At the height of the superhero boom a few years ago, Disney pushed its Marvel assembly lines to run faster and faster. After awhile, quality suffered and ticket sales declined.
So Disney slowed the pace. Last year, Marvel released one movie (the megasuccessful “Deadpool & Wolverine”) and two Disney+ series. To compare, in 2021 Marvel churned out four movies (with mixed results) and five Disney+ series.
Factory problem fixed?
Maybe: Marvel’s “Captain America: Brave New World” was a runaway No. 1 at the global box office over the weekend. The movie, which cost at least $300 million to make and market worldwide, was on pace to sell roughly $100 million in tickets from Thursday through Monday in the United States and Canada, according to Comscore, which compiles box office data. Moviegoers overseas were poised to chip in another $92 million or so.
Maybe not: “Brave New World” received the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s lowest-ever grade (B-minus) from ticket buyers in CinemaScore exit polls. Reviews were only 50 percent positive, according to Rotten Tomatoes, which resulted in a “rotten” rating from the site. Just two Marvel movies rank lower on the Rotten Tomatoes meter, and both quickly ran out of box office steam after No. 1 starts that were driven by die-hard fans and marketing bombast.
“Brave New World” outperformed analyst expectations amid a racist backlash from some internet users and right-wing pundits, who criticized Marvel’s decision to refresh the “Captain America” franchise by giving the title role to a Black actor. (A “D.E.I. hire,” they maintained in numerous X posts, a reference to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.) Anthony Mackie, who took over the character from Chris Evans, also came under attack as “anti-American” for a comment he made while promoting the film overseas.
“Captain America represents a lot of different things and I don’t think the term, you know, ‘America’ should be one of those representations,” Mr. Mackie said. “It’s about a man who keeps his word, who has honor, dignity and integrity. Someone who is trustworthy and dependable.”
Boycott talk circulated online even after Mr. Mackie quickly used Instagram to clarify that he wasn’t trying to disparage America, just point out the universality of his character.
Some people appeared to buy tickets as a counterprotest. “We went to support the DEI hire for Captain America,” Deborah Olivia Farmer, a Chicago communications executive, wrote on Threads on Saturday, using the term ironically.
Mr. Mackie joined the Marvel roster in 2014, when he played a winged superhero called the Falcon in “Captain America: The Winter Soldier.” In 2021, his character took over as Captain America in the final episode of the Disney+ series “Falcon and the Winter Soldier.” That series explored what it would mean for a Black man to wield the Captain America shield.
Harrison Ford stars in “Brave New World” as a power-crazed U.S. president who turns into Red Hulk, wreaking havoc in the government and society.
Disney had initially scheduled the film for release in May of last year — long before Donald J. Trump returned as president and declared war on D.E.I., and companies, including Disney, responded with rollbacks of their diversity policies. “Brave New World” was delayed partly by labor strikes in Hollywood. Marvel had also decided that some of the film’s action sequences were not good enough.
At least among critics, the studio’s retooling fell short. The only two Marvel films to receive a lower Rotten Tomatoes score were “Eternals,” 47 percent positive, which had $86 million in opening-weekend sales in 2021, after adjusting for inflation; and “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” 46 percent, which amassed $113 million over three days in 2023.
“Eternals” ultimately collected $402 million worldwide — a disaster by Marvel standards. “Quantumania” managed $476 million. It had been rare for a Marvel film to collect less than $700 million worldwide.
“Quantumania” was directed by the Marvel veteran Peyton Reed. In every other instance where a Marvel movie has struggled either critically or commercially (or both), the director has had little to no experience with sprawling franchise movies, let alone superheroes. Julius Onah directed “Brave New World.” Previously, his feature film résumé consisted of two low-budget thrillers and “The Cloverfield Paradox,” a Netflix movie that cost $45 million.
