this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2024
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Does anyone actually watch MCU movies anymore...?
Honest question, I saw every film from mid phase 1 to Endgame, in theaters.
Then came Disney Plus, Loki was great, Wanda vision was different, and the rest range from forgettable, to complete garbage.
I would rewatch Agents or SHIELD, and any Netflix Marvel show (sans Iron Fist), a dozen times each, before I ever paid for another MCU movie.
Before you dismiss me of some hater, I used really enjoy the MCU. I even tried to watch Agatha, and gave it like 2 1/2 episodes before I couldn't take it anymore, it's bad.
These aren't director movies, their producer and studio movies. There's only so much turd a talented director can polish up, and all of these movies are gigantic stinking studio turds.
Deadpool & Wolverine grossed 1.3 billion in the theatres.
And you really think that Deadpool's performance has reversed the fortunes of the MCU….?
Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think audiences have forgotten that the Deadpool franchise that was made successful outside of MCU, much less X-Men.
Point is, call me skeptical that that the enthusiasm for that one off event, will be carried over into the next MCU turd they plop into theaters.
The Marvels grossed 206.1 million. Guardians 3 grossed 845.6 million. Quantumania grossed 476.1 million.
I'm not trying to convince you to like them boss, I'm just answering your question of "Does anyone actually watch MCU movies anymore...?" which is a resounding: Yes, they do.
The argument is for "yes people watch them." 200 million is a lot of people watching them, regardless of what the movie cost to make.
Okay, look, I didn't think I was going to have to defend this position so hard, but here I am. I don't know movie theatre prices in USD, so I converted US$200 million into my currency and divided it by a very conservatively expensive ticket price and got over 9 million people.
I cannot stress enough I am not trying to make an argument for or against its success. But 9 million people is a lot more than 0 people.
Okay, of domestic boxoffice records in 2023, two of those were in the top ten. Seem pretty popular to me.
(edited to add: I didn't say I wasn't defending their popularity, I said I wasn't defending their [financial] success)
Popularity is financial success.
These aren't indie arthouse flicks, they're enormous investment vehicles for the studios, and they're failing.
It doesn't matter if a film grossed a billion dollars, if it cost 2 billion to make. That's a flop, a failure.
They're failing because they aren't popular anymore, not enough people care about them to sustain the studios in the medium or long term.
When I said no one was watching them, you conveniently found that to be a very literal argument. When clearly in this context "no one's watching them anymore", refers to their box office receipts relative to their cost to produce.
So, to answer my own question in the appropriate context, no, no one's watching them anymore. But to answer in terms you'll understand, the audience has shrunk so much that they're no longer consistent profitable investments. Which is why they've scrapped so many projects, including multiple shows and movies that had already began production.
I disagree wholeheartedly with you that financial success is a direct measure of popularity, but I think we'll just be talking past each other on that. If you were referring to their financial success, I think that's what you should have said to make your point, as that's not at all what I took from your original comment. I'm very done with this though, because I really don't care anymore. Cheers.
That was a lot of effort to prove 9 million is more than 0. But this is the world now I guess.
Two of the three movies you named, lost hundreds of millions of dollars.....
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinereid/2024/10/03/disney-lost-nearly-a-third-of-a-billion-dollars-on-two-marvel-movies/
I wasn't trying to prove their profitability, I was trying to prove that yes, people watch them in response to you asking if people watch them still.
I wasn't really sold on the MCU from the beginning, as I wasn't a fan of the Iron Man comics. I saw it anyway, at the behest of a good friend (who actually did like the comics) and I was blown away. After that, if a Marvel movie came out, I went and saw it, whether or not I cared for (or even knew) the source material. This got me to some great experiences I would have never imagined liking, ie: Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant-Man.
But for me I started looking a bit more critically after the release of Iron Man 3. I thought it sucked, so I realized then that although the MCU has a disproportionate number of real winners, it can still have losers, it's not a given. So I would wait to see what public opinion was before I'd spend money to see it in a theater. I still saw a lot of them in the theater. Most of them. Right up until Avengers Age of Ultron. I hated that movie so much that I've never seen another Marvel movie in a theater since. I've seen most of them after their theatrical run, streaming - some have been quite good, most have not.
So yeah. Big fan of the comics when I was a kid. Reluctant fan of the MCU turned enthusiastic - then turned reluctant again. I still haven't seen Deadpool and Wolverine yet, but it's on the agenda.
Plenty or the wheels would come off such expensive productions (they have lost a chunk of change from a few recent films but, overall, aren't suffering). Personally, I'll go and see every one in the cinema - I've liked a lot, disliked a few (The Marvels gets a lot of hate but I rather enjoyed it, which can't be said for the most recent Ant-Man and Black Panther films).
You know they have canceled the majority of the Disney Plus shows they had in the pipeline, and in production, right..? The wheels came off, a year ago.
This article takes a rosier view by not listing all the shows they canceled or permanently delayed, like Iron Heart, but you can find a complete list if you're so inclined to search for a few minutes.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/marvel-studios-cut-back-films-tv-shows-1235892364/
~~It was posted here a couple of days ago.~~
Edit: different issue (that one is from a few months ago). The cancellations and delays are the right move - as I've said many times on here, they were generating content not actual producing quality films and TV shows (if some of them were good it was almost by accident) and the same applies to Star Ward too (which has been badly managed) - no-one was curious about what Kenobi did between then PT and OT, they just spotted an opportunity to bung out a few hours of TV.
Moon Knight is amazing. Hawkeye and She-Hulk are good.