Has the mainstream audience outgrown comic book movies? We ponder whether comic book movies have enough audience to warrant such big budgets now…
Remember a time when short of being one of the big two of Batman or Superman, comic book adaptations were seen as a sure-fire money pit? We saw failed Punisher, Phantom, Shadow and Captain America films before the surprise success of 1998’s Blade, which was still a moderately budgeted film that accrued enough of a cult audience to be considered a hit.
Then, in the early 2000s, we had Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man films and Bryan Singer’s first two X-Men movies which pushed comic book movies into being box office dynamite. By the time the MCU rolled around in the wake of the Christopher Nolan Dark Knight Trilogy, comic book movies were the big dawgs of the box office tentpole season. The source material for these films, the humble comic book was also not seen as such a childish pursuit as previously, whilst nerd culture was suddenly at its zenith of cool. You could actually be a grown man reading an Aquaman comic and be cool.
The popularity of comic book movies was almost so surefire that it didn’t even require top-tier characters to bring audiences in their droves to part with a billion here or a billion there. I’d never even heard of The Guardians of the Galaxy and nor had most fans who ended up buying tickets to the film adaptations. The core fanbase for these movies has still tended to be young of course, and leaning more toward the male audience but it felt like just about every guy under 25 between 2009 and 2018 who visited a cinema more than twice a year was likely to have seen a Marvel or maybe even a DC film. Comic book films still had the die-hard IP fans well versed in the page format of their beloved characters, but they could also count on the mainstream audience members.
Everything peaked with Avengers: Endgame, a culmination of countless interconnected films and characters in a universe-ending storyline. Then Covid happened and Spider-Man aside, it feels like almost every comic adaptation since has performed either slightly below box office expectations or disastrously below. Why did people flock to see Aquaman only a few years ago, but a comparatively paltry number turned out for the sequel recently? You can’t lay all the blame at Amber Heard’s door.
There are an array of reasons why Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, Madame Web, Shazam! Fury of the Gods, The Marvels and more have been viewed as disasters. Okay, looking at most of the recent bombs there’s a commonality. They all range from being aggressively mediocre or outright terrible. However, those factors may not have greatly affected box office receipts just five years ago.
Whereas in the golden era of the MCU as a golden goose, that mainstream audience of under 25s would turn up to anything with the Marvel label attached, many of those kids who grew into adults to see the culmination of their grand opus were probably pushing 30 by the time they’d got to Endgame. Having started at maybe primary school age when Robert Downey Jr. first stepped into the Iron Man suit, many fans will have been signing up for mortgages and having kids of their own by the time of his tear-inducing funeral in Endgame.
Here’s the problem though, you get to a certain age and your tastes invariably change. This also comes in conjunction with Disney’s approach to firing out new projects. They’ve oversaturated the market with movies and TV shows almost forcing their fans to grow weary. Sure, the die-hards tend to remain but even their patience is being tested by heavy-handed box-ticking, lazy writing and even lazier productions. The company is so prolific now that many of its films appear to have a mass of cut corners and overinflated budgets that belie how cheap the films often seem to look now.
If you treat your properties as disposable content rather than trying to create films (shows) with artistic merits, audiences will probably treat them with similar indifference. Plus, those long-term fans who have diminishing products foisted upon them react with indignation. Now, if Disney/Marvel were still creating good films rather than obnoxiously “eh” films, they might attract a new wave of youngsters who’ll mature as the films go through a Phase or three.
However, it seems like the once given that every 12-year-old kid within a 5-mile radius would just float to their nearest cineplex baited by the Pied Piper’s call is now no longer the case. Maybe kids these days are more into shorter-form disposable content and TikTok videos than actually watching films? Maybe many of those young fans are more attentive than the studios think? Maybe they want to be a little more challenged. They may not like being talked down to with films that cynically try to appear hip or with it by ticking every possible diversity box (without having the good grace to create interesting characters that feel formed and human).
This all creates a problem of course and it goes beyond merely comic book movies too. The majority of films costing over $150 million appear to be bombing unceremoniously now. Many of these budgets don’t seem to be reflected by what’s on-screen either. It’s remarkable how horrible most films at that budget level look now, just aesthetically, even before you consider the complete mess a script might be by the time the film gets shot (or how much messier a film becomes after the producers’ cut). Still, so many studios seem happy to shambolically slice, dice and re-glue films together until they have no semblance of a narrative structure or continuity.
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is a shocking mess thanks to a post-Heard-Depp court case, the aftermath of COVID-19 and poor numbers from comparative films. Have you ever cut your hair and tried to correct, and correct, and correct until you look like Shawnee Smith in Saw 2 or Josh Hartnett in The Faculty? Countless films, that directors invariably try to distance themselves from, seem like an explosion of producer/executive impulses that resemble a well pebble-dashed toilet bowl after chilli night. Then consider the seeming ease studios have to spend hundreds of millions on a film only to can its release entirely.
Meanwhile, in the face of continual box office failure from the formerly most surefire sub-genre, there appears to be a promising rise in indie films and midbudget genre films. Horror seems to be experiencing a boom right now. The fact is they can be made for $15 million bucks, make a tidy profit and at those budget levels, filmmakers are given a little more license to express themselves.
As far as action goes, the recent success of Jason Statham’s The Beekeeper might seem small fry compared to the idea of films grossing over a billion quid, but a smaller outlay for a decent return just seems more sensible. The film didn’t even need a massive marketing push (which in itself can add a hundred million bucks to a tentpole film’s cost). Some good word of mouth and some simple undemanding entertainment have made it a hit. For one thing, it actually delivered on what it promised.
Deadpool began life as a more modest comic book film among the mega-budget alternatives. Its irreverence and genre subversion proved popular and made plenty of money. Now we come to a situation where Deadpool and Wolverine might be the best bet in a year that seems rather uninspiring when it comes to comic book adaptations. A lot is riding on it to undo the damage that almost every Marvel and DC film in the past couple of years have done to the genre.
However, although it may invariably attract more of the over 30s than most of its Marvel contemporaries these days, and undoubtedly attract youngsters too, are they biting off more than they can chew with a film reportedly costing $250 million bucks before they’ve even accounted for marketing? With two prior films that smashed out three-quarters of a billion each, this third film (which is banking on the lure of Wolverine and the introduction of the characters into the Marvel Cinematic Universe) will need to probably match the combined total of its predecessors. Is there enough mainstream lure there?
Even so, one big success won’t be enough to change a current tide that suggests comic book films might be best served as being moderately budgeted films with more creative ambition. Not enough kids flock to see these now and many who grew up watching Iron Man et. al. seem to have outgrown these films. They’re becoming something for a niche audience again. They often seem far more marketed to an audience age level who aren’t even turning up in numbers anymore. Of course, making them decent might help turn the tide back in the favour of comic book films, but even Matt Reeves’ The Batman, which was a film with genuine directorial vision, didn’t quite do the numbers expected of a top-tier character following the comic book movie boom.
Have mega-budget comic book movies had their day as a widescale mainstream attraction? Let us know on our social channels @FlickeringMyth or hit me up @jolliffeproductions…
