3 of the bottom 9 grossing MCU films are Ant-Man solo movies.
Spoilers Marvel Cinematic Universe spoiler-heavy speculation thread
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The first two had probably the lowest budgets of all the MCU films so they both made a healthy profit.
Low grosses as measured by MCU standards aren't automatically equivalent to being super unpopular failures.
How popular a character was in the comics has no bearing on their movie success. A successful comic is read by maybe tens of thousands of people. The audience for a successful blockbuster movie is the square of that. That means that more than 99% of the movie audience has no familiarity with the comics. That's the whole reason comics get adapted to the screen -- because it gives them a larger audience than they previously had. It's not about appealing to the existing comics audience, it's about introducing the non-comics audience to characters and storylines that are brand new to them.
None of them were well-known to the general moviegoing audience, except maybe the Hulk for those who remembered the Bill Bixby series. The reason they started with Iron Man is probably because he was the most grounded, the most accessible to the general audience that wasn't already accustomed to comic-book weirdness. A guy in a high-tech armor suit is easier for a general audience to suspend disbelief about than an alternate-history WWII with superpowers, or a Norse god who's actually an alien.
You see this in a lot of screen adaptations of comics universes. Since the goal is to introduce these characters and concepts to the wider, non-fan audience, they tend to start out fairly grounded so as to scare off the newbies with too much bizarreness. For instance, the DC Animated Universe started out with Batman: The Animated Series, which generally focused on non-powered characters and crimes, occasionally getting into science fiction concepts like Clayface and androids and such, but toning down the more fanciful elements (e.g. Zatanna was just a stage magician). It wasn't until Superman: TAS and the later series that we got into aliens and magic and the crazier aspects of the universe. Similarly, Smallville started out minimizing the comic-book elements of the Superboy mythos and presenting it as more of an urban-fantasy (or rather rural-fantasy) teen drama with "no flights, no tights," but as the years went on, it brought in more and more comics characters and trappings. And Arrow started out as a street-level urban vigilante series in the vein of the Nolan Batman movies, but then it started to ease into the idea of superpowers, then introduced the Flash and metahumans, and the universe just kept expanding to encompass time travel and aliens and magic and more and more wild stuff until it became completely, unapologetically comic-book crazy. Even Agents of SHIELD started out looking like a conventional ABC-style procedural series about a team of ordinary government agents investigating weird crimes, before changing things to bring in more comics characters and give team members superpowers and go more all-out with the sci-fi and comics stuff.
In every case, the goal is to start out accessible to the uninitiated, then gradually ease them into the stuff that requires greater suspension of disbelief. And it's just as much about appeasing the conservatism of network or studio executives who are wary of taking chances with anything too weird or unusual. Lots of series, not just comics-based ones, have to start out conforming to a fairly conventional format that the execs are comfortable with, and then once they prove themselves viable, they're given more leeway to become unconventional. Which is why so many SF/fantasy TV series have to start out looking like police/crime procedurals.
I mean, are you forgetting how when the MCU started we kept hearing all the poo-pooing over how no one would care about Captain America or Iron Man getting movies because they were B-Listers or C-Listers?
Ant-Man. Budget 130m Box Office 530m
Even for Disney over 200m profit's not bad.
And probably guest-starred in over half the solo books.
I was thinking more about the actors' schedules and workload more than the characters being overused.
More Pugh would be a goodness!
Played right Pugh has the potential to be one of the MCU's MVPs going forward. Irrespective of what Tarantino said about the likes of RDJ or Chris Evans not being movie stars part of the MCU's probably now is that they don't have those big tent pole characters to build everything else around. They really only still have Thor and Hulk, and much as I love Hemsworth's loveable idiot vibe it isn't conducive to leading the franchise, and with Hulk there's still a rights issue.
I'm not saying RDJ and Evans are movie stars, but they owned and dominated those roles in a way few other actors in the MCU have been able to do (I guess it did help that there were fewer movies and no TV series diluting the market back then.)
I'm not saying RDJ and Evans are movie stars, but they owned and dominated those roles in a way few other actors in the MCU have been able to do (I guess it did help that there were fewer movies and no TV series diluting the market back then.)
I think it will depend on how it's written when they all come together. As much of an ensemble that Avengers, Age of Ultron, Infinity War and Endgame are, they are very clearly and emphatically built around the trio of Iron Man, Cap and Thor (though Thor gets lost in the mix a bit in Ultron).
Post-Endgame, it's unclear who those cornerstone leads are. It's not really set up to be the newly introduced characters. Especially where most of them have been introduced as supporting characters rather than having centre stage. And there isn't any tangible "I can't wait until X, Y and Z are sharing a screen" either - caused in large part because we've seen pretty much all existing characters share the screen in Endgame and most new characters since have shared the screen with already existing characters, dulling that intrigue to a detrimental level.
There's no sense, for example, in Multiverse of Madness or Quantumania that the relative statuses of Dr Strange or Ant-Man has changed in a world without Stark and Rogers. They remain leads in their films, but there's no sense that the next gen will look to them for leadership. And Thor's status as a 'Big Three' is less so when there's no one really stepping into the other two vacant positions.
Post-Endgame, it's unclear who those cornerstone leads are. It's not really set up to be the newly introduced characters. Especially where most of them have been introduced as supporting characters rather than having centre stage. And there isn't any tangible "I can't wait until X, Y and Z are sharing a screen" either - caused in large part because we've seen pretty much all existing characters share the screen in Endgame and most new characters since have shared the screen with already existing characters, dulling that intrigue to a detrimental level.
There's no sense, for example, in Multiverse of Madness or Quantumania that the relative statuses of Dr Strange or Ant-Man has changed in a world without Stark and Rogers. They remain leads in their films, but there's no sense that the next gen will look to them for leadership. And Thor's status as a 'Big Three' is less so when there's no one really stepping into the other two vacant positions.
I really don't see why that matters. The crossovers are a part, not the whole. They're not the only reason for the MCU's existence. All that matters is that the characters are the leads of their own movies and series. The MCU isn't one storyline, it's a shared universe of multiple series. There doesn't have to be a "leader."
Although it seems to me that the most logical candidates for "lead" roles, if any, are the ones whose next movies we're still waiting for -- the two Captains, Carol Danvers and Sam Wilson. T'Challa probably would've been the other lead if he'd lived. Spider-Man will probably still have a major role to play, though that's complicated by Sony's control of the rights. Otherwise, Marvel may be keeping the "lead" roles open for the Fantastic Four and the X-Men.
Right now, I'm not that impressed by the writing that surrounds Pugh's character, Yelena Belova. In "Black Widow", the narrative kept pushing the idea that she was the best Black Widow . . . ever. And yet, the film's narrative failed to support this. And she was also one of my least favorite aspects of "Hawkeye". It's bad enough that the series never explained why Contessa Valentina Allegra de la Fontaine had accepted a contract from Eleanor Bishop to kill Clint Barton. Also, this apparently happened before Christmas 2024, judging from the setting that featured her meeting with Yelena. Why did she feel it was necessary to tell Yelena that Clint had killed Natasha? Why was Valentina accepting hit contracts from private citizens, if she was supposed to be working for the CIA? Will this catch up with her? Why did Yelena blindly accept Valentina's claim that Clint had killed Natasha? By the end of "Hawkeye", Yelena discovered this wasn't true. Yet, she will continue to work for Valentina (and Thaddeus Ross) with the Thunderbolts. WHY?
Also . . . I thought Thor had ended that "lovable idiot" portrayal by the end of the first Thor film. Why did Taika Waititi bring it back for the fourth film?
Have you considered being rational and waiting for the movie to explain a scenario you created in your head? We know all these characters are involved. We have literally zero concept as to who works for who and why. The entire full capital 'why' really is a childish little internet-attention attempt.
I honestly think the Disney+ shows have generally been better than the films. Though several of the shows probably would have been better edited down into feature-length productions themselves.
Like, I think a stripped-down, 2-hour version of Hawkeye, Moon Knight, or Ms. Marvel would have been better than most of the real Phase 4 movies.
That's kinda the problem for me; they looked at them as chopped-up movies (with the exception of 'She-Hulk') with no plans on what to do next with the characters. Like, why introduce Kate Bishop and do nothing more with her.
I'm willing to bet they have plans.
I mean, this is also an issue with the newer movies. Shang Chi got a great intro and we have no idea when we'll see him next (though I think Simu Lee is hinting he may be in The Marvels). There seems to be no solid plan for further use of The Eternals either, though in that case it might just be how poorly received the movie was.