Yahoo Movies Blue Beetle was always going to struggle at the box office
There's an easy narrative stemming from Blue Beetle topping the US box office with a softer-than-expected debut.
For some, it's the latest DC flop after the studio's other 2023 releases, Shazam! Fury of the Gods and The Flash, both suffered at the box office. It can't really be superhero fatigue as Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 and Across the Spider-Verse have both done well, so it must be Blue Beetle's fault.
But as much as labelling a movie a flop after its opening weekend is jumping the gun (after all, look at Elemental crossing $450 million after a slow start), it's also reductive. In Blue Beetle's case, the wider context of its release has to be considered.
Blue Beetle might eventually be objectively labelled a box-office flop if it doesn't rebound or sustain a long run, but it's also likely that it never really stood a chance in the first place.
Unlike its fellow DC releases in 2023 (or even Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania if we wanted to extend beyond DC), Blue Beetle didn't have to overcome poor reviews.
Its current Rotten Tomatoes score of 76% is solid, if unremarkable, and there's a lot of positivity in the critical response. The audience appears to like it too with a 92% audience score currently, although a B+ CinemaScore isn't the perfect rating. It's reflective that even though the movie might have its issues, it's still an enjoyable superhero outing.
In different circumstances, it's the kind of warm reaction that should have led to bigger opening numbers. However, the market that Blue Beetle is opening into is anything but normal, despite the recent Barbenheimer success.
For one, the ongoing strikes meant that none of its cast, including Cobra Kai star Xolo Maridueña, could do promotion for the movie. It was left to director Ángel Manuel Soto to take on promotional duties alone and he's just not the same draw as its stars.
It was reported recently by The Hollywood Reporter that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem's box-office earnings were hurt by 15% due to the cast's inability to promote the movie. While it might be a new take on the Turtles, it's still a movie based on an existing and well-known brand.
Blue Beetle might have his fans in DC Comics, but you can't call the character a well-known property. It's hard to quantify exactly how much the lack of promotion hurt at the box office, but it certainly didn't help in trying to establish a new superhero for the wider audience.
Origin movies have never been guaranteed hits, even in the all-conquering MCU, and it usually takes a sequel for a character to bring in the big bucks. This has become especially prevalent in an era when we've seen so many superheroes, leading to the likes of Shang-Chi ($432.2 million) and Eternals ($401.7 million) struggling.
Blue Beetle needed that wider promotion from its cast to break out into the wider cinemagoing audience. It's not hard to imagine that there are many who didn't even know it was coming out because of a lack of promotion on, for instance, the late-night chat show circuit in the US.
On top of that, the fact that Blue Beetle wasn't even promoted at Comic-Con marked a missed opportunity to build hype. An early screening for Blue Beetle, in the same way The Flash built early praise, could have made a difference, even if the cast wouldn't have been able to attend.
But as well as having an issue with a wider audience, Blue Beetle faced the same DC-specific issues that hampered Shazam! Fury of the Gods and The Flash.
Fans know there's a new universe coming, but there's confusion about what that means right now, leading to apathy towards 2023's DC releases. James Gunn might have said that Blue Beetle is the "first DCU character", but he muddied the waters by saying it wasn't the first DCU movie.
It would have been a shame to delay Blue Beetle to 2024, but perhaps the confusion would have been lessened if it had been moved to after Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (assuming that still comes out at Christmas). There's no connections to the current DC universe in Blue Beetle, so it wouldn't have impacted the movie at all.
As if these outside issues weren't enough for Blue Beetle, it's possible that its opening weekend will have been impacted by Tropical Storm Hilary in the US.
It's currently estimated to deliver a $25.4 million debut, but its actual Sunday gross might be lower. Whatever happens, it will still be the lowest debut for a DC movie bar Wonder Woman 1984 ($16.7 million), and that movie was released at a time when cinemas were operating with limited capacities.
Would it have been a much higher debut without the storm? Probably not as a result of everything we've discussed. It's certainly an extra factor though that will be needed to be taken into consideration when viewing the debut in the coming months.
In light of everything, perhaps Blue Beetle might have stood a better chance if it was released directly to HBO Max as originally planned.
As the first live-action superhero movie with a Latino lead, it absolutely deserved its big-screen outing so we're glad it did get a cinema release. However, a streaming debut would have freed it from the inevitable discussion about whether or not it's a flop.
Arguably more people would have seen it on streaming and given it a chance when they wouldn't necessarily go to the cinema for it. Maybe then the conversation would have been about how it's a travesty that the movie didn't get the cinema release it deserved.
Maybe that happened in an alternate universe. In the one we're in though, Blue Beetle has found itself part of a harsh debate that shouldn't be as simple as whether it's a flop or not.
Blue Beetle is out now in cinemas.
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