No one ever get's this right. If you want to actually talk about revenue you have to take the conversation further than most fans on here do. You talk about the entire production budget(excluding marketing cost though and for some reason..), then you weigh that against it's theatrical run alone? Even if the theatrical is maybe half the actual revenue stream generated by Snyders work? From merchandise to home video to promotional tie ins...all going to WB and all dependent on the films 'success' (see guardians toy sales).
Sure that seems excessive but then again, you are the one that mentioned the entire production budget, why not the entire revenue of the film that budget paid for as well. These conversations are always confusing in that people mention how much it entirely costs to produce, say a music album, but stop counting it's gross at itunes singles sales alone.
I understand your queries
1. The Marketing budget is rarely revealed, how am I supposed to take it into consideration
2.Again the production tie-ins,toy and merchandise sales profit isn't revealed either
How am I supposed to talk about the entire revenue when all I know are the box office numbers? I just made an assumption that both these movies earned around the same from Toys,merchandise and advertisement
Moreover, I was talking about domestic gross(gross in particular), for international revenue is a can of worms. For example, taking into a account just what little percentage a studio get's for every dollar earned in china. If you make all your money over seas there is a good chance you may have made less than a domestic race horse. Which is why the TWS vs MOS numbers are skewed in a way the GOTG numbers aren't(save for that films lack of competition for months), because the latter made a good amount domestically. You have to ask yourself if TDK actually made less money for the studio than TDKR looking at it this way. Same applies for the present situation.
1.It becomes incomparable and a 'can of worms' if the movies compared and wide apart in terms of release, say comparing SM1 and TA. But both MOS and TWS released only 8 months apart, hence no
2.I think its 55% of the Domestic gross, 45% of the OS gross (except China) and 15% of China's gross. Whatever the percentage be, its the same for both the movies, so it can be taken out the equation
3.Why do you keep talking like MOS made a whole lot more domestically than TWS? Its only 30M more. And even if we are talking about just the domestic gross, TWS made just 30M less than MOS domestically despite having a 60M lesser budget, that clear things up
That gap widens if you take into consideration the marketing budget, MOS had 150M marketing budget, I doubt TWS had anywhere near that considering TA had a marketing budget of 100M
Speaking more on over seas market, those latter mcu films were marketed over there as avengers this and that, something that is hot overseas in spite of the particular film in question. Superman was marketed over there as another superman film, and the last of him audiences have seen of him there wasn't pretty(in spite of mos), before SR it was 2 decades of unappealing Reeve esque doctorine that may work for domestic fans but that's not for everyone, especially in a post spidey world. As for the nolan name, sure that helped to some degree. The Cameron and Speilberg names help too, but it only goes so far. Just look up every film those names have a producer credit on and notice the actual numbers. There is a big difference between being listed as a producer vs a director imo.
They just use 'From the Studios that bought you... Avengers, Iron man, Thor', and even that type of line was mostly used with GoGT and less with TWS, they don't market it as an avenger follow up or anything
And for crying out loud, TWS had Captain
America in its name, having a single countries name in the movie's title is a serious disadvantage, are you seriously gonna argue Superman's iconic appeal over the world against a hero which is supposedly for a seperate country?
And please tell me you aren't one of these people that is going to willingly ignore the issue of competition during theatrical run? I hope not but it seems you are. MOS' second weekend drop was significant yes, but can you name for me some other big films that has faced ~150mill of box office competition in their second weekends(and moving forward into more) and done better than mos? Honest question because I honestly can't think of any off the top of my head. TA and TWS(the film you are comparing it to) being an example of the very opposite btw.
People often talk about perfect storms, MOS is an example of that but not in the same way. It wasn't just 150mill of direct competition, it was split between two other films at that. That means if people weren't feeling one film, there were still two other alternatives that weekend. Again, I need some examples if you don't mind.
I don't talk about it for one reason alone, its the studios fault, they had the whole year to put it on but they chose July because they thought Summer would make more money, Marvel also took a risk and put it in a less-money making March with less competition. It was studios decision, we don't need to make it an excuse now, TASM release between TA and TDKR, the most anticipated two superhero movies of the decade, yet I never bring up the release date when talking about its box office gross
As for critical praise,
again, I'm not the person for that conversation. I find it borderline stupid that the opinion of a few, sometimes hundreds can be the or a weighted authority of any sort on whether a film experience is good/fun..etc or not. Just look at how divided people are on IM3, millions of us can't say whether the film is crap or awesome to any official degree, because it speaks to us in different ways, now take that million(s) and pool it down to 50 or so, and have them come up with the definitive answer. Hopefully you picked the right 50...
For the large part the views of the critics more or less parallel the views of the GA, except some exceptions like Transformers and Pirates, that's usually the case
As for IM3, the only place where the opinion is divided is hardcore comic book fans like us, especially because of the Mandarin twist, and hardcore comic book fans make up less than 0.1% of the total people actually watching the movie. Among the GA, IM3 is almost universally loved, I have never met anyone in real life who didn't like that movie
As for financials,
it really doesn't matter what the brand's name is in most cases. That didn't help the last superman film from pulling in what it did, rather didn't, and that didn't stop Avatar(a brand far smaller than even puny Thor) by definition from killing everything. There are other things at play, such as being tied to something bigger with alot of modern momentum. Things outside of a particular films quality. Just look at Batman Begins, and the explanation as to why that film about the GODDAMN batman made as little as it did. I'm sure you'll find the answer lies in elements beyond Nolan's film and film making.
All said and done, at the end of the day, I have a few numbers in front of me, Production Budget, Box office sales
And looking at that I can call it a movie a great success, a moderate one or a failure
And another thing that comes into the equation is 'expectations'
MOS and TASM2 were thought to be legitimate movies to hit a billion, people expected that, and both failed by 300 and 340M respectively, while most people didn't expect either of TWS or GoTG to make more than 500-600M and both made 115M to 180M more, hence they are called great success
Secondly, I am curious what Thor and Hulk and such would have made had they been stand alone movies instead of being sold as tie ins to a legit hit.
For one, Avengers was never a 'Legit hit', it could have been a hit and a miss and was still a tough job to do in 2008 or 2009
Secondly Hulk and Thor were actually standalone movies, and I don't think the Avenger's name came up anywhere in the marketing, especially for Hulk, even Marvel wasn't sure of its plans then
If you said the same thing about sequels I would understand
I wonder what the ratings on AoS would be had it not been sold as it is(find out what happened to coulson after that hit film...boom thor hammer boom green monster..etc), right down to another ratings bump when they sold it as a tie in to TWS...
I don't what you are trying to prove here but Daredevil never referenced the MCU apart from just three occasions, it was even marketed separately , yet it is critically acclaimed
I thought your humans don't need origins bit at the end was another interesting rule of yours, I personally don't agree of course.
A throwaway line establishes the character, and its upto the actor to build him on, look at Joker for example, he had no origin, or Hawkeye or Black Widow
Lastly, your example of xmen is skewed. Sure Scott summers is shafted in those movies, but if you actually look at something like first class, just how many of the actual main characters are shafted? How many of the actual main characters in DOFP are shafted? I say main because you seem to be confusing cyclops with such a thing.
I don't use them as examples because FC and DOFP are 4th and 5th movie in its franchise (not counting solo wolverine movies), most ,if not all, the characters are already established by then
Hence X1 and X2 are more valid comparison to BvS and JL than FC or DOFP
How many characters are given focus in those two movies? Wolverine, Rogue, Xavier and Magneto, and last one is the villain. Characters like Cyclops, Strom, Jean Grey, Sabretooth , Toad are just window dressing
I also hear tell avengers has 11 main characters? I suppose that works because they (all of them) all have solo films and such. I personally don't really care if someone has an origin or not these movies, as seen in watchmen or even the antagonists in mos, a strong, memorable and contributive presence seems to work for most fans. They have plenty of time to expand later in solos and such.
I would disagree that MOS 'worked' in the villain department but whatever floats your boat
I am not asking for an origin about a villain, but Heroes sure deserve an origin, especially when they are characters as complex as Aquaman, Wonderwoman and Flash
What are they gonna do, 'Hey this guy controls the oceans, this here lady is an amazon princess with a truckload of superpowers, this dude is a robot and this little felow runs really fast'
Won't that be too much to swallow for the GA
Before you bring in the X-men, in a universe that established that Mutants exist and are born with powers, its easy to do that but in the DCCU's forced realistic world, I find it bewildering
