The More Superheroes, The Better
If The Avengers proved anything at the box office, it’s that teaming up an all-star collection of good guys can result in major coin at the multiplexes. The quantity is indeed important – and getting to know each of the people in the team is also handy. This was the summer of the best title in the X-Men franchise. While other films from that franchise struggled to make most of their superheroes compelling, this one focused on around a half-dozen of the characters (Xavier, Magneto, Mystique… and not too many others). This limitation made the subplots compelling and the central plot moving quickly.
Meanwhile, the eventual box office champ this summer is Guardians of the Galaxy. (Who would have thought that at the summer’s start?) By giving us a few minutes to get to know the struggles and dilemmas of each member of the ragtag space cowboys, we got to enjoy watching them bicker and spar before they eventually joined arms and became one. In its second weekend, though, the sci-fi adventure lost the box office race with another iconoclastic group of characters: the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Strength in numbers was a key asset for many of these big-budget spectacles, but not all of them. The Expendables 3 had 17 actors above the title but managed to rake in under $16 million over its opening weekend – less than one million per name actor. One of the major criticisms of the franchise is how few of these nostalgic action heroes get a lot of screen time. Without much of benefit for some of the major actors, their fans would rather stay and home and watch their 80s classics. Here, quantity did not equal quality.
