Originally Posted by Daniel John
Reply With QuoteBox Office: As 'Batman V Superman' Tops $800M, Here's One Big Advantage Marvel Had Over DC
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice did indeed cross the $800 million mark at the worldwide box office on Wednesday. The film is somewhat unique in that it has grossed a rather significant amount of money, more than many others of its ilk, and yet is being painted (fairly or not) as something of a failure or a disappointment. It did not necessarily crown the DC Extended Universe as the proverbial next-Marvel. But back when Marvel began its Cinematic Universe experiment, the bar for victory was much lower.
Iron Man was the one that started this interconnected universe madness. The Robert Downey Jr. smash hit, which was the first Marvel Comics movie produced by Marvel, earned $318 million domestic in the summer of 2008, but “only” $585m worldwide. The big game-changer, the film that kickstarted the MCU and eventually set all of Hollywood on a path towards interconnected universes made less that summer than Mama Mia! and Hancock.
The next film in the MCU, The Incredible Hulk, opened a month later and was arguably a flop. It earned $263 million worldwide on a $150m budget, no better than Ang Lee’s Hulk five years prior. And then Iron Man 2 received mixed-positive reviews and made “just” $623m worldwide off a $200m budget. That sequel was unquestionably a hit, yet it ended its global run below the likes of Inception, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, and DreamWorks Animation’s “written off as a miss” Shrek Forever After ($755m on a $165m budget) in the summer of 2010.
2011 saw the next big test for the MCU. Could Marvel and Paramount/Viacom Inc. market and open movies based on Thor and Captain America? They did and they did. Thor, the first Marvel movie in 3D was a huge hit earning $449 million worldwide. That’s less than the 2D Rise of the Planet of the Apes and less than The Smurfs. But back in 2011, the well-reviewed (and wholly entertaining) Kenneth Branagh film was the biggest comic book superhero movie ever not starring Batman, Iron Man, Wolverine, or Spider-Man.
Thor opened the summer (give-or-take whether Fast Five counts as the kick-off movie), but Captain America: The First Avenger helped close out the season. Joe Johnston’s World War II adventure is still the best MCU movie ever, and it was the one that made me finally believe in this interconnected universe madness. Everyone was so relieved that a film with the word “America” in the title could make more overseas than it did in the U.S. that they were all-too-willing to look at the film’s $374m worldwide gross (on a $140m budget) as an unqualified success.
It wasn’t until The Avengers took the MCU to heretofore unseen box office heights that we started treating Marvel as the new masters of the universe. Joss Whedon’s dynamite and crowd-pleasing team-up spectacular earned solid reviews, broke the $200 million opening weekend barrier, and legged it to $623m domestic and $1.5 billion worldwide. At the time, it was the third-biggest grossing movie ever here and abroad behind Titanic and Avatar. The Avengers was the promise fulfilled. Its success sent everyone chasing their own interconnected universes, which is still (four years later) mostly a hypothetical.
But because Walt Disney’s The Avengers had arguably raised the bar so high, the newfangled DCEU movie franchise, which unofficially began with Man of Steel, never had a chance of impressing the masses with merely “really good” box office grosses. Man of Steel earned $291 million domestic and $668m worldwide in the summer of 2013, more than the eventual $642m global gross of Thor: The Dark World. The number wasn’t high enough in this post-Avengers world. So not only was the Dark Knight tossed into what was supposed to be Man of Steel 2, but the film was made into something of a backdoor pilot for Justice League.
And now Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is being viewed as a disappointment because it will only make $850-$900 million worldwide. Now, you can make the case that Warner Bros. brought this on themselves by basically going all-in first with their would-be Justice League before doing the legwork of the smaller films. But, we should acknowledge that Man of Steel was that “smaller film” and that, with the understanding that Superman has never been as big of a cinematic superstar as we all like to pretend he is, $668m worldwide gross was a pretty solid foundation.
Will we all be cheering if Suicide Squad “only” earns $375 million worldwide this summer? Will a Wonder Woman that makes $450m worldwide next year be seen as a big hit? One of the core differences between MCU and the DCEU was that the former came about when the would-be bar for success was much lower. Of course, the same applies to Batman Begins, which was considered a clean hit at $371m on a $150m budget back in 2005. It’s a good thing, too, since otherwise we may never have gotten The Dark Knight.
Because a $371 million worldwide gross for The First Avenger was considered just fine in 2011, a $714m worldwide gross for The Winter Soldier was considered remarkable in 2014. Because Thor was considered a triumph at $449m in 2011, Thor: The Dark World was an unmitigated win at $642m in 2013. But because Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice came about in a post-Avengers era where $1 billion worldwide was all-but-expected for the would-be big superhero franchises, it finds itself on the defensive with “just” $800m worldwide.
It’s not an all-purposes excuse, but it’s not nothing.
