Is ‘Thunderbolts*’ a Hit? It’s Complicated
Legacy Media outlets frame victory for MCU, conservatives beg to differ
Most studios would quaff Champagne if their new film made $76 million on opening weekend.
There are exceptions, of course.
Some sequels look to the $100 million mark as a starting point for any Champagne toasts. The next “Avatar” film, for example, will be expected to make more than that in its opening frame come December.
So where does that leave “Thunderbolts*?”
The MCU’s latest adventure came out on top over the weekend with a $76 million haul. Legacy Media outlets hailed the news as a win for the flailing franchise.
The LA Times and The Hollywood Reporter dubbed it “solid.”
The BBC called it a “hit.”
New Media outlets beg to differ on “Thunderbolts*’s” box office results.
John Nolte at Breitbart News calls it a “disappointment,” and he backs it up with some data points.
Out of 34 Marvel Cinematic Universe titles, Thunderbolts* ranks 28th for opening weekends, coming in behind Captain America Brave New World ($89 million), Guardians of the Galaxy ($94 million), and even the 17-year-old- Iron Man ($102 million). Even Black Widow, which was released in the heart of the pandemic and simultaneously on Disney + opened to $80 million.
The Right-leaning Bleeding Fool has a similar take:
“Thunderbolts*” finds itself grouped with weaker MCU launches like “Eternals” ($71 million) and “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” ($75 million), both of which were seen as underperformers for the brand.
It helped Team MCU that no other major title opened against “Thunderbolts*.”
Both sides have a point.
The theatrical box office has been uneven since COVID-19, although plenty of films have defied conventional wisdom and over-performed since the global pandemic.
- “A Minecraft Movie”
- “Barbie”
- “Deadpool & Wolverine”
- “Inside Out 2”
- “Oppenheimer”
- “Sinners”
The “But COVID” excuse is no more.
Legacy Media outlets often spin news in Disney’s favor, be it the Mouse House’s failed fight with Gov. Ron DeSantis or its woke storytelling push.
Right-leaning outlets, aghast at Disney’s progressive makeover, crunch the numbers. Hard.
It’s undeniable that the MCU still has a pop culture hold on us. A $76 million opening for an ensemble title without a populist hero like the Hulk or Iron Man is impressive.
If you asked 100 strangers to tell you who John Walker was you might get 100 blank stares. He’s the quasi-patriotic character played by Wyatt Russell in the film.
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The MCU’s current problem is similar to other movie studios. The movies cost too much money.
“Thunderbolts*” could end its theatrical run with a $400 million global haul. Will that be enough to cover its budget and marketing efforts? Unlikely.
Word of mouth will have to save the day for the latest MCU film. Moving forward, the saga must find a way to cut costs or, even more practically speaking, make better movies.
Thunderbolts* goes where no MCU film has gone lately, and crushes it out of the park.
As an MCU fan since Iron Man and the storytelling arc, I have been largely disappointed with everything the MCU has come out with since Endgame, Spider-man No Way Home and Guardians 3 as the exceptions. I had luke warm hopes for Thunderbolts but after seeing in this weekend, I am telling everyone to watch it in the theater. The story is not like a typical MCU film and the way they weave these misfit characters together is some of the best writing the MCU has had lately. Thunderbolts proves you don’t have to stick to the typical formula that has been the norm lately. You also don’t have to pack agenda items in this and check off boxes. Definitely see this in the theater.
Make better movies? This is the best reviewed and best audience score in awhile for them. The problem is people like you bitch about Marvel then don’t show up when a good one does come out. The production budget is $180 million. If Captain America could make $400 million worldwide, this will easily pass that. Conservatives have become hypocritical whiners. And as a conservative myself, this shit needs to stop
it depends on your perspective. Marvel lost the benefit of the doubt a LONG time ago – entirely of its own volition – and now they have to do an almighty amount of lifting to prove the default assumptions wrong, For many, especially those who’ve now adapted to watching classic movies from when Western filmmaking was at its peak, “reasonably good by modern standards and not heinously progressive” is simply not good enough.
Hollywood crossed my threshold for bullshit tolerance in about 2018. There’s literally nothing, short of a revolution, they could do to make me a customer again. 20th century movies are flat out better, cheaper to buy, and are still >80% less egregiously agenda-driven than the most “conservative” films of today. There’s no point. We don’t *need* to give money to people who hate us. There’s already a lifetime of great cinema. Among serious conservatives, only the most hopelessly addicted to the modern sheen will risk their time, money, and sanity attempting to locate the barely-above-average efforts.
It certainly makes the point that this is now a captured industry more interested in ideology than even money. Any sane profit-driven industry would’ve had a hard turn by now, but instead we just get token efforts to indicate that not everything is afflicted. The problem, for me, is that I guarantee I could find the subversive subtext in Thunderbolts, if I could be bothered to watch it. Hollywood did this to me: a decade (or more) of their programming has programmed me to actively seek it in everything, lest their propaganda bypass my filter and start affecting me. We know from “nudge units” and suchlike (the former being responsible for producing the recent Adolescence disaster) that entertainment has become a key vector for outright psychological warfare.
As for exposure, that’s for each to determine for himself, but their heavy-handed, ubiquitous approach to “the message” has left me with zero tolerance for any of it — they’ve quite successfully had the diametrically opposite effect to that intended.
Addition to my other comment; I will readily acknowledge that the industry is now between a rock and a hard place. They would have to consistently produce movies like this, without reverting to type, for at least a couple of years in order to win back over many on the right. But in the meantime, they can expect paltry returns as we simply don’t trust them. They could continue trying to target the barely-extant progressive base that got them into this mess in the first place, but they don’t typically bring in the dollars (those guys *really* don’t turn out for things – even when an entire industry is catered to them – and they’re only some ~15% of the population anyway). Still, I have *very* little sympathy: they *chose* this and kept at it for many years after it became obvious that it wasn’t working. It’s going to take them as at least as many years to claw their way back out of the hole they dug. And I don’t believe they want to, so there’s going to be a ton of dialectic tension for a long time
Any movie they make that conservatives will enjoy will either be by accident or an attempt at pacification. Given that they’re in a situation, like academia and civil service, where the hierarchy is 95% hard progressive from top to bottom, they need to get rid of the rot from the ground up, and I don’t see a feasible way to do that once you’ve been so completely overrun and infiltrated. The “long march through the institutions” didn’t only mean academe, finance, and news media, even if those were the most important components. Conservatives would have to launch a counter-march and the progressives are too lacking in integrity (and just smart enough) to avoid allowing that to happen. It was conservative integrity and respect for the old version of liberty (i.e. the freedom to pursue virtuous ends in one’s own way) that allowed extreme New Leftists to assume control in the first place. Well, that and a lack of clearly-defined *positive* positions and proposals (the old “modern right-of-centre conservatives are just the progressives of n years ago” point is trite but true).