@Bullman: Has to make double on top of any marketing budget.
It hasn't yet, so no, its a flop right now. And based on trends, its not likely going to.
Watch SymphogearI wonder what Sam's role in Doomsday will be.
Edited by Bullman on Feb 23rd 2025 at 12:23:45 PM
Fan-Preferred Couple cleanup thread![]()
It just has to earn 180m + marketing + something like a 20% mark-up. We don't know the marketing budget. And they probably account for Disney+ views somehow too, maybe D+ "pays" licence fees to Marvel or something. The film is dancing around the break-even. It's not cool either way, moreso from the reputational perspective than the financial one.
Edited by Asherinka on Feb 23rd 2025 at 1:28:39 PM
Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous.Yeah. The reputation thing is looking bad regardless of how you look at it.
Fan-Preferred Couple cleanup threadSo, what was everyone's thoughts on Leader? I liked him but wish he had something extra that I can't put my finger on.
Fan-Preferred Couple cleanup threadI liked Leader's design. There's a Body Horror aspect to it that works rather than him just having a big head, it could easily been goofy.
I'm not a big fan of the 'calculating the odds is like prophecy' thing but it was much more toned down compared to say... the latest Mission Impossible thing and... well he seemed consistently wrong about Sam. So there's that.
It'll be more than profitable with merch, streaming, and other matters. Everyone expected a bomb and it absolutely isn't that.
I think he's a poor villain because he's not very comic book leader like at all. In simple terms, he's a little much like the Vulture in that he's really someone who has every reason to be incredibly frustrated at the US government and Ross. He kills innocent people and almost starts a war but if he had just murdered Ross then it would have been fully justified in my opinion for his kidnapping and torture.
He's basically got the "Karli" problem where the audience agrees with his point.
Going too far works well for RL and fictional terrorists but the movie doesn't adequately explain why either of them felt the NEED to go so far. You need them to be adequately shown to have a mindset of "burn the world down" versus, "I'm blowing up this refugee center to make you realize I'm a bad guy."
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Feb 23rd 2025 at 2:04:59 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.Yeah the Leader is very much not a villain you agree with in the comics, his entire thing is he wants to rule/lead the world, and his prone to lots of wanton cruelty and For Science! approaches to his evil.
It's gonna be fun on the bun!To be fair, by the end of the film basically everyone agrees with his point. Sam may think that if Ross wants to change he should have a chance to on a personal level, but he certainly doesn't have a problem with him being in prison and not being president any more.
This movie's actually kind of interesting because it's the MCU's second Villain Protagonist (or more accurately, really, Villain Deuteragonist) film. Ross is a villain, and the whole story is about his struggles to keep his position and suppress the truth as his horrible secrets come to light. Sam has an Inspector Javert vibe from that point of view, and while Sam sympathizes with both Ross and Sterns, he eventually has to take both of them down for everyone else's well being.
In the Ross-centric scenes in the film, and really in the grand scheme of the movie's conflict, Sam kind of comes off as Columbo-esque, tbh.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Feb 23rd 2025 at 2:18:45 AM
No. It never occurred to me the Leader had a point and especially not that it would be perfectly fine if his revenge killing was just restricted to Ross.
eta: Yeah, Ross fucked Sterns dangling a pardon in front of him in return for work. And yeah not revenge killing but exposing Ross would have been fine.
But Sterns is hardly some innocent scapegoat here, even though Ross describes him that way. He was doing research to mass produce Hulks and is partially responsible for creating the Abomination. (He was under duress which would affect sentencing but not get him off entirely i would think)
eta2: It's odd Ross describing Sterns as being scapegoated for Harlem because we know Blonksy also got a long prison sentence for it.
And it looks like Sterns will be in need of a good lawyer. Pity they aren't making more She-Hulk.
Edited by dcutter2 on Feb 23rd 2025 at 10:32:05 AM
Sterns tried to start a world war to get back at one man. Disproportionate, thy name is Leader
Forever liveblogging the AvengersOkay, I couldn't see this film with my date, we watched Sonic 3 instead, but how good is Harrison Ford in this movie? My dad is interested in watching it and he's a Harrison Ford fan.
Dad really didn't like Indiana Jones and the dial of destiny.
"The Black Rage makes us strong, because we must resist its temptations every day of our lives or be forever damned!"It's the most engaged I've ever been with Ross's character in any media.
I didn't see him as much of a villain prior to this film either. I know he's one of Hulk's enemies but he's a little more justified in that position than most. He also doesn't really seem to care about that anymore by the time of Brave New World.
Edited by FOFD on Feb 23rd 2025 at 5:58:08 AM
Whether you sincerely enjoy the film, or you and your dad end up riffing on it, here's genuinely hoping you two have a good time at the movie theatre.
Self-professed Wild Card who thinks cynicism isn't so bad.I think he was innocent as all he did was under gunpoint from the Abomination.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.Just saw the film.
Ross may have hated Banner, but he apparently took a cue from him and bought himself stretch pants just in case.
Seeing Ross be placed under arrest at The Raft felt very cathartic, even if Ross apparently had himself placed there voluntarily.
It's kinda funny how Sam Wilson expresses regret over not taking the same serum that Steve Rodgers got, because there's many fight sequences where Wilson uses so much strength, agility, calculation (such as mastering how to use the shield) where I thought "I don't think he really needs it".
Sam Wilson getting a pep talk from Bucky Barnes of all people was great.
Like creepy stories? Check out my book!I think we're talking about two different questions here.
We're mashing "is Sterns innocent of the crime Ross scapegoated him for" and "is Sterns an innocent in his war against Ross that we see in Brave New World" together, when the answer to the former is "maybe, leaning towards probably" and the answer to the latter to the latter is "no."
Sterns can be absolutely right that Ross was a monster who ruined his life rather than take responsibility for his own actions and be wrong that murdering people for revenge is the right way to respond. Likewise, he can be a horrible murdering terrorist in the present and still have been a relatively innocent civilian in the past.
Though to speak to the bit about Sterns trying to make an army of Hulks, that's not really what was happening. Sterns, iirc, was mass producing the blood under the belief that it was a breakthrough with loads of medical potential, completely unaware that the Hulk was involved at all. Though he did do so without Bruce's permissions (and, in general, he was running experiments on blood samples some suspicious rando was sending him through covert channels, which is shady), he wasn't trying to weaponize the samples or anything along those lines.
Meanwhile, Ross framed him as having willingly created the Abomination and then unleashed him on Harlem, which is somewhere between technically true and flat out wrong. It's implied that the pardon Ross dangled over him was always impossible, because the world thought he was effectively a terrorist.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Feb 23rd 2025 at 4:40:50 AM

I am going to see it again tomorrow with a friend who hasn't and didn't want to go alone.
Edited by Bullman on Feb 23rd 2025 at 12:10:44 PM
Fan-Preferred Couple cleanup thread