Marvel hero ‘Captain America: A Brave New World’ is overwhelmingly maintaining its #1 spot at the box office. However, due to ambiguous reviews of the film, there is a gloomy outlook as to whether it will be a long-term hit enough to change Marvel‘s downward trend.

According to the Integrated Computer Network for Movie Tickets on the 18th, ‘Captain America: A Brave New World’, which was released on the 12th, maintained its #1 spot at the box office through the 17th, the 6th day of screening, attracting a cumulative audience of 851,715. In a situation where there is no notable competition, it is monopolizing the box office by attracting about 6 times more daily viewers than ‘Secret’ and ‘Hitman 2’. In particular, it attracted over 580,000 viewers from the 14th to the 16th, the first weekend, and recorded the highest opening score in the first week for a movie released this year.

However, despite this performance, it seems to be severely lacking in firepower to achieve results comparable to the previous ‘Captain America’ series. This movie is the fourth in the ‘Captain America’ series, and the previously released ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’ (2014) and ‘Captain America: Civil War’ (2016) attracted 1.47 million and 3.93 million viewers in their first weeks, respectively.

The reason why this movie is recording a lower-than-expected firepower despite being part of Marvel Studios’ representative box office IP, the ‘Captain America’ series, is interpreted as fatigue with Marvel hero movies themselves, as well as aversion to the generational change of popular characters. This film deals with the activities of Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), who became the ‘Second Captain’ following the ‘original Captain’ Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), who left Marvel after ‘Avengers: Endgame’, but there are many opinions that it is not enough to fill the void left by the first Captain, who enjoyed immense popularity.

In addition, there is a reaction that the main characters and setting of this film, which are a continuation of the film ‘The Incredible Hulk’ from 17 years ago and the Disney+ drama ‘The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’, are raising the barrier to entry for general audiences.

With director Bong Joon-ho‘s Hollywood production ‘Mickey 17’, one of the most anticipated films of the year, set to be released on the 28th, the long-term race outlook is also bleak. With only 10 days left until its release, the advance ticket sales for ‘Mickey 17’ have already surpassed those for ‘Captain America: Brave New World’.


Reporter Seungmi Lee smlee@donga.com

This article is automatically translated using Google AI. If you notice any inaccuracies, please let us know at allkstar@donga.com.