What's the main reason "The Eternals" has been such a box office disappointment?

Not enough of that hot actor Richard Madden

Super, super dense mythology. Same thing would have happened to Thor had he not been on the Avengers team. Taika had to strip the character of his regality and basically turn the character into Chris Hemsworth to make the character palatable to people after 4 movies

The Eternals will be fine when they are in another MCU movie with other MCU characters

It’s not a box office disappointment though. It opened to $71 million last weekend. That’s on par with Shang Chi which opened to $75 million with a 4-day weekend and Black Window with $80 million with a 4-day weekend.

It’s going to be number one this weekend too.

No one cares about damn superhero movies.

I think the public is less impressed with superhero movies and all their CGI razzle dazzle. Filmmakers are going to have to work harder and not a moment too soon.

Why do I keep hearing this talking point that Eternals failed because it’s too diverse, too gay, and too woke? They keep talking about this “failure” on FOX News and conservative Twitter. Is OP part of this agenda too?

It didn’t really fail. It actually opened higher than Shang Chi if you take away its Labor Day Monday BO.

too many of these damn things

It's always hilarious when the trolls and haters think they can get away with their whining on DL about Liberal woke culture making movies too diverse for their liking. This is not the right-wing message board Free Republic.

I liked it, but it does have a lot of issues/fair criticisms, so it's definitely not a must-see. They stuffed it with too many characters and as a consequence, they never really served any of them well, and the nominal 'leads' don't have much chemistry or emotion. Despite the absolutely sky-high stakes of the film's plot too, you never really feel any sense of peril and even though a couple of them die, you have no investment in the characters so you don't really care.

It looks gorgeous, and some of the action scenes are cool, but all together it's just not enough to make a smash hit movie. It's not bad, but I get why the early critical reception was weak and that does have a massive impact on whether people are willing to get themselves out to the cinema or they will just wait a few weeks until it drops on Disney+

There was a distinct lack of topless men too which I was disappointed in. I'm not sure why Kumail Nanjiani even bothered to get so jacked since you only see his arms a couple of times and his power would have been the same regardless of his physique. Gemma Chan looks good but her character was so bland - in fact, the same could be said for Richard Madden. He looks good and he probably had the most to do, but even then it wasn't strong enough to carry the film.

I actually really liked Angelina in this.

Lack of male nudity from Kit, Richard, and Kumail.

It's Chloé ZHAO!

R3

Yep. Some right-wing troll is trying to convince us this is a flop.

Notice the subtle manipulation where the failure is declared as a matter of fact and not up for discussion. The reasons why it's a failure are.

Shady, shady, shady.

Honestly, I do think part of it is the gay superhero. America is still fairly homophobic when it comes to real representation of gay men in non-stereotypical roles.

R3 those comparisons make Eternals look worse. Black Widow had a simultaneous streaming release which deflated its box office. Shang Chi had a lesser known cast, a smaller budget (I think) and far less promotion. Eternals, with that cast, extensive promo, and exclusive theatrical release should have blown them all out of the water. It's doing OK enough to not be a flop, but it is undoubtedly underperforming and is probably not going to make a profit for a long time.

The gay character has been a huge turn off. That’s the most common complaint I’ve heard.

It already made back its budget.

^ Why lie? They haven't even made back the reported production budget, and they are a long ways from recouping the marketing budget.

Ever since Iron Man 2, I have seen every MCU movie opening weekend; due to conflicts last weekend and the poor reviews, I waited until today to see Eternals and it's handily the worst film in the series: the cumbersome back story takes forever to relate, with dull dialogue exposition, no sense of tension, uninteresting characters, and unexciting action scenes.

Friday estimates show it plunging 75% from its opening Friday ($30+ mil last Friday to just under $8 mil yesterday). No way the studio is happy with these numbers.

I'm trying to get into it. I never was into the Avengers but I'm trying to get excited about the Eternals.

Richard Madden's costume is pretty sexy.

There's not much merchandise for the movie.

Do they have a headquarters like the Avengers?

I'd buy this if it fit well. I'd keep it so the patterned part remains on the inside of the reversible jacket.

“No Time to Die” is far from the only tentpole to lose money while the movie theater industry struggles to recover. Marvel’s superhero epics “Shang-Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings” and “Eternals,” as well as “The Suicide Squad” and Christopher Nolan’s mind-bender “Tenet” all stand to finish in the red with losses in the tens of millions. “

The movie theater is on its way out in favor of streaming. All of the theaters in my city have closed down.

Do you think Disney’s waiting for months to drop the movies on Disney+ is a mistake?

Totally straight Patrick visits the Eternals at Disneyland.

Madden is box office poison.

I don’t think Madden can carry a major film. He’s better carrying a tv series that has good tight writing. He’s not a ‘FILM STAR’ as such.

I've heard from several people they found it boring and they didn't like it - and these are Marvel fans.

The thing about the Avengers cycle is that they built up the cast slowly. Pretty much every major character had an introductory movie that established their strengths and weaknesses. Plus, with some obvious exceptions (Thor, Rocket Raccoon, etc.) these were basically people who either were or had started out as normal human beings. Hell, some of them (Antman, Spiderman) were total losers. Not gods. Bring gods into the equation, and the underlying tension of things like human fallacy, frailty and even mortality take a hit. So there's less at stake even as the scale is amped up.

I admit I have not seen the film, so don't know how well it addresses these what seem to me innate issues. But no one in the cast inspired me to watch it. The Avengers judiciously brought in some of the most charismatic performers and character actors of our time, whether for full time roles or as bit players, but beyond Jolie there's no one in the Eternals (in my opinion) who provides the same cultural frisson.

R32

A lot of MCU fans don’t like it because it doesn’t follow the same childish format of other movies.

It's funny that the people who hate WOKENESS so much see it in literally everything.

"Hey that movie hired Chinese people! WOKE!!!!"

I am now two decades past being tired of superheroes/comic book movies.

I would rather never watch a movie of any sort again then have to suffer through another superhero movie.

It's on Disney+ in January.