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As we have mentioned before, our beloved Outposters (down there in the Disqus), are superior online movie beings who are almost always right about just about everything between them. Yet another prescient prediction made by the community was twofold. Firstly, that The Marvels would bomb. Secondly, that it would all somehow be our fault.
Prediction one came to pass at the weekend. Now, with the tedious inevitability of an unloved season, the second has also come true. Director Nia DaCosta is raging, and of course, she’s raging about people like us, probably. By that, we mean people who didn’t bother / won’t bother to go and see her movie.
Comments have come to light that were made in an interview ahead of the opening weekend where she branded critics of The Marvels as:
“…virulent and violent and racist — and sexist and homophobic.”
DaCosta made her thoughts known during an interview with Variety’s Angelique Jackson talking about fans. She said:
“There are pockets where you go because you’re like, ‘I’m a super fan. I want to exist in the space of just adoration — which includes civilized critique. Then there are pockets that are really virulent and violent and racist — and sexist and homophobic and all those awful things. And I choose the side of the light. That’s the part of fandom I’m most attracted to.”
So legitimate criticisms of Marvel, the MCU, and the direction it has taken since Endgame, Kevin Feige’s self-confessed “diversity phases”, are simply verboten? Yet we are still expected to turn up, and pay our cash? No, that’s not how things work. Those of us industry adjacent who have memories longer than a buzzword-seeking goldfish are well used to this by now. After all, who can forget:
People see straight through this now. They know deflection. The movie bombed at the box office with the worst opening weekend in Marvel Cinematic Universe history. The film grossed $46.1 million in its opening weekend domestically with big drops across the weekend. On Friday it grossed $21.6 million. Saturday grosses were down to $15.2 million, a 29% drop. On Sunday it dropped another 39% to $9.2 million.
The audience simply didn’t turn up. You see, this is what happens when you stop making products that appeal to your core customers, start making products for somebody else entirely, and then say it is the customer’s fault. Again and again and again this happens and no lessons are learned.
This mythical new audience you crave simply does not exist, and the old audience has simply had enough of both what you are selling, and being called “virulent and violent and racist and sexist and homophobic” because we chose not to watch a movie.
You can’t have too many more £200 million movies that bomb. Maybe it’s time to start listening to your customers again?
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