As predicted, The Marvels, the most recent Disney/Marvel release, launched and immediately crashed. There's a myriad of reasons as to why, but chief among them is bad writing and a lead character that left a bad taste in the mouths of MCU fans who had already rejected Disney/Marvel's hyper-political gruel.
(READ: Disney Killed Its Golden Goose In Marvel by Suffocating It With DEI)
The opening weekend for The Marvels was nothing short of a disaster, bringing in less than $50 million. However, it was the second weekend in theaters that truly cemented its place as the worst Marvel opening in Disney's history of owning the brand, as Bounding Into Comics reported:
Per information provided by box office data aggregator The Numbers, The Marvels only managed to pull in $10,200,000 domestically during its second weekend in theaters – a drop of 78% when compared against its $46,100,859 pull a week prior.
As noted above, this figure represents the worst such audience drop-off suffered by any MCU or comic book film, beating out both the respective 69.9% and 74% faced by previous record holders Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and Morbius.
Naturally, the film's failure has been attributed to everything except what actually caused it to fail. Disney/Marvel shills began throwing out all the usual accusations. Audiences are sexist, misogynistic, and even racist. The Marvels director Nia DaCosta also labeled those who refused to see it as “virulent and violent and racist — and sexist and homophobic."
However, the gender breakdown for the audience who went to see The Marvels has remained pretty static for Marvel movies with 61 percent of the audience being male and 39 percent being female according to IndieWire.
With this in mind, let's ask some logical questions.
If it was sexism that caused The Marvels to fail, then why did more men go see it than women?
This leads us to a more important question. If this women-centric movie was meant as a fun outing for female empowerment...why didn't women show up in greater numbers? Are these women sexist?
The obvious answer to all of this is "No, it's not sexism." Few people showed up for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania too and its biggest draw was a male.
Sexism is just an excuse for bad writing, bad directing, bad PR decisions, and bad politics.
Sure, there's an element of "superhero fatigue" but if a half-decent Spider-Man or Batman movie were to come out, you would see audiences show back up because they love these characters. The problem isn't superheroes, it's superheroes being used as a mask for the latest infusion of social justice talking points and message-first story writing.
Given, The Marvels seemed to have that messaging stripped out before its release, but the stink of Marvel's politicization still sticks to every creation it has, especially Brie Larson, the prime representation of Disney/Marvel's descent into woke madness in the eyes of the public.
If Disney wants to know why The Marvels failed, it needs to look in the mirror, not sneer at the audience that abandoned it. It also needs to get its cast and crew under control and stop them from effectively reinforcing the audience's confidence in their choice not to see Marvel movies by insulting would-be moviegoers.
The bottom line; social justice adherents and leftists of all stripes need to stop blaming "sexism" for their inability to succeed. You might convince the shills, the access media, and various critics that people just hate women and that's why women-led (insert project here) falls short, but the truth is far more simple...
You just suck at your job.
