I’m a science fiction and fantasy fan (as well as an SFF author), and so I follow some social media accounts that talk about books, TV shows, and movies in both genres. A Movie debut in early November has been a fascinating example of media bias and preconstructed narratives, as well as how unhelpful narrow perspectives are.

Some background if you’re not a dyed-in-the-wool nerd like me: The Marvels is part of the increasingly vast Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), and it’s the story of three female superheroes, Monica Rambeau, Captain Marvel, and Miss Marvel. It was one of three MCU movies to launch this year.

Here’s where it gets interesting.

In the weeks leading up to this movie’s release, we were treated to a lot of articles on how movie goers were suffering from ‘superhero fatigue.’ Then we got a lot of predictions about how The Marvels was going to bomb. Before the opening weekend was even done, we had a boatload of pieces on how it was a flop.

So was it a flop? Let’s look at the numbers:

The Marvels (Nia DaCosta)

Budget: $220 million
Opening U.S. weekend: $46 million
Global to date: $197 million

If your metric is box office take vs budget, then the numbers don’t look great. Typically you have to bank twice your budget to break even (because movie theatres take a cut.) And it was one of the lowest Marvel opening weekends. (All figures from BoxOfficeMojo.com.)

But let’s pull back a bit. How have other movies released at about the same time done?

Killers of the Flower Moon (Martin Scorsese)

Budget: $200 million
Opening U.S. weekend: $23 million
Global to date: $154 million

Napoleon (Ridley Scott)

Budget: $200 million
Opening U.S. weekend (+Thanksgiving): $32 million
Global to date: $136 million

What have the articles said about the box office take for these two? Scorsese’s debut was called ‘respectable.’ Scott’s was called ‘dominating.’

To be sure, you’ll find individual pieces pointing out that neither of these two other films will break even, but on average, the coverage of these two other films has been decidedly more positive. More to the point, the companies behind the films have supported them with triumphant post-debut weekend advertising, with Napoleon even getting online banner ads referring to it as the number one film worldwide. Which it was, briefly.

But so was The Marvels! However, the Disney folks’ statement on The Marvels was that “there wasn’t enough executive supervision on set.” Because yeah, movies definitely benefit from more executives putting their two cents worth in all the time.

For the moment, let’s set aside why these three movies got different coverage in the media and different comments on social, in spite of similar performance, because I now want you to step back further still.

None of these films had great marketing, and more to the point, they all debuted at a ‘meh’ time of year for movies. They also all suffered from the (necessary and justified) writer and actor strike. None of the actors could do the promotional tours. So those were factors.

Pull back again and you’ll see that actually only one big budget film in 2023 as of this writing has turned a profit. Not even Mission Impossible managed it, and it was a breathtakingly good action film.

Step back once more and you’ll see that so far, only two movies in 2023 (again, to date) have even cracked $1 billion in global box office (Barbie and Super Mario Bros.). Again, not even Mission Impossible did it. Flip back to 2019, and you’ll see that nine films grossed more than a billion that year. What about 2020? Oooh. Ouch.

Look one last time at the 2023 numbers. The ‘super hero fatigue’ narrative doesn’t hold water because when people did go to the movie theatre this year, they went to see a bunch of super hero movies (Guardians, Spider Man, Ant Man, The Flash, The Marvels, and further down Shazam, and The Blue Beetle.) The ‘get woke, go broke‘ narrative doesn’t work either, witness Barbie, and all of the ‘woke’ Disney properties, which includes the Marvel universe movies as well as Little Mermaid, Elemental, and Indiana Jones. Little Mermaid in particular is important to note: there was a lot of frothing because Ariel was played by a black actor, it still ended up in the top ten movies of the year.

Now we’re starting to see a bigger picture. Once we set aside some preconceived notions, we can see that movie theatres have taken an absolute beating since the pandemic, and while earlier in 2023 they looked poised to recover, consumer spending in general has slowed down since the first quarter. Inflation is waning, but those interest rate hikes are really starting to bite. (Charts from the US, but the story is the same elsewhere.) And especially where movies are concerned, we consumers know that it will be available on streaming eventually anyway.

Why did I take you through all of this? I’ll be honest, my first motivation was my irritation with a certain element of SFF fandom who crap on everything that isn’t lantern-jawed male heroes + fridged supporting characters. Also, The Marvels was a fun flick, and while not as good as Captain Marvel, I personally enjoyed it and think you might too.

But I also wanted to demonstrate how to go about getting a wider perspective on a particular issue. Is my ‘analysis’ above the total picture? Almost certainly not. But it’s a few steps closer to an objective reality.

We’ve spent the last few years glued to social media, which is hyper-filtered, at a time when political forces are actively working hard to create a ‘post-truth’ world. Up is down, bad is good, etc. There is, I’m afraid, more of that to come. We need to keep our wits about us and practice critical thinking whenever we can.

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