“OH, YEAH? Well, she alone!”

Frankly, it seems like something he could just do with the ‘reality’ stone, since altering reality would seem to be the one inherent power of the stone.

One of the least enjoyable Marvel mega-events combined with only a weak nod to the premise of how What If...? is supposed to function.

-shrugs- It’s been a horrible two movie years regardless of any of that. A few extra tens of millions on one specific weekend out of that year because one of the movies released happened to be Marvel isn’t going to change that and it won’t really change the long term prospects of this film, which, right now probably…

Yeah, I definitely think there’s a difference between the ones that studios are releasing into streaming services for free versus ones that are getting the Disney ‘access fee’ treatment. It’s hard for me to believe that WW84, Kong, and Suicide Squad haven’t all been affected negatively in terms of box office receipts…

Technically, Sunday will be day 4 that people will have the opportunity to see Shang Chi in theaters, but Thursdays shows were considered advance screenings and most theaters did not show a full day’s worth of screenings on Thursday.

Oh, yeah, you’re right.  I was thinking of another film.  Suicide Squad was sort of a bomb.

You’re correct about that, of course. Shang Chi’s budget was $150 million roughly, while Black Widow’s budget was $200 million roughly, meaning that Disney’s investment in Black Widow was quite a bit more and their expectations for it were quite a bit more.

I’m not sure how much we’ll be able to gauge D+ plus Box Office to D+ plus Box Office between these two movies, because, as I understand it, Shang Chi will be hitting D+ after 45 days with the same sort of ‘premiere price tag’ that you could see Black Widow for on day 1. So immediately there are a whole lot of other…

I largely agree with you. I just don’t think that this particular box office performance, (which projects to a little more than The Suicide Squad, but a little less than Black Widow), is the proof that Barsanti does that folks are now ready to jump up and go out to the movies, even if this opening was on Labor Day.

In order for this to really be considered a success in pre-Pandemic terms, wouldn’t it at least have had to make as much as Black Widow made between box office and streaming combined?

Especially since everyone continues to characterize Black Widow as a miserable box office failure even though to date it’s been the #1…

Realistically.  No.  Labor day is day #4 of its release and it’s a Monday.  For a historical precedent, you can look at the percentages of the film whose record it just broke.  Halloween made a little over $4 million on Labor Day Monday in 2007 with was a day-to-day dropoff of about 71%.  Shang Chi will overperform if…

She directed one movie prior to Wonder Woman.  14 years beforehand.  Yes, it was a well regarded 1 movie, but let’s not act as though Patty Jenkins is Kathryn Bigelow.

Not really.  Her being invited superficially seems to be the ‘branch’ point, but in order this episode’s scenario to work, you need both a ‘branch’ point and a ‘divergence’ point where Strange actually falls in love with Christine Palmer, which he wasn’t in the movie.  If Palmer had accepted I guess we’ll call him…

A lot of things bothered me about this episode, starting with the assumption that Christine Palmer was somehow Stephen Strange’s ‘heart,’ especially when the Dr. Strange movie pretty explicitly demonstrates that he never loved her at all. Which means that there is no real ‘divergence’ point of this episode, which is…

Just as an aside, replacing a hand with a long edged blade like that is, in general, not a great idea because a very large portion of what makes an excellent sword fighter excellent is wrist dexterity.

I was never a fan of that one.  There’s just something off about that actor’s delivery of it that telegraphs the joke too much.

For awhile, I thought the ‘turn’ was going to be that Dr. Strange was going to figure out that in order to save Christine, he would have to ‘give up’ something he valued more than his love for her, ie, his skill as a surgeon, which would have dove-tailed the story in a meta way into what actually happened.

That’s pretty much true for any performer who becomes know for a specific role, not just Marvel roles.

I can see why all the Rogue parts were cut.  It added quite a bit to the run time without adding much to the story except to reveal where a major character who had not yet appeared in the movie was.