(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) Dismissing its insufferably woke overtones, left-wing critics struggled to concoct an excuse for why the most recent installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Marvels, bombed on its opening weekend.
The movie—a sequel to 2019’s Captain Marvel—made $47 million at the domestic box office, putting the film’s in dead last for the entirety of the comic-book company’s 33-movie franchise, according to Slate.
Initial projections showed the movie opening up to an $80 million weekend; it reportedly needed to make $600 million to break even.
Almost as predictable as the movie’s failure was the cacophony of hemming and hawing from Hollywood that succeeded it.
Woke propagandists scrambled to explain the movie’s massive financial shortfall, with reasons ranging from superhero fatigue; to lack of promotion from the cast due to the Hollywood writer’s strike; to easier, cheaper access to the movie on the Disney+ streaming service.
Yahoo!Entertainment News rolled out a laundry list of possible reasons, including the fact that the franchise became so massive that the audience must spend hundreds of hours consuming content on Disney+ for adequate context—as two of the main characters of the movie originated in Marvel shows on the platform.
On the more blunt end, Slate admitted that The Marvels may just be a bad movie.
Some of the film industry’s recent efforts to appropriate iconic cultural touchstones, like Barbie and the Little Mermaid, have drawn backlash from conservatives that has been used, ironically enough, to help market the movies and, in some cases, to explain their financial failures.
But while The Marvels registered nary a blip on many conservative radars due to its insipid plot, some continued trying to blame right-wing politics for “go woke, go broke” boycotts of movies, featuring blatant feminist themes.
Author Stephen King wagged his finger at “incels” for “gloating” over the movie’s low box office numbers.
I don’t go to MCU movies, don’t care for them, but I find this barely masked gloating over the low box office for THE MARVELS very unpleasant. Why gloat over failure?
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) November 12, 2023
“I don’t go to MCU Movies, don’t care for them, but I find this barely masked gloating over the low box office for THE MARVELS very unpleasant,” he posted. “Why gloat over failure?”
Several other Twitter users pointed out that the people producing these movies hate conservatives and conservative values, so they opted to spend their money elsewhere.
Disney CEO Bob Iger announced that executives may scale back the Marvel brand.
“At the time the pandemic hit, we were leaning into a huge increase in how much we were making,” Iger said. “And I’ve always felt that quantity can be actually a negative when it comes to quality, and I think that’s exactly what happened. We lost some focus.”
