Hokeyboy

If this were the case, almost every huge opening would be suffering near 70% drops... which isn't the case. Didn't happen to Wakanda Forever, and Thor's drop wasn't quite as large. Black Adam, The Batman, Eternals, etc. all had significantly smaller drops.

WOM is not good on this movie.

candyrocket786

Then how do you explain Top Gun Maverick?

Decker

or Avatar : The Way of Water.

DJariya

If it's a really good movie, gets great word of mouth, people will come and some will come back for repeat viewings. Ex. Top Gun: Maverick.

The pandemic is no longer a factor. There is so much entertainment fighting for our attention these days. Ant-Man and maybe to an extent Black Panther: Wakanda Forever just weren't good enough to blow up the box office.

I saw this movie and was entertained, but I don't think it's good enough for repeat viewing, so I'm going to watch other things like last night I saw Cocaine Bear.

I have no personal stake in Marvel and already gave them 2+ hours of my time, money etc. That's their job to figure out why this movie wasn't a smash hit.

Josh-da-man

Spectacle. Event films. The movie industry has been moving in this direction for a decade or more, where it seems like people will only go the theater to see something big, loud, and larger than life. And it's choking out all of the smaller films that would have at least a modest success in generations past. The pandemic and shutdown accelerated this process. I'd also say it also has something to do with ticket and concession prices, too.

Going to see a movie like Top Gun Maverick or Avatar Way of Water at a theater is sort of like going to a concert where you don't mind paying the inflated ticket and concession prices for the experience of seeing it on a twenty-plus foot tall screen with dozens of other people. Whereas, if you're want to see Banshees of Inisherin, you don't necessarily need that same experience and will just watch it at home.

But I also believe that Marvel fatigue has been setting in since Endgame. I also think the pandemic hurt them because they didn't really have any strong content waiting in the wings. To use a sports analogy, they are currently in a rebuilding phase after losing their star players. It's like, hey the pandemic is over and the shutdown has ended... here's Black Widow's backstory and a bunch of new Russian characters!

There is more MCU content being released now than ever with Disney+, but most of it just seems half-assed and unnecessary.

And, thus, the MCU films are losing their status as event films and spectacle.

dsa_shea

Did anyone every really think we would get 3 Ant Man movies at the onset of the MCU? I find these movies enjoyable, but the feeling that these should be blockbusters is silly. The movies around the main players will get the draw until they start dropping the ball. The last Thor was a ball drop to general audiences and I bet the next entry will see less come in upfront and must deliver a great story to get good word of mouth to recover in the following weeks. The same thing can be said for a prospective Black Panther follow up. I'm not even certain Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 will do gangbusters unless Gunn's story matches or surpasses what we saw in the newest trailer.

In regards to the movie, I'm hoping that Kang the Conqueror is not actually dead and will return to lead the army of himself against the Avengers

DVD Josh

Just got back. The movie is a CGI suckfest with a terrible script, atrocious acting outside Majors and Michelle P., and very wooden performances.

The best part of the movie was the trailer for GOTG 3 before it.

Crocker Jarmen

I can't believe there wasn't a shot . They just toss him in that direction in you sort of see him disappear in a wide shot that's so busy with soldiers running around you almost miss it. It didn't even have to be a gruesome moment if that's what they were worried about. The way they handled the payoff to that little section seems incompetent.

Always great to see Greg Turkington thrown in there..

rexinnih

Saw this with the kids earlier this week. Felt like a filler movie rather than kicking off a new phase. Have the feeling things are going to get messier and more confusing for the average viewer with multi-verses, multi-Kangs, lesser characters coming out of the woodwork. This is from someone who has seen and owns all MCU movies. They need to get FF and X-Men out quickly and not mess it up.

Boba Fett

I don't know how any critic can give a Turkington film anything less than five bags of popcorn and maybe a miniature Ant-Man keychain charm.

Decker

We all thought that Dr Strange Multiverse of Madness would be a game changer. Then we thought that Quantumania would be it. Both were low stakes and disappointing. Hard to keep getting excited about the MCU, except maybe for GotG V3, but that's more for finality rather than a launching point.

candyrocket786

At this juncture maybe they get RDJ back or they go with the Xmen/FF4 and scrape Phase 5 altogether.

Whatever they're doing right now is simply not working.

Draven

Loved this one - Paul Rudd is always a blast to watch and I thought the quantum realm was super interesting and fun to see on-screen. It was great to use M.O.D.O.K. as a callback to the first movie (and honestly he looked as good as it could because the actual comic book character looks even more ridiculous) and he made for a formidable enemy/ally.

Kang was fantastic and it really set up Phase 5 in a big way. Glad we didn't lose anyone and that everyone got out of the quantum realm.

Troy Stiffler

They hold back. Fans would lose their shit if the MCU would just indulge a little more. The first disappointment was Wandavision. Could have done something with X-Men and it was like “is that it”. I’m not sure why they do it this way. The fans are there and waiting.

DVD Josh

To me, it really seems like Endgame was in fact...the endgame.

IBJoel

I think they're taking the wrong lessons from Endgame. I belive they think Endgame worked because it was a marriage of spectacle, driven by emotionally human story (or stories).

So we're seeing a lot of movies right now that are written as character pieces on a huge cosmic canvas, to the detriment of both aspects of that formula. The stakes are mostly about a relationship the main characters have (Dr. Strange and Christine, Ant-Man and Cassie, Thor and Jane), but drawn on a canvas that's dimensional in scale. Since you have to save the biggest twists for the team-up films, the directors/writers more or less have to just spin their wheels in the "big picture" stuff, while the character dynamics don't get as much attention as they need because script mandates require action beats on pages 23, 52, 63, and 77-120. On top of that, they can't weave in any subversive themes (remember how we just drop Cassie's ACAB activities? and don't worry, the bad guys in Falcon/Winter Soldier raising legitimate points about displacement and inequality kill innocent people) because they need a return on their investment and can't alienate anyone in the 4-quad demos.

rocket1312

They already have two more phase 5 movies in the can as well as another that is due to start production any minute now. I don't think scrapping phase 5 is really an option.

Draven

This film is already set to make more than both the first Ant-Man and the sequel. Why would they scrap anything?

TheBang

Is it? It's already leveling off fast. It may not surpass the global box office of the 2nd film, and the production budget was much higher:

https://www.the-numbers.com/movies/franchise/Ant-Man

DJariya

It's going to get annihilated this week with Creed III opening.

Creed III has positive reviews and good WOM going for it. Ant-Man is going to take another nosedive.

Troy Stiffler

I wouldn't say so. The multiverse thing can be big if they want it to be. But they need to want it to be. I can't tell if they're purposely slowly building to something.

Maybe it is storytelling building blocks leading to Avengers and Endgame. Maybe throwing too much at once wouldn't work. I hope they're leading to something epic again.

dex14

Every other previous Phase had an Avengers film to bring the characters together and set the stage to a degree for what the franchise arc was building towards. Phase 4 did not have this, was about (per Feige) "experimentation, introduction, reintroduction", and sometimes could feel rudderless due to that. The multiverse seeds have been getting planted, but it doesn't feel like it did with the Infinity Saga. Now we need to wait until the end of Phase 6 for an Avengers film, it seems a bit too far off. They should have some sort of team-up movie to hold us over. I don't think Thunderbolts will be able to wet the beak enough. It would've been interesting if some other hero characters got pulled into the Quantum realm with Scott and crew to be a quasi-Avengers film like Civil War was. Hell... it's been set up enough to where they could've even give us a Young Avengers film or series before the end of Phase 6.

B5Erik

Dr. Strange Multiverse of Madness and the latest Thor were kind of crap.

Big, overblown, uneven tone in both (the tone was all over the place in both of them), some good scenes, some crap scenes, some clever stuff, some stupid stuff - they were both big messes.

Quantumania is much the same.

What made the first Ant-Man, Iron Man, hell, even The Incredible Hulk work? They weren't about saving a world or a universe (or collection of universes). They were about people. For superhero movies they were down to earth.

Since Endgame Marvel has tried to make every single movie a huge epic, forgetting about what made Marvel movies great in the first place. It's the characters, stupid!

The bigger the stakes, the less a lot of the audience cares. It's easy to relate to an individual or a small group of people in peril, but a universe in peril? Hard to relate, hard to really feel it. It just doesn't work unless it's like Infinity/Endgame. The final chapter of a long story.

Feige's lost the plot, and so has everyone else at Marvel.

sherm42

Is this a real book? Look Out For the Little Guy by Scott Lang

B.A.

It was good. Not great

Definitely not as light-hearted as the first two​.

It needed a small dose of Michael Pena’s Luis.

jonathan majors is excellent as Kang.

dude has presence.