The verdict is in, Captain Marvel is flying high in North America, with an estimated opening take hovering between $155 to $160 million, early estimates showed Friday.
If the projections hold, Captain Marvel will surpass Sony’s “Spider-Man 3”, which is #19 on the list of highest domestic opening weekends of all time. It will be the second best launch for a standalone superhero, topped only by “Black Panther” in 2018.
The first Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) movie revolving around a female superhero, Captain Marvel took in $20.7 million for its Thursday night previews. That makes it the fifth biggest preview among 21 titles in the MCU. It ended up with $62 million at the box office on Friday (including the preview).
Elsewhere in the world, Captain Marvel has earned $78 million in its first two days. More than $34 million of that figure (or 44%) is coming from China, where the Carol Danvers movie is expected to earn more than $100 million for the weekend.
All these box office figures showed that the controversy surrounding the actress who played the title role of “Captain Marvel”, Oscar 2015 Best Actress winner Brie Larson, hardly made a dent in the current earnings of the movie.
Brie Larson’s Controversial Speech
Brie Larson bore the brunt of criticisms and trolling from some white males who took her call for more inclusive representation among film critics as man-hating and for making “Captain Marvel” a “feminist movie”.
The criticisms started because of Brie Larson’s speech when she accepted her Crystal Award for Excellence in Film at the Crystal + Lucy Awards in June 2018.
In her speech, Brie disclosed that “67% of the top critics reviewing the 100 highest-grossing movies in 2017 were white males, less than a quarter of the critics were white women, less than ten percent were underrepresented men, and only 2.5 percent were women of color.”
The data cited by Brie Larson were based on the findings of USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, the leading think tank in the world studying diversity and inclusion.
Brie went on to say that the composition of top critics is “a huge disconnect from the US population breakdown” which is comprised of 30% white men, 30% white women, 20% men of color, and 20% women of color.
Further down her speech, Brie Larson said:
On top of all of this, am I saying that I hate white dudes? No, I’m not. But what I’m saying is, is that you make a movie that is a love letter to women of color, there is an insanely low chance a woman of color will have the chance to see your movie and review your movie.
And this is also not to mention, other people besides white dudes like “Star Wars” and would love the opportunity to do a set visit.
And I’m also saying I don’t hate white dudes, I’m just saying we need to be conscious of our bias and do our part to make sure that everyone is in the room.
It really sucks that reviews matter, but reviews matter.
Brie Larson went on to say that good reviews help independent films to be noticed, help movies earn money, slingshot movies into awards contenders, and can change your life as it did to her.
Then came the statements which a lot of people probably took out of context:
Our industry has gone through a major growth. We are expanding to make films that better reflect the people that buy movie tickets. But they are not allowed to read public discourse on these films by the people that these films were made for.
I do not need a 40-year-old white dude to tell me what didn’t work for him about “A Wrinkle in Time.” It wasn’t made for him. I wanna know what that film meant to women of color, to biracial women, to teen women of color, to teens that are biracial.
And for the third time, I don’t hate white dudes. These are just facts, these are not my feelings…I know that this means that my work will be shown, digested, discussed by a variety of people, not just a singular perspective. I wanna know what my work means to the world, not a narrow view.
Brie Larson’s speech at Crystal + Lucy Awards
[ref: SorrelGum]
For those statements, Brie Larson has been slammed by a lot of white males on the internet. Some went to the point of trying to take away potential earnings from “Captain Marvel” and even initiated the #AlitaChallenge, which simply means skipping “Captain Marvel” and watching “Alita: Battle Angel” instead.
Audience reaction to “Captain Marvel”
On review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes, the audience score of “Captain Marvel” sunk to as low as 34% (now up at 50%) while critics score hovered near 80%.
PostTrak show that 6 out of 10 “Captain Marvel” viewers are males (61% males against 39% females). By age group, males over 25 leads with 39%, followed by females over 25 at 24%.
“Captain Marvel” gets an “A” CinemaScore, which simply means that audiences loved it. Cinemascore grade ranges from A to F, and is based on a poll of moviegoers after they have seen the movie.
Captain Marvel is directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck. Brie Larson is joined by Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn, Jude Law, Annette Bening, Lashana Lynch, and Djimon Hounsou in the cast. The superhero movie is now showing in over 4,300+ screens in North America and in thousands of cinemas worldwide.
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