The Marvels Star Iman Vellani Says The Box Office Is Disney CEO Bob Iger's Problem
Nia DaCosta's new superhero film "The Marvels" is notoriously one of the lower-grossing films in the famously successful Marvel Cinematic Universe. This blindsided many pundits, as the MCU has famously been able to rake in billions, even when presenting more obscure characters to a mass audience (case in point: the Guardians of the Galaxy had no major cultural cache until their first movie came out in 2014). "The Marvels" was a sequel to the 2019 film "Captain Marvel," a film that made $1.1 billion worldwide. It was also a sequel to the acclaimed Marvel TV shows "WandaVision" and "Ms. Marvel," leading many to naturally assume that "The Marvels," too, would be a hit.
The film opened to mostly warm reviews, but — still shockingly — had the lowest opening weekend of any MCU movie, scoring even less than "The Incredible Hulk" back in 2008 and "Ant-Man" in 2015. The low receipts have been chalked up to a general sense of superhero fatigue, and, more so, the changing taste of a mass audience. Marvel has been No. 1 for over a decade — it could only hold that spot for so long. To briefly editorialize, "The Marvels" is shorter and slighter than many recent MCU movies which, to this author's eye, makes it better than a lot of them; not everything requires massive portent.
Actor Iman Vellani plays one of the film's three title Marvels, specifically Ms. Marvel, aka Kamala Khan, a teenager who can turn light into physical matter. Vellani, in a recent interview with Yahoo! Entertainment, was asked about the relatively low earnings of "The Marvels," and she had a very healthy attitude about it. She would rather, she said, leave the number crunching to the execs and merely be proud of the work she did.
'That's for Bob Iger.'
Iman Vellani even called out Disney CEO Bob Iger by name, saying: "I don't want to focus on something that's not even in my control, because what's the point? [...] That's for Bob Iger."
Prior to the inception of the internet, a movie's box office wasn't typically widely publicized unless it broke some sort of notable record. Outside of trade papers in Los Angeles, no one knew the weekly B.O. reports. At some point, however, those numbers became widely available to the public, inspiring the creation of a class of busybody armchair executives who obsessed over receipts, even if they weren't executives themselves and clearly had no financial stake in the outcome. Vellani, rather wisely, noted that ignoring box office reports, even as the film's star, was the smarter course of action. More important was, logically, the film itself. She continued:
"[The box office] has nothing to do with me. I'm happy with the finished product, and the people that I care about enjoyed the film. It's genuinely a good time watching this movie, and that's all we can ask for with these films. It has superheroes, it take place in space, it's not that deep and it's about teamwork and sisterhood. It's a fun movie, and I'm just so happy that I can share it with people."
Vellani's performance, to offer another editorial, is one of the reasons "The Marvels" is as fun as it is. Her character, unlike a lot of superhero characters, seems excited to be there, thrilled to be flying alongside a heavy hitter like Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) and Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris). The student/mentor sororal relationships between the three leads are palpable.
Toxic fandom
Rather unfortunately, as many know all too well, mainstream pop movies tend to accumulate some of the worst-behaved fans imaginable, and the MCU has a contingent of sexist and racist followers that frustratingly proliferate over time. This is not an experience I recommend, but one can go to YouTube and find multiple video essays with titles like "The Marvels is the Worst Movie Ever" and "The MCU is DEAD" all coming from insecure fungus people with names (and grotesquely hyperbolic thumbnails) like Nerdrotic and Yellow Flash. These people tend to start idiotic hate campaigns against blockbuster films that lambaste diversity and whine about sexual equality. Iman Vellani recalled the early stages of that kind of dark Marvel fandom from when she was a kid. She was a young child when the first "Iron Man" was released, so she grew up with the MCU and with its bad actors.
In a diplomatic fashion, she stated that it's wiser to just let go of the hate and let enthusiasm thrive where it takes root. In her words:
"I had a lot of experience in high school alone when I would share my excitement with someone, and then they'd immediately shut me down for being so excited. I would hate to see that within the fan community as well, because it does feel awful. If people are excited about something, let them be excited about it. And if you have constructive criticism, voice it — but never be the wet blanket on someone else's excitement."
The MCU may not have made a lot of money this time, and one may very well feel that the best of the film series is behind us, but, please, in a world full of Nerdrotics, be an Iman Vellani.