The Four Color Media Monitor

John Nolte at Breitbart comments on the box office failure of the new Marvel movie based on Thunderbolts,

Thunderbolts*, the latest from the Disney Grooming Syndicate’s Marvel division, opened to a weak $76 million over the three-day weekend.

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 entertainment media is looking to spin this as pretty good news, primarily because Thunderbolts* earned within what it had been projected to earn. However, that’s not entirely true. Boxoffice Pro saw an $80 to $90 million opening.

Nevertheless, this is a Marvel movie launching without any competition during the first weekend of May, which is now seen as the opening weekend of the summer box office.

Globally, the news was not much better. Whereas the box office disappointment Captain America: Brave New World $192 million worldwide on its opening weekend, Thunderbolts* crapped out to just $162 million.

So just what good does it do for the mainstream media to fluff-coat the whole mess? Not a bit. Among the negative reviews of this movie, here's what Blunt tells about the characters cast in this film, and it looks like a different bunch than what was seen in the 1997-2003 comics series:

Disillusioned assassin Yelena Belova/White Widow (Florence Pugh), disgraced super soldier John Walker/USAgent (Wyatt Russell), thief Ava Starr/Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), and mercenary Antonia Dreykov/Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko in the briefest appearance by a main cast member I have ever seen) find themselves at each other throats when they’re all sent on the same mission by shady CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, pretty much in a whole different movie alongside Australian actor Geraldine Viswanathan as Mel, her assistant). The idea seems to be they off each other; instead, they team up. Joining them are Sebastian Stan‘s Bucky Barnes and David Harbour’s superbly slovenly Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian, plus newbie Bob Reynolds/Sentry (Lewis Pullman, very good). Do you care?

[...] It’s not helped by the fact that the film seems so small. Not intimate in scope, mind you – just cheap, with limited locations and lackluster action. It feels like a placeholder – a film whose sole function is to tie up a few dangling plot threads from a handful of other MCU projects while we wait for Fantastic Four: First Steps and Avengers: Doomsday to come down the pike. It comes at a time when the entire MCU seems shaky, and while it isn’t as awkward an entry into the canon as, say, The Eternals, it feels like a film created out of a combination of contractual obligation and financial dictates rather than because there’s a story here that was burning to be told.

I don't care, and I'm not waiting up for First Steps to premiere. I just think it's a shame they can't just put away their toys and call it a day. That's what should've happened with Marvel back in the early 2000s, as I've long come to realize, as it would've minimized the damage that's resulted since. When will Hollywood realize the overbearing focus on all these comics adaptations isn't helping cinema any more than the comics themselves?

Labels: Avengers, Captain America, Fantastic Four, marvel comics, sales