Marvel finds itself now at a precarious precipice; what once could be chalked down to a changed pandemic theater landscape, evolving consumer trends and superhero fatigue with some promising signs of recovery has now entered code red with the embarrassing box office bomb that is “The Marvels.” 

As of today, this film that reportedly cost over $200 million to make has yet to gross as much at the box office, putting Marvel in position to lose a significant amount of money once you factor in the ad spend (though you could convince me that they spent nothing advertising the film, given how much little promotion has been circulating), as well as the cut theaters take. 

What went wrong and where does the studio go from here? 

Many have pointed out that this film came out during the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes, meaning that it missed out on key promotion opportunities — but I think the impact of that is overstated. For a film like this, word of mouth and the online buzz associated with it I think play a much more crucial role — for example, “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” dominated the box office during the strikes through just this — of which, “The Marvels” gained little attention. 

Reviews for it are middling and unenthusiastic, and there just didn’t seem to be a passion for this. It’s worth noting that there wasn’t necessarily much going for the original “Captain Marvel” in 2019, though it benefitted from having its theatrical release overlap with “Avengers: Endgame” — that alone I think is responsible for its $1 billion haul — and it benefitted from a very good villain portrayed by Jude Law. Otherwise, it was a very boilerplate superhero origin story. 

“The Marvels” as a concept perplexes me. It denies “Captain Marvel” a true sequel — instead, serving as a sequel to that film as well as “WandaVision” and “Ms. Marvel,” the last of which had the title of being the lowest-watched Marvel Disney Plus show. 

Still, team-up films have been Marvel’s strong suit and I gave it the benefit of the doubt when it was announced. Even at its lowest (i.e. “Avengers: Age of Ultron”), Marvel has shown an aptitude of balancing multiple big personalities on screen while giving everyone a decent arc. It also had a good record of making previously obscure comic series into big-name franchises (“Guardians of the Galaxy,” “Ant-Man,” “Doctor Strange”). 

I think it smartly has scaled back its release schedule, set to only release “Deadpool 3” next year, although we will still get three Sony “Spider-Man” universe movies. 

What is clear is that if Marvel is going to get its mojo back, it will need to make these films events like they used to be. They had a pandemic break, which was initially a great thing for its Disney Plus shows, but almost half of its films have failed to impress — through until “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” and “The Marvels,” they haven’t been big losers. 

Audiences still showed up for “Thor: Love and Thunder,” “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” “Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3” and “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” so it’s premature to say that the genre is dead yet. But if you’re going to succeed within it, you need to make something special.