After three and a half years, Marvel movies returned to the Chinese mainland big screen. Unfortunately, the two blockbuster films "Black Panther 2" and "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantum Frenzia" (hereinafter referred to as "Ant-Man 3") have suffered box office failures one after another.
"Black Panther 2", released on February 7, had a domestic box office of about 20 million yuan on the first day, and the box office only broke 100 million yuan in 12 days of release, becoming the worst Marvel movie in the past 10 years. On February 17, Marvel's new film "Ant-Man 3" was released simultaneously in Chinese mainland and North America, with a box office of only 132 million yuan in the first weekend, and a box office of 217 million yuan at press time, far less than the 671 million yuan box office of "Ant-Man" in 2015 and the 831 million yuan box office of "Ant-Man 2" in 2018. In terms of word of mouth, the Douban scores of "Ant-Man 3" and "Black Panther 2" are only 6.1 and 5.4 points.
As the finale of the fourth phase of the Marvel Universe and the opening of the fifth phase, "Black Panther 2" and "Ant-Man 3" have been placed on high hopes, but the two films have "overturned" in all aspects from the box office to word of mouth, and the market performance is dismal. The reason, industry insiders analyzed, the two superhero IPs of Ant-Man and Black Panther have limited appeal in China, which has affected the box office of the new work, but the box office failure is ultimately due to the decline in the quality of the film. After years of cultivation of theatrical films and film and television videos on various channels, the aesthetic level of Chinese audiences has been greatly improved. If it does not bring refreshing stories and create new visual spectacles, the influence of Marvel and even Hollywood movies in the domestic market will continue to decline.
Authoring bottlenecks
"The screenwriter wrote the script in ChatGPT." This short review of "Ant-Man 3" has received more than 2,000 likes on Douban.
"Ant-Man 3", released simultaneously in North America and the mainland, can be called Marvel's first work to return to the mainland market. In the film, "Ant-Man" and "Wasp" accidentally entered the quantum realm with their daughter Cathy, and in that unknown world full of danger, they met the strongest villain of the Marvel Cinematic Universe - Kang the Conqueror, thus opening the fifth stage of the Marvel Universe.
Some netizens commented that Kang, as the most important villain in the fifth stage, was not portrayed brilliantly in the film. "The first half of the film repeatedly exaggerates his strength, but in the later stage, he is easily defeated by the protagonist." In addition, the newly appeared character Cathy also lacks character characteristics and highlights that the audience remembers. Another audience said, "From the overall effect, many of the visual shapes of "Ant-Man 3" are familiar, and the various races and ecological wonders in the quantum field are very similar to "Star Wars". ”
More importantly, "Ant-Man 3", which was given by Marvel to open a new stage of tasks, also lost the original characteristics of "Ant-Man". "The positioning of "Ant-Man" in the Marvel Universe has always been a dessert-style Disney family movie, but this one is arranged as a hard dish to undertake the fifth stage of the layout, which is really difficult to match the volume, and there is always a feeling of 'Liao Hua being a pioneer' after the old generation of Avengers retires." Douban netizens "leave no traces" so evaluated.
"Black Panther 2", which was released earlier, tells the story of Su Rui and others who continue to fight to protect Wakanda after the unfortunate death of King T'Challa of "Black Panther". The film was released in the United States in November last year, and then went live online, and some viewers have already seen the movie first.
Changing the protagonist is also one of the reasons why many viewers do not enter the cinema. Chadwick Boseman, the actor of "Black Panther" in the previous work, died of worsening cancer in 2020, which caused mourning from netizens around the world. This time "Black Panther 2", Marvel Studios has made a comprehensive adjustment to the script, and the new generation of "Black Panther" Princess Su Rui officially appeared, and the story focuses on female characters. The combination of "feminism + skin color" made this superhero movie criticized as "too politically correct". In the film, the Kingdom of Talocan lives at the bottom of the sea, and was also ridiculed by netizens as a "low-end version of "Black Panther 2: The Way of Water".
There are also many netizens who complain about the tearing feeling of the film. "It is clear that the setting is the world's number one power, and digital technology and forging technology are full, but the climactic passage of the movie is set on a ship, and the two camps are fighting with cold weapons, like a family."
"Ant-Man 3" and "Black Panther 2" are cold in China, highlighting the creative bottlenecks commonly faced by Marvel movies in recent years - new and old heroes are not connected, creation is stuck in routine templates, and the audience's aesthetic fatigue with special effects blockbusters. In this regard, industry insiders analyzed that if superhero movies want to attract more audiences, they need to make a huge leap in production and break through the audience's expectation threshold.
Lost viewers
The Marvel Universe is currently divided into 6 phases.
In 2008, "Iron Man" was released in Chinese mainland, kicking off the first phase of Marvel, which ended with "Avengers" released in 2012, and the "original six" Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Black Widow, Hulk and Hawkeye were assembled for the first time in the film, detonating the market in one fell swoop and receiving 566 million yuan at the box office. The second stage is from "Iron Man 3" released in 2013 to "Ant-Man" in 2015, and the Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant-Man joined the battle as new characters. The third phase is from "Captain America 3" released in 2016 to "Spider-Man: Far From Home" in 2019, with new heroes such as Doctor Strange, Black Panther, and Captain Marvel appearing. These 3 stages are collectively known as "Infinity Legends". During this period, the box office of Marvel movies was almost 500 million yuan. Even after 2015, its single box office has remained at about 700 million yuan.
The peak moment of the Marvel Universe appeared in 2019, when "Avengers 4: Endgame" (hereinafter referred to as "Avengers 4") released that year grossed 4.25 billion yuan at the mainland box office, and still occupies the position of the box office champion of imported films in mainland film history, and is also the only imported film in the top 10 box office lists of mainland film history. The box office of the film's premiere zero point scene was 179 million yuan, and the number of moviegoers was 3.044 million, setting a record. The words "love you three thousand times" when Iron Man said goodbye at the end of the film still make Marvel fans uneasy.
In the planning, from the fourth to the sixth stage, Marvel entered the "multiverse legend".
But after the fourth phase opened in 2021, Marvel fell into word-of-mouth controversy. At this stage, there are 7 works in "Black Widow", "Shangqi and the Legend of the Ten Rings", "Eternals", "Spider-Man: Homeless", "Doctor Strange 2", "Thor 4" and "Black Panther 2". In addition to "Black Panther 2", other films are absent from the Chinese market. The three-and-a-half-year break has made mainland audiences inevitably feel alienated from Marvel movies. At the same time, due to excessive reliance on visual effects and clichéd superhero story templates, the content of the film at this stage is lackluster, and the Douban score is around 6 points.
Disney, the parent company behind Marvel, adopted a dual-line strategy of cinema and streaming media for the layout of Marvel content after betting on Disney+. In addition to movies, Disney has also launched single-player series "WandaVision", "Hawkeye", "Loki" and so on. These episodes influenced the development of the story line of the Marvel Universe. For example, the series "WandaVision" linked the movie "Doctor Strange 2", and the villain Kang in "Ant-Man 3" also appeared in "Loki" before. Domestic audiences who have never seen the series will have content breakpoints, which will weaken the pleasure of watching movies.
In addition to the decline in recognition, the attitude of Chinese audiences towards Marvel movies is also changing. Liang Junjian, associate professor at Tsinghua University's School of Journalism and Communication, believes that the weakness of the Marvel series in the Chinese film market is not only closely related to the creation of films, but also reflects the changing consumer needs and cultural values of the new generation of young audiences. He said that new mainstream films such as "Changjin Lake" and "Ten Thousand Miles Home", warm realist films such as "I Am Not the God of Medicine" and "Life Events", IP animation films such as "The Legend of the White Snake" and "Feng Shen List", as well as the Chinese-style sci-fi films brought by the "The Wandering Earth" series, have shown an increasingly mature level of film industrialization, not only becoming the darling of the Chinese film market, but also forming a far-reaching social and cultural influence, and are hot topics to discuss China's contemporary development.
In contrast, Marvel movies, which have entered the third and fourth phases, although they continue to have a high conceptual level, are gradually moving away from the mainstream cultural needs of Chinese audiences. At present, Chinese audiences are looking forward to not only entertainment products on the big screen, but also contemporary film and television works that can evoke universal empathy and express social mentality. In other words, the purpose of watching movies for young Chinese audiences is no longer just catharsis and entertainment, but also to find empathy, find their connection with society, and find their own identity. The scenery of Marvel movies and even traditional Hollywood blockbusters is no longer closely related to the above changes in Chinese film culture. Liang Junjian said.
Success is also "universe", defeat is also "universe"?
By the end of 2022, the Marvel Cinematic Universe created by Disney and Marvel Studios has produced 30 movies, grossing $28 billion at the global box office and 20.4 billion yuan in Chinese mainland, making it the world's most profitable series of movies.
However, with the departure of the older generation of superheroes loved by Chinese fans, such as Iron Man and Captain America, the shortcomings of the "Cinematic Universe", a super integrated series of commercial blockbusters, have become increasingly apparent. Hu Jianli, Secretary-General of the China Film Critics Society, believes that "the film universe is a product of the highly industrialized era of Hollywood commercial blockbusters, and is a cluster commercial genre film concept built by shrewd Hollywood film giants to maximize the value of film IP and package and sell multiple series of films under the same theme." "Typical representatives are the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the DC Extended Universe, and the most successful is the former.
"But as the Marvel Cinematic Universe snowballs bigger and bigger, the weaving story structure becomes larger and larger, the relationship between characters becomes more and more complex, and the visual effects are becoming less and less innovative, which not only causes aesthetic fatigue to many audiences, but also inadvertently becomes a kind of fan movie." Although the fan base is very large, it has more or less created a certain threshold for audiences who have rarely watched Marvel movies before. For the Chinese film market, the viewing threshold caused by the increasing fandom of the Marvel Cinematic Universe makes it increasingly difficult to reach movie audiences in the sinking markets of third-, fourth- and fifth-tier cities. ”
In Hu Jianli's view, what is more deadly is that in order to maximize the value of movie IP, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has used industrial means to copy blockbuster movies in batches in the first three stages, but it will inevitably hinder the innovative expression and personalization of filmmakers. In the long run, Marvel movies will gradually lose their ability to innovate. Perhaps this is the main reason why the fourth phase of the film is in decline. Using "Chengye Cinematic Universe, Defeat Cinematic Universe" to describe the current Marvel movies may not be accurate, but at least it has sounded the alarm for Disney and Marvel Studios.
However, Marvel is also trying to find a way to save itself.
Disney CEO Bob Iger said in early February that he would slow down the production of content from some of his most blockbuster brands. Marvel head Kevin Feige also mentioned in an interview with the media that the number of Marvel Universe works will be less in the future and the interval will be longer.
For the future creative path of Marvel movies, An Yugang, CEO of the film industry who has operated the domestic marketing of many Hollywood blockbusters, analyzed that the experience and routines in film creation are not omnipotent, and the creation must have a sense of keeping pace with the times: products must be constantly updated, creators must have new values, world view output, and always pursue progress.
In the Chinese market, Hollywood blockbusters no longer seem to be box office guarantees. In the past three years of the epidemic, the highest box office of imported films is "Avatar: The Way of Water" (1.689 billion yuan). In the past three years, domestic films have given birth to two works with a box office of more than 5 billion yuan, "Changjin Lake" and "Hello, Li Huanying". In this year's Spring Festival, the box office of the local film "Manjiang Hong" surpassed "Avengers 4" and ranked 7th in the total box office list of Chinese films. At present, among the top 10 box office in Chinese film history, only "Avengers 4" is a foreign film.
Will the appeal of Hollywood movies become weaker and weaker? An Yugang believes that in recent years, the audience has indeed favored the works with strong emotions in domestic films. However, the advantage of imported films is visual impact, and such works still have an audience base. "Imported films and domestic films are like Chinese food and Western food. People eat Chinese food for a long time, and occasionally want to eat a Western meal. The market needs to combine East and West, and integration is a reasonable and healthy market state. ”
In 2023, Marvel's fifth phase of films will also include "Guardians of the Galaxy 3" and "Captain Marvel 2", which will be introduced into China without surprise. In addition, there are a number of Hollywood blockbusters expected to be introduced this year, including "Fast and Furious 10", "Transformers 6", "Indiana Jones 5", "Mission Impossible 7", "Oppenheimer", "Megalodon 2: The Abyss", "The Expendables 4", etc., 2023 can be called the big year for Hollywood. An Yugang analyzed that in 2019, the total box office of Chinese mainland was 64.2 billion yuan, and the imported film market accounted for 36% (imported films accounted for 15% in 2022). If imported films can gradually recover to the market share before the epidemic this year, it can be regarded as the recovery of the imported film market.