Godzilla King of the Monsters is officially off the summer’s box office failure list. This is both by dint of having basically broken even at the worldwide box office, as well as having its shortcomings obscure by far more grandiose bombs like Dark Phoenix and Men in Black International. Godzilla KOTM can now be viewed as underperforming, since auxiliary monies will push it into a modest (perhaps very modest) profit.
Again, though, compared to many big movies this summer (basically non-Disney ones), that’s actually enviable territory. Dark Phoenix as of June 23rd had reaped $232m worldwide, thus being outright trounced by the still underperforming Godzilla KOTM at $350m. Add to the fact that it also had a higher production budget ($200m as opposed to $170m for Godzilla KOTM), and well, the math is pretty clear.
Considering that the latter was a sequel to a moderately successful film make five years earlier, and that DP was the latest (and last) of Fox’s rather up and down X-Men franchise, that’s quite embarrassing. That’s true even compared to Men in Black International. Yes, the latter has so far made about $50m less than DP, but again, it’s production budget of $110m is only about half of DP.
Marvel has eating up nearly all the box office oxygen with Captain Marvel and, especially, Avengers Endgame. In an enjoyably cheesy move, Disney/Marvel will re-release the film this coming weekend with a new teaser ending or two. The movie is about $50m worldwide short of beating Avatar as the number one box office draw in movie history, and you’d have to think this stunt will easily push it over that mark.
Dark Phoenix defenders have pushed the idea that Disney sabotaged DP to make it easier to bring their own revamped X-Men into the MCU. There’s probably a bit of truth to that, but frankly DP doesn’t seem like it needed much sabotaging.
Also, the MCU seems in no real rush to fold the X-Men into the next ‘phase’ of their movies, seemingly focusing on finally doing something decent with the Fantastic Four while relying on their more recently introduced heroes (Black Panther, Captain Marvel) and bringing in more ‘cosmic’ characters with the Eternals and Nova.
I’m not sure there’s really that much appetite for that, but we’ll see I guess. I do hear the overarching story is the Korvac Saga, and I have to admit, that intrigues me. Although the big kick of Jim Shooter’s story at the time was the climax where the cosmic-powered Korvac slaughtered pretty much all the Avengers’ heavy hitters (as well as the comics’ different line-up of the Guardians of the Galaxy).
Well, filmgoers have now already seen that sort of thing with Thanos, and besides, Marvel jut retired a number of their big guns. People seem to genuinely like Black Panther, but I don’t know that anyone is really that invested in Captain Marvel, so it’s hard to believe those two will replace Iron Man and Captain America in terms of impact. As for the other heroes—Doctor Strange, Spider-Man, etc.,–again, we just saw the Thanos thing, so that seems a bit redundant. Anyway, we’ll see.
For myself, the 22 films that were closed out with Endgame were an amazingly entertaining ride. However, that might be enough for me. I’ll certainly see the films with the characters I care about, but I suspect I just won’t feel it necessary to see every single film, especially since the cosmic storylines, past Thanos, have never been my bag. Hell, I even like Doctor Who better when he is puttering around Earth fighting aliens with UNIT, as opposed to gallivanting around the universe. Since I can’t see how the MCU can really add any more audience members, I suspect on the whole the MCU will remain successful but not quite as fulsomely.
And even as it seems bound and determined to kill all fan interest in Star Wars, Disney is still dominating the box office to an unhealthy degree. Some of the only non-MCU blockbuster hits this summer will be Disney’s two live-action remakes (Aladdin and Lion King) and the latest Toy Story. The latter is again considered to have been an underperformer for “only” making $108m the opening weekend, domestic. Well, Dark Phoenix and Men in Black would have loved that sort of take, and Toy Story 4 will now just be very profitable rather than very very very profitable.
Anyway, one lesson is perhaps to stop relying on trying to bring back franchises that nobody really cares about anymore, like Ghostbusters and Men in Black. And if you are going to try to shove them down peoples’ throats, at least make really good movies. Part of this whole issue, of course, is that kids obviously just don’t rely solely on movies for entertainment, as they largely did when I was in high school. There are a lot more choices now. So they aren’t automatically going to go see a movie every weekend, meaning they are more and more only going to go when there is something they actually want to see.
By the way, hat’s off to Keanu Reeves, who has one of the only non-Disney hits this summer.
