Story and photos by Keilah Oldaker, COMM 2311-601 Newswriting
It’s out in theaters now.
“Captain America: Brave New World” was released on Feb. 14. According to Forbes, it made $88 million on opening weekend. Reports from iSpot, a site that specializes in TV advertising performance, show the Marvel Cinematic Universe failed to get back what it spent in marketing alone for the newest “Captain America” installment during its opening weekend.
Since the year 2000 there have been over 20 superhero movies released from both the Detective Comics and MCU. Most flopped at the box office while only 11 broke the billion dollar mark says Screenrant.com.
With this latest superhero movie on the big screen, have audiences had their fill of the villain losing once again to the superhero that saves the world?
One 35 -year- old Lubbock native, John Adams, an avid superhero enthusiast who saw the new “Captain America” at the theater opening weekend, says the film wasn’t anything to brag about due to the storyline not having a main focus.
“I mean, yeah, it was alright,” he says. “There was a lot of villains that was hard to keep up with. I mostly watched it for the Red Hulk. It wasn’t money wasted.”
We conducted an anonymous survey about the latest “Captain America” movie at the SPC Downtown Center the week after it opened. Out of 20 college students surveyed, none said they watched the new “Captain America” on opening weekend. One, however, did say they had plans that day to watch the movie with their child.
According to Forbes, the movie, starring Anthony Mackie, performed only nearly twice as well as the bottom-ranking MCU movie, “The Marvels.”
“At least these initial numbers indicate it could end up escaping the badge of being a box office flop,” the Forbes website writes.
One SPC student stated in their survey that they enjoy most movies from the MCU but this time around their interest fell short. In fact, nine out of the 20 students surveyed said they have no intention of watching the movie. Most said that is due to the massive influx of the MCU, dislike of the casting, and even the “overwhelming amount of characters.”
“I think the superhero trope has shown an amazing amount of resilience over the years,” says Robert Peaslee, Ph.D., an associate professor in Texas Tech University’s Department of Journalism & Creative Media Industries.
In fact, Peaslee says what the MCU has done with its movies leading up to “Endgame” is “astonishing”. Now, he says the box office and critics may have found exhaustion with the MCU. Audiences are left, he says, wondering what more the MCU can come up with.
“We could see a pivot from our sort of Marvel fascination,” Peaslee says, “over to a new DC appreciation that maybe will take us into a new era.”
Still, Peaslee admits, superheroes in general resonate with audiences.
We may see that resonance reflected in our survey at SPC. Of the 20 students we surveyed, 11 said they plan on watching “Captain America” mostly because of their general fandom for superheroes.
“We spent more on superhero media over the years than some countries have spent on their infrastructure,” Peaslee says.
Americans use superhero cinema as escapism, Peaslee explains, and a big part of our culture is the fantasy of the superhero to the villain dynamic. In the superhero dynamic, he says, there cannot be a villain without a superhero. An underdog is an audience’s favorite person, mostly because the viewers can see themselves in this against all odds character.
There’s maybe wishful thinking that the next MCU movie, “Thunderbolts”, can escape the projection of a flop. Society may have grown tired of the MCU, but if Peaslee is right, it has not grown tired of superheroes. At least not yet.
Time will tell. “Thunderbolts” hits the theaters May 2025.
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