Are audiences finally souring on Marvel movies? It sure looks like it. The underwhelming box-office performance of “Thor: Love and Thunder” must concern Disney. Maybe the MCU lustre is dwindling.
The fourth “Thor” movie had a 68% drop in its second weekend, accumulating around $46.5M. That makes the Taika Waititi-directed movie’s second weekend the worst in MCU history, besting (or worsting) the succeeding weekends for “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” (-67%) and “Black Widow” (-67%).
Spielberg warned us about this in 2015:
"There's eventually going to be an implosion — or a big meltdown. There's going to be an implosion where three or four or maybe even a half-dozen megabudget movies are going to go crashing into the ground, and that's going to change the paradigm. We were around when the Western died and there will be a time when the superhero movie goes the way of the Western. It doesn't mean there won't be another occasion where the Western comes back and the superhero movie someday returns."
We might now be at a crucial moment in the MCU where only “Spider-Man” can produce pre-pandemic numbers. Disney must be panicking. The mouse house has “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” due out in November, that one will not make as much money as the original since all three of the main actors, the late Chadwick Boseman, Daniel Kaluuya and Michael B Jordan, won’t be a part of that sequel.
Even critics are starting to turn on Marvel. It used to be that between 2008-2019 almost every MCU instalment would be gushed over with positive reviews. That’s somewhat starting to change — critics haven’t been as receptive to “Eternals”, “Black Widow”, “Doctor Strange into the Multiverse of Madness”, and “Thor: Love & Thunder.”