Fantastic four: First steps
Credit: Marvel
It was a hard year for Disney and Marvels McU. Captain America: Brave New World was hit with lukewarm reviews and a slow box office. Thunderbolts was better received, but the relatively unknown characters and the title almost guaranteed that it would flop. More about these two in one minute.
Fantastic Four: The first steps initially seemed to be a rebound for Marvel. Positive reviews and the audience reception have lifted a strong opening weekend, although it was left behind the Superman from DC, which was published just two weeks earlier. However, the second weekend of the film was catastrophic and fell 66% from $ 117.6 million to only 40 million US dollars, which is predicted by a significantly steeper decline than predicted (55 to 60%).
When it comes to cash register numbers and superhero films, some factors have to be taken into account. There are some things that are completely outside the control of the film studios.
The cinema business had already declined before the Covid 19 pandemic due to the rise of streaming, but consumer behavior after pandemic has only made things worse. Fewer people are now going to the cinema than during the flowering period of the MCU. Many film studios began to publish films directly for streaming during the pandemic, and although this was significantly withdrawn, the damage was caused. A good part of the audience will simply wait until these films come to Disney Plus or HBO Max.
Nevertheless, the decline of Fantastic Four Woche-over-Week cannot be fully adhered to on consumer behavior. Superman opened with a weekend of $ 125 million and only fell 53%the following weekend. Both films had strong reviews and word of mouth. Both had A-Cinemascores. Most of the critics praised them. Why should the decline of Fantastic Four be so much steeper than Superman?
The other online theory is that “superhero -fatigue” is used and cinema -goers simply get the genre tired. This certainly contributes to the equation, but Superman has already exceeded the domestic cash register in the amount of 300 million US dollars, topping Man of Steel (291 million US dollars) and the Justice League (229 million US dollars) from DC, both films that were published during the highlight of the superhero madness.
The truth is that the people in superhero films are not burned out. Quite the opposite. People are so hungry for good superhero films that they rave about films that are okay at best. Superman was a hot mess of a film, but fans and critics raved about it. And I admit, despite all of his shortcomings, I think that it was a more pleasant film than Fantastic Four. People also raved about it, but apart from the cool retrofuturistic aesthetics, it is usually only incredibly boring with a lackluster end. People are so desperate for good superhero films that they have convinced themselves that they qualify.
But bad films are often good at the box office (Aquaman 335 million US dollars in Germany and over 1.1 billion US dollars worldwide) and good films often do badly (dungeons & dragons: Honor under thieves 93.9 million US dollars in Germany and worldwide 208.2 million dollars), so that even if you only look for quality, the bad representation of a film cannot always be explained.
If we want to get involved in the first reason for Fantastic Four: The first steps went back on so much on the second weekend and have recognized all of these other factors, it is simple: it is a Fantastic Four film. These characters are not particularly popular. No Fantastic Four film before this was very good. These are not comic figures from Batman or Superman or Avengers Level. Ultimately, it is worse that Captain America was so bad. Captain America was supposed to be a great success for Marvel at the time, but the good new World was a confusing mess, and very few people are particularly happy about Anthony Mackies Sam Wilson, who took on the role of Captain America, while Bucky (Sebastian Stan) – a more sensible choice is set up in Thunderbolts in Thunderbolts in Thunderbolts.
The problem with superhero films these days is that the people they do are not in contact with the people they see. You have forgotten who the target group is and why cinema goers go to the cinema at all. To his honor, James Gunn rightly had a popular DC hero like Superman for his DCU restart (and intelligently, usually less expensive stars to take over the roles, as the budgets are absolutely out of control). He simply wrote one of his worst scripts for the film.
Between lusty scripts (Fantastic Four is terrible) and characters that most cinema goers are not interested in, superhero -fatigue and sluggish cash numbers are less that people do not want this kind of films, and more about the quality of the films that we keep from Marvel and DC. Give people what they want. Find better writers. There is still a lot of life in the genre. The question is whether the people responsible have creativity and where you bring the audience back.