re: Is Brie Larson tanking Captain Marvel with her comments?

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16,409 views|Feb 14, 2019,10:30 am

Box Office: 'Captain Marvel' Doesn't Have To Prove A Darn Thing

Scott MendelsonSenior Contributor

Hollywood & Entertainment

I cover the film industry.

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‘Captain Marvel’MARVEL AND DISNEY

There has been a lot of talk over the last few days about what Captain Marvel does or doesn’t mean to Hollywood, to gender representation and to the world at large. Yes, Brie Larson is within her rights to request that the folks who cover prerelease press conferences and interview junkets not just be mostly white dudes around my age. If she wants to use her capital to push for a more inclusive movie media circle, that’s her prerogative, and it’s a valid use of that muscle. People will proclaim outrage; folks will complain about her being a man-hater, or a reverse racist, or that Captain Marvel will destroy the MCU. The good news is that none of that will matter.

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Presuming the Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck-directed 1990s sci-fi prequel is anywhere near as good as Mississippi Grind or Sugar (or about as good as Half Nelson and It’s a Funny Kind of Story), the MCU will survive its initial bout with cooties. The folks who want to see a Captain Marvel movie, because it’s the first solo female-led superhero movie in the MCU, because they like the character of Captain Marvel or because they just like superhero movies, will show up. The loudest voices screaming in protest either are the sort who were never going to see it anyway or are merely blowing hot air online because it doesn’t cost them anything to yell the loudest.
All of this is a roundabout way of saying that the first opening weekend tracking predictions are in. It looks like The Adventures of Goose: The Cat That Killed Thanos may open with an over/under $100 million Fri-Sun opening weekend when it debuts on March 7 (counting Thursday previews). When dealing with numbers of this scale, there’s a lot of wiggle room. I’d like to say that positive reviews, solid buzz and presumably positive media coverage could theoretically push that number upward. But after Aquaman, Glass and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (three big movies that opened as predicted regardless of reviews and narrative), I’m no longer automatically assuming that.

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When you’re dealing with non-sequel superhero flicks, anything in the $80 million – $110 million range is just fine. Inflation notwithstanding, that includes Venom, Doctor Strange, Thor: The Dark World, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy, Justice League, Iron Man and Wonder Woman.  The only way for Captain Marvel to really be a letdown (even if it’s lousy) is if it “only” earns numbers closer to Doctor Strange ($677 million worldwide) than Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 ($863m) or Black Panther ($1.345 billion) and folks (who were sure that it was going to top $1b just by virtue of being the next big MCU movie) try to argue that it underperformed.
Because I feel I need to keep making this point, just because Wonder Woman cleared $821 million, Black Panther cleared $1.345 billion and Aquaman topped $1.1b does not mean that $1b (or even $800m) is Captain Marvel’s bar for success. Captain Marvel is not as well-known of a character as Wonder Woman and doesn’t quite have the same glass-ceiling-breaking narrative (or the DC Films redemption arc) going for it. As the relative domestic disappointments of A Wrinkle in Time, Underworld: Blood Wars, Tomb Raider, Atomic Blonde, Red Sparrow, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter and Ghost in the Shell show, folks showed up to Wonder Woman because they wanted a Wonder Woman movie.

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Captain Marvel, an introductory superhero flick for a hero who has never appeared in any prior movie and is somewhat unknown to the moviegoing populace, might perform not like Black Panther (or even Venom) but like Doctor Strange. Brie Larson and Benedict Cumberbatch (like Tom Hardy) are both respected and well-liked movie stars who can’t open an envelope outside of hard IP plays or platforming Oscar flicks. Both films will (presumably, give-or-take Endgame clues) take place outside of the ongoing MCU narrative. The only reason I would argue that Captain Marvel might earn more than Doctor Strange ($232 million domestic and $677m worldwide, which is Marvel’s second-biggest non-sequel without Iron Man flick ever) is specifically because it’s the first female-led MCU movie.
There’s also a point to be made (right here, in this post, starting with this sentence) that Captain Marvel has absolutely nothing to prove. Wonder Woman “proved” that big-budget female-led superhero movies could make big bucks. Ocean’s 8 “proved” that gender-swapped redoes could make relatively big bucks as long as they didn’t rely on the IP as a crutch. Crazy Rich Asians “proved” that big-scale, studio-backed female-led romantic comedies could thrive in multiplexes (as did Trainwreck three years earlier). Twilight proved 10.5 years ago that female-led fantasy franchises would earn top-tier blockbuster business. Twilight and The Hunger Games (and, relatively speaking, Disney’s first three Star Wars movies) showed that female-led fantasy spectaculars could outgross the boys’ stuff.
With the presumption that Captain Marvel will probably do just fine when it opens next month, it should be allowed to fail or disappoint. Even if the movie stumbles, it’s not like Warner Bros. is going to cancel Wonder Woman 1984 or Birds of Prey, nor will Sony magically put the brakes on their female-led Spider-Verse ensemble spinoff. At worst, I would imagine that a poorly-received Captain Marvel movie would merely result in a lack of a Captain Marvel 2 and the inclusion of the character as a kind of overpowered supporting character (think the MCU’s Hulk or DC Films’ Superman) who shows up to steal scenes in other folks’ MCU movies.

Ten years after Twilight, seven years after Hunger Games, five years after Frozen, 4.5 years after Lucy, three years after The Force Awakens and two years after Wonder Woman, the proof is as clear as day. Yes, fewer people go to the movies just to go to the movies than they did even five years ago. And, yes, just because folks show up for Wonder Woman doesn’t mean they’ll show up for every halfway decent female-led action fantasy, even though I frankly wish they would. But there have been so many examples of ridiculously successful female-led biggies that I’d argue whiffs like Ghostbusters (which cost too much) are now the exception rather than the rule.

Captain Marvel shouldn’t have to prove a bloody thing. At this point, I’d argue Hollywood needs Captain Marvel more than Captain Marvel needs Hollywood, but that’s for another day.

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