What Does Captain America: Brave New World Mean for Marvel’s Future?
Things aren’t looking good for Marvel in the near future. As of this weekend, Captain America: Brave New World, the newest would-be blockbuster from the downward-spiraling studio, has had its third weekend at the top of the box office, but it only made a little under $15 million in what Deadline reports is the lowest-grossing weekend of the year so far – even lower than Super Bowl weekend, if only by a couple of million bucks. The only new wide releases were Last Breath, a dramatization of a deep sea rescue that got virtually no publicity (I hadn’t even heard of it till I saw Odin’s box office breakdown), and Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX -Beginning, which barely qualifies as a wide release with a 784-theater opening. This should have been an easy weekend for a Marvel movie to clean up, even if it isn’t the film’s opening; I’m not suggesting it should have made another $100 million, but somewhere between $25 and $50 should have been a piece of cake. And yet, here we are, and it’s on track to be another MCU money pit with even a $400 million worldwide gross seemingly out of reach.
So, what happened? Aside from the exorbitant cost of this thing after the massive reshoots (which, according to the entertainment trades, cost absolutely nothing, and the budget is the same as it’s always been… almost as if Marvel knew this wasn’t going to be their next big hit and kicked the spin machine into high gear), the bottom line is that people didn’t like Brave New World. It has the lowest CinemaScore of any movie in the MCU with a B-, including the complete joke that was The Marvels. The quick box office dropoff is a result of those who wanted to see it not caring for it enough to see it again and not recommending it to their reluctant friends and family. (Why did The Marvels, which has a higher CinemaScore, do worse at the box office? My guess is that fewer people were interested in seeing it from the get-go, which is what happens when you market a superhero movie with an eight-hour cat video.) The writing was on the wall, according to those reports of bad test screenings, which led to the reshoots that Tim Blake Nelson said were enough to make the movie twice. And I get it; Captain America: Brave New World wasn’t very good, and I can’t imagine anyone wanting to see it again, especially for the price of a movie ticket.
But we knew this movie was in trouble for some time. The reaction to Brave New World is most interesting in terms of what it means for the rest of Marvel’s 2025 slate. The other two films on the MCU docket are Thunderbolts*, which features a bunch of B-to-D-list characters from previous Marvel movies forming a superhero team, and The Fantastic Four: First Steps, the third iteration (aside from the lost Roger Corman movie) of the Fantastic Four on film. Neither of these things is a brand name – Fantastic Four is to comic book fans, but outside of that audience, I don’t think many people care about them – and considering how apathy for the MCU is clearly setting in, this isn’t the time to be playing with benchwarmers. Iron Man wasn’t widely known when his film launched, but Marvel successfully got people’s attention with cool trailers that promised something different from the typical superhero movie at the time and what looked like a fun performance from Robert Downey Jr. Guardians of the Galaxy was probably Marvel’s biggest out-of-left-field film, but it hit at a time when Marvel’s brand was trusted, a time when we’d seen Iron Man and The Avengers and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and even the lesser movies were generally well-liked. After several years of absolute dreck, Marvel’s name isn’t held in high regard anymore, so it doesn’t have the cachet to sell the audience something it isn’t asking for, like they once did with a talking raccoon and his best friend, the tree. The only thing Thunderbolts* has going for it in terms of drawing a crowd is Bucky, and I don’t think he’s enough for an audience that’s had its fill of Marvel. And while I mostly liked it, most people don’t seem overly thrilled with the Fantastic Four trailer; after a day or two, nobody was talking about it. If Brave New World had been a hit, maybe it could have helped them; then again, Deadpool & Wolverine didn’t do much for Brave New World, so who knows?
Then again, Deadpool & Wolverine had star power in Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool and especially Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, which made up for a pretty lousy story with massive plot holes and some poor characterization. (That, plus the cameos and the many funny jokes; it was at least entertaining in the moment, which counted for a lot.) I think there’s a lesson in that: at this point, Marvel needs to give people a spectacular reason to see their movies, and Sam Wilson calling himself Captain America simply wasn’t one. Neither was Harrison Ford as the Red Hulk, which was all over the marketing. Thunderbolts* and The Fantastic Four: First Steps don’t look like they’re going to have much people want, either, which is why I expect Galactus to be all over the next FF trailer. And I believe Kevin Feige and the rest of the Marvel folks know this, which is why Robert Downey Jr. is coming back in the next two Avengers movies (and despite the Doctor Doom stuff, which is stupid, let’s not pretend he won’t also be back as Iron Man), Chris Evans is rumored to be returning, Deadpool & Wolverine set up Deadpool meeting Chris Hemsworth’s Thor, a joke about Hugh Jackman playing Wolverine till he’s 90 all but ensured he would return as Logan, Spider-Man (who is still a draw) will almost certainly be there, Charlie Cox is making some noise about wanting to play Daredevil on the big screen, and so on. But this is not something Marvel can rely on for long; aside from the cruel reality that the actors are getting older and won’t be able to play superheroes forever – even if they want to, which I don’t think most of them do – audiences won’t keep coming back if the movies suck, no matter how much star power Marvel packs in. Robert Downey Jr. will ensure a huge opening for Avengers: Doomsday, but if it’s a bad movie that fails to entertain, it’ll drop like a rock. The Russo Brothers and writer Stephen McFeely (collaborator Christopher Marcus hasn’t signed on) are back for Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars, so these ones at least have creatives with good track records, but as with the actors, these guys won’t stick around forever, and Marvel has lost their touch when it comes to hiring talented creatives. Ultimately, I expect Doomsday and Secret Wars to be like Deadpool & Wolverine: aberrations that bring back beloved actors to play their characters again but fail to have long-term effects on Marvel’s downward spiral. Aside from these two movies, Marvel’s future will look a lot more like Brave New World than the one they left behind.
Let us know what you think of Marvel’s future prospects in the comments!
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