Despite the success of 2019’s Captain Marvel, Brie Larson’s The Marvels failed to follow in the footsteps of its predecessor. Ticket sales for the first movie were stratospheric because, even though it received a lot of negative criticism, the installment was a must-see for the Infinity War saga.
The Marvels, however, became the lowest-earning film in the history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Still, there were other superhero movies that had it worse, and one in particular took almost four decades to revive the character in movies.
Supergirl Has Always Struggled Critically And Commercially
Perhaps the most famous version of Supergirl today is the one starring Melissa Benoist. The cousin of Superman took the spotlight and told her story in the television series that ran through six seasons. Before this, there was the 1984 version.
The infamous Superman spinoff film was branded as one of the earliest superhero movie flops in history. It gave an underwhelming performance at the box office after earning $14.3 million against a budget of $35 million.
It was quite difficult to revive a character with very poor reception from fans and critics, and it was only this year that viewers saw Supergirl again in theaters in 2023’s The Flash, which was also another box-office bomb. The character was portrayed by Sasha Calle.
In a post by Forbes, the reason why Supergirl seems to fail as a franchise could be rooted in s*xism. The review stated:
“The key problem with Supergirl is one that arguably plagues the female-centric action sub-genre right up to this day, which is a lack of faith in the seriousness of its story. Simply put, Supergirl, and the concept of Supergirl, is treated as a lark.”
Kara Zor-El is one of the most important figures in DC Comics, but the treatment of the character in movies had not been very kind from the beginning.
Why Did The Marvels Fail?
It’s no secret that, while many huge franchises thrived at the box office this year, there were also a lot that failed to meet the expectations of fans. It was truly a shame that Brie Larson’s The Marvels did not receive the warmest welcome from the audience, and Disney CEO Robert Iger blames one thing for this. He said during The New York Times’ DealBook Summit via CNBC:
“The Marvels was shot during COVID. There wasn’t as much supervision on the set, so to speak, where we have executives [that are] really looking over what’s being done day after day after day.”
When it comes to sequels, Iger suggested that the company set their standards too high and achieved success before the pandemic happened:
“I’m not sure another studio will ever achieve some of the numbers that we achieved. I mean, we got to the point where if a film didn’t do a billion dollars in global box office, we were disappointed. That’s an unbelievably high standard, and I think we have to get more realistic.”
Both Captain Marvel and Supergirl struggle to find their footing in the movie industry. While they are part of huge franchises, they could not seem to find success that would make them stand on their own.
