In Retitling 'Thunderbolts,' How Much Lower Can Marvel Sink in Its Desperation?

Marvel used a marketing gimmick to retitle 'Thunderbolts' to 'The New Avengers,' but at what cost?

Have you seen Thunderbolts* yet? No problem, it just has a completely different title now that spoils a major plot point. With total disregard for people who didn’t see the movie during its opening weekend, Marvel has officially renamed Thunderbolts* to The New Avengers.

Does that get your juices flowing to see it now? No?

It’s pretty obvious at this point that Marvel doesn’t actually care at all about their movies or shows, at least not from an artistic standpoint. This is just nonstop content meant to keep the slop machine churning out those dollars. Every movie is designed to only get you excited for what’s to come; what you’re currently watching is immediately irrelevant by design.

Sure, the retitling move was foreshadowed by the asterisk, but Marvel throwing the Avengers name out there after the release doesn’t feel clever or cheeky - it feels like a blatant, shameless attempt at trying to wring whatever else it can out of a movie it clearly doesn’t have much faith in to stand on its own.

I certainly can’t fault Marvel for the marketing gimmick, but it’s got the lame stink all over it.

Marvel is no longer a cultural juggernaut. Following Endgame, the studio has worked to crush itself under its own weight, assuming audiences would scoff at the idea of a pause in superhero content, and instead opting for a total assault that spanned 2-3 movies a year and something like two hundred Disney+ shows (give or take).

And while Marvel movies still do ridiculous business on opening weekend, the drop-offs in the weeks that follow are steep. This was seen most recently with Captain America: Brave New World. Following an $88 million opening weekend, interest in the film cratered and the film barely crossed the $200 million threshold domestically. While most films would be doing backflips at the chance to make $200 million in the United States, Marvel movies are held to a different standard on account of the series history and the gargantuan budgets at play.

Given the original budget, extensive reshoots, and marketing, the budget for Brave New World could very well have crossed somewhere over $300-350 million (not that Disney would ever tell us officially). By all accounts, the movie ended up being a flop and after that first weekend, you couldn’t find a soul talking about it. Seeing Marvel movies for many people has become an obligation; the excitement has been all but stripped away. Marvel movies are film Gulags now.

Marvel would like to avoid the same box-office fate for Thunderbolts* as much as possible. See? These are actually the Avengers now or whatever. Will you just come see the movie?

Again, I can’t blame Marvel for the stunt - it makes sense. Audiences have made it clear they don’t really care much for anything beyond the Avengers brand at this point. But we’re talking about utilizing F-level characters, and Marvel isn’t interested whatsoever anymore in making anything that takes true leaps creatively. Something like the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy is the exception to the otherwise endless junk we now receive.

Having said all this, I recognize these movies are no longer for me. It appears that would be the case for a good portion of the moviegoing audience too, no matter how much Marvel wants to convince itself otherwise. At the end of the day, though, this might all actually work for the hardcore fans, and you can bet Avengers: Doomsday will make $6 trillion next year. You’ll forget it ever happened as you walk out of the theater, but once the money machine has printed for Disney, what do they care?

You might be wondering why I’m even devoting any time to this relatively innocuous name change then. The Marvel world is still worth talking about because these movies drastically altered the landscape, and Disney has been suffocating other films for almost two decades now. Until the next major theatrical trend reveals itself, Marvel will remain a topic worthy of discussion.

Right now, the studio is rudderless, totally absent of any true creative direction. And if you think things are bad now, wait until the Hail Mary junk they’ll throw at us in Doomsday.

It won’t matter, though. The Marvel machine will simply continue to steamroll us all.