Summer Movies So Far!

If the summer movie season runs May through August, we’re about halfway through the summer, with most of the highest-profile releases having already happened. It’s been a very strange summer with a lot of movies poised to lose a lot of money based on unreasonable budgets and horrendous marketing. So what I want to do with this post is run through the summer movie storylines I wrote up back in April and see how they’re playing out. 

How successful with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and The Flash be? And what does this mean?

As of now Guardians 3 is the highest-grossing film of the summer (it’s likely to pass by Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse in the coming weeks). But even with that box office success, it’s hard to say how big of a hit it’s been. It only just passed the grosses of Thor: Love and Thunder from last year. That’s pretty surprising when you think about it. Guardians 3 has more cultural caché than Love and Thunder, and Guardians 3 got much better reviews than Love and Thunder. If Guardians 3 were an unqualified success, it would have passed Love and Thunder a while ago.

As for what this means, that’s also hard to say. Disney is playing things pretty close to the vest right now, probably while they wait to see what unfolds with the allegations against Jonathan Majors and while the writer’s strike shows no signs of ending anytime soon. Disney’s most recently announced line-up shuffle of Marvel movies is hard to believe with only one movie right now on the schedule for 2026 and 2027. It’s pretty clear that Guardians 3 did better than Antman and the Wasp: Quantumania back in February, but this is a hollow victory. The jury is still very much out about what kind of public appetite there still is for Marvel and superheroes in general. 

The story of The Flash is much simpler: this movie is a colossal bomb. It will probably lose Warner Brothers hundreds of millions of dollars. It’s week 2 drop was nearly 73%, the second worst all time for a DC or Marvel property (top spot belongs to the infamous Shaq flop, Steel) (if you like tidbits like this, be sure to check out Dan Murrell’s YouTube channel for videos like this one). If there’s a morbid silver lining for The Flash, it’s going to be such a historic failure for a movie of this magnitude that it will wipe the woes of Shazam! 2 from everyone’s minds. 

There’s no one specific factor that led to this performance. When a movie fails this hard, you can blame everything. I would blame the following 4 things in this order:

1. Terrible marketing. I saw a trailer for it 10 times and I still didn’t know what the movie was about. From the reviews I’ve read, it seems like there was a half-decent emotional core but not one that was communicated in the marketing. 
2. The DCEU overhaul. Hindsight is 20/20, but it’s pretty darn clear now that announcing the new era of DC direction before The Flash was not a good idea. It’s left DC’s 2023 projects—and there are 4 of them—in limbo, all likely to underperform (silver lining: the budget on Blue Beetle is a reasonable 120 million, so if the movie is actually good, it could be a solid hit).
3. Ezra Miller drama. I have this as the third factor because many casual audiences, like my dad, have no idea about any of this controversy and legal trouble. But it clearly turned some informed audiences away. I have to say that this seems to have been a bigger factor than I anticipated.
   1. As a subpoint, Disney should be very aware of this. Jonathan Majors could be an even bigger box office albatross. Black actors and performers rarely have a short or neat redemption arc in the public eye. 
4. A crowded summer. As far as I’ve heard, the average moviegoer still sees 6ish movies a year. Let’s say that equals three in the summer. And if that summer has other options like Guardians 3, Oppenheimer, Indiana Jones 5, and Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, The Flash could easily be squeezed out. Said the average viewer knows that within a couple of months they can see it on Max anyway…

To wrap up these points, Guardians 3 was a bit disappointing, and The Flash has been a cataclysmic disaster. The DC and Marvel brands are both a lot less bulletproof than they used to be—in 2013, Man of Steel had a mixed reception that still equaled 300 million domestically, three times what The Flash will have if you adjust for inflation—and both Disney and WB have some soul searching to do. 

In short, and this is a big point that carries over to a lot of the summer releases, it’s not 2018 anymore. Franchises, like Fast and the Assorted Adjectives, are losing steam, and the baseline for a summer weekend opening is a lot closer to 75 million (on a strong week) than 120. By my count only three movies this summer—Guardians 3, Little Mermaid, and Spider-Man ATSV—have opened over a 100 million. And of those three, only Spider-Man exceeded tracking and expectations. Yikes. 

My predictions in April: Guardians 3 is a hit, but not so big of a hit that we fully table the narrative about MCU decline; The Flash is not a hit, but it is also not a historic failure. 

I’m half-right. I’m spot on about Guardians 3, I think, but The Flash was not a hit and was a historic failure. I grade these predictions A-.

Is it FINALLY time for the long-awaited comeback of the hard-R comedy?

No Hard Feelings opened a little bit stronger than expected this past weekend (around 15 million), but still a decent bit lower Cocaine Bear did this past winter. It also opened low enough that it will likely not make money on its 45ish million budget, but clearly this is a movie also meant to bring in Netflix eyeballs when it heads over there, so I wouldn’t call it a failure. The Machine did decent business, as did The Blackening. Strays got moved to August in hopes that late night shows would be back to help with promotion (it’s unlikely they will be yet), and Joy Ride comes out a few weeks. Both could still do fine, but I think it’s safe to say that, no, the hard-R comedy is not back. 

Prediction: No Hard Feelings becomes the biggest comedy hit in many years, but still doesn’t top 100 million. 

This prediction was okay but not great. Blockers from 2018 is probably the last big moderate hit R comedy (unless I’m forgetting something), and it opened with 21 million (against a surprisingly huge opening for A Quiet Place) and legged out nearly 100 million. No Hard Feelings isn’t going to do that kind of business, but it might still be kind of a hit. We have to wait and see what Strays does. For now, I think this is a B- minus prediction. 

Is animation back?

The story here is not written. Elemental isn’t going to be the massive Pixar hit I thought it might be, but it may have strong legs. Spider-Man might be the top movie of the summer. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem doesn’t come out till August. This is still a developing storyline (but I was definitely wrong about Elemental).

How does this summer go for Disney?

I’m going to wait and analyze this one later. The narrative on Elemental is still very much being written. Indiana Jones 5 is tracking to the 60-70 range right now. Whether it opens above that, below that, or in that range will play a large part in determining how good the summer was for Disney. And Haunted Mansion is still on the books for late July. 

Okay, where are the horror movies?

NOWHERE! The Boogeyman enjoyed none of the success that The Black Phone had last year. Insidious: The Red Door might have some success next weekend, but I’m skeptical. And that’s about it. Fingers crossed something hits, but it’s looks like we have to wait till fall for most of them. 

Who wins the Barbie vs Oppenheimer showdown? 

Of course, we’re still a few weeks away, but it’s becoming clear the Barbie has the edge. The PG-13 rating may turn a few people away, but Oppenheimer’s R-rating, and 3-hour runtime, are likely to do more damage. Honestly, June was full of so many flops that it’s possible Barbie could land in the top 5 for the summer. It’s doing something few movies this summer are doing: gathering momentum as they head into their release. Barbie also ran the best marketing campaign I can recall in many years. I think it will matter.

What about the other blockbusters?

Fast X was not as successful as hoped. It looks like it won’t even get to the domestic total of the pandemic-released previous film. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (which I thought was pretty good) has done decently. Not a flashy release, but the take has been solid, and the word of mouth has been pretty good. Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning and Blue Beetle aren’t out yet. But MI:DR seems to be gathering steam, and it pretty much has all of July to run wild. I think it will exceed expectations. 

What other gems are there to find?

Past Lives. It was so unknown until recently that I didn’t even have it on the preview, but it will easily be among the best films of the year. Right now, it holds the top spot by a pretty wide margin. I also really liked BlackBerry and Sanctuary was good, too. Both of those are available on demand now. If you can go see Past Lives in your market, do it because it’s one of the best movies you’ll see this year and one of the best movies A24 has made to date. Also, Wes Anderson definitely won me back with Asteroid City, easily my favorite film he’s made. Be sure to check that one out, too. 

To close, let’s check in on what I predicted would be my top 5.

1. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
   1. I did really like this, but it won’t be number one. I do hope to see it again in the coming weeks which will make it easier to assess. 
2. Theater Camp
   1. This one comes out in a few weeks. The trailer has me thinking this will likely still hit top 5.
3. Barbie
   1. The hype for this has not subsided. I’m so ready for it. 
4. No Hard Feelings
   1. I have a long article on this one coming to the site this week, but this was mostly a miss for me, sorry to say. 
5. Elemental
   1. I liked Elemental quite a lot and think people are being too hard on it and missing the complexity of the film. I don’t think it will stay in the top 5, but we’ll see. 

I will revisit the other predictions and whatnot when they sort themselves out. Also, before Memorial Day, I decided to try and pre-rank every movie I thought I would see in the course of the summer movie season and then have been ranking them as I’ve seen them. When summer is done, I’ll do a post about that list and where things ended up. 

And since we’re halfway through the year, here’s my top 10 of 2023 so far, as of June 28^th. 

1. Past Lives
2. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.
3. BlackBerry
4. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
5. Asteroid City
6. Suzume
7. Air
8. Women Talking (which I count as 2023)
9. You Hurt My Feelings 
10. The Blackening

A lot of gems so far this year, though many of them off the beaten path. Happy watching!