Hollywood! What a fickle mistress. There was a time, say circa 2015, when Marvel could release a movie about Iron Man’s corporate bathroom and it would be a hit. Alas, those days are over as Hollywood moves on fast. There was a glimmer of hope this summer with Deadpool & Wolverine, but that’s looking to be an outlier as two high-profile supe movies crashed harder than Elon Musk’s likability after he bought Twitter. Things aren’t looking great for the future of superhero films.
Joker (2019) seemed like the cautious evolution of the superhero film. It was dark, poetic, and unhinged yet immaculate in its storytelling and writing. It was a huge surprise hit and won lead actor Joaquin Phoenix an Oscar for his troubles. Whatever goodwill was bought with that film was squandered and pissed all over with Joker: Folie à Deux, which is set to lose somewhere between $150 and $200 million. Ouch.
OK, so the Joker isn’t going to save the genre. That means it’s up to the symbiotic shoulders of Eddie Brock aka Venom, whose highly anticipated Venom: The Last Dance was supposed to be a reliable addition to the flogging superhero train. After all, Venom (2018) grossed $80 million in its first weekend and Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021) pulled in $90 million in its first weekend.
How could this bode poorly for a third one? Well, it did. Even though it’s still about 10 days from release, the movie is tracking to be the lowest opening weekend of the trilogy, at $70 million. That sounds like a lot, but in the superhero world, it’s either HUGE or it’s a failure. If the numbers don’t stack up, you’re out of luck.
Compare this with the megahit Deadpool & Wolverine, which had the biggest domestic opening since Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), with $211 million. See? Those are super numbers. That’s what it’s supposed to look like. How can Sony executives buy new Ferraris and show their faces at The Ivy when a movie’s only tracking at $70 million? Shame!
Of course, the reviews didn’t help. Folie à Deux is getting particularly hammered, with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 33%. Week-old broccoli is fresher than that. Leonard Maltin, a critic not necessarily known for his brevity, put the thesis of his review in three succinct words: “What a waste.”
Bad reviews aside, it’s also a magnet for bad press, perhaps inventing a whole new genre of criticism: the celebrity walkout. The latest big name to make a hasty exit from the theater is none other than writer-director Paul Schrader, who’s responsible for a little film you may have heard of called Taxi Driver.
“I saw about 10 or 15 minutes of it,” Schrader said in an interview. “I left, bought something, came back, saw another 10 minutes. That was enough.” Woof.
What about Venom: The Last Dance? Well, the rumor is that reviews for that one won’t be lifted from embargo until the day before its theatrical release, on Oct. 23 at 3pm EST. That’s never a good sign, but it’s not like critics loved any of them anyway. This doesn’t bode well regardless.
Despite the bad omens, don’t expect superhero movies to stop being made. High-profile releases including legacy characters like The Fantastic Four, Captain America, Avengers, and Blade are all on the way. Then we have James Gunn’s Superman next summer. Those will probably do fine.
It’s the lower-tier ones like Kraven the Hunter and Thunderbolts* that are in trouble. But you never know. Like the comic book characters they are based on, the genre could rise from the dead to kick butt once again.
Published: Oct 15, 2024 03:04 pm