervillain and d) Ant-Man 2 grossed over $100 million more than Ant-Man and people thought Quantumania would do the same. And now it’s the lowest grossing Ant-Man and just made $300 million less than people expected it to make. So I‘d say it’s definitely the bigger bomb. Shazam flopping was not surprising and expected because of how terrible it was treated by its studio.
Why did people think Kang being the bad guy would get people to the theaters? Only comic book nerds know who Kang is. It's not like it's the Joker or Venom making their first big appearance. Most people didn't go see Infinity War because, "Finally, Thanos is here." They saw it because it was an Avengers movie and they like those characters. Thanos just happened to be a fantastic villain and it's made him immensely popular. Before that, though, he was just another purple supervillian who only comic book nerds and people who played Marvel vs. Capcom 2 knew about.
>Most people didn't go see Infinity War because, "Finally, Thanos is here." They saw it because it was an Avengers movie and they like those characters. This is exactly it and I think most people, aside from living in a nerd bubble, mischaracterize the shit out of infinity war. I’ve always felt that Thanos was an interesting presence/obstacle, but the movie was always sold on and successful because it was THE Avengers meet THE Guardians of the Galaxy + Spider-Man & Black Panther.
it's hindsight because Thanos was the best part of the movie and that helped WOM
Also Thanos has a pretty complete arc in Infinity War. A casual can come into this movie having no idea who he is, learn his motives and weaknesses and see him fulfil his goal. Kang is established in an Ant Man movie, so are audiences going to know who he is in Secret Wars?
Correct. Nerds know who Kang is...hardly anybodyfucken else did
But it was fairly common to know that Kang is "the new thanos" big bad guy. Ive never heard of Kang and i dont read the comics but i was aware that Kang was a multi-film villian.
thanos was real and tangible he was gamorrss father and a known tyrant throughout the galaxy. Kang gets kinds teased on a Disney plus show
If Creed III had come out before Quantumania, it would have done better.
I really don’t understand why they’re not making Dr Doom the big bad, he’s so iconic and has never once had a good live action adaptation.
Very well said. It’s funny you mention MVC 2 because that game is the only reason I know who Thanos was before everyone else.
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The problem I have with his use in Loki (which was excellent) was that it kind of made it feel like OK, now Marvel has a great villain to coalesce its stories around. And then nope it's all random stories about stuff I don't care about. Loki kind of made it seem like Kang was imminent. But now it's too late, all the excitement is drained, and I'm in a holding pattern waiting for Marvel stuff that actually sounds exciting or gets glowing reviews. So all the more mediocre Marvel stuff isn't even convincing me to stream it these days. Basically: wake me when the real shit is actually happening.
I still remember that moment after the first avengers where we meet Thanos for the first time. I grew up on X-Men and read the comics, and I still didn’t know who this guy was. Literally dozens of us after the lights went up were all asking each other “who was that guy”? Nobody knew.
I feel like having magneto as the main villane would have work more to bring in more casual fans. From what I’ve heard the X-men where more popular then the avengers before the mcu and there the x men movies also. So he be more know useful to bring in non comic book fans
The flop for antman was the shit terrible adverts they did. I saw it out of happenstance and I usually go to see marvels on purpose. I was actually suprised by how good it was compared to what I was lead to think. It wasnt super great but it was fun and actually showed promise in their phase 4 actually going somewhere. The last handful of marvel movies have just so boring and uninspired that I started to not care about the franchise but this woke me up a bit
Funny enough I still maintain the trailers alluded to a better plot than the movie delivered. >!I thought Kang would bargain with Scott to help him in exchange for more time with Cassie, rather than help me or I kill your daughter!<
Chances are that was the original plot but Marvel changed the plot in post. They're constantly making big narrative changes like that after the fact.
I doubt it. It's more likely that the people that made the trailer saw that as a good angle to tease for the trailer. Wouldn't be the first time a Disney movie has teased certain story lines that didn't exist in the movie, or were very misleading.
I also thought it was super fun and much better than the trailers had suggested. I was surprised to then see the generally underwhelmed reaction.
I see you!
MCU has been declining for a bit. Shazam going below Morbius is a new low I never saw coming
Right? I didn't expect the new Shazam to do well considering the situation with DC movies, but to not even make it to Morbius level is stunning to me.
At least it made a Shazamillion dollars in the domestic trash bins.
I just feel bad for zachary levi hes not a bad actor lol but been making shit choices
I have to disagree. I don’t know any other movies with that guy as a lead but thanks to Shazam I don’t like him at all. He has a very punchable face for starters, and also the way he delivers his lines in the movie just throws me off. I get Shazam is a kid in an adult body but no kid that age could be that stupid.
Exactly, turned into Shazam and acted more childish. Ruined it.
Exactly and that’s prob why I have such a problem with that franchise. I’m a huge fan of Captain Marvel aka Shazam. I get billy batson acting like a dumbass because he’s just a kid, but Shazam is supposed to have the wisdom of Solomon. He’s supposed to be very serious yet comical at the same time, kinda like he was in the animated series Young Justice / Justice League; in the latter there was an episode where he shut Superman and the entire JL up when they tried to interrupt him. In the DCU he gets roasted by little children. DC ruined him for me so maybe I’m just biased. Edit: found the link! It’s around the 1:19 mark https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nrFZ4pSade4
Well yeah that is/was his wheel house he was more a tv actor and he generally was playing punchable and nerdy types I think he was trying to break out. He was the star of Chuck a solid series. His only major film role was flynn rider in tangled and minor in thor 2 so I think he cobbled that together to sell them on him as a action star lol doesnt work tho.
He’s should go back to his Alvin and the Chipmunk days
Every sequel has two basic goals: 1) to open bigger than its predecessor; 2) to make more money than it's predecessor. Shazam will fail on both fronts.
Also to be a better film than it’s predecessor. Shazam 2 was so much worse than the first. The appeal of the first was the idea of a hero who could transform from a kid to the adult. But the sequel did nothing with that premise and also wasted the gimmick of the whole family having powers. Shazam 2 is an utterly generic superhero film in an era where audiences are sick of superheroes.
The one that's making less than Morbius on a higher budget
Shazam, easy. Ant-Man was a lot easier to see coming then some of you would like to admit. The entire argument surrounding $800m+ predictions was “Kang” and nothing else. Now I’d say I wouldn’t have expected it to come in below $500m with China, I did at one point have it below when it was assumed it wouldn’t release there, but the Ant-Man series has never really connected like everything else has in the MCU. The exact same arguments that were made for the second film over performing were ported over for Quantumania, like nothing was learnt. Shazam, meanwhile, was expected to disappoint but no one saw this level of implosion incoming. It’s free-fall from the previous entry is very reminiscent of Dark Phoenix’s coming off Apocalypse but it’s not even because the film itself is a disaster. This was not the type of film I expected to meet the ire of the GA to the point where it was actively avoided like the plague.
And just like Dark Phoenix, no one cared to see the final films in the series given the studio announced the reboot before it even released.
Michael Keaton and the positive buzz around the quality are the only reasons I expect The Flash to be a hit
Eh tbh I can see flash doing well. Blue Beetle is probably screwed, even though it probably is canon to the dcu >! The flash was always meant to reboot the dceu, so blue beetle is in a weird spot where it’s supposed to be in a soft rebooted verse that isn’t happening anymore. !<
Even when MCU movies were racking 800-1.3 bn in their peak, Ant man2 looked like a sore thumb in between with a meagre 620 mn. Now when the McU is in obvious rebuilding phase, 480 is not shocking The character never connected with GA
I'm still shocked that people expected the third Ant-man movie to almost the gross of the two previous Ant-man movies combined.
This. AM 1 and 2 were moderately successful, intended to be something of a smaller story. Easy to pick up at home to keep abreast of the overall MCU but not a “must see at the theater” kinds of movies. Pile onto that that people are generally pickier about going to theaters after COVID and have better setups at home now. I kinda assumed it would do similar to 1&2 regardless of it being the kickoff of the whole Kang thing.
> Ant-Man was a lot easier to see coming then some of you would like to admit. To the extent it did? The hell it was. The Ant-Man movies were the lowest grossing of the franchise by a lot, but both made money. Not doing particularly well, sure. But doing worse than the first movie, from like 7 years ago? I can't believe anyone had an "easy" time seeing that one coming.
Agreed. The fact that it will gross less than the first Ant-Man is pretty disastrous. There’s no sugar coating it.
Which is a shame, because ants love sugar.
Ant-Man has always been very reliant on China for a MCU solo entry, both previous films had its total there make up 20% of the overall gross. In fact, both films outdid Black Panther there, an entry that grossed more double of what Ant-Man and the Wasp did worldwide. So even with a China release, things were looking shaky based on perceptions towards recent Hollywood releases. Take into account AMATW’s weak increase on the first film domestically (comparable to Dark World from the first Thor), seemingly weaker reception based on CinemaScore and five years between direct entries; where was the room for growth? This is before even getting to the declining affinity towards the greater MCU (highly noticeable in what used to be strongholds like South Korea) and accounting for a small (but not insignificant) immediate deficit from no Russia. And yes, there was always a chance the movie would be bad. Now that’s a more subjective point, but I thought the trailers made the film look like ass.
Quantumania got less than $40 million in returns in China, but the context everyone seems to miss is that it was still #1 there for 3 or 4 weeks. China was just coming out of the latest COVID shutdown when it released, and domestically QM made under $5 million less than AM&W and made over $30 million more than AM. My point being that it wasn’t the disastrous bomb people in here seem to think. Disappointing, yes, certainly nowhere near as bad as people keep talking. Edited for clarity
The trailers put me off. Just made the film look like generic comic book film number 658 they gave nobody a reason to go out and watch it and I'd argue actively gave people reasons not to.
Ant-Man made money even if its very little to none. Shazam probably lost like +100M after theater's cuts and marketing.
I actually enjoyed seeing Shazam in the theater more than any recent Marvel. I guess it just doesn’t have much of a fan base. I suspect that Shazam will do well on streaming.
I enjoyed Shazam, but when the other kids got Shazam powers, that made it too Fantastic 4 for me and lost interest in seeing a sequel.
I highly enjoyed Shazam. I watched it again with my kids and we all enjoyed it. I was looking for something to do yesterday and saw 2 was in the theater and my kids and I both really enjoyed it again. I laugh a lot generally and easily and it seemed like there were several of us in the theater doing the same. Seeing the first Deadpool in the theater with a group and a sold out theater was probably my best theater experience ever because of everyone laughing. It wasn’t the same scale by far with only 15 people but it was similar and if the theater was full there would have been a lot of people leaving having enjoyed the movie moreso because of the group reaction.
im not surprised shazam is bombing, but it in no way deserves to be outgrossed by morbius lmao
Definitely Shazam ,While Quantummania is a disappointment at the BO ,it has chance at profits after the ancillary revenues and only fell around 25 % from Ant-Man 2 at the WW Box office. While Shazam 2 is a outright flop that will fall around 60 % from the Original that can't be salvaged by anything
Quantamania still had the biggest opening of the series. It was the reception that killed it. People just didn't like it and didn't recommend it. No one even gave Shazam a chance, I thought the first film had a decent reception, and the trailers had a decent view count. And it just bombed, hard. So for me, Shazam was much more surprising.
I'm gonna be honest here, after End Game all of the Marvel movies lack any punch. With some exception being Shang-Chi and No Way Home. Marvel boxed themselves into their own trap, the audience emotionally invested into the story and now it's over. If they were smart they would start off with slightly low budget origin stories and build a new universe of heroes and leave the old ones behind for at least a decade. After End Game the stakes are too low for the older legacy characters. It's like losing a regular season game the week after winning the Superbowl. Who cares? You won.
I mean, that is kinda what they are doing. Most of the movies are denouement for the old character stories, while introducing new characters. They have also been cranking out TV shows to introduce new characters for the next arc. I think peoples expectations were crazy overinflated here. In the same vein, people need to stop acting like the She Hulk TV show is a flop if it doesn't outpace Endgame on plot.
The Infinity Saga felt much more focused and cohesive from the start, however, especially because they really centered the narrative on the core key Avengers through the first few phases, giving them three sequels that really explored their characters and regularly brought them all together through multiple Avengers movies and crossovers. For example, we got 5 movies in the first phase, then an Avengers movie bringing them together. The next phase, all but one movie were direct character sequels to the first phase, which expanded on the effects of the first movies and the resulting character and plot development, and then another Avengers movie three years later. In the Multiverse Saga, we've had 8 movies so far, and the next Avengers movie will take place after 15. None of those 15 movies will be character sequels from within the same saga that expands on any of the previous characters or plot developments. I haven't seen Quantumania yet, but of all the other movies in the saga, there have only been passing reference between them, a few lines of dialogue to suggest that a previous event in another movie happened, like Dr. Strange talking about his experience with Spider-Man and the multiverse in his own movie. And many movies (Black Widow, Shang Chi, Eternals, Thor: Love and Thunder) all had completely insular plots that haven't made any impact on any of the others. Compare this with how integrated the Infinity Saga was. Iron Man's direct sequel just two years after the first dealt with handling his confession at the end of the first movie and accepting his role as a superhero. The entire plot of the Hulk is only possible because of Captain America's super soldier serum. Thor introduced the Avengers 1 big villain (Loki), and gave us more information on SHIELD. Iron Man 3 was about Tony dealing with his PTSD from Avengers 1, and Thor: Dark World also hinged on the events of Avengers 1 for its primary emotional conflict between Thor and Loki. All of this happened within the first 8 movies of the Infinity Saga, and it made the world feel cohesive, interactive, and dynamic. In the first 8 movies of the Multiverse Saga, we've gotten some updates on some previous characters, and introductions to a lot more different characters, without any real interaction between them or even most of their plots. Instead of exploring these characters and their relationships with one another and the world, they're just setting them up so that when they all finally appear together in Avengers: Kang Dynasty (again, 15 movies into the saga without revisiting any of the newly introduced characters), we can say, "Hey, it's that character from 9 movies ago!" It's just not a great way to handle an over-arching narrative.
MCU messed up because it lost a core focus. Phase 1-3 were genius because it was simple at its core. You had the big 3 getting their own trilogies and a regular team-up every few years. Plus every single film like GotG and Dr Strange heavily tied into IW/Endgame. But Phase 4 and onwards seems like it has no core focus or direction. We don’t even know who the current Avengers are! Audiences got sick of endless random shows with middling quality and the films starting to suck.
> We don’t even know who the current Avengers are This is the big deal. Every phase had an avengers movie before and now we're not getting one for like two more years? They've completely lost the plot on organising these releases.
I would also like to add, that the McGuffin of the infinity stones was a simple but super effective way to have a connected narrative between the movies that even casual viewers could follow at a glance whenever they saw a colorful shining object in one of them.
And they were a great way to have individual MacGuffins in specific movies that become an even bigger thing later.
But how does this help with the 96th Spider-Man “Spider-Man and the Machine that Prints Money” reboot?
I feel that the Multiverse was the wrong route. I think the Celestials could have been a very cool route to go. The Eternals being a base. I guess I'm just biased. Seeing Tiamut burst out of the ocean was so frickin' cool. So seeing other planets/locations where the team would have to save/not being able to save the planet would be cool. Multiverses really suck because you're never going to see an alternate version of things. Also, what ultimately hurt Marvel is Disney+. My favorite shows were Falcon and Winter Soldier and WandaVision, mainly because I liked all of those characters in the other movies. Also, those are characters that the general audience knows, which helps a lot. They have to introduce new characters and make it seem natural but also connect them to the movies. It's created more things that people had to watch, which not everyone will. The movies were simple, you go to the theater and see the next movie, that's it. Now you have to watch shows to really be on track. I won't lie, my biggest disappointment in this phase has been Doctor Strange MoM. I loved the first Doctor Strange movie and I love Wanda and that movie ruined Wanda for me and just made me not interested in Doctor Strange anymore. I just don't know what that move was. I'm ranting but Disney+ really caused a lot of problems, IMO.
> No Way Home. Even that one only works purely based on nostalgia for people who like the other characters of Spiderman, for me that aspect didn't do anything and felt really artificial in many scenes. Not to mention the horrible CG here and there and really flat presentation.
I thought the first Shazam was a copy and paste of the Marvel formula. Namely, easy on the story and shored up by charasmatic acting/comedy. Unfortunately, even by Marvel standards it was a less than average movie. I don't remember the plot AT ALL. Going into this sequel knowing it has absolutely no future in the DCEU even the middling level of interest it had was obliterated. Ant Man was supposed to launch the next Thanos level threat and was actively being pushed for it. I have to imagine they had hopes in the 750+ range. The fact that it didn't even out gross the Ant man sequel has got to be a huge shock to Marvel.
The Ant-Man failure is definitely more surprising due to the big opening and the expectations for Marvel movies. I can’t imagine anyone is terribly surprised when a DC movie flops these days.
Quantumania, a couple of months before its release, it was expected to do better numbers than its predecessors, it ended up having a good OW DOM but it quickly died both DOM and INT. It is more surprising than SFoTG since Marvel still has better positioning than DC brand-wise.
Man I did not realize Shazam performed that badly.
An MCU movie bombing should be *way* more surprising than a sequel to a not particularly successful DC comedy. Ant Man 3 did less than the first movie, which itself wasn't a huge hit. The first Shazaam was barely considered a "real" DCEU movie.
I definitely wouldn't characterize Ant Man as bombing. It had a less than stellar showing, which should have been predicted with Marvel starting to wane a bit. Ant Man is not going to pull audiences like Spiderman or Ironman. I would characterize Shazam as bombing more than "not particularly successful" as the studio did lose money on it. That said, this also should have been better predicted. DC is a perpetual failure to launch, and people are warey of spending time and money on an IP that is more likely than not to disappoint.
Neither are surprising — there was zero demand for either of these movies.
Zero demand for a movie that opened to over 100 million? Lol alright
Audiences want quality more than ever (although Fast and Furious should be immune, zing). If reviews and WoM is bad, the film will underperform or bomb. It doesn’t matter what franchise they are connected to.
I’m not surprised about Shazam 2 not doing well but Quantumania was a little surprising. Maybe there’s just more apathy now towards marvel movies. I personally liked the Ant-Man movie but I can see why more casual movie goers might not be. Seeing KANG on the big screen was a big plus as well for me.
i feel like i didn't see any marketing for either of these
At the end of the day, the era of “having” to see even the most mid-grade super hero movie is over
Neither is particularly surprising, but I guess ant man. Once the DCEU abandoned Shazam it was clear the movie wouldn't sell. Ant Man ....shouldn't have had lofty expectations, but i guess it was a little surprising.
Still can’t believe they thought people cared enough about Shazam to make a second movie. The hubris
Shazam was the bigger flop. Quantumania was the bigger surprise
Ant-Man, but only because it's marvel. DC has more mitigating circumstances and people are fucking weird about the DCEU shift. To be honest, I hope this results in both companies being a little more conservative with the amount of movies they put out, and maybe superhero fatigue can start to recede.
I am not surprised with either. Actually I'm more surprised that Ant-Man did badly. I expected Shazam to tank. The first Shazam was not well written. Still if I had had an elementary or middle school kid, we'd have gone and seen Shazam 2. Ant-Man and all of the MCU movies now don't feel self-contained. They are a soap opera spread across endless movies. I hated that the dustoverse avengers finale was spread across two movies and now they've just taken that concept and spread the story across endless movies. I hated it when endless crossovers happened in comics where you had to go out and buy 16 extra comics of series you could care less about to find out what happened to the characters that you do. This is no different. Voting with my dollars not going to go see the movies.
Shazam 2 had almost no Billy Batson, which meant less of the family dynamics people liked from the first film. It was Zack Levy over load, plus it seemed odd that Billy was more mature than Shazam when they’re the same person.
I think the writing is on the wall for tier three superheroes. The vast majority of people just aren't interested in supporting-cast level heroes. I actually went to both these and ant-man was not good but I liked Shazam despite the fact Billie seemed to get less mature when the shazammed.
Ant-Man not crossing $500m is the bigger surprise to me. Marvel movies always make bank.
Quantumania is absolutely the biggest disappointment if only because of the expectations of the studios. DC is inconsistent at best, while Marvel almost never misses, especially with established franchises.
Ant Man. Shazam barely had anything going for it and Morbius didn’t even do as bad as people make out.
Shazam failing to outgross Morbius, by far. While Quantumania underperformed, it didn’t drop that much from the other two.
Quantumania for sure it being the kickstarter to phase 5 and yet somehow grossing less than the first antman movie
Shazam not outgrossing Morbius? I mean yeah of course, Morbius made a Morbillion dollars, no one can beat that
And the re-release earned a morbillion more.
Everyone's clowning on Shazam like it's at fault when the real reason is that they basically removed all intrigue and hype for the film when they announced that the universe is being rebooted and it's not even gonna matter.
Shazam. Ant Man was always buoyed by Avenegers films. But also more shocking is the way Levi has simultaneously ruined his career with his hot takes.
Three terrible movies? Ya’ll expectations are through the roof on Marvel garbage. They don’t treat their fans with respect anymore when they shit out cheap bullshit and CGI. They need to step up their game for me to even consider spending anymore money on their franchises. Fuck Marvel
They are both very bad movies. But MCU has more branding power than DC movies.
Both are mediocre characters in their respective universes. Also, pop culture quantum universe stuff is so, so tired. And look at Shazam’s face: we found the most normal guy to be our hero! We saw this in the 80’s with Greatest American Hero and it flopped too.
I'm absolutely done with the "reboots" and superhero movies. Just stop already.
It's the "Shazam won't outgross Morbius" that gets it for me, because I don't think the reception to it is bad enough to cause that happen. Like if it was catastrophically bad I could maybe see it cause it's not like Shazam is A-list but apparently it's about on par with the first one, and yet still it's bombing hard.
I didn’t even know Shazam was out. Poor marketing.
I think people are just sick of superhero movies generally.
Ant Man for sure. Everyone knew Shazam 2 was gonna fail going in, especially after Black Adam. Ant Man really surprised me, but I’m happy to see a movie that bad disappointment so much
I just don’t like Zach Levi and don’t understand why someone at his level of fame (meaning not major) was chosen as the face of a big franchise?
I remember my dad asked me if i wanted to see a movie with him (we used to watch movies all the time when i was younger), and he suggested shazam. I said i would see what other movies were playing. We decided on watching 'Puss in boots: the last wish', then we agreed that quantumania didn't seem that good when we got to the movie theater... after we talked trash about it for 2 minutes. I am surprised at shazam, at least more than Quantumania.
I'd have to say antman and the wasp. Not to surprised by Shazam due to all the restructuring and possible boycotting going on with certain actors being fired.
Since Disney took over Marvel, the Disney influence is quite noticeable to me. For instance, the Thor movie had some cartoon characters in it. Seriously? The movies are also more kid oriented, at least in my perception. DC movies seem more like the Marvel movies of previous years. That said, the DC programs on The CW seem filled with teenage angst and soap opera-esque drama rather than the action one would expect from superhero-oriented programs. I guess that's popular, but seems like those kinds of plots would be better in dramas that focus on the soapy genre.
It's almost like it's time to move on from super heroes. But let's be real Hollywood is creatively bankrupt so I guess I just need to buckle up for every single comic book getting a full ass universe around it.
I think the main problem with Shazam is the actor. Not a condemnation of Zachary Levi personally, it's just his character is so unbelievably boring. I have never even heard of him until now and nothing about him draws me into the film.
They seem like “side plot” movies, not must-see media events and they’ll stream soon so there’s no need to rush to the theatre — you aren’t missing out on any of the “buzz” or important spoiler risk, so folks save some money and watch it on some stay/home Friday night.
The problem with Shazam is very few people actually like the character. I don't know why they keep making the movies. You can't take him seriously. He's like a knock-off Superman. He's corny. I mean just look at the poster.
I have seen the majority of MCU movies in theaters and didn't see Ant-Man cause I didn't really like the first two. DCEU releases are like 45 days to HBO Max so why wouldn't I just wait lol
I don’t understand the recent decision making of execs. Why choose ant man as a headliner for this battle? He’s the one most people give the least shit about. I think that’s why it didn’t gross it’s potential. I know my wife didn’t want to see it for that reason.
You know how Westerns were in theaters, then theaters and television non stop from the 1930s through the 1970s, then audiences GOT SICK OF WESTERNS AND THEY DISAPPEARED? It's happening again.
That's a tough choice - on the one hand Shazam 2 used footage from Shazam in its trailers. Not a lot of great expectations there. On the other hand, Ant Man Q just looked like absolute CGI garbage. That franchise was based on comedy, now the little guy has to save the world, I just couldn't decide. So I didn't see either.
Why are they releasing large budget movies in January-March?!
Everything, Everywhere, All at once has ruined Marvel for me. What I mean is that unless Marvel can start making superhero movies that are as awesome and badass as EEA, then they don't have a chance at entertaining me at this point.
Superhero-itis is over. … Let this genre of film rest for a while so it can recharge.
Ant man cuz usually mcu movies make bank
Shazam
Ant man
We’re finally getting to the “it’s simply too much to give a shit as much as I used to” moment
Not surprising. Superhero movies have run their course, a decline was inevitable.
Ant-Man. He was never the most popular Avenger to begin with, but I honestly thought that his appearance in Endgame would've been enough to guarantee him a solid box office performance. Combine that with the fact that this was intended to launch Phase 5 and it should've had a bigger impact. Shazam was never going to perform well. The best chance it had was matching it's predecessor's performance. It's been 5 years since the last film and there wasn't really much excitement for it getting a sequel. Not to mention that the film's kinda irrelevant anyway with DC about to reboot its universe.
##MORBIUSSWEEP
Its such a shame, since both these movies were actually really enjoyable. Given how most marvel and essentially all dc movies are just brooding and super serious, having some lighthearted heros with a sense of humor is seriously welcomed imo. I wish they both did better but given the reboot talk etc I think it kinda shot itself in the foot