‘Projects like Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania have seen a steep box office drop in their second and third weekends in theaters.’
Watching Quantumania will tell you why it didn’t do that great. It was a decent movie, but the MODOK character was just bad and definitely detracted from the experience.
There are bones of several movies buried there. One of them could have been decent. Way too many studio edits and reshoots
Ant man hit at the wrong time for the MCU. A few years earlier and it would have been dismissed as a one off. Now it’s the flag ship of Marvel’s failings.
Quantumania had one other problem too… it came right after the flop that was Strange World.
Watching the trailers for Quantumania I was like “Wait, didn’t this already come out?”
I see a couple of problems:
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Phase 4 was rudderless. There was no direction for it, and no clue where it was going until Loki broke open the multiverse on Disney+
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No physical media for Disney+ content. Your product will not be top of mind unless it’s physically available in every Walmart, Target and Best Buy.
Some people felt lost walking into Multiverse of Madness. They hadn’t seen WandaVision, Loki, or What If?. They didn’t even know WandaVision and Loki were a thing.
If Blu Rays had been out before MoM, it would have done much better.
Same deal for Quantumania… how many folks picked up on the fact that Kang was in Loki?
I’m surprised they didn’t learn from their Agents of SHIELD mistakes (spoilers for that show going forward).
The first season of that show sort of floundered along until near the end of the season when Winter Soldier happens and SHIELD falls. Also these events, if you were watching both the film and the show, happen back to back. Winter Soldier is released in theaters and less than a week later we see SHIELD falls in the show.
This was an amazing moment. It’s like the movie and TV universe were really connected. You left the theater, came home and then got to watch more movie.
But that was it. They never pulled that off again. Next season of SHIELD was Inhumans related (I think) and the Inhumans show obviously didn’t take off so that didn’t build the universe further.
The show constantly had this weird “So how will the Avengers react to Coulson being alive” thing that hovered over it. You’d get a slight nod from the show to the movies sometimes, but it was obvious the two were disconnected.
Eventually, by Season 3, the show makes it’s own path and honestly it’s a lot of fun, but it isn’t really connected to the MCU anymore. It’s more of a What If comic. I expect if Daisy/Quake ever comes to the MCU proper it will be a soft reboot similar to how I expect Daredevil to be. The past happened, but we’re going to be fuzzy on the details and not talk about them much.
In terms of Multiverse of Madness, Wanda being evil didn’t really make sense. WandaVision left us with a character that had done terrible things out of grief and was trying to heal. WandaVision should have ended Agatha wanting to teach Wanda. Agatha wanting to “help” Wanda (for her own selfish reasons) and trying to manipulate her. They still could have had the sad WandaVision ending by saying that the first step was letting them go.
Then the post-credits of WandaVision is Wanda not being able to let go. The Darkhold truly beginning to corrupt her and Agatha not able to control Wanda. Multiverse of Madness starts the same but when the heel turn is revealed have her explain the power she has gained. Have her allude to a former teacher, let her be unhinged, you can even have a flashback to her defeating Agatha.
Then if you watched both series, it’s a continuous story that makes sense. If you only watched MoM you are left to wonder about the teacher she had.
And when asked if fans needed to see the shows to enjoy the movies, Feige said no. But yeah, people had no idea why Wanda was the way she was in MoM if they hadn’t seen Wandavision.
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I’ve noticed that only some of the shows say “A Kevin Feige Producfion.”
They were pushing for Disney+ content and I think he was forced to make too many shows at once.
They spread things too thin and now they’re going to give the guy whiplash by taking all away too many shows.
What they should do is say, “If you have a good idea for a show, we have a home for it,” and let Feige continue to do his thing.
They’ve really been hit or miss recently, tending to slip more on to the miss side of the things. Just enjoyed Marvel things more on average previously than currently.
This feels to me a lot like blaming the kids when dad comes home drunk. Some of the MCU movies have been absolutely great… some, not so much. Likewise for the Disney+ shows, for that matter. Just let each of them stand on their own two feet and stop casually casting blame on content that is at best only peripherally related.
And for crying out loud… stop force injecting political agendas into a movie which offer no meaningful contribution to the actual plot. I promise you, that’s done far more damage to movies than any of the Disney+ content.
Which movies pushed political agendas? I’m drawing a complete blank.
Falcon and the Winter Soldier obviously got political. She-Hulk was kinda accused of it with acknowledging incels. But those were shows and were relevant to the plots.
