‘Avengers: Infinity War’
At a glance, it looks like Walt Disney’s Avengers: Infinity War will end its sixth week with around $634 million in domestic grosses as it makes a play for the $1.95 billion worldwide mark this weekend. 20th Century Fox’s Deadpool 2, meanwhile, has earned around $230m domestic in two weeks of domestic release along with at least $525m worldwide on a $110m budget.
Both films will have to deal with the overseas debut of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom starting June 6. Universal/Comcast Corp.’s dino sequel is an oddly important release this summer. Not only is it somewhat instrumental to showing that a theoretical Disney/Fox combo wouldn’t create a theatrical monopoly, but it may be the only movie within the top six-biggest global grossers of the year that isn’t a superhero movie.
The J.A. Bayona-directed dino thriller, which again stars Bryce Dallas Howard and Chris Pratt (along with franchise vets BD Wong and Jeff Goldblum) may be the only major global hit outside the realm of superhero movies. Once Deadpool 2 passes the $579 million global grosses of Operation Red Sea and Ready Player One, all three of the year’s top global grossers (Avengers: Infinity War, Black Panther and Deadpool 2) will be Marvel comic book movies. And you can probably throw Pixar’s Incredibles 2 into the top-tier of that list alongside Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp early next month.
Since Solo: A Star Wars Story flamed out, it’s essentially up to Jurassic World 2 to show that audiences around the world will still show up in top-tier numbers for a big movie that isn’t an explicit superhero movie. Further irony rests in the notion that the other two possible mega-movies of the summer are Dwayne Johnson’s Skyscraper and Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible Fallout. They are both arguably about glorified superheroes whose powers are perseverance, endurance and the ability to leap tall buildings in a single-bound.
Let’s merely presume that Skyscraper does Rampage/San Andreas numbers ($413-$495 million, which would be fine), Mission: Impossible Fallout doesn’t crack the $700m ceiling and Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again makes (at best) a global total close to the first film’s jaw-dropping $609m worldwide. We are going to end the summer (and enter at least November) with five of the top-six global grossers of the year (some combo of Infinity War, Black Panther, Deadpool 2, Incredibles 2 and Ant-Man and the Wasp) are outright superhero flicks.
The first 11 months of 2016 was mostly dominated by comic book adventures (Civil War, Dawn of Justice, Deadpool) and talking animal toons (Zootopia, Jungle Book, Secret Life of Pets, Finding Dory). But this year is light on big animated flicks while two of the three summer toons (Incredibles 2 and Teen Titans GO to the Movies) are superhero movies. Presuming Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom doesn’t perform shockingly low compared to its $1.672 billion-grossing predecessor (and nothing else from China breaks out), the dino flick will be the only non-superhero movie in the top six, heading into the very end of the year, that isn’t a superhero movie.
Moviegoers are “suffering” from the opposite of superhero fatigue. The biggest of big movies are mostly, give-or-take Star Wars, Fast and Furious and Pixar/Illumination/Disney toons, superhero movies. In a way, that makes sense, as generally speaking most of the Marvel movies (be they MCU from Disney or X-Men/Deadpool from Fox) have been various shades of decent. There is a trust that just isn’t there when it comes to King Arthur or The Mummy. And since those films are “good,” it makes sense that audiences would spend their money on the well-reviewed biggies as opposed to the wannabees.
When so many would-be blockbuster franchise-starters are emulating the current superhero boom, with a mix of Batman Begins-style origin stories and Avengers-level interconnectivity, it makes sense that audiences would flock to the genuine article over pale imitations. And since the actual superhero movies don’t have to justify themselves within the superhero sandbox, they can branch out and play in different genres and take artistic chances. A movie like King Arthur is trying to emulate a superhero flick, but actual superhero movies use their sub-genre as a launching pad to (somewhat) break free from the genre constraints.
As such, Deadpool 2 is a comedy, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is an outer-space swashbuckler, Wonder Woman is a World War I drama and Ant-Man is a heist caper. You know this, as Kevin Feige has emphasized diversity-of-genre after Avengers to differentiate MCU’s superhero movies. We can debate how much of a conspiracy thriller Captain America: The Winter Soldier is, or to what extent Spider-Man: Homecoming succeeds as a high school coming-of-age comedy, but folks who consume the latest batch of comic book movies are getting their genre needs met via the sub-genre.
Folks who like westerns flocked to Logan. Folks who like high school comedies flocked to Spider-Man: Homecoming. Folks who like Tom Clancy or Alan J. Pakula-like thrillers flocked to Captain America: Civil War. And, of course, those who like Michael Mann and/or Sydney Lumet crime pictures helped make The Dark Knight into a $1 billion+ grosser ten years ago. It’s not that moviegoers are ignoring diverse genre filmmaking in multiplexes. It’s that they are getting their fill from the superhero stuff. When you’ve seen The Winter Soldier, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit looks like pretty weak sauce.
We’ll see if the current superhero boom, which now rules Hollywood like never before, will continue after next year (after X-Men: Dark Phoenix, Wonder Woman 2, Spider-Man 2, Avengers 4 and Captain Marvel). Superhero movies have taken their spot at the top by essentially offering (mostly) well-made/well-received genre pictures with grand production values and big movie stars, where the capes and superheroic theatrics are almost a bonus. In this environment, with Solo essentially DOA, it’s up to Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom to show that there is still room at the top for non-superhero blockbusters.
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