Why The Marvels Flopped
The Marvels is a worrying sign for the MCU's future.
Once upon a time, the possibility of a Marvel Cinematic Universe movie flat-out flopping seemed totally impossible.
And yet, The Marvels' early box office performance damn-near guarantees that it's set to be the franchise's first outright bomb - ignoring those films hobbled by the pandemic like Black Widow and Eternals, of course.
Current projections theorise the $250 million blockbuster could gross less than $300 million worldwide, with some even suggesting a worst-case scenario of failing to top both The Flash ($270.6 million) and 2008's The Incredible Hulk ($264.7 million).
It's certainly an alarming outcome for the sequel to a film which grossed $1.131 billion less than five years ago, and extremely concerning for the MCU as a whole.
Industry analysts and fans alike are already scrambling to try and explain what went wrong, but as ever, there's no one single explanation for why The Marvels is cratering commercially.
It's a complicated issue explained by a multitude of reasons, all of which we'll soundly cover here.
Even accepting the movie's relatively mediocre reception from critics and audiences alike so far, quality is just one of the many things that contributed to The Marvels' failure to launch...
9. Captain Marvel Isn't As Popular As Other MCU Heroes
While it's fair to say that nobody cared about many of the MCU's biggest superheroes until a compelling movie about them came out, The Marvels faces an especially steep hill in this regard given that it has three protagonists of dubious-at-best popularity.
Brie Larson's Carol Danvers is obviously the most high profile of the focal trio, yet she nevertheless remains a highly divisive character among the MCU fandom, many simply feeling that she's "boring" and lacks the personality to sell a movie by herself.
Though the first Captain Marvel cracked $1.13 billion worldwide, it's also worth remembering that it benefitted massively from releasing between Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame, effectively serving as a bridge between the two movies and catching the associated tailwind of hype.
Naturally, this sequel has no such luck.
As for Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) and Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani)? Even accepting that they gained their powers in Disney+ TV shows - another problem we'll get to in a moment - neither character has a large fanbase, and so general audiences likely met their presence in trailers with a disinterested shrug.
When you've got a movie centered around three characters that general audiences just haven't connected with, it shouldn't be terribly surprising that the box office outcome is so grim.