Is Marvel Fatigue Real?

 It seems silly to even suggest that the Marvel Cinematic Universe, officially the biggest box-office franchise in the history of movies is in any sort of trouble.  As of writing, the MCU has an unbroken and unequaled streak of 29 films that have opened at number one, the aggregate global box office gross of which, as of writing is $27.1 billion.

Since restrictions brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic have eased, the MCU has released six films theatrically, all of which have opened at number one, all but one of which spent at least two weekends as the number one movie in North America, and one of which, namely Spider-Man: No Way Home has the distinction of being the first movie released during the pandemic to gross over a billion dollars at the global box-office. 

It's not all happy news, though; of the six MCU movies released during the pandemic, four of them, namely Black Widow, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Doctor Strange In the Multiverse of Madness, and Thor: Love and Thunder,  shed over roughly two-thirds of their audience in their second weekends.  Black Widow was arguably a victim of Disney's idiotic day-and-date release strategy which saw the movie released in theaters at exactly the same time as it was made available for a fee on Disney+. In the case of, Spider-Man: No Way Home, there were extenuating circumstances, namely the second weekend coinciding with Christmas eve. That movie is an outlier, though, as it has since gone on to recover quite well from that first-to-second weekend drop, grossing over three times its mammoth opening weekend of $260 million. 

The steep second weekend drops of the Doctor Strange and Thor sequels, however, don't have any particular explanation behind them, other than that, perhaps, the long-dreaded Marvel fatigue may finally be setting in. 

The films of Phase 1, like the first installments of Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and Avengers, on the average, saw second weekend drops of around 50%. Captain America's first movie, with its 60% drop, was the outlier there.  With Phases 2 and 3, the average attrition of a Marvel movie in its first to second weekend shifted gradually from the low 50% to the high 50%, bordering on 60%. This was tempered, of course, by the fact that Marvel movies tended to have bigger and bigger opening weekends as the sprawling Infinity Saga neared its climax.  There were outliers, like Black Panther and Spider-Man: Far From Home, which experienced gentler-than-average drops from their opening weekends, but overall attrition tended to be higher.

Looking at Phase 4, I found it notable that only one of the six MCU movies released, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, experienced a first-to-second weekend drop below 60%, although it was also among the lower grossers of the six.  It didn't shed as much of an audience as the other films because its audience wasn't as big to begin with. 

Is it fair to say, then, that audience interest in these movies is waning? 

It is really hard to say, since these movies are still making money hand over fist. At the very least, though, these figures, coupled with the less-than stellar reviews for three out of the last six Marvel movies, should at least put Kevin Feige and his brain trust on notice that they may have to shake things up a bit in terms of how they tell their stories.  The chinks in Marvel's armor are showing.