Taika Waititi’s take on the God of Thunder was a resounding success when he first entered the MCU scene with Thor: Ragnarok. So, it was no surprise that he would be returning to take Chris Hemsworth on another wild and outrageous ride for a fourth outing. What was surprising, is how, this time around, Love and Thunder didn’t land quite as well as the director’s first rodeo.
While the initial reactions were oddly positive, when reviews started hitting, the reception was generally lukewarm. In fact, the project received a B+ CinemaScore. While that seems perfectly reasonable, it happens to be the second lowest for a Marvel Studios movie ever—Ragnarok got an A in comparison.
Well, now the hits keep coming for the franchise, as box office numbers for its second weekend have finally landed. Suffice to say, they aren’t nearly as exciting as some may have hoped.
Love and Thunder Suffers a Box Office Blow
Gitesh Pandya from Box Office Guru has revealed that Taika Waititi’s Thor: Love and Thunder has suffered one of the worst second-weekend drops in Marvel Studios’ history.
While the movie raked in $144 million domestically in its opening weekend, a Thor franchise best, over this last weekend, it faced a 67.7% drop off—pulling in $46 million. The previous entry in the Thor series, Thor: Ragnarok, dropped by only 53.5% comparatively.
Love and Thunder’s drop is worse than what occurred for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness when it opened up in May, where it dropped 67% in its second week. Black Widow suffered a slightly worse 67.8%, while Spider-Man: No Way Home landed at 62.2%. However, Deadline specifically noted that Tom Holland’s latest Spidey flick is an outlier in this equation due to when the holiday fell, not to mention how it made a significant amount of money every day of its first week of release.
Reddit user u/AvatarKanol pulled together a list of all MCU movies and their second-weekend drops; here are the ten worst that Marvel Studios has faced, with Thor: Love and Thunder officially arriving as the second-worst on the list:
- Black Widow - 67.8%
- Thor: Love and Thunder - 67.7%
- Spider-Man: No Way Home - 67.5%
- Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness - 67%
- Eternals - 62.3%
- Spider-Man: Homecoming - $62.2%
- Ant-Man and the Wasp - 61.6%
- Captain America: The First Avenger - 60.7%
- The Incredible Hulk - 60.1%
- Avengers: Age of Ultron - 59.4%
Thor Drops the Hammer
Thor: Love and Thunder’s word of mouth likely played a big factor in its massive drop. While people like to claim that reviews never affect the box office, that simply isn’t true.
A similar chain of events occurred for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which also received an identical CinemaScore. Two other films that had middling reviews, Eternals and Black Widow, also didn’t fare too well with their dropouts—with Eternals ironically being at the top of the pack, only dropping 61% in its second weekend.
Had reviews for Chris Hemsworth’s latest adventure been glowing, that drop would have almost certainly been far less. Though, of course, that’s only conjecture, and it’s impossible to know for sure.
Some fans have started questioning if Marvel Studios is pulling themselves too thin, seeing as many of the Phase 4 projects haven’t quite been blowing audiences away. Hopefully, viewers will start to see more consistent quality going forward as Marvel gets more comfortable with their current output and how it’s all managed.
After all, it’s safe to say that fans don’t want to see the MCU collapse anytime soon.
Thor: Love and Thunder is now playing in theaters worldwide.
