Recent developments have seen the previously impenetrable armor of the Marvel Cinematic Universe suffer a couple of hammer blows, with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania‘s alarming drop at the box office perhaps the most notable.
While the most recent installment in the franchise may be keeping its head just above Eternals to avoid becoming the comic book monolith’s worst-reviewed entry on Rotten Tomatoes by a single percentage point, the staggering decline in earnings over the space of one weekend is a real eye-opener for how much trouble Kevin Feige’s baby could be in moving forward.
Quantumania secured the MCU’s biggest-ever sophomore drop, snatched the unwanted record away from Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice as the largest week-to-week drop-off for any superhero blockbuster to open with $100 million or more, and it was even occupying the same territory as the notorious duds Dark Phoenix and Morbius before eventually pulling clear.
And yet, a studio insider revealed to Deadline that nobody is showcasing too much fear internally, after admitting that there’s always going to be a positive in there somewhere.
“Marvel takes something away from movie including Black Panther, including Avengers. I can say we’re incredibly proud of the film, Jonathan Majors does a fantastic job as Kang. It’s the movie we wanted to make. Box office is what it is. But it’s not going to stop people from going back to the theaters.”
Of course, that’s not really the point at all, is it? It’s all well and good for the top brass at Marvel to be pleased with Quantumania, but it’s chipped away even more of the inbuilt goodwill audiences and fans alike have for not just the MCU, but Phase Five and the Multiverse Saga. The people that pay for the tickets need to be blown away, and if the upcoming slate continues failing to do that, then even more of them could end up turning their backs completely.