Star Wars Was Not, and Could Never Have Been, Another MCU

The title of this post makes the point--Star Wars was not, and could never have been, the second Marvel Cinematic Universe-style hit machine that Disney was so clearly hoping for when it bought Lucasfilm. There are at least three reasons for that.

1. As one finds attending to George Lucas' creative process when he worked on the original Star Wars he was torn between making a more "adult" piece of science fiction, with complex world-building and political themes, and a fairy tale as he understood the form on the basis of Bruno Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment. In the end he opted for the latter--and produced Star Wars as we know it. The catch, however, is that fairy tales are simple and short, with a beginning, middle, end, and expanding them is apt to turn them into something they are not--as is evident when we look at the Expanded Universe, even at its best. (A figure like Grand Admiral Thrawn, for example, has no place in a world of fairy tale simplicities.) It is evident, too, when we look at George Lucas' own prequel trilogy (1999-2005)--in which we see something of those more complex, world-building-intensive, political ideas Lucas had but eschewed when working on the first film in the '70s. The Expanded Universe has been a success with a limited hard core of readers; the prequels alienated many. So was it likely to go with any other such effort--with, as Disney demonstrated, stretching out the Star Wars' saga's main line by three more movies leaving fans looking at it and saying "This is not my Star Wars" (and not just because of the culture war politics, even if that is what gets all the press).

2. As might be guessed from that fairy tale origin Star Wars was never a creation comparable to the Marvel or DC comic book universes--really a bunch of separate comic book characters, separate stories that over time got to be complexly interlinked into a sprawling narrative. Putting it another way the core of those universes that people attend to are those characters, each the stars of their own show, so to speak, the heroes of their own stories, who happen to live in the same world as those other stars and heroes so that they get involved in each others' lives. By contrast Star Wars was the "hero's journey" of Luke Skywalker--and if members of his supporting cast struck a chord with many fans (a Han Solo, a Lando Calrizian, a Boba Fett) they did not provide the same basis for setting up Iron Man and Thor and Captain America in their own movies, and then tying them together in the Avengers. Thus a Han Solo movie was the kind of thing more likely to appeal to Expanded Universe readers than the general audience--as was seen when that movie actually came out. It did not have to be a debacle--but the level of investment in it, reflecting the unreasonable expectations for the general-audience interest in such a movie, made it so.

3. Besides the fact that Star Wars did not provide a superhero comic universe-retinue of characters each plausibly the star of their own film, there was the significant liability of the world they inhabited. One of the principal attractions of the superhero genre as against other forms of sci-fi action spectacle--most evident in the most consistently high-performing franchises, like Batman and Spider-Man, as against the more exotic franchises like Guardians of the Galaxy--is that superheroes operate in something like the real world, presenting the audience with a minimum of what Darko Suvin would have called "alienation" effects (things that yank them out of the experience, not least by forcing them to think). We all know Gotham is basically New York--while Spider-Man actually does live in New York--and it is easier for the general audience to get into that than the story of someone on Coruscant. Alas, making a Cinematic Universe out of Star Wars required the audience to not just be willing to follow the adventures of someone on Coruscant, but to be specifically interested in that fictional world in itself. Again, the hardcore fans are happy to immerse themselves in that galaxy far, far away. But they are no basis for consistent billion-dollar hits (as, again, the results show).

The basis of all of this seems to me to have been fairly obvious stuff to anyone who bothered to understand Star Wars, and the cinematic market, and for that matter bothered to learn a little bit about how science fiction works. (Certainly something of this would have been obvious had they read a certain book I can name. Ahem.) But I have no idea if anyone at Disney-Lucasfilm understood it, while it seems obvious that if they did understand it they regarded it as far less important than the Star Wars brand name, which was what they paid those billions for and on which they bet so heavily, with this admittedly seeming to work out for a while Episode VII was a sensational success, financially at least (making a billion in profit by itself, according to the folks at Deadline).

But things fell apart fairly quickly, so much so that Kathleen Kennedy recently spoke of Star Wars being handled not like the MCU but the much-lower output Bond movies (read: rather than three billion-dollar movies a year, one movie that will probably fall short of a billion every three years). While the press does not seem to have made much of it this is a confession of the effort's defeat--catastrophic, war-losing defeat--which can seem the greater given how 007 himself has not been doing so well lately, with the same going for Disney's other revenue streams.

The Superhero Flops Pile Up--as the Musical Flops Did a Half Century Ago

Looking at the superhero films of this year one may note that Ant-Man 3 underperformed, but the domestic drop was actually mild (about a sixth from the prior film's gross)--the bigger factors in perceptions of the film's performance the very front-loaded holiday weekend and the exaggerated expectations for what making it the start of Phase Five of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) would do to boost the film relative to the prior Ant-Mans; and where the more serious shortfall in the international gross was at issue, the way the film fell flat in China (where Marvel generally, and Ant-Man 2 specifically, had done well). Shazam 2 really did do badly, but was also a relatively limited follow-up to an at best minor success, and so chancy from the start, with the same going for Blue Beetle--an originally straight-to-streaming project upgraded to theatrical release that failed to justify the gamble (commercially, anyway, even if there did seem to be some genuine liking for the film among those who bothered to show). Additionally Guardians of the Galaxy 3, if it opened disappointingly (by the standards of $100 million+ openers, at any rate), had the benefit of good holds that in the end will probably leave it, if a confirmation of the MCU's trend toward declining grosses, still one of the year's more profitable films.

The result is that looking at those movies one can see room for argument about how superhero films are doing. By contrast The Flash was an undeniable catastrophe, with this major, height of summer-released DCEU film about a core Justice League member performing in a way that would have been troubling even for a Shazam film--this movie that cost $300 million taking in under $300 million globally.

Now Captain Marvel 2, as of its third weekend in release, looks as if it will end up doing worse. And the first tracking data-based forecast from Boxoffice Pro for Aquaman 2 suggests the film will do no better than those two predecessors.

Considering the prospect of these three massive superhero films becoming flops on a historic scale (each perhaps registering a loss in the $100 million+ range, and perhaps much more) in just a little over six months' time puts me in mind of 1969--the year when the underperformance of three big-budget musicals (Sweet Charity, Paint Your Wagon, Hello Dolly!) proved a turning point for Hollywood, ending its fantasy of having another Sound of Music-level success. Musicals still got made, but they were no longer the mainstay of the box office they once had been--and in spite of scoring hits once a while, never truly recovered.

Again, Hollywood does not turn on a dime, the release schedule typically lagging the decision to greenlight a movie by a couple of years (more than that these days, with all the pandemic and strike-related disruptions), such that more superhero movies will be coming our way because the project is already in production, pre-production or otherwise underway; while as yet I have seen no evidence that Disney or the WBD are at all capable of shifting tracks. Quite the contrary, troubled as the MCU is it may actually be Disney's strongest earner these days (with Star Wars all but moribund, with any schemes it had for Indiana Jones fallen flat, with its animated productions doing so badly that the commercially marginal Elemental is its closest thing to a success since before the pandemic); while the WBD would seem to have little to keep it going but the fantasy that an overhauled DCEU will let it beat Disney-Marvel at its own game. Still, supertanker-slow as shifting a studio might be, and stubborn and stupid as the studios' management may be, the studios, already very badly battered at this point (by overinvestment in streaming, by the pandemic, by rising interest rates, etc.), can only take so much more in the way of losses--and eventually they will have to change their current course, however hard it may be to picture that change, or the result's appearance.

Napoleon's Opening Weekend

Last month I speculated about whether Ridley Scott's Napoleon had the makings of another Oppenheimer--as another historical biopic that looks like unpromising material for a hit which surprises us all with a box office triumph. I was doubtful (Oppenheimer having had advantages in the form of Christopher Nolan's cheering section and the claims for its relevance based on the hyping of supposedly transformative breakthroughs in artificial intelligence). Going by the initial projection, and the tracking data-based estimates that Boxoffice Pro put out over the month I saw no reason to revise that opinion, while looking at the numbers this weekend it seems that the movie's actual gross has, domestically at least, almost exactly matched Boxoffice Pro's pre-weekend projection (a bit over $20 million for the 3-day period, $32 million for the 5-day period).

Still, how the film's legs hold up remains to be seen. They would seem most unlikely to carry it anywhere near the billion-dollar mark given this start, but it is possible that if the holds are decent, or the film simply enjoys a robust response in the international market that has long been more receptive toward movies like this one than the domestic one (indeed, the film has already picked up $46 million abroad, a figure apparently considered a pleasant surprise by some observers), it might at least cover its costs--which these days seems like a feat for any movie, and still more for a Scott-directed historical epic such as this.

Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes: Second Weekend Box Office Gross

A month before release the expectations for the Hunger Games prequel (Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes) were low--dismal, even--next to the grosses of the four films of the original saga, and if Boxoffice Pro's projections edged upward from there they were still a far cry from the surges seen for Oppenheimer and Barbie (the high end of the range for which shot up from a bit above $200 million to almost twice that much). And then when the film did come out last weekend its gross was nearer the low end of the range than the high, a mere $44 million at the domestic box office.

Of course, as I have said in the past, it may be that even franchise films which succeed are less front-loaded than they used to be, with audiences more hesitant to go to theaters than before the pandemic--more skeptical of the idea that they have to go and see this sequel/prequel/reboot/remake "just because it's there," instead waiting to hear that the film is actually worth their time from others, preferably others they know instead of ever-ready-for-hire claqueurs of the entertainment media. (Thus would it seem to have gone with Guardians of the Galaxy 3, for example.) So I thought I would wait and see what the second, holiday, weekend had in store for the movie.

As it happens, the Hunger Games prequel would seem to have held up a bit better than expected this weekend--the movie pulling in $28 million over the three-day Friday-to-Sunday period and $41 million over the five-day Wednesday-to-Sunday period, lifting the total domestic gross to $97 million (against the $82 million Boxoffice Pro projected on the basis of its expectation of a steeper drop). This is far from enough to make it a blockbuster on the scale of its predecessors--but, should its legs hold up the movie may at least eke out a domestic gross north of $150 million on that basis, at least keeping it from being a major money-loser, and maybe better than that on the basis of a healthy international response (which is certainly better than a good many anticipated for it).

Captain Marvel 2's Third Weekend Box Office Gross

Last week Boxoffice Pro predicted a relatively gentle drop in Captain Marvel 2's weekend gross after the collapse seen in the movie's second weekend--anticipating its taking in a bit over $6 million to raise its North American total to $77 million after seventeen days in relase.

As it happened, the unprepossessing prediction proved accurate. The result is that, if the film's chances of defying all it has against it (a divisive reaction to the first film, the Marvel Cinematic Universe's trend of declining grosses, the declining interest in superhero films and franchise films generally, the weak promotional campaign, the uncertain response to the Ms. Marvel show with which it is so strongly tied in, the bad buzz-encouraging delay and leaks about its budget, and eventually the lackluster reviews) to be a great commercial success were probably slight from the start, the chances of Captain Marvel 2 now going from flop to hit Elemental-style now seem negligible.*

Indeed, given how badly it is lagging the earlier film (with not quite $77 million grossed after seventeen days, when Captain Marvel 2 was just short of the $100 million mark) I no longer see any reason to expect Captain Marvel 2 to beat The Flash domestically, or globally either. What interests me now is whether the movie will manage to beat Aquaman 2 to escape the dishonorable distinction of being the lowest-grossing of the really big superhero releases of the year--a race that, given Aquaman 2's weak current prospects, Captain Marvel 2 might not necessarily lose.**

* The only real rival to The Flash here would be Indiana Jones 5.
** I count as the major releases the top-tier Marvel and DCEU movies--besides the three named here, Ant-Man 3 and Guardians of the Galaxy 3. (By contrast Shazam 2 and Blue Beetle, both of which Captain Marvel 2 has admittedly beat, would be lower-tier films.)

Will Any Movie Open Above $50 Million This Season?

Captain Marvel 2, reportedly the season's most anticipated film, opened earlier this month to just $47 million domestically--and then proved to have been very front-loaded indeed (falling 78 percent in its second weekend). The Hunger Games prequel, Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, in spite of some comparative optimism about its prospects, opened to a little less, while Boxoffice Pro projected an opening of $25-$35 million for Wonka, and $50 million is likewise well ahead of what either of this week's big releases, Napoleon or Wish, is expected to make in its first three days (even if Wish might get past that over the fuller five day weekend).

All of this seemed to leave Aquaman 2 (coming out Christmas week) Hollywood's last shot at a really big hit this season--but we have just learned that $50 million is well above even the high end of the range projected for its opening by the folks at Boxoffice Pro. The result is that I have no expectation of any movie opening before New Year's Day debuting to that much--and this holiday season, just like the first half of the summer season, coming off looking week next to their counterparts in 2022, underlining just how far Hollywood still remains from its pre-pandemic performance--all as 2024, with a release slate much like 2023's but weakened by the disruption of the year's strikes, promises the box office little relief.

Aquaman 2: Boxoffice Pro Posts its First Long-Range Forecast for the Film's Domestic Gross

Considering Aquaman 2 (aka Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom) I did wonder if the movie would not defy the trend of franchise failure. After all, the first Aquaman film was relatively well-received, this only the second film in the sequence (in contrast with characters of which the public had had time to grow more weary), and the trailer looked very credible (certainly a lot more exciting than the one for Captain Marvel 2). Still, the pattern of failure has been fairly consistent (underlined even by the only comparative success of Guardians of the Galaxy 3), the always more vulnerable DC Extended Universe has done very badly indeed this year (with Shazam 2, Blue Beetle and of course The Flash), while the fact that the DCEU is not so much building to a triumphant climax as being handled like a canceled TV show "burning off" its last unaired episodes. The result is that I tried not to be overly negative, but all the same, taking up the subject back in July it seemed to me necessary to allow for a scenario of collapse at the box office in which the film fell short of not just the billion-dollar barrier the first such movie broke, but $400 million globally.

Now Boxoffice Pro (just as it did with Captain Marvel 2 back in October) is affirming the anticipation of collapse with the publication of its first tracking data-based long-range forecast for the film, specifically an opening weekend take in the range of $32-$42 million (versus The Flash's $55 million and Captain Marvel 2's $47 million), and a domestic total range of $105-$168 million (such that at the low end it could take in less than The Flash). Compared with the first film the total gross would be about 60 to 75 percent less than the movie made in real terms ($335 million in 2018-2019, equaling $410 million in today's terms), a drop comparable to what Captain Marvel 2 suffered in comparison with the first Captain Marvel film.

Such figures make a very considerable worldwide multiplier necessary to turn a domestic performance like this one into a respectable, break even-approaching earner, and alas, in contrast with that other series that Aquaman star Jason Momoa appeared in this year, Fast and Furious, this series has little such hope. Fast X made four times its domestic gross internationally ($559 million to its $146 million in North America)--but superhero movies, a particularly American passion, tend not to do so well internationally, with the first Aquaman, which made about two-and-a-half times what it did domestically abroad, as good as it gets. Moreover, one should note that this was overwhelmingly due to a very strong response from China, which is very unlikely to be forthcoming this time given the reception of more recent American films there. The result is that Aquaman 2 would be doing well to make three times its domestic gross globally, which in even the most positive current scenario detailed by Boxoffice Pro would leave it a half billion at best, as much worse becomes imaginable (such that it could end up with a lot less than $400 million).

Of course, there is still a month to go before that movie actually hits theaters--but as The Flash and Captain Marvel 2 both showed, the movie's prospects could decay rather than improve, while, even if the faintness of the competition this year should seem a point in the movie's favor, it by no means guarantees its "cleaning up." The way the box office works these days the lack of appetizing alternatives on the menu does not mean that others will order up this one--and so for now the safest guess would seem to be the DCEU's last movie concluding the franchise's run with a whimper rather than a roar of triumph, with all that implies for the fantasy of a mighty new DCEU finally satisfying the WBD's longstanding Marvel envy, to say nothing of the superhero film, the franchise film, the blockbuster as we know it more broadly and the fate of a Hollywood which, battered by events beyond its control (like the pandemic, and the geopolitical turn hurting it in China) has also inflicted plenty of wounds on itself--while showing not the least sign of behaving more intelligently in the years ahead.

Captain Marvel 2 is Actually Doing Worse Than The Flash

Initially considering Captain Marvel 2 I treated it as a regular Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) release in a time of declining prospects for Marvel (with its sequels making 20-50 percent less than their predecessors in the same series), and calculated on that basis a likely gross of $600-$700 million for the film back in May. Many franchise flops and a disappointing promotional campaign later I suggested the movie would be the Marvel Cinematic Universe's equivalent of the debacle that The Flash has been for the DC Extended Universe (DCEU), with, of course, this promptly affirmed by the tracking data-based projections from the folks at Boxoffice Pro.

So far, however, Captain Marvel 2 has actually done worse than The Flash. The Flash had a bigger opening weekend ($55 million to Captain Marvel 2's $47 million five months later), and had a better first-to-second weekend hold (falling just 73 percent, as against 78 percent in Captain Marvel 2's case) that left it with one-third more money grossed ten days into its run ($88 million to Captain Marvel 2's $65 million). Moreover, Thanksgiving weekend is not expected to narrow the gap by much. Even with Boxoffice Pro anticipating a relatively mild second-to-third weekend drop of 33 percent for The Marvels, this still works out to $77 million for Captain Marvel 2 on Sunday, against the $99 million The Flash had at the same point in its run. That enabled The Flash to break the $100 million barrier the next day--whereas that barrier seems likely to remain well outside Captain Marvel 2's reach.

Moreover, the numbers are only part of the story. In comparing the two films it is worth noting that given the state of the DCEU the release of The Flash was, from the franchise standpoint, comparable to the airing of the last episodes of a TV series canceled for low ratings after being given many, many chances to do better--in contrast with a Marvel Cinematic Universe that, if far from its Phase Three peak, recently looked as robust as any franchise around, with Guardians of the Galaxy 3's reception, if not all that could have been hoped for, implying some life still left in it (the weak opening weekend compensated for by good holds suggestive of a real measure of welcome), and even raising hopes that a bit of the associated good will would translate over to the next MCU release. One may add that Captain Marvel 2 did not suffer anything like the scandal that hung over The Flash on account of the personal life of its star. The result is that its weaker performance occurred without quite so many of the liabilities that The Flash bore, bespeaking the public's either becoming much more sour on the kind of film this is in the past few months, a much stronger rejection of this particular movie on the basis of the kind of movie it seems to be (the goofier approach, etc.), or both.

Captain Marvel 2 Flies into its Third Weekend

With Napoleon and Wish coming out these are naturally the focus of the commentary of box office-watchers--but let us also not forget the major releases of prior weeks, like Captain Marvel 2. Thus far underperforming very, very badly (with a mere $65 million taken in its first ten days it was running about one-fourth behind The Flash and tending to slip) one may wonder if the holiday weekend will not provide the film some relief.*

As it happens, Boxoffice Pro projects the movie collecting another $12 million over the week, likely helped by the holiday weekend.

Of course, past projections for the film have proven overoptimistic (as with last weekend's)--and so could this one. Yet the fact remains that the film does not have much way to fall, while the competition this weekend (given what we are hearing about the expectations for Napoleon and Wish, and holdovers like the Hunger Games prequel and Trolls 3) does not seem overwhelming. Rather the problem is that the film could do a good deal better than that and still have a very long way to go before rising above the "flop" status the press has accorded it.

* At the same point in its run The Flash, which had opened bigger and had a better first-to-second weekend hold had $88 million grossed domestically (one-third more than Captain Marvel 2).

Wish Hits Theaters: What Can We Expect?

This Thanksgiving weekend sees two big new movies hitting theaters. One is Ridley Scott's Napoleon. The other is Disney's Wish.

An "event" film marking the 100th anniversary of the Disney studio and its tradition of animated filmmaking, one might ordinarily expect the film to be a massive hit--but the picture we got a month ago was more ambiguous. And the range has slipped. Where even a week ago Boxoffice Pro suggested a range of $40-$60 million for the 3-day weekend, and $57-$87 million for the 5-day, now their range has $44 million as good as it gets for the 3-day period ($35-44 million), $66 million as good as it gets for the 5-day ($49-$66 million). The floor has not dropped much, but the ceiling has, with all that implies for the prospects of a near-$300 million gross that Boxoffice Pro has raised, and continued to entertain in its longer-range estimates down to last week. Good holds might partially compensate for this, but these are of course no sure thing--the more in as the critics have not been kind to this one. (Their score on Rotten Tomatoes is just 51 percent.)

Still, it is now the audience's turn to judge the movie for itself, and we will see what they decide in the weeks ahead.

"Can Napoleon Be Another Oppenheimer?": A Follow-Up

As I remarked in a post last month seeing the ads for Napoleon I found myself thinking of Oppenheimer--both films being biographical epics about major historical figures, a genre not known to do too well at the American box office. Oppenheimer surprised everyone on that score--and I wondered whether Napoleon might not do the same.

I saw two reasons to doubt it right away--namely that whereas Napoleon helmer Ridley Scott is a respected, veteran, director, he has no cheering section out there ready to praise to the skies anything he does the way Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan does, which probably did a lot to help sell the movie; while if the story of Napoleon and the events of his time have undeniable meaning for the world today, there seemed little playing up of any such "relevance" in the media next to the way they compared the advent of the nuclear age to the unhinged hyping of text-spitting chatbots when talking about Nolan's film.

As it happened, the Boxoffice Pro projections for the movie, in spite of fluctuations over the past month, remain pretty much where they were four weeks ago (with a 3-day opening in the vicinity of $16-$21 merely risen to one of $17-$23 million, and even the high end of the range projected for the film's overall run still in the $70-$80 million range). Meanwhile critics are not exactly gushing about the movie, the film's Rotten Tomatoes score a mere 68 percent. By contrast the projection for Oppenheimer, reflecting the tracking data, surged some 30 percent in the month before release, from $40-$55 million to $52-$72 million in the opening weekend alone--a feat the more impressive because it came out the same weekend as the even more performing #1 hit of the year, Barbie--while critical enthusiasm was such as to produce a 93 percent score (with some of that praise won in surprising places, I might add).

Of course, with the film only coming out now it has some room to surprise us--but that room is dwindling fast, domestically at least. (The international markets, traditionally more receptive to historical films like this one, may be another matter.)

Captain Marvel 2's Second Weekend in North American Release: How Did it Go?

Back in May I speculated that The Marvels, based on the emergent pattern of Marvel Cinematic Universe sequels each making 20 to 50 percent less in real terms than the preceding film in their series (and the particularly close parallel with Black Panther 2), would gross some $600-$700 million global. After a summer of shocking franchise flops that could not simply be blamed on anything but audience disinterest (given how well other movies like Barbie were doing in the same season), and the poor impression that the film's pre-release publicity seemed to be making on the public, this seemed like it could be optimistic--and in early October the tracking data confirmed it. On the basis of that added information I revised my estimate for the global gross down to $250-$500 million--and then after another month of signs pointing to an even weaker performance than had seemed likely in early October, ended up wondering if even $250 million would not be overoptimistic, with this possibility hardly seeming less plausible after the actual opening weekend (which saw it take in just $47 million in North America).

Of course, I did suggest that hit movies, even when they were big movies like this one, may have been growing less front-loaded than before, and that good holds might partially compensate for the film's weak opening (as they did for the last MCU movie Guardians of the Galaxy 3, and even more for that flop-turned-hit Elemental). Alas, the expectations for the second weekend were a far cry from that (Boxoffice Pro projecting a hard 65 percent drop, versus the 48 percent decline Guardians had) while the reality seems to have been worse--a fall of 78 percent, leaving the film with just $10 million grossed this weekend and $65 million in total.

By contrast even The Flash had not just opened bigger, but had a better first-to-second weekend hold ($55 million versus Captain Marvel 2's $47 million on the opening weekend, and a 73 percent), leaving it one-third ahead at the same point in its run (with just under $88 million after ten days, as against Captain Marvel 2's $65 million).

The Flash, of course, failed even to double its opening weekend gross, on the way to barely breaking past the $100 million mark domestically ($108 million). Captain Marvel 2, opening weaker and fading faster, would seem set to do worse, and thus fall short of the $100 million mark--and maybe even below the low end of the much-reduced domestic range I suggested earlier ($85-$125 million, versus the $100 million I thought was as low as it could go back in early October).

Of course, we do have a holiday weekend coming up--and again, the competition over the weeks ahead does not exactly look fierce. (The Hunger Games sequel opened this weekend to even less than Captain Marvel 2 had last week, just $44 million, near the bottom of the range predicted for it.) Still, even if I think it safest to watch how the film does next weekend before writing it off as a failure, it is undeniable that its chances of overcoming the weak opener, probably always slight to begin with, just keep on getting slighter.

"I Don't Wanna Hear About No Superhero Fatigue!"

There are times when the entertainment media seems to represent movies as bigger successes than they are--grading box office performance on a curve.

This does not seem to have been the case with Captain Marvel 2, the press--which had loudly anticipated a flop before the film's release--calling the film a flop after that first weekend in release (and still more, the second).

However, those "analyses" of the film's performance I have encountered seem to be doing so as part of a particular game--emphasizing that yes, this particular superhero movie is a flop, but one should not draw any wider conclusions from that. Chalk this one up as a misfire suggestive of nothing more than slightly better management over at Marvel could easily fix--not superhero fatigue.

Yet consider the undeniable pattern since the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)'s Phase Three wrapped up back in 2019. Of the MCU movies released since only one really went "above and beyond" at the box office--Spider-Man in December 2021. Of course, one could reasonably chalk up the lackluster performance of its three predecessors (Black Widow, Eternals, Shang-Chi) to the effect of the pandemic and the associated experimentation with streaming (and at the global level, Marvel's shutout from the Chinese market, even if in fairness Marvel should have understood what it was getting into there), but it was also the case that Dr. Strange 2 looked like an underperformer given how well the Spider-Man film it was tied in with had just done, and the fainter than usual competition that season. And everything since has been unambiguously less successful, with the four next MCU sequels (Thor 4, Black Panther 2, Ant-Man 3, Guardians of the Galaxy 3), when the grosses are adjusted for inflation, down 20 to 50 percent from the grosses of the preceding films in their series'. Now Captain Marvel 2 seems almost certain to do worse than that. (Going by my estimates its gross could end up 80 percent down from what the first Captain Marvel made.)

And of course, what has been bad for the MCU has been worse for its principal rival, the DC Extended Universe, which saw Black Adam get a weak reception (failing to crack $400 million global), Shazam 2 make the third-stringer performance of the first Shazam look like boffo b.o. by comparison, and The Flash . . . well, it was pretty shocking back in June, though now we are used to such performances.

This seems to me like a pretty consistent pattern of weak performances by such films--the more in as, in contrast with the 2020-2021 period other movies are becoming really vast successes (as The Super Mario Bros. Movie and Barbie did, for example).

Considering all that my only objection to talk of superhero fatigue is that it understates the problem when we look at a year in which along with the declining grosses of the superhero films Fast and Furious, Transformers, Indiana Jones and Mission: Impossible also suffered. Superhero fatigue is really a subset of a wider franchise fatigue and action movie fatigue and blockbuster fatigue, which fatigue for the moment shows no sign of abating--while being a thing Hollywood, and the claqueurs of the entertainment press, can still less afford to admit given how much more deeply threatening it is to the model by which they have made so much money for so long, and for which the increasingly battered studios have absolutely no substitute at hand as they try to keep themselves afloat.

Do Computer Programmers (and Programming) Get Disproportionate Attention in Discussion of the Labor Market?

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) in May 2022 the U.S. had some 133,000 computer programmers at work.

This is out of some 158.3 million employed people that very month--which means that computer programmers comprise a mere 0.084 percent of total American employment, fewer than one in eleven hundred of those persons employed in this country actually a "computer programmer."

One would never guess that from the sheer amount of time spent talking about coders and coding.

Of course, computer programmers are just one of a wider range of jobs in the computer field (with some of which programmers may be synonymous in the minds of those not too meticulous in their use of the terminology). Still, as the BLS statistics show, the full range of computer science-related jobs comes to some 5 million nationally--with this, again, working out to not much more than 3 percent of the work force.

Again it is a rather smaller proportion of the work force than one would suppose from the time spent gabbing about them, to say nothing of such fashionable nonsense as coding being the "new literacy"--or the notion that people losing their other jobs could, in line with the inane sneer of the conventional wisdom-abiding, simply "learn to code," precisely because it is inconceivable that there would be enough work to go around for all of them even if they all excelled at it, with the category of "truck driver" exemplary. We have over 3.2 million drivers of light, heavy and tractor-trailer trucks--which is to say 24 times as many truck drivers as we do coders, and some three-fifths as many truck drivers as we do people employed across the whole computer field (again, something we would never guess from how people conventionally discuss these matters).

All of this is before we get to the matter of whether or not coding is itself going into decline as a profession in the wake of advances in artificial intelligence, as suggested by one working programmer whose remarks I read this week. As is so often the case with the essays in his increasingly unfortunate chosen forum (sufficiently unfortunate that it seems to me undeserving of a link that would bring it more readers) he meanders quite a bit and never really makes a point worth making, and subjects the reader to a great many stupid conventionalities as he does so (like the whole coding as the new literacy idiocy). All the same, it does provide some interesting anecdotal evidence of the new chatbots increasingly taking over the task, in large part because they are increasingly able to outdo humans at this very practical function the way they have recently outdone them at functions that were less necessary to the "structures of everyday life" (as with mastery of games like chess and Go).

Taking such claims at face value it seems to me that, while it is not inconceivable that more people will be involved in software development in one way or another, those who actually code as we have known it--and do so as trained, paid, full-time professionals--will probably become fewer rather than more numerous within the years ahead, making the disconnect between the occupational realities and the media-promulgated perceptions about coders discussed here even wider than it is now.

Captain Marvel 2: Looking Ahead to the Second Weekend

We now have some perspective on the opening weekend of The Marvels; some sense of how its second weekend is likely to go; and the reaction to all of the same.

Right now much is being made of not only how the movie's opening compares to that of the original Captain Marvel ($47 million versus the $153 million the first made, and just a quarter of the $186 million to which that gross would be equivalent now), but how it has had a weaker opening than any of the prior thirty-two Marvel Cinematic Universe films released to date in current dollar figures, including 2008's The Incredible Hulk fifteen inflationary years earlier (that movie made $55 million, which is more like $78 million today after adjustment for price rises), and long before the MCU became a brand--and all this accomplished by a non-sequel centered on a CGI-based character who had already proven hard to set up as the lead of his own movie (such that the MCU has not repeated the feat since), in contrast with the kind of hit the first Captain Marvel was.* Moreover, there seems little expectation of Captain Marvel 2 being saved by a leggy run, Boxoffice Pro projecting a 65 percent drop from the first weekend to the second to give it a second weekend take of $16 million, leaving the movie with only a bit over $71 million after ten days in release.

By comparison The Flash had almost $88 million collected at the same point in its run.

Should the film's grosses, falling from a lower level to start (The Flash opened bigger), continue to decay at that rate for any length of time the movie could be expected to finish out with a run well below that of The Flash ($108 million), and indeed below the long-depreciated $100 million mark.** (Just consider the opening weekend multiplier for the June release--1.97. Applied to Captain Marvel 2 it leaves one with just $92 million, near the low end of the range I suggested right before opening weekend.)

Meanwhile it has been noted that the overseas markets seem unlikely to come to the rescue, with these accounting for 57 percent of the gross to date, and China especially weak--the movie opening to under $12 million there, versus the $89 million it managed in 2019 (which constitutes an 89 percent drop in opening weekend gross in real terms). And while I have not seen any estimates of the international gross in the film's second weekend, I have no expectation of their being any better than those projected for North America.

If this movie is going to turn things around the way Elemental did (a possibility I thought slight but still worth raising) it will either be very soon or not at all.

* I refer, of course, to the reception to 2003's Hulk.
** The Flash opened to $55 million in its first three days--17 percent higher than Captain Marvel 2's opening.