Monday Morning Quarterback
By BOP Staff
May 10, 2016
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Jason Barney: I think we can put the term "superhero fatigue" on the shelf for a little while.
This opening just reminds everyone just how massive the Marvel Universe is as far as money making potential. I can't help do this analysis without tying it to Batman v Superman. I think discussing Captain America 3 in terms of the other Marvel films is fine, but we are talking about a class of their own. The Iron Man films, Captain America, Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy...look what they have accomplished. Then examine the DC Comics universe. Especially the recent body of work. There just isn't even ANY comparison. To make the point....Captain America: Civil War has made $670 million globally in about two weeks of release. Batman vs Superman doesn't even look like it is going to be able to limp to $900 million total. Ouch. I'm not going to go too far out on a limb with predictions for how far Captain America can go...but at this point, with this sort of buzz around this film, it is entirely possible it surpasses $1 billion globally by some time next week.
On its own this is a fantastic opening....$179 million is HUGE, especially when compared to the other Captain America films.
Ben Gruchow: I will be forever sort of grouchy that the opening juuuust missed $186.1 million, which would let me unleash a torrent of cheeky references (like, maybe one or two) about the start of the Marvel Civil War vs. the start of the actual Civil War.
I'm nonplussed about this opening, in the best reflective way toward the movie itself; honestly, once a sequel exceeds its prior film's opening by a certain amount, numbers just don't mean much anymore. Would anyone be claiming disappointment if this had opened to $170 million instead of $180? What if it'd opened at $125 million? That'd still be a healthy growth over the opening of Winter Soldier. Instead, the $179 million it did open with gives us some fun trivia: it joins the short list of sequels that outgross the original film's entire domestic run within the confines of a three-day opening weekend, and it only slightly falls short even when adjusting for inflation. It nearly doubled the opening weekend of the last film in the series; offhand, I can't remember that kind of explosion happening for a $100+ million franchise since New Moon came out in 2009. And now there really is not even a shred of a reason to ever speak of New Moon again, so...bonus.
Disney's already had a brilliant year thus far with regard to quality product making ridiculous sums of money; Finding Dory is still waiting in the wings, and Doctor Strange and Rogue One aren't even really around the corner yet.
Felix Quinonez: I think this is an awesome result. If we compare it to the previous Cap, the growth is amazing. But if we compare it to Age of Ultron, it's a bit lower. As usual the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Yes, the movie does have "Captain America" in the title but we can't pretend that it didn't get a box office boost from the added characters. On the other hand, I believe a lot of viewers did see it as a Cap sequel and it would be unfair to judge it as anything close to a disappointment just because it didn't match Age of Ultron. At the end of the day, I think this is yet another out of the park home run for Marvel. I haven't seen it yet but I've heard very positive word-of-mouth. So I'm really excited to see how it holds up. I'm definitely cheering for it.
Reagen Sulewski: I think there is a very, very small amount of room to look at this as a disappointment, as with its cast, there was the sense that this was something of an Avengers 2.5, but you kind of have to be looking for a fight in order to say so. Once you get above $150 million or so, you're dealing with just massive amounts of people, and any little thing have have a significant effect on opening weekend. Official Avengers film or not, it's taken a property that started off as a $60 million opener and tripled that in a few years time, adding yet more to Disney's arsenal. They still get the Avengers movies in the meantime, so it's extremely hard to me to view a 10% fall off from the peak as a sign of something bad. The devil, of course, is in the details and the final gross, but there's a stark (ha) difference between this and Batman v Superman v Joy: discussion of the film has centered on, well, the ideas raised by the film, and not in how we can raise a mob to slay the beast.
Kim Hollis: Do you believe that comic book movie fatigue is a real thing? If so, how does the performance of Captain America: Civil War impact the perception of movie-goers?
Jason Barney: Whenever I read "comic book or superhero fatigue" I have to think that the person writing the words or asking the question already has a certain bias against the history of that particular media. Fatigue? Really? The reality is that aside from Star Wars, there is no other universe, franchise, group of characters earning more money right now. Just look at the last three entries....Batman vs Superman, Deadpool, and now Captain America. With the performance of any of those films, I just don't think the word fatigue applies to audiences embracing these films.
To put it another way, even the bad comic films do well against most other movies. No fatigue there.
Ben Gruchow: To me, for something to be fatigued implies that the genre or subgenre has been heading down the wrong path for a while. No single movie can create or sustain fatigue of a genre, nor can a simple question of quantity. The last time the superhero film tanked in the cultural consciousness, it was all blamed on Batman & Robin. Bad movie, yes, but also immediately preceded and immediately compounded by Steel, Spawn (which I liked, but I was also 14), The Crow: City of Angels, The Phantom, Barb Wire, Judge Dredd, Tank Girl, Blankman, Batman Forever. The superhero film had been lumbering to its appointment with Death for several years before B&R brought the scythe down.
We need several more BvS's, and the attendant loss or wash of revenue that comes with it, before fatigue is something that'll apply to this genre. And - excepting the surprising apparent creative failure of X-Men: Apocalypse - the genre IPs are in too solid and confident of hands to allow that to happen yet. If ever.
Felix Quinonez: I do think that comic book movie fatigue is a real thing. There definitely are people who roll their eyes at the very thought of these movies. But I don't think it comes close to being anything significant. I believe there is a portion of viewers who actively hate the genre but unfortunately for them, they aren't a big enough group to hurt these movies financially.
But I think these people are biased and have already made up their mind, so Civil War's opening weekend won't change their mind. If anything it'll make them hate the genre even more.