Marvel movies are always a gamble. Considering the budgets of those blockbusters, the stakes are high, and it’s not surprising when a movie doesn’t make the mark, especially in the floundering years of Marvel post-Endgame. But The Marvels was supposed to be the antidote to that: a short and sweet, fun, women-focused Marvel story directed by rising indie filmmaker Nia DaCosta.
Instead, The Marvels opened to $47 million, the worst opening weekend box office for a Marvel movie ever. But in a new interview, DaCosta revealed the failure is not because of her involvement, and what the whole experience taught her about movies.
According to Deadline, while at the Dublin screenwriting festival Storyhouse, DaCosta spoke about The Marvels and how she looks back at the movie 18 months on. “They had a date, and they were prepping certain things, and you just have to lean into the process hardcore,” she said. “The way they make those films is very different to the way, ideally, I would make a film, so you just have to lean into the process and hope for the best. The best didn’t happen this time but you kind of have to trust in the machine.”
In fact, she noted the very moment where she realized she wasn’t making the movie she wanted, instead, she was the facilitator for a Marvel product. “There was a certain point when I was like, ‘Ok, this isn’t going to be the movie that I pitched or even the first version of the movie that I shot,’” she said. “So I realized that this is now an experience and it’s a learning curve and it really makes you stronger as a filmmaker.”
In recent years, Marvel has been taking bigger bets on smaller filmmakers with singular visions. Destin Daniel Cretton, who directed Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, is best known for directing the touching drama Short Term 12. Before Chloé Zhao directed Eternals, she won an Oscar for directing Nomadland. But clearly this strategy of plucking promising arthouse directors and dropping them in the Marvel machine isn’t working — the final result feels like anyone could have directed it. What made the direction of those movies great in the first place is the freedom the filmmakers were allowed, and that’s apparently not something Marvel can accommodate anymore. Even if Thor: Ragnarok showed Taika Waititi’s style in full force, Thor: Love and Thunder proved that’s no longer the case.
It’s not exactly a secret that making a Marvel movie is a filmmaking experience unlike anything else, but this quote confirms what we’ve always suspected — there’s no one person at fault for The Marvels’ failure at the box office: not Nia DaCosta, not Brie Larson, not Kevin Feige. The people behind the camera are told to trust in the franchise and the powers that be, and that doesn’t always pay off.
When Marvel goes in a direction fans don’t like, they’ll often fixate on a scapegoat. For example, look at DaCosta for The Marvels, Zhao for Eternals, and Brie Larson for Captain Marvel. (It’s probably not a coincidence that these figures are usually women.) But Marvel is the biggest film series in the world, and no one person can put it off the rails. Sometimes, you just have to rage against the machine.
