The Crapology of the MCU

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Movies are wonderful things. The Marvels Cinematic Universe is a marvelous thing.
Superhero Marvel movies have apparently made a lot of money.
But, we ask, exactly how crappy are they?
How crappy is the Marvel Crapatronic Universe?
All data taken from the website The Numbers, and only domestic US sales are included.

Here we utilize the Iso-Crap model of movie revenue.
Equally crappy movies have the same proportionally crappy evolution.
Whether they interest the same people, or because of the same marketing.
Or perhaps the Hurricanes in California, they have a few similar features.
These financially underperforming fantasy genre movies of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or M C U are examined here.
All of the domestic box office revenue is normalized, meaning divided by the first three days of revenue, or the day three as reported from the numbers.

As an example the MCU phase five movie: Blue Beetle had an initial three day opening of: 25 point zero million.
And a total domestic box office of: 72 point 49 million.
Therefore, the iso-crap of blue beetle is a value of 1 after three days, and 72.48 divided by 25.0 or 2.896 at day 77.
To put it another way, for every dollar Blue beetle bought in in the first three days, it needed another two and a half months to get the next two dollars.
But what was it like back in the old days? Well let’s have a look at MCU phase one.

The MCU Phase one consisted of:
Iron Man, Hulk, Iron Man two, Thor, Captain America and the Avengers.

The evolution of these films is shown in figure one. Normalizing their three day revenue to one, the average over the MCU phase one is 2.75.
What does this curve illustrate? Well, after the three day opening, at some value determined by buzz, advertising, fan interest, or a piece of dirt on the radar screen at Norad, the movie revenue evolves.
Reviews are written. Reviews are read. And the toxic fandom word of mouth spreads, and people are drawn into the theatre.
The iso-crap here is the revenue divided by whatever the movie made in its first three days, so all the films are comparable to their initial interest.
The best long term performer, the one with the highest iso crap, was Iron Man, with an Iso Crap of three point one two.

In figure one point one, we add an average movie. And it’s a very average movie, as we will reveal later. As we can see, even in the glory days of MCU phase one, none of the films bought in more movie goers compared to the three day opening than an average movie.

The plot of this average movie is shown on the numbers “Average-ness graph”, to display how thoroughly average it was.

Time went on, and along came MCU Phase two.
It bought us such memorable gems as Iron Man one hundred and eleven, or perhaps that’s a three, Thor, the Dark World, Captain America, The Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy, the Avengers, AOU, and I can’t remember what AOU stands for, and last but not least, Ant-man.

All their revenue is shown in Figure 2.
The best Isocrap was Guardians of the Galaxy, which reached the level of averageness with an Iso-crap of three point five four. Overall, the iso-crappiness of the MUC phase two was: two point seven four.
So Guardians of the Galaxy bought in as many people after its three day opening, as any average film.
It achieved the peak transitional breakthrough of being average.

Figure three:

Along came MCU phase three, from twenty sixteen to twenty nineteen.
Phase three had such wonderful little gems as Captain America and the semi colons, and the Civil war.
Doctor Strange, and a semi colon and something else in the title.
Guardians of the Galaxy vengeance Waffe two, Spiderman Homecoming.
Thor and the Semi Colon of Ragnerok.
Black Panther, Avengers Infinity War, Ant man and the Wasp, Captain Marvel and Avengers Endgame, which also had the memorable semi colon.

Here again, the average iso-crap of the MCU was two point seven six. Almost indistinguishable from the earlier phases.

The peak performer was Black Panther with an Iso-Crap of three point four six.

Figure Four.
And the came MCU phase four or five, along with the inevitable semi colons.
We had movies like Blue Beetle, Ant-man and some more semi colon quantum things, The Flash, The Marvels, That blonde chick and her aunt, which was released under the title of “Black Widow”, Shang Chi, Doctor Strange, in some other movie, Thor and the love of Chunder, Black Panther in some other sequel movie, the Eternals, and the aforementioned Guardians Volume three.

Guardians of the Galaxy Volume three peaked three point zero one, and the whole Phase four to five
Had an isocrap of two point four five.
Over all, the Entire MCU to date, Ignoring the Marvels, which has not crapped to completion in theatres, the MCU averages two point six five.

The best performers? With iso-craps near three, we have Blue beetle, Shang Chi, and Guardians of the Galaxy. Indiana Jones and the Rotary phone time travel thing as also iso-crapic with these three.

The worst? The Flash and Ant-man, both iso-craps of each other at around two point zero.

So what?
Well, if an MCU movie is released, and makes a hundred million in three days, the average final domestic box office will be two point six five million.
Or in other words, for every dollar bought in during the first three days, the rest of the domestic box office run will bring in one dollar sixty five cents.
If we ignore overseas income, which is usually a smaller fraction of box office revenues, a movie studio will receive as income about half of the box office revenue.
For an Average MCU movie, this is about half of the average iso-crap, or one point three two times its three day opening.

So, if an average MCU movie is released, and makes one hundred million over three days, the Movie studio is likely to receive, on average, one thirty two million back. Which means, that average MCU movie is going to have to cost less than one thirty two million to make if the Studio wants to see any profit.

We might then ask, what did the MCU movies make as a three day opening, over all phases?
Here we include the Marvels, since it has emphatically had its three day opening.

And the number is: MCU phase one, average three day 103 million.

MUC Phase two, three day opening 116 million.

MCU Phase three, average of 165 million.

MCU Phase 4 to 5, a value of 95.9 million.

Or about 120 million, over all phases, and close enough to one hundred million if we consider phase one or phase four to five by themselves.

For optimistic accounting, if we took the MCU phase three average of 165 million three day opening, and the Average MCU phase three iso-crap of two point seven six, then for a fifty percent return of the domestic gross, and ignoring foreign sales, the average movie would have to cost less than two hundred and eighteen million to break even.

Well, the best of the best performers of the MCU, the original Guardians of the Galaxy, and Black Panther, bought in movies like an average move, with iso-craps of about three point five. Whatever happened with reviews, twitter-bots, word of mouth, those two movies grew the initial pool of movie goers like the average flick does.

What was that average movie with an iso-crap of about 3.5 that beat almost everything, and tied with the best the MCU could produce?

Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull.

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