Cinema Issues: Marvel Doesn’t Seem To Understand The X-Men

We have talked previously about the deviant morality in Hollywood and how a lot of modern screen writers cannot understand right from wrong. Well to this point consider Jean Grey in Brand New Day she is a murderer, she throws a man in front of a taxi, she drives a tank into a building full of people and blows it up amongst other things. However, the writers say she is just acting in rage so it’s fine and that she didn’t kill anyone directly, which is untrue.

Not only does this horribly butcher the character, please look at the comics wherein Jean’s sister is actually kidnapped notice how she handles it there, notice how she doesn’t endanger civilians and throw them in front of cars, it also shows they don’t understand the X-Men.

The idea that something bad has happened to you therefore you can fly into a rage and do whatever you like consequence free, is simply not true it is the philosophy of kids and progressives. Even when you’re upset you have to make moral choices and must hold yourself to that line. When Uncle Ben died did Spider-Man kill the killer, no. Did he go around throwing people in front of taxis for no reason, no. Yet jean did.

This reflects the fact that Hollywood no longer understands the concept of good vs bad, they only understand the concept of getting what they want and lashing out if they don’t get it. That philosophy of Hollywood and the left is why when they are offended they scream death threats at people, Jean Grey herein is a manifestation of that.

In the world of the X-Men the idea is that the world fears and hates them but they do good and risk their lives to save regular humans. If the X-Men are throwing random people in front of taxis then the world will be right to fear them and that fundamentally isn’t the X-Men at all. You could argue she hasn’t met Charles Xavier yet but the film presents her as being an adult she should still have a moral compass and shouldn’t need Charles to teach morality to her.

This all comes on the heels of the X-Men director for the MCU’s attempt at these characters saying that they will showing new stuff never before seen on screen. That is a colossal red flag, yes there are many great X-Men comics that haven’t been adapted however, it is almost certain they don’t mean that, they likely mean they’ll make up new adventures for these characters. With the way in which they introduced Jean Grey being so out of character and just so wrong this fills us with concern.

The butchering of Jean’s character isn’t the worst of it, it is the precedent it sets that is by far the more troubling thing.

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Cinema Issues: Career Suicide The Story Of Yahya Abdul-Mateen ii and Mahershala Ali

Recently Marvel has come under attack from stars of projects that didn’t happen in the case of Ali and from stars of shows that did not get renewed in the case of Abdul-Manteen, the accusation is the same, as the black show or film was not made, or renewed therefore racism. This is the very peak of entitled, you are not owed a project or a second season, the fact that shows like Eyes of Wakanda are made, and that Black Panther and Sam Wilson are central to the Marvel universe show that there is no racism going on.

What is going on is that these stars of colour think they can throw around accusations in order to get what they want, but as the case of Blake Lively will tell you that is a dumb strategy to try. First to Abdul-Manteen’s argument of optics, black shows are not the only ones being cancelled or not renewed for season two, look at Hawkeye, look at the scrapped sequel for the Eternals, but this is an inconvenient fact.

The movie going public are well aware of actors like this trying to claim to be the victim whilst they live in their mansions, and they are starting to get sick of it. The fact is the black audience, in countries that matter to the box office, so the collective west and large Asian markets, is so small that they could boycott the next wave of Marvel projects and it would not effect the bottom line at all, Africa as a market does not matter to the box office at all. All of that is to say, that trying to claim you’re an abused black man because you didn’t get a film or second season is not a winning strategy.

Moreover, look what happened to other ‘stars’ who ran their mouth about Disney/Marvel and had an acrimonious divorce with the studio, Tatiana Maslany’s She Hulk might as well be non-canon with a lot of the events of her show having been ignored. Then there is the case of Oscar Issac who threw away the chance of Moon Knight ever getting a second season after he came after Disney for suspending Jimmy Kimmel. Blade can get a new film post Secret Wars with Snipes, Ali has put himself out of business, and if Disney ever did want to bring back Simon Williams there are plenty of other actors who could take over the part.

Behaving in the way these two men have, with the level of entitlement and using their race as a card to mean they cannot be fired and that they must be given things is disgusting. The idea of equality is that everyone is treated the same so if Issac and Maslany can get themselves fired and their characters written off so should these two men.

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Cinema Issues: American’s Fear Of Sex Scenes

Wil Gluck’s new film One Night Only is about the one night a year where sex is allowed, it is literally about sex, yet despite this the man who directed Anyone But You and had Sydney Sweeney take her top off says he has removed a lot of the nudity and sex scenes from the movie.

Why? Well because audiences don’t want to watch that according to Gluck. Anyone But You, Wuthering Heights, and any number of other erotic thrillers begs to differ with Mr Gluck. However the deeper reason seems to be America’s growing prudishness around sex, a lot of the people defending Gluck say it takes away from the story, the story is about sex, they say that you can watch porn for that, a film’s sex scene establishes character relationships and is not real hardcore pornography. Frankly, if you think there is a comparison between a film sex scene and porn then you belong about 400 years ago in the puritan past.

There is this idea of oh audiences are uncomfortable watching them, Gluck puts this forward to. Why are you uncomfortable with something as normal as sex, if you can’t handle it the issue is with you, you should stick to watching kids films rather than trying to censor sex as a whole. Does it make you uncomfortable as it shows you what you aren’t having or it shows you people whose bodies don’t look like yours? That’s a you problem. Is it because you can only go to the cinema with other people be it friends or your significant other, once again the fact you can’t go on your own is your problem.

Once again we see the strange needless prudishness coming out of America that has always been there, one of our writers said that they have seen it their whole life, however from this writers European perspective it seems both ridiculous and karenlike. When One Night Only fails hopefully so will Gluck’s career.

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Cinema Issues: The Death Of Marvel’s Disney + Dreams

News has broken that other than Daredevil Born Again no other series will be returning to Disney +, despite all those fake leaker accounts promising Hawkeye season 2. There’ll be some one offs and mini series, but by and large the focus will shift to animation as it is cheaper and easier to do.

As you can imagine people are upset, why won’t we get another season of Wonder Man despite the fact it flopped. However, this move is great for Marvel, you shouldn’t have to watch a 6 hours series in order to understand a film you want to watch as such stopping it is for the best.

Moreover, a hell of a lot of the things that happened in the Disney + shows either were never referenced again or were just written out, looking at you Hulk’s son and Kingpin losing an eye. The fact is a lot of these series just weren’t good at all, and so it makes sense to cast them off. When they did mix in with the proper MCU films it was generally in so much as providing a supporting character or explaining a motive, they just weren’t needed.

There are also a lot of reasons why Disney and marvel as a brand want to remove themselves from Marvel’s Disney + offerings and a lot of this comes down to politics. Both Tatiana Maslany and Oscar Issac have publicly attacked Disney in the press and online and as such She Hulk and Moon Knight died there and then, She Hulk has been heavily ignored and vast parts of it simply seem to be non-canon now.

In many ways Disney leaving this arena whilst they still have some of their credibility left is a win, let’s hope Wonder Man, Riri Williams, She Hulk and the rest stay buried forever and don’t pop up for a jump scare in the next Avengers film.

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Cinema Issues Spider-Man Brand New Day And Superhero Fatigue

Just like the success of the Odyssey doesn’t prove that woke films are back in vogue, Spider-Man Brand New Day’s success doesn’t change the fact Superheroes are on the way out.

One only needs to look at recent Superhero box office failures such as Captain America Brave New World, Thunderbolts, Fantastic Four or Supergirl or consider the bad viewing numbers of many of the streaming shows.

Folks will always watch Spider-Man he’s a popular character just like folks will watch the Avengers films but just wait for the next B level character and see how few people turn out for it. The fatigue hasn’t gone away it just never applied to the big characters people care about.

Nolan could pull off woke as he’s is Christopher Nolan and sold the experience of seeing his film, another director couldn’t do that, likewise the Marvels 2 wouldn’t be able to be profitable simply because Brand New Day was as no one cares about those characters.

Some say it is bad movie fatigue we say it is bad character fatigue.

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Cinema Issues: The Recovery Of The Box Office?

So we were originally going to write a post about the slaughter that has been the summer box office with some films doing really well and everything else flopping. However, we decided to retool that into a conversation on the fact that we are in July 2026 and have already had 3 billion dollar films, with more likely to come meaning that from a box office perspective we have had a much better year than we have had in post-pandemic history. However, within that there is a caveat.

As of right now Michael, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie and Toy Story 4 are all sitting at 1 billion, with the Odyssey, and likely Spider-Man Brand New Day set to join it. Whilst on paper this is great news for the box office it is also painting a picture of instability, as whilst there are more high profile hits there are also a lot more high profile misses.

As the summer season has shown films like Minions 3 have struggled to connect and films like Supergirl and Moana have outright flopped, this is showing that cinema is becoming an all or nothing bloodsport. There are far fewer films that do middling, and the remaining strength of the box office is being channeled into a few specific types of film, directors, or franchises this makes the box office lob sided and reduces chances taken on projects.

This seems to be the new reality people either come out in force and a film makes lots of money or no one goes and it dies on the vine. People may say it has always been this way but that is not true there were often middling cases and a middle ground between hits and flops but increasingly that has withered away.

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Cinema Issues: The Jean Grey Issue Spider-Man Brand New Day

At the time of writing we do not know if Jean Grey is in Spider-Man 4 and if it is Sadie Sink’s mysterious role however a lot of online speculation says that’s the case.

If it is then it is a terrible terrible decision for multiple reasons, let’s get into it.

1- It introduces her first as a villain: Jean Grey of the X-Men outside of her Phoenix possessions is a good guy, however, a lot of the rumours linking Grey to this film say that she is the villain pulling the strings behind the scenes. Why would she be doing this? It would be incredibly against the character and make very little sense.

2- It cheapens the idea of introducing the MCU’s own X-Men at a later date: we know the X-Men are coming however, the drips and drabs strategy we have been getting isn’t working. The idea was to have an X-Men film pretty immediately after Secret Wars when the universe will be reset why would it make sense to have just Jean Grey introduced early here rather than alongside her fellow X-Men there, it wouldn’t.

3- Spider-Man is still not able to hold his own film: under the MCU there seems to be an idea that you can’t just have a Spider-Man film, like Sony did for years. You need Iron Man, you need the multiverse, you need an X-Man. Repeatedly it seems like Peter cannot just have his own adventure and this film is already crowded with the likes of the Hulk and the Punisher showing up for some reason, now they have to put Jean Grey in as well, it’s just stupid. People want grounded, focused stories not cameo fests.

We long hoped that she is Firestar a different mutant character but one that would be a much more organic fit for the film, however, it would not explain the seeming mind control elements of the plot.

If it is Jean Grey it is a poorly thought through desperate move.

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Cinema Issues: The Death of Pixar

We have written before at length in these Cinema Issues posts about how Pixar has chosen ideology over entertainment time and again, and how they have literally had to come out and say they’ll stop. Moreover, we have also said how they have been a one hit wonder emotionally manipulative, sequel machine for a long time.

Today’s article is to talk about the Disney layoffs which are happening across the company but mainly at Pixar. Some people are not understanding how Pixar can be in trouble when Toy Story 5 has just come out and done so well, let us explain.

Pixar has a bad profit to loss ratio in their recent filmmaking. In their ten films since 2020 only three of them have made money with the rest losing the studio money, some of this is the fault of Pixar and the films themselves some of it is the fault of world events or Disney’s wider decisions. However a 3/10 ratio for profitability is not good.

Let’s examine.

First you have the COVID films that lost money due to COVID and the films being sent out to streaming rather than them being bad but still created a deficit at the studio and start to dent the idea of them as hitmakers.

Onward with a budget of 200 million dollars needing to make 500 million to break even yet making 141 (due to the pandemic) lost the studio 359 million dollars.

Soul cost 150 million meaning it needed 375 million to break even but it made 122 million, costing the studio 253 million even with re-releases.

Luca coat 120 meaning it needed 300 million to break even, it made 50 million needing it cost the studio around 250 million

Turning Red cost 175 million meaning it needed 437 million to break even, it made 21 million costing the studio around 417 million dollars

These films were largely written off as most of the films that flopped during COVID where. There was an idea that once cinemas fully reopened things would change. However, Pixar then started to pivot to social activism and sending a message, which would turn out to be a very costly mistake.

Lightyear cost 200 meaning it needed 500 million to break even, it made 226 meaning it cost the studio 274 million dollars

Elemental cost 200 meaning it needs 500 million to break even, despite a strong rally it made 496.4 million dollars meaning it cost the studio 3.6 million.

Inside Out 2 was a smash hit that started to reverse the damage, it cost 200 million to make and made 1.699 billion so it made around 1.199 billion dollars in profit for the studio. This amount of profit more than covers all the past debts of all the films listed above, and leaves the studio around 300 million dollars in the black, however, if this success had then been replicated going forward Disney would likely not have laid off so many people.

Elio cost around 200 to make meaning it needed 500 to break even, It made 154 million meaning it lost the studio around 346 million which in turn eats through the last of Inside Out 2s profit for the studio.

At this point in the entire 2020s the studio had made one profitable film and was back in a precarious financial position again. This led the studio head to stay that the studio was going to stay away from political messaging and try and get back to films for everyone.

The holdovers of the woke era then came with Hoppers costing 150 to make meaning it needed 375 million to break even, it made 389 meaning it made a small profit of 14 million dollars, which in the world of movie making isn’t enough.

Then you had Toy Story 5 which cost around 250 million to make meaning it needed 625 to break even, currently it has made around 960 million and seems posed to go over a billion which will make probably around 400+ million in profit for the studio.

At the time of writing Pixar as a studio is in the black after Toy Story 5 and the small scale success of Hoopers. However Disney doesn’t want a studio that is batting 3/10, Disney doesn’t want a studio that constantly veers between profitably and loss making, Disney doesn’t want a studio that isn’t a sure thing. As such you can see corrective behaviour being taken at Pixar, the original output beyond Gato is being slashed it’s mainly sequels coming in the future, and if they were smart the budgets would come down significantly. The lay offs represent the need to make the studio profitable on a more consistent basis again, the idea of cutting the overhead down so they can lower the budget on these films and have a more consistent hit rate, especially in a landscape with a shrinking theatrical audience.

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Cinema Issues: The Importance Of The Second Weekend For The Odyssey

As Sunday rolled into Monday many people were looking at the numbers of the Odyssey first weekend around 264 and going take that chuds.

However, the first weekend is not proof of anything and everything will be decided in the second and third weekend. Here’s how.

Firstly the film using Hollywood standard 2.5x the production budget needed to break even needs to make around 625 million dollars. Which is about 360-361 million dollars from where they are now.

Now normally Nolan films have a long stretch in cinemas without competition, not this time but we will get there.

Secondly, if you look at the breakdown of the reported 264 a lot of it came from premium formats, this is your IMAX and things like that. Now these tickets were sold way in advance and bring in much more money per ticket sale than a regular ticket. However, most of the people who cared deeply about the format will have seen it by now, meaning they went the first weekend potentially suggesting we could be seeing a front loaded movie. There will be some people who couldn’t get premium seats last weekend who may go in the week or even next weekend and there will be others who go again. The number of premium tickets however will be down in the second weekend both for the natural reason of less people going but also because the few who missed out on opening weekend and those who want to see it again will be a small group. This means the second weekend drop off will be reflective of a front loaded movie. A usual film that holds well will lose about 50% of its business but this has the added factor of being so dependent on premium formats as such it could see into the 60% or higher.

Going into the second weekend the film sits at 364 million dollars, as a lot of the stragglers after the first weekend went to see the film during the week, meaning they’ll likely be high drop off on the second weekend.

This would mean that the film would end its second weekend around 500 million when you account for the weekday ticket sales as well. This leaves the film with around a 125 deficit to break even. This would then become a central issue as it faces a lock out in the third weekend.

Basically if the Odyssey wants to break even it needs an incredibly strong second weekend.

In the film’s third weekend Spider-Man Brand New Day comes out. This means the premium IMAX screens will stop making any money for the Odyssey and will be handed to Sony for that film. This means that the male demographic is split as well. Both Spider-Man and The Odyssey lean towards men, older men say 25-40 will have an interest in both so there will be direct competition. Whilst the older crowd 60+ may still show up for the prestige epic and the cinephiles might go back for rewatches the core of the audience will be hollowed out.

As such the box office will likely see a significant downturn on the third weekend.

You are then left with two options, that the film sticks around and over a few long period of time maybe into September is able to crawl to that 625 million break even point, or it does not break even at all and the chuds win.

If you were Universal you would be watching that second weekend like a hawk the closer to 500 million you can get the easier it will be to survive post Spider-Man. If the film managed to barely drop at all in the second weekend it could comfortably break even at 625 over the later summer period.

As such for those celebrating it is too soon to call.

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Cinema Issues: A Surprisingly Barren July (26)

If one looks at the release schedule for July you see the early big hitters of Minons and Moana and then the Odyssey takes up the middle of the month, but then there is a gap between the Odyssey and Spiderman Brand New Day that would be unthinkable for prime summer movie season.

One explanation could be that Nolan asked the other studios and cinema to give him two weekends with his latest venture and they let him, which would be dumb, or they want to see him fail in real time.

Another could be that there just isn’t that much to release as the after effects of the strikes and the downsizing in Hollywood are starting to cut the output. The weeks between the Odyssey and Brand New Day would be the perfect time to launch a sleeper hit horror movie but people are staying away.

The summer box office this year has been erratic, with obvious flops like He-Man, The Mandalorian and Grogu and Supergirl all crashing and burning, but also with films like Minions and Monsters opening softly. You can feel Hollywood shaking, they are out of touch and aren’t connecting and don’t know why. Moana and the Odyssey won’t save them and neither will an ever shrinking summer schedule.

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