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 LordofHats wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
And it also flopped - US$26m return (domestic) on a US$185m budget. Ouch.

To be fair, I feel like the DCU has a reputation at this point that amounts to "We make super gakky movies about characters you like, and at times oddly good movies about characters you weren't expecting." Because the dubious quality, and the pandemic surging again right around the time of its release, the movie was facing a serious uphill battle no matter how good it was.

Yeah, I think they have some overall brand challenges, but not every moviegoer is aware of Marvel vs. DC. Other than COVID (which I think is a big factor no matter what some of these directors want to believe), I think the underperformance can be attributed to the 'tail' from the previous film, that had good box office but stunk. Justice League had the exact same dynamic after BvS. Even without all the director drama etc. that most ticketbuyers didn't know about anyway...the interest level for JL was majorly lacking because the lead-in turned people off. First impressions and all of that.

Aquaman 2 and Shazam 2 will do fine if we get past COVID-related issues. WW84 would have done very well at the BO even though the film wasn't as good as the first. WW3 will be an interesting test, but I tend to think audiences will give it the benefit of the doubt since the first film was popular.

Looking forward to streaming/DVD whenever this shows up in Egypt.

Suicide Squad 1 was awful, Birds of Prey not much better but people are at least saying this was fun.

While I loved the film, it was seriously over budget for an R rated comic book film. Deadpool 2 did gangbusters but that was a different time, and it came off an excellent first film.

This one didn't.

Plus covid is an actual big deal and I think its changed movie behavior. While our theater was full this was the expensive theater, not the teenager gigantoplex.

 gorgon wrote:
Marvel vs. DC.

I don't think Marvel vs DC has much to do with it. I'll bet common movie goers who are interested like Batman as much as Spiderman and don't care about the label distinctions so much.

It's definitely a brand challenge because while people don't care about the label distinctions, they definitely know they exist. The movies have been too inconsistent and I think their lows are more well known than their highs. Suicide Squad is kind of a niche corner of the brand to begin with, and as much as I like this one I think there's an irony in that it probably won't help much with the brand problem at all. I think common movie goers will remember how blarg Justice League was before they remember how bad the first Suicide Squad was.

EDIT: Budget wise, it probably doesn't help that they hired on a bunch of well known actors to kill off in the first twenty minutes... That was probably expensive.

Well, now that Free Guy has clearly outperformed TSS, it's probably safe to say that the stench of the original SS was all over this one just like it was for Birds of Prey. IIRC, the openings of BoP and TSS were eerily similar despite both movies being rated far more favorably than SS.

Gonna guess that this is the last we'll see of Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn for quite some time. Which is a shame since this last outing was her best IMO.

Hopefully superhero fatigue is finally setting in on the general public

Goose LeChance wrote:
Hopefully superhero fatigue is finally setting in on the general public

Yeah, that's exactly what we need. Remember when it was 15 years between incredibly gakky movies?

I watched this over the weekend and, whilst I enjoyed it, I felt I had seen most of it in the trailers....

But it was infinitely superior to the other DC movies I have seen (although that's probably personal preference, just not a big DC fan).

So it's a shame it didn't do that well at the box office as it's a perfectly good movie.

Goose LeChance wrote:
Hopefully superhero fatigue is finally setting in on the general public

It's not superhero fatigue if they stop making good superhero movies.

Now I get it, superhero movies aren't your thing. But I really hope you're not hoping that there will only be BAD superhero movies in the future, so fewer of them will be made just because you don't like superhero movies.

I think people have been talking about superhero fatigue since Age of Ultron, but the big budget films actual effort was put behind keep making gangbusters.

Even the mediocre ones turn good profits when something doesn't get into the way.

I see no sign or reason to think there is any superhero fatigue. So long as the films keep being good and can avoid becoming too stale, there won't be any fatigue. At worst, the craze will die down into something more stable and keep going until the films stop being good. Saying superhero movies will die of audience fatigue is like saying studios will stop producing James Bond films due to spy movie fatigue. It doesn't make much sense. If the movies are good, people will come. If there is money to be made, someone will fill the niche.

Yeah, by all accounts Shang Chi is going to be awesome. And Eternals trailer 3 shines some light on the story and gives me some ideas for where it's going. I have zero fatigue for Marvel movies.

For some reason people always try to compare super-hero fatigue to what happened with Westerns, without realising that the amount of Western properties (movies and TV) being produced during the Western boom was several orders or magnitude more than the 4-5 comic-book movies we get a year. They are incomparable situations.

Goose LeChance wrote:
Hopefully superhero fatigue is finally setting in on the general public

Hopefully?

What a weird thing to wish for.

How about zombie or vampire fatigue?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
For some reason people always try to compare super-hero fatigue to what happened with Westerns, without realising that the amount of Western properties (movies and TV) being produced during the Western boom was several orders or magnitude more than the 4-5 comic-book movies we get a year. They are incomparable situations.

Goose LeChance wrote:
Hopefully superhero fatigue is finally setting in on the general public

Hopefully?

What a weird thing to wish for.

The content hose of D+ is gushing hard to close that gap mind

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
For some reason people always try to compare super-hero fatigue to what happened with Westerns, without realising that the amount of Western properties (movies and TV) being produced during the Western boom was several orders or magnitude more than the 4-5 comic-book movies we get a year. They are incomparable situations.

Goose LeChance wrote:
Hopefully superhero fatigue is finally setting in on the general public

Hopefully?

What a weird thing to wish for.

Not weird at all. Superhero movies have hijacked action/fantasy movies now. I don't mind them generally speaking but I love enjoying high budget blockbusters sometines and I'd like them to be something different than the usual stuff. Right now we have countless Superhero sagas, countless Star wars sagas, Fast and furious sagas and Mission Impossible saga. Anything else is B movies. Definitely too many superhero movies. Superheroes are predominant also in tv series but at least there are several legit alternatives there.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
For some reason people always try to compare super-hero fatigue to what happened with Westerns, without realising that the amount of Western properties (movies and TV) being produced during the Western boom was several orders or magnitude more than the 4-5 comic-book movies we get a year. They are incomparable situations.

Part of it is also keeping things fresh imo. Westerns didn't necessarily get bad, but they got stale. We ran out of stories to tell and the stories we had told had been repeated ad naseum. The thing about superheroes is that you can slot them into all kinds of stories with all kinds of twists to keep things feeling new and exciting. It'll go stale eventually, but I see no reason to think that's happening now. Opening up the multiverse in the MCU is just paving the way for a whole bunch of new stuff to do. The genre might decline, but it's not dying anytime soon.

Superhero movies are not getting stale, because most of them aren't super hero movies at all. They are genre movies with a superhero leading them.

Black Widow= Spy movie
Capt America= WWII War Movie
Cap II= Conspiracy Thriller
GoTG= Sci- Fi movie
Ant Man= Heist movie
Suicide Squad= Dirty Dozen
Shang Chi= Modern Wuxia(?)
Birds of Prey= Girlpower movie

I could do this all day!

That is why they are not getting stale per se, but as they start to run out of genres this could change.

 Blackie wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
For some reason people always try to compare super-hero fatigue to what happened with Westerns, without realising that the amount of Western properties (movies and TV) being produced during the Western boom was several orders or magnitude more than the 4-5 comic-book movies we get a year. They are incomparable situations.

Goose LeChance wrote:
Hopefully superhero fatigue is finally setting in on the general public

Hopefully?

What a weird thing to wish for.

Not weird at all. Superhero movies have hijacked action/fantasy movies now. I don't mind them generally speaking but I love enjoying high budget blockbusters sometines and I'd like them to be something different than the usual stuff. Right now we have countless Superhero sagas, countless Star wars sagas, Fast and furious sagas and Mission Impossible saga. Anything else is B movies. Definitely too many superhero movies. Superheroes are predominant also in tv series but at least there are several legit alternatives there.

Sounds like the problem is the saga, not the superhero.

I'm fine with it so long as quality is maintained. There's a reason I deliberately skipped the last installment of the second one; the quality of that saga had terminally declined.

 Vulcan wrote:


Sounds like the problem is the saga, not the superhero.

I'm fine with it so long as quality is maintained. There's a reason I deliberately skipped the last installment of the second one; the quality of that saga had terminally declined.

Both actually. I'm not really a fan of superheroes, I'd like to watch 1 good movie about superheroes every 2-3 years, definitely not 4-5 mediocre ones per year but they have the monopoly of high budget action movies. DC movies are unbearable to me and I decided to entirely skip them long ago, Marvel ones sometimes ok or even pretty good but lots of boring episodes as well, last movie I actually enjoyed was Infinity War. At least there's a SW every 3 or more years and there aren't many space operas around, so even if SW is mediocre (I think it is) I don't feel the same level of fatigue I have towards superheroes.

 Easy E wrote:
Superhero movies are not getting stale, because most of them aren't super hero movies at all. They are genre movies with a superhero leading them.

Black Widow= Spy movie
Capt America= WWII War Movie
Cap II= Conspiracy Thriller
GoTG= Sci- Fi movie
Ant Man= Heist movie
Suicide Squad= Dirty Dozen
Shang Chi= Modern Wuxia(?)
Birds of Prey= Girlpower movie

I could do this all day!

That is why they are not getting stale per se, but as they start to run out of genres this could change.

I’d say that’s more the MCU’s specific strength. Sure there are common themes to each (the newly forged hero finding their way and their responsibilities, the sequels further testing their moral mettle against sins of the past and so on), but because it’s applied to a wider mix of film genres as you demonstrated, they don’t feel especially formulaic.

Each entry more or less stands on its own two feet, and even the dodgier entries such as Thor The Dark World are still pretty enjoyable.

I don't think its fatigue but my Super watching is starting to go the way of my comicbook hobby in that I'll follow actors rather than heroes (didnt work out well for Guardians 2 mind), post Endgame only Venom and Aquaman tickled my funnybook bone (honorable mention to Shazam for being not awful), heck I can't even be bothered with Legends despite having Johnny C and the distracting Ms Lotz