There are as many theories going around for why The Marvels flopped as there were characters on the Avengers: Endgame poster. And, come to think of it, that movie's title nods to one of the them. Some argue that people stopped caring about the MCU because Endgame functioned as a fitting finale. Others have theorized that it was Disney's expansion into streaming, with the Marvel brand getting diluted in the flood of TV. And, if you look on YouTube, you'll probably find out that it was 168澳洲💞幸运5开奖网:because The Marvels was "too woke" (read: it starred two women of color).
But this week, Disney CEO Bob Iger said that The Marvels' theatrical failure could be chalked up to something else entirely. The executives, Iger reckons, just didn't exercise enough control.
"‘The Marvels’ was shot during Covid," Iger told Andrew Ross Sorkin . “There wasn’t as🦹 much supervision on the set, so to speak, where we have executives there really looking over what&rsqu𝔍o;s being done day after day after day.”
It's a ridiculous statement on its face because all of Disney's recent releases, hit or flop, were "shot during Covid." For context, The Marvels principal photography in July 2021 and in May 2022, with beginning in August 2022. Meanwhile, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, the studio's biggest hit of the year, shot from Nov. 8, 2021 to . Spider-Man: No Way Home and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Marvel's biggest Covid-era hits, were both shot in the deepest, darkest days of the pandemic, and succeeded in getting audiences to theaters in droves. There's nothing especially negative about the pandemic-related circumstances that produced The Marvels.
Iger's comments are artistically offensive, not just factually incorrect. In saying that "there wasn't as much supervision on the set," Iger is implying that giving artists freedom results in worse films. For us to buy that line of reasoning, we'd have to also buy that MCU directors are given much say over the final product to begin with. To hear The Marvels' director, Nia DaCosta, tell it, that wasn't the case. She said back in September that it was .
You may not believe DaCosta, maybe you think she's just trying to spin the narrative on a movie she knew wasn't very good. But her comments track with the assessments that other filmmakers have given of the MCU process. Argentinian filmmaker, Lucretia Martel, who was approached about directing Black Widow, that Marvel told her "Don’t worry about the action scenes, we will take care of that." MCU action sequences are, reportedly, previsualised before a director is even hired, leaving actual director little control over much of the film.
Certain filmmakers have been able to put their stamp on their MCU movies, it's true. James Gunn's Guardians movies feel especially distinct. But Gunn writes his scripts, too, which gives him greater control over the process from early on.
In a year that has seen many would-be blockbusters falter, no honest person can look at the flops and say they've been rejected because too much of the artist made it on screen, and too little of the executive. Barbie and Oppenheimer, films that are clearly the work of the writer-directors behind the scenes, were massive hits, while The Flash, an exec's synergistic wet dream, was .
Iger is presiding over one of the worst years in Disney's history and, if he continues to look to execs to make hits while stifling creatives, he'll see more flops like The Marvels and Wish. Audiences are interested in movies that have a story to tell from a unique perspective. They're done with movies that only function to set-up a dozen other movies. No amount of "supervision" would have made The Marvels a hit.
You couldn't keep the Titanic afloat by bailing water out with a bucket. At this point, the writing is on the wall that the superhero genre hit the iceberg a few hours ago. The Marvels is the MCU's biggest flop, true, but it's just the latest in a string of capesh*t failures. Black Adam, Shazam: Fury of the Gods!, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, The Flash, Blue Beetle, and now The Marvels have all bombed. The superhero era is ending. If Iger listened to his talent instead of seeking to control them, he might have known that already.
