Here we go again. Despite all evidence to the contrary, people are coming out of the woodwork complaining about for a July 2018 release. Why? Because they still want to classify Ant-Man as a failure, either due to still being butthurt over the loss of Edgar Wright or having a hate-on for the MCU in general. “But it bombed!” “It was a flop!” “It was an embarrassment!”. Sorry, folks, but that’s just not true. Not only did Peyton Reed’s light-hearted superhero romp not faceplant at the box office, but it met, if not even exceeded expectations a little. On top of that, Marvel still remains over the moon for the film and its creative team.
I’m not going to sugarcoat this anymore: if you were holding Ant-Man to the box office standards of the likes of Iron Man 3 or Captain America: The Winter Soldier, you’re a delusional. It’s as simple as that. No one with common sense expected it to pull in the same numbers of the big Marvel super-sequels (or even for it to hit Thor: The Dark World‘s tally), nor did they expect it to score a zeitgeist on the level of Guardians of the Galaxy.
Holding the film to such a high expectation is akin to expecting a toddler to perform on the same level as a 10-year-old. All the film needed to do was land relatively close to the initial debuts of Captain America and Thor. It did just that. Ant-Man pulled in $178.5 million domestically. That’s more than the first Captain America film ($176.7m) and just under the first Thor ($181m). Worldwide numbers came out similarly, with Ant-Man pulling in almost $410m to Cap’s $371m and Thor’s $449m.
At this point, whether you like their films or not, betting against Marvel at the box office…no matter how obscure the property might be…is absolute folly. The Marvel brand now sells these films just as much as the characters do and their overall track record with audiences is hard to deny. Sure, some films are better than others, but they all bring home the bacon and I cannot foresee that changing anytime soon. In short? Yeah, Doctor Strange, Black Panther, Captain Marvel, and Inhumans are going to be hits. If that makes you angry, well, perhaps you need to re-evaluate your priorities in life. You’re taking this all way too seriously.
