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Movies THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS (Passes $400 Million Globally; Dragonlord's Review, post #1)

If you have seen THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS, how would you rate it?


  • Total voters
    53
Flex away. Details pls. :)
Worked for the company that handled customer service for the Mavel Comics website/app. Also handled all the shit with Marvel Insider (which they have now gotten rid of - those were such a fucking pain).

Funny enough, most of the calls we got were for Marvel Refrigeration. When Marvel Rivals dropped we had a shit ton of calls about that too, even though we had zero to do with the game outside of providing a skin.

Marvel brought everything in house the first of February (think they are based in Canada).
 
First Steps was a good self-contained, standalone story. Having seen it, it's clear that it was never meant to outright promote Doomsday. It was to establish the F4 in the MCU. That mid-credits stinger was meant for hardcore fans. If they were that desperate, they could have made Doom appear within the movie. I'm happy with the final product. It's better to have a great film with disappointing box office performance than to have a mediocre movie with good box office results.

2026's Spider-Man: Brand New Day will be its own story. It probably won't have any Doomsday subplot within the movie. Post-credits, very likely. For better or worse, Avengers: Doomsday will have to hype itself up with its first teaser trailer, which will probably break some sort of record and super-charged casual fans' interest and excitement.

I'm fairly certain Disney and Marvel executives would disagree with you on that point. ;)
 
I'm fairly certain Disney and Marvel executives would disagree with you on that point. ;)

Touche lol. Of course I meant that for the short term. If they are playing the long game and want the whole MCU brand to be stronger, these are part of the growing pains.
 
It used to be part and parcel, but RDJ gathered so much notoriety as Stark, that people just flock to see him. I agree about his salary. He wasn't that much above everybody else in the MCU, imo.
Normally I would agree but man I don't know RDJ just elevates everyone in the MCU. Even Strange was better when he was interacting with Stark in IW. A lot of my favorite moments in the MCU involve RDJ. That scene with Iron man fighting the winter soldier and Captain America at the same time, him interacting with Strange for the first time, meeting Spiderman for the first time, when cap says "He's my friend" and Tony's like "So was I", that shit hit hard. The end of End game of course. I'm sure I could come up with way more but RDJ has earned it IMO.
 
Normally I would agree but man I don't know RDJ just elevates everyone in the MCU. Even Strange was better when he was interacting with Stark in IW. A lot of my favorite moments in the MCU involve RDJ. That scene with Iron man fighting the winter soldier and Captain America at the same time, him interacting with Strange for the first time, meeting Spiderman for the first time, when cap says "He's my friend" and Tony's like "So was I", that shit hit hard. The end of End game of course. I'm sure I could come up with way more but RDJ has earned it IMO.

Yeah, I mean, I don't have a counter argument for that. I like to give more people credit than just RDJ, but yeah, what you said is pretty accurate.
 
Very nervous times for Disney. They've put out two good movies, Thunderbolts and First Steps, both of which have gotten positive reviews but underperformed at the box office.

Fantastic Four will be particularly worrying for them, since it should have really kick-started the hype for Doomsday. If the first MCU appearance of RDJ's Doctor Doom can't put bums in seats...

Add to this the strong performance by the new Superman movie and a lot of Disney senior executives will be reaching for the Xanax.
Did people like thunderbolts?
 
Very nervous times for Disney. They've put out two good movies, Thunderbolts and First Steps, both of which have gotten positive reviews but underperformed at the box office.

Fantastic Four will be particularly worrying for them, since it should have really kick-started the hype for Doomsday. If the first MCU appearance of RDJ's Doctor Doom can't put bums in seats...

Add to this the strong performance by the new Superman movie and a lot of Disney senior executives will be reaching for the Xanax.

Yeah, for sure. I don’t think they have to be worried about the two Avengers films other than that you need a slam dunk for both because the budgets are assuredly through the roof.

But much like Tobey and Garfield return ramped up the already highly bankable Spider-Man franchise into next level territory or how Jackman’s return fueled the massive numbers of the already highly bankable Deadpool franchise, I feel Avengers name in and of itself has that sure thing type of feel as well, where it will make a ton of money regardless of how people feel about some of these lead-up movies.

I could be wrong on that, of course, but that’s just my sense, and that’s independent of RDJ’s involvement as Doom.

What Marvel really must be nervous about is the other films. Spidey seems like an obvious hit in the making because it’s Spider-Man and it’s close to the Avengers movies. But there was a time when every MCU film seemed to be financially viable because the MCU was just that much of a juggernaut. Now, it’s as though the unprofitable films/the marginally profitable ones are as frequent as the hits.
 
I saw very few negative reviews. So most people who saw it seemed to like it. But not enough people saw it to make a profit.
I took my son to see it, I thought it was terrible. It felt like a Marvel TV show, very soulless, It was on par with that Red Hulk movies as the worst Marvel movie I've seen.
 
Box office update:

First Steps came at No. 3 at the US box office with $15.5 million for its third weekend, for a steep 60% drop from the second weekend.

The film has grossed $240 million in the US for a global total of $434 million.
 
Box office update:

First Steps came at No. 3 at the US box office with $15.5 million for its third weekend, for a steep 60% drop from the second weekend.

The film has grossed $240 million in the US for a global total of $434 million.

That's worse than any of the previous movies, even Fant4stic's -54%.

Put a fork in it.

EDIT: for some more context:
F4 '05 -44.5%
F4:RotSS -44.5%
Batman v Superman -54.5%
Justice League -59.2%
Thor 2 -61.2%
Jonah Hex -62.4%

-60% is abysmal.
 
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I think Fatigue overall is an apt word. Fatigue with the MCU, Fatigue with attempts, Fatigue with YouTubers skewering movies before they are even out .

I believe the MCU still has a Buiilt in fan base that will prevent an Opening from being a death sentence, unfortunately that Fan Base isn't showing up for repeat viewing or spreading word of mouth like they did back in the day.


If anything guys at work for me were more looking forward to seeing Weapons than Superman or FF4 , most of them saying they would catch the 2 superhero movies on streaming.
 
I think Fatigue overall is an apt word. Fatigue with the MCU, Fatigue with attempts, Fatigue with YouTubers skewering movies before they are even out .

I believe the MCU still has a Buiilt in fan base that will prevent an Opening from being a death sentence, unfortunately that Fan Base isn't showing up for repeat viewing or spreading word of mouth like they did back in the day.


If anything guys at work for me were more looking forward to seeing Weapons than Superman or FF4 , most of them saying they would catch the 2 superhero movies on streaming.
I think this is the biggest issue.
Even prime MCU has had some stinkers and Black Panther has no right pulling in a $B.
I think even if this movie was a good as I wanted it to be it couldn't have performed as super well.
 
Saw First Steps a few days ago. I thought it was pretty damn good. Hopefully it makes a profit to help keep this party going.

Just listened to a podcast about this stuff. The thing hindering Marvel/Disney from making big money on these movies is their own streaming platform. Before 2019 they'd sell the streaming rights to Netflix to make an extra $$ bang at the end. Now they don't have that option since it goes right onto their own platform.
 
I took my son to see it, I thought it was terrible. It felt like a Marvel TV show, very soulless, It was on par with that Red Hulk movies as the worst Marvel movie I've seen.

I thought Thunderbolts was the best MCU film since No Way Home. YMMV.

I agree that Brave New World was shit. I didn't even watch it at the cinema. I just waited until it dropped on Disney Plus.
 
I thought Thunderbolts was the best MCU film since No Way Home. YMMV.
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Honestly, it hit all the right notes for me. Strong performances from a stacked cast. Good action scenes; Sentry making the Thunderbolts his prison bitches without breaking a sweat was my favourite. And the script didn't try to turn every character into Tony Stank. Yeah, there was enough humour to offset what was, for an MCU film, some very dark themes of depression and mental illness. But it was subtle enough to not be jarring.

I'm disappointed it wasn't a bigger success. The film deserved better.
 
Honestly, it hit all the right notes for me. Strong performances from a stacked cast. Good action scenes: Sentry making the Thunderbolts his prison bitches without breaking a sweat was my favourite. And the script didn't try to turn every character into Tony Stank. Yeah, there was enough humour to offset what was, for a MCU film, some very dark themes of depression and mental illness. But it was subtle enough to not be jarring.

I'm disappointed it wasn't a bigger success. The film deserved better.

Same. But I take solace that they're in the rebuilding phase and are back to Phase One box office numbers ($300M to $400M+ for non-Iron Man films). If they continue to make quality films, they'll graduate to Phase Two box office numbers ($600M to $800M+ for non-marquee characters or titles).
 
Same. But I take solace that they're in the rebuilding phase and are back to Phase One box office numbers ($300M to $400M+ for non-Iron Man films). If they continue to make quality films, they'll graduate to Phase Two box office numbers ($600M to $800M+ for non-marquee characters or titles).

I honestly think that if Thunderbolts had come out pre-Endgame, it would have made serious bank. Hell, Captain Marvel made a Billion off Endgame hype, and it was mediocre, IMHO.
 
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