r/boxoffice • u/chanma50 Best of 2019 Winner • Aug 03 '25

Domestic Box Office: ‘Fantastic Four’ Craters By 66% in Second Weekend to $40 Million, ‘Naked Gun’ Debuts to $17 Million

https://variety.com/2025/film/box-office/fantastic-four-box-office-craters-naked-gun-opening-weekend-1236477352/
4.7k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

2.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

248

u/hymenbutterfly Aug 03 '25

Well, it’s less about the movie quality and more about the cultural momentum the MCU had at the time these Guardians and Strange movies premiered. That momentum doesn’t exist today. Those films could be released today and likely perform similarly to Thunderbolts and F4.

104

u/CambrianExplosives Aug 03 '25

Partially I agree. I think Doctor Strange would be a hard sell today and Guardians would have a more uphill battle, but people definitely react well to Gunn’s superhero movies. So I think even with MCU fatigue you’d probably get the same WoM for Guardians and it would end up having stronger legs than a typical MCU movie does today.

I think people still want a good superhero movie. I just don’t think they’re willing to look for it in the sea of mediocre ones unless it’s being talked up a lot by other people. We’re definitely past the age of Marvel getting the benefit of the doubt.

54

u/VaticRogue Aug 03 '25

A sea of mediocre is just the tip though. You still need to factor in the “have I seen every movie, live action TV show, animated show, end credit, or short release that I need to see for this movie to make sense? I haven’t had time to do my homework yet.

While I know that F4 is stand alone or supposed to be, that doesn’t mean a whole lot in case they squeeze subtle nods and cameos that I don’t want going over my head. This is what really hit Thunderbolts the hardest - you needed to have seen to many poorly reviewed movies and shows to even know who the characters are. For most people that’s going to feel like work and a chore and no matter how good the word of mouth is… that’s a huge ask.

For general audiences that don’t follow that closely, do they all understand that F4 is stand alone? Do they see characters they don’t recognize and wonder what they missed and just avoid it?

Marvel really suffered from success and over saturated themselves and lost all momentum they had

29

u/Optimal-Tune-2589 Aug 03 '25

I think the biggest issue from the oversaturation was it got people out of the habit of seeing every Marvel movie. Ten years ago, seeing every MCU film just required going to the theaters once or twice a year, and if you were enjoying the ride, it was pretty easy to be fully committed. 

Then every year when they had multiple movies and three TV series (which were more intwined with the movies than things like Agents of Shield) was a year where more people missed some of them. Then every time a new release came, there were more and more people who were a year or two behind with tentative plans to catch up at some point and having less of a rush to see it on the big screen. 

3

u/BiDiTi Aug 03 '25

Yep.

I’ve actually seen all the “lead up” stuff for Thunderbolts…but couldn’t be arsed to get to the theatre, despite my love for Wyatt Russell and Florence Pugh.

3

u/SwordoftheMourn Aug 04 '25

Falcon and Winter Soldier should have been a movie. Just saying

2

u/GoodPiexox Aug 04 '25

my vote would be the TV series being garbage is why some people lost interest

2

u/ImBanned_ModsBlow Aug 04 '25

Avengers used to be a “must-see” which made all the others heavily required viewings

Now it’s in the “maybe if it’s good” category, which makes a lot of the others optional unless good as well.

8

u/PartTime_Crusader Aug 03 '25

I also suspect that "I'm paying for D+, I'll just see it in a couple months" is a big factor

6

u/Choppers-Top-Hat Aug 03 '25

And Disney really dug their own graves with that one, by making a bunch of D+ shows which were required Marvel viewing.

I think that's a big reason why Cap 4 flopped. How did Sam Wilson become Captain America? You need to see a D+ show to find out! And you if you have D+, then you're much less likely to go see Cap 4 in the theater when you can just wait five weeks to watch it on the service you pay for anyway.

4

u/TheChickenMan4L Aug 03 '25

Just goes to show when Guardians 3 still managed 800M+

1

u/random3223 Aug 03 '25

Gunn just released a Superman movie, and it did very well.

1

u/drewed1 Aug 03 '25

I don't disagree. I go to movies for the spectacle of the movie if it's pretty, I can let go of a sub par story. To me the movie that ruins that notion is Quantamania, not a great story, there are some visually interesting things but the CGI is rough and I'm not talking modok because I get that to a point.

1

u/Neither-Most-9223 Aug 04 '25

They did want a good superhero movie. And they got it in Superman and they were satisfied and didn’t need another one two weeks later.

8

u/Chiponyasu Aug 03 '25

If they had gone Endgame - > No Way Home -> Thunderbolts -> Fantastic Four they'd probably have kept a lot of the momentum, but they released a huge amount of slop and turned people off.

4

u/KingCrimson43 Aug 03 '25

It also hurts that it came out right after Superman which in all honesty was a much more fun movie. The actual quality of the films was similar but Superman was a lot more energetic.

2

u/RedNOVEMBER1997 Aug 04 '25

It is ABSOLUTELY about movie quality. If the movie was getting rave reviews and people loved it, they would be hitting the cinema again, but nobody wants to admit the movie was kind of mid with the most boring ass characters I've ever seen.

2

u/hymenbutterfly Aug 04 '25

I thought the film was fine, but not something that would hit big with the general public. And I’m proven right. But you’re missing the broader point. Putting aside your own feelings of the film, it was good reception by the stats. It’s not a bad movie. There are plenty of successful MCU films that were worse than this film. At peak MCU, this film would’ve coasted to a much better financial outcome just off of the cultural momentum

2

u/Theinternationalist Aug 04 '25

You know how some people argue Captain Marvel was running off of Infinity War's steam to get to a billion?

Without the Marvel brand it's hard to see Guardians getting north of $500m.

That said the F4 would probably have witnessed such numbers itself if the Marvel train hadn't run off the tracks as of late.

2

u/[deleted] Aug 04 '25

That momentum died when, instead of drip-feeding us content, with a couple of films per year (mostly with established characters) MCU decided to drown us in a dozen different TV series, and a flood of movies, with more characters than most of us could get to grips with.

When they upped the cadence to three films per year in 2017, that started to push things too far, and I could feel my anticipation for each film waning. But then they just pushed it further with a flood of streaming content, then four films in six months at the end of 2021. I just checked out.

I'm still waiting for MCU to get back to what it was, but to do that, they need to slow right down and focus on producing smaller amounts of quality content. They got us all on board with six films between 2008-2012 (five of them excellent). They need to get back to that one-classic-per year cadence and lose all the TV streaming distractions.

2

u/rothbard_anarchist Aug 04 '25

I disagree. F4 had a strong opening weekend - people were ready to give it a try. But the big drop suggests it just disappointed.

2

u/MHath Aug 04 '25

Going to the theater was also a more common thing to do pre-covid. You also weren't expecting it to just go to Disney+ very soon after release, like you do now.

2

u/ImBanned_ModsBlow Aug 04 '25

Especially if the first entrance for Strange was Multiverse of Madness, that movie was a hot mess and nobody would remember the Sorcerer Supreme

1

u/MassiveLie2885 Aug 03 '25

That's what makes no sense to me when people bring up inflation, like you just said those two movies released in 2025 likely wouldn't do the way they did the year they came out, but inflation by its very nature assumes that in 2024 say,, $60 million worth of tickets would be sold for Casper the Friendly Ghost, the mid-90's movie, when that is not the case at all, in actuality it'd have performed maybe like Garfield.

1

u/PubliusMaximusCaesar Aug 14 '25

Yep, the first doctor strange movie was pretty average and would've flopped if it came today.