Let’s Discuss Marvel’s Highs and Lows in 2024

Marvel just completed a redemptive 2024…for the most part.

On the Disney side of things, Marvel told exceptional stories on streaming and in movie theaters.

The same cannot be said of the Sony side, which struggled mightily at the cineplex and failed to get its TV division off the ground.

So, here are Marvel’s highs and lows in 2024. You can probably guess how this is going to go.

High: Marvel’s What If…?/Echo

Technically, season two of What If occurred in 2023, while the final season aired at the end of 2024.

So, I really shouldn’t count both for this list…but I’m gonna anyway.

Like many of you, I didn’t finish season two of What If… during the 2023 holidays but rather early 2024.

Due to the unique daily release pattern for this series, it was easy to fall behind, which is a shame. This one deserved a binge.

Brilliant episodes satirizing Die Hard, Fast & Furious, and even Robin Hood delighted fans like me.

Meanwhile, season three featured an epic showdown between Agatha Harkness and Kingo in a Hollywood vs. Bollywood battle.

What If… never lacked for ambition, and even though its quality meandered with some episodes, it always kept me entertained.

Remarkably, Disney+ provided virtually no breathing room between What If… season two and Echo, which streamed in January.

I had the lowest of expectations for what I knew to be a disastrous production. I was ye of little faith on this one.

Instead, Echo surprised me with a nuanced portrayal of rural living in Oklahoma.

Somehow a skating rink felt like a perfectly natural location for a brutal fight, as did a town festival rumble with a rocket launcher shooting from a van.

Echo was somehow gritty and warm, and I hope we get more of it, something I wouldn’t have ever expected to say 18 months ago.

Low: Madame Web

Spider-Man: No Way Home is a 10 out of 10 and is legitimately one of the best movies of the past decade.

I feel like it’s important to stress this point before starting to rake Sony over the coals.

This studio can make great comic book movies and has on several occasions. It just so happens that they mainly involve Spider-Man.

My family also likes Venom enough to have watched Venom: Let There Be Carnage in theaters at a time when few were going to the movies.

So, we’re certainly not anti-Sony. We are anti-bad movies, though, and that’s all Sony has churned out lately.

The worst part is that everyone has known it but Sony, whose most recent President offered a delusional going away interview.

This man was stubbornly unwilling to admit that most not-Spider-based Sony comic book movies are trash.

Thankfully, he’s gone as of this month, as I think he might have been part of the problem.

We certainly witnessed his ineptitude with Madame Web, an instant punchline of a film.

People openly mocked the trailer so much that Sony edited out the line of dialogue it’d considered the money shot.

Oddly, changing one quote didn’t stop the horror any, as Madame Web earned a woeful Cinemascore of C+.

The film’s box office take of $100.5 million is far short of the $225-$250 million it needed to have any hope of a profit.

Proponents will point to the film’s success on Netflix, but let’s remember that A) people hate-watch programs and B) Netflix can make people watch anything.

So, I read nothing into that and view Madame Web as one of the worst bombs of 2024.

Somehow, it wasn’t Sony’s worst bomb, though. And I cannot believe I just typed that.

High: X-Men ‘97

The person who wrote X-Men ’97 is both naturally gifted and rather challenged.

Marvel fired the individual for cause, and the writer’s social meltdowns suggest nobody will miss him.

Having acknowledged that, the show he wrote is exceptional.

X-Men ’97 somehow recaptures the magic of the 1990s classic show, X-Men: The Animated Series.

However, the take modernizes the premise and makes it feel fresher.

Easter eggs abound as more famous characters from the MCU appear at seemingly random intervals.

The amusing part is that some wouldn’t have been allowed on the 1990s Fox show due to licensing issues.

Others weren’t popular enough at the time to justify their appearance.

So, this feels like a time capsule AND an alternate-reality take on the first X-Men series.

The show deserves credit for showing heroes and villains alike in sometimes morally ambiguous positions.

Some of the stories provide challenging takes on hot-button societal problems, just as X-Men should.

I credit Marvel for not shying away from the potential headaches, as it could have used this as a pure nostalgia show.

Instead of pure positivity, Disney took a chance, and it paid off huge.

Penthouse: Deadpool & Wolverine

Speaking of which, I was watching a YouTube influencer video the other day.

While watching their child playing with a toy, I had the epiphany that an entire generation of Disney fans will grow up loving Deadpool.

Just a few years ago, the odds of that were…remote. Deadpool is closer to anti-Disney in nature than Mickey Mouse-ish.

Still, when Disney acquired the rights to Deadpool movies, the studio gambled on Ryan Reynolds’ talent.

That move paid off in monetary exponents for Disney when Deadpool & Wolverine saved the MCU.

That’s Deadpool saying that, not me. In the movie (and its early marketing) the character refers to himself as Marvel Jesus.

That statement isn’t far from the truth, as Deadpool 3 has earned about $1.35 billion in theaters.

From 2020-2023, no Disney-Marvel films reached a billion.

This film didn’t just smash through that barrier but surpassed it by 35 percent.

There aren’t enough superlatives in the dictionary for what Reynolds and his buddy Hugh Jackman did here.

Deadpool & Wolverine is a perfect movie project. It’s that simple. This one’s in the Marvel penthouse for 2024.

Over the past five years, the only other title in its stratosphere is Spider-Man: No Way Home, a Sony title.

High: Agatha All Along

There’s a media service you don’t know called Owl & Co. They’re a Nielsen-like company with their ambitions.

Owl & Co. tries to measure the popularity of various programs.

Specifically, the company tries to identify the most popular shows on streaming services.

Owl & Co.’s measurements are relevant to this discussion in that they show on-service popularity.

In other words, how does a show on Paramount+ perform relative to other Paramount+ shows? Or Peacock? Or Netflix?

For the month of October, Owl & Co.’s data strongly suggested that Agatha All Along was THE most popular Disney+ program.

We’ve got other metrics like Nielsen and Disney posting its own internal data to reinforce this point.

While many female-oriented comic book stories have struggled, Agatha All Along did not.

This series avoided the disastrous fates of Madame Web and The Marvels by being a comic book variant of Hocus Pocus.

Fans delighted in the story’s twists and turns and expressed shock over its conclusion.

Now, signs point toward a second season or spinoff that’s a de facto season two. So, this one’s another big winner for Disney.

Middle of the Pack: Venom: The Last Dance

From a financial perspective, Sony has made money on the third Venom movie.

The Last Dance has grossed $475 million worldwide, $140 million of which comes from North American box office.

So, the film’s popularity resides internationally much more than locally.

That’s not great news for Sony, as it reduces the overall profit of the film.

Then, we have the other point regarding the franchise. Generally, when a studio markets something as the last one, it does well.

That’s why we often witness titles purporting to be concluding their franchises, only for follow-ups to follow afterward.

There’s ostensibly money in being the finale. But there wasn’t with The Last Dance. It’s the least successful film of the three.

That’s especially concerning since, as I mentioned, Venom 2 came out during the pandemic.

The Last Dance had every reason to do better financially, but it didn’t.

As for its quality, it had a lousy Cinemascore of B- and a Rotten Tomatoes grade of 41 percent.

So, yeah, Sony did NOT finish up strong here. Honestly, words don’t do justice to how Sony failed with comic book movies in 2024.

And we haven’t even gotten to the worst part yet. It’s…

Lowest Low: Kraven the Hunter

Here it is, the worst of the worst.

At one point, Kraven the Hunter needed less than $10 million over the holidays to reach $25 million.

On December 27^th, the total had dropped to $5 million needed…and I swear to you this movie may never get there.

Kraven’s current domestic box office is hard-locked at $24.4 million, and it has lost 70 percent of its screens.

Overall, the film’s global take of $59.5 million might not even pay for its marketing costs.

As for its quality, the film earned a Cinemascore of C, which is basically like fans saying they’d rather be punched in the face.

Under the Cinemascore system, anything other than a B+ is worrisome. A C is…Uwe Boll territory.

Kraven the Hunter is so much of a financial and artistic failure that it has killed Sony’s Spider-Man Universe in the short term.

What more is there to say?

 

 

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