The Four Color Media Monitor

John Nolte at Breitbart comments on what turned out to be the latest fantastic flop of a live action Marvel adaptation:

“Fantastic Four grossed $11.7 million domestically in its second Friday on the big screen, marking a devastating 80% drop from its debut,” reports Variety. “If the poor turnout continues, the film will most likely fall short of its initial weekend two estimates of $45 to $52 million by Sunday.”

And “fall short” it did, grossing just $40 million with a 66 percent drop.

After ten days and two weekends, this well-reviewed Marvel entry sits at just $198 million.

That’s nearly as bad as Captain America: Brave New World, which dropped 68 percent, and a lot worse than the 56 percent drop Thunderbolts suffered. Both of those 2025 Marvel releases are considered box office bombs. [...]

The Disney Grooming Syndicate’s turn towards the anti-art and anti-storytelling lunacy of identity politics, gender politics, and all that LGBTEWW stuff has already destroyed their Star Wars and Pixar franchises. And now it seems pretty official: The woketards killed Marvel.

The problem, I think, is that star Pedro Pascal alone alienated a considerable amount of the potential audience, with all his obsessive defenses of LGBT ideology, even going so far as to attack J.K. Rowling. One of the stars, Joseph Quinn, may have suggested Johnny Storm would be portrayed in woke ways too. In this Collider article:

The 2025 movie doesn’t shy away from the core of how people see Johnny: he’s still the handsome, charming, young man who flirts, jokes, and flies through the skies of New York as the Human Torch. But in The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Quinn’s portrayal marks a striking departure from Evans’ take because it has to. While Evans leaned into Johnny’s cocky, thrill-seeking persona, Quinn introduced a more grounded and introspective version, a quiet genius who cements his place in the team as more than just a ladies' man. The movie makes good use of his character traits from the comics by showing how he’s able to help Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) and Reed (Pedro Pascal) pilot their spacecraft and navigate. He even figures out on his own how to shoot beams into the side of the wormhole to use its curved trajectory to attack Silver Surfer (Julia Garner).

Well this sure doesn't sound encouraging to believe Quinn plays Johnny much different than from what wokesters of the past decade would prefer. Of course, because Nolte's official review is behind a paywall, how can I clearly confirm from him that it's not PC as he's saying? And by the way, it's not like Johnny in the comics was portrayed slacking off all the time. There were plenty of stories where he was battling baddies just as much as his family partners were, and the Collider article actually admits as much. But, it also points to something Nolte must've strangely overlooked - the Silver Surfer was changed from a man to a woman. Seriously, why are we supposed to find that impressive? What's so wrong with Norrin Radd? I'm okay with creative liberties, but it looks like this might've wound up being too much after all the insults to the intellect in earlier movies.

Warner Todd Huston also addressed the current catastrophe:

The film suffered a surprising 66 percent loss of revenue in its second weekend, dropping from its $117.6 million box office take last week to a mere $40 million over weekend two, according to The Wrap.

Its overseas impact mirrors its domestic box office, as well. The film opened strong with more than $108 million overseas. But for weekend two, that take collapsed to only $39.6 million.

In the end, this may portend bad news for the film. Even though it had a nice opening weekend and received hearty praise from critics and fans alike, the money is simply not following. It could mean that the film may fail to break the $500 million threshold worldwide.

It all smacks of superhero movie overload, as the genre seems to be giving studios diminishing returns.

Marvel’s other recent superhero flick, Thunderbolts, was also a disappointment for Disney. According to World of Reel’s math, Thunderbolts will lose more than $100 million for Disney.

With a budget of $400 million, including production and promotion, Thunderbolts only earned about $350 million in its first month in theaters. And Thunderbolts was the third film in a row for Marvel that did not perform as hoped. Captain America: Brave New World, and The Marvels were also box office disappointments.

I wonder what leftist writer Kurt Busiek, who created the original Thunderbolts series in the late 1990s, thinks of the catastrophe, since he's such a woke advocate in his own way. And there's also the box office intake of Superman to ponder:

Meanwhile, DC Comics’ movies for Warners is finding a similarly hard slog at the box office. Despite that James Gunn’s newest Superman reboot was well received by fans and critics, the film has earned less than hoped.

After its first two weeks in theaters, the film earned about $406 million worldwide, but with a $400 million budget, that take is not near enough to earn back its production costs.

Let's recall promotional and marketing costs can figure heavily into a movie's budget as well, not just how much it costs to film it. As I've noted before, the political metaphors in Gunn's Superman film are a turnoff, and he did give additional hints at where he stood politically, so maybe when a filmmaker says stuff that divisive, you can't be so surprised when the audience doesn't go for it.

Then, here's an extra commentary from Nolte:

Now that the collapse of the Disney Grooming Syndicate’s Marvel brand is no longer in dispute, the far-left entertainment media continue to deceive their readers by blaming everything except what’s really to blame — Marvel’s lunatic embrace of woke.

“Woke,” of course, means that Marvel put identity politics above effective storytelling and relatable characters. Woke cares only about pushing a left-wing propaganda message that seeks to normalize homosexuality, spread the lie that women are physically as strong as men, girlbosses are appealing, and everyone wants to talk about feminism and race.

[...] Forbes blames the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) collapse on too many TV and theatrical releases, on losing its core cast of heroes, casting off new ones after a one-off movie, and excessive nostalgia.

And…? And…? And…?

That’s it?

The far-left Wrap makes a complete fool of its sycophantic self by shamelessly aping the Disney Grooming Syndicate’s excuses that blame Marvel’s implosion on streaming and still — yes, after five years — the pandemic.

At least I’m willing to admit that some of this played a role. But these gerbils refuse to even go near the truth.

You don’t think feminizing and emasculating Thor played a role?

How about all that “black girl magic” nonsense in The Marvels?

How about two hairy men necking in The Eternals?

How about removing all the female sex appeal in everything?

How about a “group hug” saving the world in Thunderbolts?

Lesbians, gays, obnoxiously unappealing girlbosses, racial resentment, basing the virtue of characters on their skin color… Nobody wants to watch that crap.

Yes, all the above doubtless played some role in guaranteeing the new FF movie's failure. But even gender-swapping the Surfer could've too, and it'll make no difference whether Human Torch is supposed to fall in love with the lady playing the Surfer in this film - how does that substitute for a civilian co-star to rival say, Alicia Masters, who began as the woman the Thing fell in love with, and the blind daughter of the Puppet Master? Again, I think it's okay to take creative liberties with screenplays adapting from comics. Even manga in Japan sees it on the way to anime. But when it's all exploited for the sake of additional woke brownie points, that's when it all goes awry, and the relentless way Marvel movies went about that definitely rubbed off on the new FF movie, along with Pascal's divisive politics. Something I'm not sure Nolte dwelled upon, so that's a flaw of his there.

Will comics adaptations evaporate after this latest thud? Maybe, and maybe not. But for all we know, there might be far less coming along, certainly superhero fare, and if so, it'll be for the best. Moviegoers should take a good look at how woke Marvel and DC's comics became since the turn of the century, and when the situation is that bad, how can you feel up trying out more live action adaptations?

Labels: dc comics, Fantastic Four, golden calf of LGBT, history, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, politics, sales, Superman