#and its apparently not even that hard with the film coming in at $80M to make (blue beetle cost $104M for comparison that's insane)

[jynjackets]

I finally watched The Creator and holy shit why didn’t any of you tell me it was going to be that beautiful

#this movie was literally made for me #i’m a ml engineer #I research tech comms & censorship in asia and la #vietnamese language vietnamese people!!!! Thaii!! nepalese!! desi!!! #*cries* god i love being asian #Asians banding together to kill colonizing Americans ilysm #gareth edwards forever the movie maker of all time #we are going to gif the shit out of this #once I find out how to #the creator #this is the dream science fiction was made for #science fiction is not for taking from other cultures and putting white westerners in its place even when that's how it's been. #it's for telling a grave and distant future that is not so distant to deliberately expand your view of how the world works #INCLUDING outside the west and the united states #reclaiming the genre to the very culture that inspired it #And by not only showing the overpillaged overcolonized overpoached focus on southeast asia but also all of asia as a united front. #Imperialism is supported by xenophobia and racism so how else do you tell that story without casting nonwhite races & diverse nationalities #the movie said you just fucking can't! #and its apparently not even that hard with the film coming in at $80M to make (blue beetle cost $104M for comparison that's insane) #and to say 'American' so clearly and so many times oh is so *chefs kiss* #there's flaws but idgaf because they are insignificant compared to the story and themes that are so clearly and respectfully carried out #It's completely okay if you didn't know anything about southeast asia or asia in general #but when watching the movie don't you just understand that imperialism war violence are inherent evils #NOT because (a) other cultures are nice to look at and you can borrow it like through clothes dances food songs religion #(b) that we are pretty advanced and such intelligence shouldn't go to waste and perhaps be put to work #or (c) any other rationalized benefit for imperialists to put a price on a people or life #but by the simple fact that people are human and are hurting #and that the elusive concept of a soul and where we go when we die exist for everyone along with fears emotions and meaning surrounding it #it's about how we must protect these differences in meaning /because/ we are all the same

[kylesvariouslistsandstuff]

I've been seeing the not-so-great projections for THE MARVELS, the latest movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

This is MCU film #33... I mean...

That right there, I think, is the reason why it's projected to open relatively so-so for an MCU movie and for a CAPTAIN MARVEL sequel. The original opened with over $155m, as the penultimate film before AVENGERS: ENDGAME in early 2019, this looks to open with... Some four years later... Less than $80m...

I think THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER and ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA really pin-pricked the MCU balloon, despite the shows still being pretty popular (then again, that's right there on your TV, you don't have to spend an arm and a leg for a ticket), and the leggy success of GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 3.

This year, I feel, kinda told me that the superhero movie boom hasn't ended per se, but has taken on a new form... In that, audiences will definitely see something superheroic in a theater **if** it has a hook.

QUANTUMANIA was frontloaded like an MCU would be, opened quite awesomely with $106m domestically (that was way up from the previous Ant-Man outing), but had abysmal legs. Legs, less than 2x multiplier abysmal. Even for a big-opener, that's horrible... Its worldwide total couldn't quite make back the budget thrown at it... I've only seen the first 10 minutes of it at my job and bits and pieces while doing auditorium checks, and... It just seemed blah to me... And I think audiences don't want blah anymore out of these movies.

Ditto their general avoidance of Warner/DC's SHAZAM sequel and THE FLASH. BLUE BEETLE was apparently quite alright, but from the trailers, it looked like just another superhero movie. Release that in 2016, it probably would've made its domestic total on opening weekend alone.

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 3 opened with $118m, which was deemed disappointing, but... Something happened... The movie was loved by audiences. Scored a fantastic 3x multiplier, higher than what the last one took in, and higher than most MCU multipliers. I mean... It was a movie that looked pretty nice as opposed to gray rushed CGI murk, people connected with its more emotional storyline, and it helps that people really like those characters when exed out of the larger MCU equation. That they hold a solid trilogy on their own, it says a lot I feel.

Whereas, Ant-Man and Captain Marvel are much more tied to the wider MCU framework, their movies felt like homework films that you had to see in order to keep up. And I'm saying this as someone who likes and owns CAPTAIN MARVEL, ANT-MAN, and ANT-MAN AND THE WASP on Blu-ray. They're solid movies, but I feel the GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY trilogy is on another level.

This leaves us with SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE. The movie made more money domestically ($381m) than the first film, INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE, made in its entire worldwide run. ($373m) Now that right there was the superhero success story of the year, and it held up nicely worldwide, too. Again, the critical and audience response to this one said it all. If audiences love the characters and really liked how the story was told, and that they don't feel obligated to doing homework, they'll come back. They'll make the thing big.

And I think that's where we've been at this year. Audiences want something worth seeing in theaters. If it isn't, they'll wait til it goes to streaming. I suppose a lot of audiences see previews for THE MARVELS, and feel "We'll wait til it comes to Disney+." Plus, there's AQUAMAN AND THE LOST KINGDOM, a movie that doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things since James Gunn and Peter Safran are completely hard-resetting the DC movie universe. That looks to be a "wait til Max" movie, even if the first film cleared a billion back in 2018/19. The world is a lot different now, and audiences are voting with their wallet in different ways now. Plus you have to factor in the ongoing actor strike.

This year, only two superhero movies made it into the Top 10 domestically, two of them Marvel adaptations. Again, GUARDIANS and SPIDER-VERSE.

Last year? Four, three Marvels - DOCTOR STRANGE 2, THOR 4, BLACK PANTHER 2, one DC - THE BATMAN. Another DC, BLACK ADAM, fell a little bit outside of the top 10 and was deemed a financial disappointment.

Let's go further back before COVID-19, to 2019, Marvel's *big* year. CAPTAIN MARVEL, AVENGERS: ENDGAME, SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME. All in the Top 10, in addition to - not a superhero film, but a DC adaptation - JOKER. Four movies.

2018 had a top three of superhero movies: BLACK PANTHER, AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR, and INCREDIBLES 2. DEADPOOL 2 and ANT-MAN AND THE WASP were a little lower on the Top 10, and a little outside the Top 10 were VENOM and INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE.

I think it's now going to boil down to "does this look like it's worth spending a fortune on to see in a theater?"

But you just know, the thumbnail chucklefucks are going to make this about women. They're gonna make this about Brie Larson, their number one enemy. (They're angry at her over something she said about film criticism being too dominated by white men... And she's absolutely RIGHT about that.) They're gonna make this about "WOKE" or whatever. These are the weirdos who deny that CAPTAIN MARVEL made a billion, claiming it was astroturfed. Brie Larson lives in these dirty-bearded pathetic loser men's heads rent-free 24/7/365.

But really, if the movie underperforms, it's not because of that...

Because BARBIE was apparently "woke", a movie *soaked* in feminism and anti-patriarchy sentiment. Enough to make the wet sandwich man-baby that is Ben Shapiro whine about it in an hour-long youtube video... that's the year's biggest movie.

AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER, last year and into this year, made $2 billion, and that's supposedly PC liberal stuff. There were even some weirdos who were upset about Princess Peach being a bit of an action gal in the MARIO movie, if they weren't using said movie as weapon against Disney's supposedly "woke" movies. MARIO made over a billion.

Even then, despite losing money theatrically, LITTLE MERMAID proved to be very popular with audiences. I know because I saw it all unfold at the cinema I work at. We also saw a THREE-HOUR political drama that condemns imperialism and superweapons nearly make a billion...

That new Taylor Swift concert movie made a real killing this weekend. The right hates Swift for various reasons, but it doesn't matter, most "normal" people love her music... So her concert movie, in just three days, single-handedly became the biggest concert movie of all time. And Beyonce's movie is on the way.

It isn't about "woke". Never was.

Audiences' movie tastes have simply shifted. Like they always do. Something rushed and assembly line-looking just isn't always going to cut it, no matter what the "politics" of the movie are.

If THE MARVELS fails, it'll simply be because audiences just didn't care to see how that story would be told. And superhero fatigue really should mean "audiences won't see every single one of them".

It's kind of the same way animated movies were treated every time a few of them flopped at the box office. "Are there TOO MANY animated movies?" "Is the bubble going to pop?" "Is there animation fatigue?"

NO. It's as simple as, if audiences want to see a movie, they'll see it.