Aquaman, The Marvels, Shazam, Ant-Man, The Flash, Blue Beetle: Superheroes fail to fly in 2023

The year that saw superheroes getting horribly tangled in a loop of flops. The box office has not been a friendly place for comic book cinema over the past 12 months, and six of the nine superhero films that opened in 2023 grossly underperformed.

Cutting across DC and Marvel assembly lines, Aquaman and The Marvels landed in the same box office soup in which The Flash, Shazam, Blue Beetle, Ant-Man and the Wasp had already taken a tumble earlier in the year. In terms of numbers, the performance was better for Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem and Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse, but nowhere near the spectacular heights that superhero flicks have habitually scaled over the past two decades.

A box office recce first. Jason Momoa’s new (mis)adventure, Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom, opened in the Christmas weekend riding a mighty budget of over $205 million but managed to collect $120.1 million worldwide in four days. The James Wan-directorial was the 15th and final release of DC Extended Universe (DCEU), hence reinvented as DC Universe or DCU for future projects.

The failure of the film, second of the Aquaman franchise, marked a complete rout for DC Studios in 2023 after no-shows by The Flash, Shazam! Fury Of The Gods and Blue Beetle. Of these, The Flash starring Ezra Miller managed $270.6 million globally and is regarded as one of the biggest Hollywood flops ever, with Warner Bros projected to have lost $200 million upon investing in the project. Shazam! Fury Of The Gods, bringing back Zachary Levi in his second outing as the titular superhero, managed a worldwide intake of a mere $133.8 million. Blue Beetle, presenting actor Xolo Mariduena in his first feature-length lead role, garnered positive reviews could collect $129.28 million globally. The film has ended up as DCEU’s lowest-grosser of all time.

The scene was barely better for the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and its associates. Marvel Studios kicked off MCU Phase Five with Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania in February but the Peyton Reed-helmed third film of the Ant-Man franchise, with global gross worth $476.07 million, took home far less than its break-even figure of $600 million. This, despite a star cast that brought back Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly in their respective popular avatars as Ant-Man / Scott Lang and Wasp / Hope van Dyne, alongside Bill Murray, Michelle Pfeiffer and Michael Douglas. Phase Five saw respite with the good show of Guardians Of The Galaxy Volume 3 in May, with the $250-million production James Gunn directorial fetching $845.55 million globally. The film was Gunn’s final assignment for the Disney-Marvel fold. Assuming his role of co-chairmen and CEO at rival DC Studios alongside Peter Safran, Gunn will next helm Superman: Legacy, slated for a 2025 release. Reloading the power cast of Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Karen Gillan, Pom Klementieff, Vin Diesel and Bradley Cooper, Guardians Of The Galaxy Volume 3 ended up as Hollywood’s fourth biggest hit of 2023. The joy of success for the makers would seem shortlived, what with the complete washout of their next release, The Marvels, in November.

Despite flaunting inclusivity in cast and characters, The Marvels has ended up as a global flop and MCU’s lowest-grossing release of all time. Sequel to the 2019 feature film Captain Marvel and extending the storyline of last year’s series, Ms. Marvel, the film brought back Brie Larson as Carol Danvers / Captain Marvel along with Teyonah Parris as Monica Rambeau and Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan / Ms. Marvel besides Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury. Nia DaCosta’s The Marvels managed $205 million globally against a gross production budget of $274.8 million, with the film’s break-even figure estimated to be $440 million.

Marvel Entertainment managed to score a winner along with Sony-Columbia in the form of the animated superhero adventure Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse. Featuring Shameik Moore’s voice as Brooklyn teenager Miles Morales’ Spider-Man avatar on Earth-1610, the sequel to Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse (2018) brough the Spider-Verse alive to score a whopping $690.5 million gross at the global box office against a budget of over $100 million. The film is the year’s sixth biggest hit. The only other superhero thriller to make the cut as a hit this year has been Paramount’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem. Jeff Rowe’s animated film, co-written by Seth Rogen, hauled $118.5 million worldwide against a modest budget of $70 million.

Marvel and DC in particular, as well as other producers dabbling with the superhero genre, must have noticed a shift in audience taste from superhero films in the post-Avengers years. The top three hits of 2023 are, notably, Barbie (global gross $1.44 billion), The Super Mario Bros. Movie ($1.36 billion) and Oppenheimer ($952 million). This is in fact the first time in the 21st century, barring COVID-affected 2020, that a non-franchise film has made it as the highest grosser of the year. Add to that the fact that none of the top three hits of last year (Avatar: The Way Of Water, Top Gun: Maverick and Jurassic World: Dominion) belonged to the superhero genre.

The situation raises a couple of hard questions: Are best days of the superhero genre truly behind us? And, is the audience suffering from comicbook cinema hangover?

DC and Marvel, however, don’t appear fazed by their 2023 report cards. Both studios are ebulliently going ahead with a ‘new era’ of their respective adventures. Many of their upcoming superhero productions were, in fact, planned before the current year and had to be postponed owing to the actors’ and writers’ strikes that hit Hollywood in 2023. Marvel Studios have an ambitious calendar running right up to 2026, with biggies including Captain America: New World Order, Thunderbolts, Blade, Deadpool 3, Fantastic Four, Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, Avengers: Secret Wars and Armor Wars, besides series such as Echo, Agatha: Darkhold Diaries, Ironheart and Daredevil: Born Again. With Gunn revamping house at DC, the universe gets bigger in the coming years with Superman: Legacy, The Batman — Part II, Joker: Folie á Deux, JJ Abrams’ untitled Black Superman movie, Supergirl: World Of Tomorrow, The Brave And The Bold and Swamp Thing.

The challenge, every director of the superhero genre would know, is reinvention. Too much of superhero cinema has happened over the past two decades, leading to a sort of hangover. Ever since Sam Raimi’s early Spider-Man films of the 2000s whetted appetite and Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight series turned the superhero genre into a blockbuster art form, fan expectation has only exponentially increased over the years. In turn, the DC and Marvel universes have unleashed amplified hype and glitzier production values with each new release. The zenith, for Marvel, was scaled with the Avengers films while DC have never quite managed to top what Nolan’s trilogy attained over a decade ago. For both universes, new brainwave to sustain audience interest in the new era would have to extend beyond expected nods to inclusivity and diversity, or merely churning out spiffier VFX and stunts.

Vinayak Chakravorty is a critic, columnist and journalist who loves to write on popular culture.

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Aquaman, The Marvels, Shazam, Ant-Man, The Flash, Blue Beetle: Superheroes fail to fly in 2023Read More