Marvel studio’s new movie The Marvels was released on November 10, 2023. 

Starring Brie Larson as Captain Marvel, Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel, and Teyonah Parris as Monica Rambeau. The movie has gone down in history as the lowest grossing opening weekend for an MCU movie. It only brought in 47 Million dollars compared to the usual of over 150 Million dollars.

The reasons behind The Marvels’ financial failure lie largely in the SAG-Aftra Strike. The strike prevented the stars of the movie from promoting their film. Due to no marketing phase, fans of the cast weren’t encouraged to view the release of the movie with many not being aware when it came out.  The lack of word of mouth enthusiasm made it very difficult for Marvel Studios to successfully build excitement before the opening weekend.

One of the main components of building a film’s success is the early on view of the movie as described by critics. For The Marvels, the view was not pretty. Most early reviews had a largely negative tone with many saying the film had a messy script and that the villain was unoriginal. The criticism led many of the already small number of anticipated viewers to lose interest in the upcoming installment.

With a film franchise such as the MCU there are millions of fans who go in to watch every movie. However, the film had minimal connections to the MCU Multiverse Saga and as a result even many loyal fans opted out of The Marvels. Many believed there wasn’t going to be enough focus on the actual arch-villain and thought that Marvel should have been focusing on the existing narrative instead of trying to squeeze another movie into the timeline.

The shocking outcome of The Marvels indicates that Marvel needs to step up their game for the next film. With a lack of promotion and bad reviews from both film critics and loyal fans, it is now obvious that something will need to be done should Marvel continue on with the Captain Marvel franchise.