Iron Man

It’s never nice to be wrong. Last November, with the unwanted superhero sequel The Marvels about to flop, the would-be series starter Eternals already unpopular and with Marvel’s hotly tipped next star Jonathan Majors on the verge of conviction for assaulting and harassing his ex-girlfriend, thereby imperiling the Kang Dynasty that he was supposed to star in, I — and, to be fair, many others — began to wonder if Marvel’s once-golden touch had begun to desert it. After all, since 2008’s Iron Man, there had been countless films, television series and other spin-offs from the studio; it seemed inevitable that audiences would eventually lose interest.

Are you excited about seeing The Marvels, the mega-budget sequel to 2019’s billion-dollar grossing Captain Marvel? Judging by the advance box office predictions, not very many of you are. Current tracking has the film opening at around between $50 and $75 million on its first weekend. For most non-superhero franchise pictures, this would be excellent, but for a film that was budgeted at between $220 and $280 million, depending on whom you talk to, it has all the hallmarks of a colossal flop, capping off what has been a truly terrible year for Marvel Studios. It was never supposed to be this way.