With Marvel Studios having no major Hall H panel at San Diego Comic-Con this weekend, the movie world is well and truly being dominated by the much-fabled box office battle between Barbie and Oppenheimer, and yet this rivalry has become an unexpected Avengers-style team-up that’s helping cinema heal better than the MCU has managed ever since the Multiverse Saga launched. Meanwhile, is your Disney Plus watchlist getting too long? Well, don’t worry, as here’s one way to cut it down…
Barbie and Oppenheimer supply cinema with its best weekend at the box office since Avengers: Endgame
Despite everything Marvel Studios has thrown at the wall over the past four years, none of its cinematic outings have come anywhere close to what Avengers: Endgame achieved at the end of the Infinity Saga. So it’s taken until now, with the combined nuclear might of Barbie and Oppenheimer, to create a weekend at the domestic box office to measure that epic 2019 effort. The Barbenheimer double-bill craze has resulted in the fourth biggest box office weekend of all time and the highest of the post-pandemic era we’re living in. Looks like those plans for a Mattel cinematic universe are about to get the greenlight…
Robert Downey Jr. tries to convince us Christopher Nolan’s Avengers movie would be bad, does the opposite
Christopher Nolan has already maintained that he has no interest in directing any further superhero movies, but now The Dark Knight trilogy helmer and his new favorite actor and collaborator Robert Downey Jr. are making us which he’d reconsider. When asked what a Nolan Avengers film would be like, Downey joked that it would still be shooting, alluding to the director’s meticulous style and love of lengthy runtimes. Nolan, for his part, admitted he would build the whole team-up movie around Iron Man because he loves working with Downey so much. I think the intention was to suggest how bad an idea this would be, but honestly, it’s kinda having the opposite effect.
The only two Marvel Disney Plus series you really need to watch have been identified
Over the past two and a bit years and counting, Marvel has churned out a number of Disney Plus series, which have had varying degrees of significance to the wider unfolding narrative. But if you’ve fallen behind and are too intimidated to catch up, maybe you don’t need to fret so much. With Secret Invasion all set to wrap up next week, Marvel fans have woken up and realized that only two of the shows released so far are actually must-sees that are integral to the MCU — namely, WandaVision and Loki. The latter, especially, given Kang’s return in this October’s second season. Personally, I might throw Ms. Marvel in there too, considering the incoming The Marvels, but your mileage may vary.
We’re all Barbenheimer girls and boys in a Barbenheimer world right now, but don’t forget to check back in soon for more from the Marvel universe.
Published: Jul 22, 2023 11:00 pm