ElsaRoc

To put it another way, the business TFA did DOM was outsized relative to its OS gross. It did very well (although I think it was weighted more heavily by Europe and Australia), but the OS/DOM ratio was quite low. And there's an open question about how much cultural impact can be attributed to it and how much can be attributed to Star Wars being baked into popular culture for four decades. TFA leaned heavily into nostalgia for the OT. This is... not a great comparison. The late year releases (Avatar, Frozen, TFA, TLJ) all made significant business in the following year. Avatar was pretty easily the biggest movie WW (and DOM) in 2010, for instance. And I think we were tracking TFA's WW gross compared to JW, and it ended up just short before the new year. IAC, I'd rank the top 5 as 1. Avengers 2. Frozen 3. Furious 7 4. Jurassic World 5. Harry Potter 8

Marketing isn't a single movie enterprise. It's building on what came before. CM has had a decade and ~20 films of pretty positive reception. WW had four years and three films, which were not generally positively received. It's not an apples to apples comparison. The first five MCU films also had pretty anemic OS grosses. It wasn't until film 6 that they got rolling OS. Oh, look. Aquaman was the 6th dceu film. What a coincidence* *yes, it definitely is a coincidence.

What about movies that became a phenomenon that was outsized compared to their hype and pre-release buzz? Because as huge as IW is and Endgame will be, they've also had the benefit of 10 years of marketing to boost them. They're huge, but they're known huges. HP8 had the same thing. It was a series with exceptionally strong overseas grosses, and while it did step it up to another level, it was built on what came before. TFA was strong WW, but it wasn't huge like it did DOM, so I think that cuts it out. I think there are three or four contenders. 1. The Avengers. It had a few films to build it up, but the international gross for the MCU was not exceptionally strong. Iron Man 2 had the biggest OS gross and that was only 311m. (Thor came in second.) If the MCU was anything like a normal franchise, we'd probably have expected, what 400m DOM and 500m OS? But instead, it was an absolute monster worldwide, basically taking everyone by surprise. It's arguably the film that actually made superheroes a thing that could be sold overseas. 2. Jurassic World. No, don't laugh. While JP1 was a monster in its day (probably the #2 WW phenomenon of the 90s), the sequels were... not, and 20 years down the line there was no reason to think that we'd be in for anything other than a pretty good result. But instead, we had a huge surprise. After AOU failed to get the OW record, and only bested Avengers OS because of huge growth in China), few people expected JW to even think of being in the same realm. It ended up shy of Furious 7 OS, but because of the difference in (again) China. It was a surprise that well outsized expectations. 3. Furious 7. While the series was on a rise, starting with the reunion 4th film, it more than doubled the OS gross of FF6. A good portion of that was because of the explosion of China business, but not all. And unlike all previous films from Hollywood that benefited from huge Chinese business, this was one that didn't do anything to specifically appeal to Chinese audiences. (Unlike, say, TF4.) And it did even better. 4. Frozen. While this is marginally smaller than the others, it, again, did WW business that well exceeded its expectations in pretty much every territory. And the cultural effect of it is hard to dismiss. None of the other films have a billion view YouTube video. And it's also a merchandising juggernaut that few films can claim. Frozen is so big, that Disney didn't even put Anna and Elsa into their Princess line. It's too valuable, so it's separate. It did business in soundtracks and video like it was released a decade or two earlier, and did business in Japan like it was a Miyazaki film. And it was also a film that pushed WDAS to the forefront of the industry again, rather than the weaker, older cousin of Pixar (and probably behind Illumination, too, considering how big the Despicable Me films were in the early parts of the decade.) And we're probably not going to see Frozen 2 be the #1 movie of the year either DOM, OS, or WW... but, it's not out of the question. Six years on, and we're still seeing how powerful it is. So, of the ones you listed, Avengers. But I could see the other three having really strong arguments as well.

I think it'll be close. The two MCU films closest to WW were IM3 and CACW. Both had bigger openings and second weekends than CM (though the gap narrowed). IM3 fell 58% and 51% 2nd and 3rd weekend. CACW fell 60% and 55%. While CM is likely to have stronger holds for weekend 3 than either of those, it's probably going to be close in terms of actual dollars, and it's 20-30m behind them. They also had a holiday in weekend 4, which CM won't have. Non-summer weekdays are pretty similar, though. After 25 days, (through Memorial Day) they were sitting at 377.5 (CACW) and 372.8 (IM3). CACW earned another 30.5m, IM3 another 36m. The better holds with CM will help late legs, but it'll need to close that gap as well, especially because it'll need another 4m or so to match WW. If it gets to upper 360s, it's probably got a shot, because Endgame gives it a boost. 410-415m? Sure. (If it gets within spitting distance, (1-2m) will Disney care enough to push it over? is probably the key question.)

Nice to see some Northwest representation.

IM1 made more dom than IM2.

Oh, we're ranking? Thor Black Panther Thor: Ragnarok Captain Marvel Spider-Man: Homecoming Captain America: The First Avenger Iron Man 3 Iron Man Thor: The Dark World Everything after that is mostly the same. Enjoyable, but nothing stands out. Basically, the early, establishment films were good, and they've had a recent strong streak of introduction films. There's a few other standouts, too.

I started thinking about the plot of IW and then remembered how bad it was.

That was my thought as well.

Still the best or second best in the MCU. CM might be fourth? (after Ragnarok).

If it gets 160, it'll need about a 2.6 multi to beat WW. If it's closer to 150, then that means about 2.75. Neither is impossible, but I think the only MCU films to do that with an opening above 100 are BP and Avengers... And homecoming? Ragnarok and IM2 were closer to 2.5. Since the response seems to be positive, but not "this is revolutionary" like BP, I kinda doubt it's going to have the same repeat business. With all that said, the gender discrepancy with WW might be that more guys are going to see it than anything else. 38% of 150m is about 57m of business from women. WW had 53-54m from women? Pretty close and possibly about equal accounting for inflation. But for dudes, that would be a 93m to 50m difference. (my math might be off here, apologies if I forgot some of the correct numbers)

👍👍

Movie was a lot of fun. Upper tier MCU IMO. Seeing more CM makes me excited for Endgame, even if little else does.

Reread the manga (and the two volumes of Last Order I had lying around) and it's still fantastic. There are a few things that bother me more than they did 20 years ago, but Kishiro is an amazing draftsman, and the action scaling is really, really fun. (Hugo has few redeeming qualities; critique of the actor aside, they made the character much more palatable in the movie. Ido also has some questionable motivations.) If we do get a sequel, it will be interesting to see what they do going forward with the story. While there is a lot of material to draw from (8.5 volumes of the original series, 19 of Last Order, and 6+ of Mars Chronicle, in addition to Ashen Victor and the various side stories), it would have to be condensed to work movie-wise. (The last half of volume 9 was retconned away when Last Order started.) The movie mostly drew from volumes 1&2, with a bit of 3 thrown in, as well as some characters from the anime. Grewishka was a character in the anime who largely replaces Makaku from the manga. Chiren only existed in the anime. Given the changes in some characters' storylines, there are a few developments in the later story that won't work. (I'll not mention them for spoiler reasons.) Some of these changes make sense from a storytelling economy standpoint. At a guess, they'd keep the sequel covering volumes 3&4 (the Motorball sequence) and 5 (which largely closes out the "Scrapyard Arc"). That would be good, IMO, because if there's only one sequel we get, that would make the two films mostly self-contained. (Although in this case, there would be little revealed about Zalem, Mars, and such.)

Oh, I've read it all before. I just hadn't had it of my own, and wanted a nice version to reread