A fairly long interview with Disney CEO, Bob Iger, but I'm mainly commenting on the sound bite between the 13-15th minute in which he blames The Marvels' box office disappointment on 1) the Disney+ streaming platform, and 2) the lack of executive supervision during the production process.
I agree with #1 in that The Marvels was not billed enough as a significant event that would get people out of their homes and into the cinema. Doubly so when the audience knows that we'll be accessing it on Disney+ not too long after its movie premiere. Nothing particularly important happens in this movie that shakes up the MCU other than a few seconds of mid-credits scene that we had to sit through an entire movie for. Nope. Most people would rather save their money and catch it on D+ as and when it shows up. There was no urgency to be first in line on opening day, and many, like myself, didn't even know when opening day was. Both the pandemic, and the actors/writers strike were factors in the lack of hype for this movie: nobody knew what the stakes were, or even who the villain was. Truth be told, I still don't.
Which leads me into #2. Iger doesn't elaborate on what he means by executive supervision, but it sounds to me like corporate meddling with the creative process. I think corporate should have said something before green lighting the movie in the first place. While I enjoyed the movie, like I generally enjoy most media releases, I'm now looking at this project from a marketing standpoint. Who was supposed to be the target audience? While there are Marvel fangirls like Iman Vellani, a.k.a. Ms Marvel, herself, the vast majority of audience who throw money at MCU movies are the guys who drag their girlfriends and wives along to watch great high stakes superhero battles. Was the battle depicted in The Marvels high stakes enough? I suppose on the cosmic scale it was big, but it didn't hit hard emotionally. It was fun, yes, but it didn't feel like our heroes were going to lose at any point. It was cool, but it also felt like a missable chapter in the MCU timeline. Nothing changed -- until the movie was literally over.
If the target audience was supposed to be women, the characters of Captain Marvel, Ms Marvel, and Monica Rambeau, aren't particularly well known to most women besides the die-hard fangirls, whose audience share simply does not compare to the MCU's male audience demographic. Droves of women are not likely to drag their boyfriends and husbands to watch The Marvels just because three women they don't know, and have never grown up with are the main characters. The Barbie Movie was a very different vibe, and was a huge box office success because Barbie is a character familiar to almost every girl in this and even previous generations. Barbie told a story that resonated strongly with its female target audience, and surprised the males who accompanied their significant others with an absurdly relatable story as well. The Marvels, on the other hand told a story that might have resonated more with a male audience, with all the punching and shooting, but the protagonists were female. Perhaps this story might have done better if it featured Rocket, Groot, and maybe introduced a new character like Nova, or someone similar (Adam Warlock?). While I appreciate the attempt at representation and diversifying the audience pool, representation for the sake of representation does nothing for the box office.
Expecting a hit out of The Marvels with female characters who are relatively unknown to its paying audience is like making a movie featuring Ken as the main character, in hopes of attracting a male audience waving lots of cash, yelling 'take my money!!!' From the marketing perspective, The Marvels made little sense from the start.
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