With Avengers: Endgame and Captain Marvel both grossing hundreds of millions of dollars, the world’s love of superhero movies is bigger than ever. Therefore, the stage was all set for X-Men: Dark Phoenix to come in and solidify the trend…this hasn’t happened.
In the opening weekend, the movie made just $33 million in the US. If we look at the Fox/Marvel mutant franchise, this is the lowest debut of ALL these movies. What’s more, global box office figures are much smaller than previous X-Men films;
- Days of Future Past– $263 million
- Logan– $247 million
- Apocalypse– $167 million
- Dark Phoenix– $140 million
As the twelfth instalment of the much-loved X-Men series, it has the lowest US box office in 2019. According to some, production costs exceeded $200 million due to extensive reshoots. However, this cost doesn’t include marketing. With all costs and revenues considered, it’s believed the production company could lose $100 million.
Dark Phoenix Has Seemingly Flopped – But Why?
Why has the movie been so unsuccessful so far? Currently, it has the following scores from three of the most reputable platforms;
- IMDB – 6/10
- Metacritic – 43%
- Rotten Tomatoes – 23%
It seems this just isn’t the film that some X-Men fans wanted. Elsewhere, Dark Phoenix could be suffering from the poor reviews that came from Apocalypse. With such a large movie franchise, we shouldn’t just look at the films in isolation. Back in 2014, Days of Future Past received 90% from Rotten Tomatoes. Just two years later, Apocalypse dropped to 47%. Could the failure of Dark Phoenixbe a hangover from this poor performance?
Date Changes and Other Issues
Furthermore, we could consider the date changes as a sign that the movie was having troubles even before release. When a film is delayed once, it suggests the production company wants to get everything right and it can actually help to build excitement. When a second delay occurs, as with Dark Phoenix, a film can lose momentum and fans can lose faith.
Between the intended release date of November 2018 to now, they’ve had to watch as Bohemian Rhapsody took $900 million while even Alita: Battle Angel performed above expectations with $405 million in the box office.
Other potential reasons for the poor performance could be the fact that fans prefer the original X-Men class to newer variations, no Hugh Jackman (Logan earned $619 million in 2017), a lack of evolution in visuals and stories, and the fact that this movie was always a ‘time-filler’ before the MCU becomes a Disney franchise.
Finally, could it be a case of Captain Marvel and Avengers doing it better? After such well-received films, perhaps the niche has peaked until the next big revelation?
Dark Phoenix
If you haven’t yet seen Dark Phoenix, it looks back at Jean Grey’s past and discovers her journey towards becoming a powerful mutant. While Sophie Turner takes the lead role, both Jennifer Lawrence and James McAvoy return as Raven and Professor Charles Xavier respectively.
