Why Godzilla: King of the Monsters underperformed at the box office
So, Godzilla: King of the Monsters has – perhaps inevitably – underperformed at the box office.
It's the least successful instalment of the MonsterVerse, opening to a disappointing $49 million domestically – almost half of 2014's Godzilla ($93 million) and behind even 2017's Kong: Skull Island ($61 million).
That's around $10 million less than the (low-end) expectations Warner Brothers had for the movie, which means executives will be praying to Mothra that Godzilla Vs Kong reverses the trend. (Spoiler alert: it won't.)
Why did King of the Monsters underperform? We have some theories. Let them fight!
No stars
This could be the biggest issue with King of the Monsters. It didn't contain a single bankable star. Now, we know, we know, neither did the MCU when it started (even Robert Downey Jr wasn't considered A-list enough to lead a comic book film back then), and most superhero movies have followed the same pattern.
But Godzilla isn't a superhero franchise, where the characters are the real stars. Sure, Godzilla's pretty iconic, but he/she doesn’t talk. Big G also doesn't have much of a backstory, or any kind of narrative arc (outside of smashing stuff up). So not the best dude to hang your wide appeal on.
When the biggest name on your marquee is Millie Bobby Brown, who hasn’t really done anything outside of a cult series on a streaming service, maybe it's time to consider hiring another casting director.
Incidentally, Brown also appears in Godzilla Vs Kong, alongside Alexander Skarsgård, Eiza González, and Demián Bichir. Yay?
Does anyone really care about Godzilla?
Don't get us wrong, the Godzilla movies have their fans. It's just a very limited group – and the majority of the members of that group are over 25, which isn't exactly the ideal target audience for a blockbuster that needs to make half a billion to be considered a success.
Oh, and you're probably going to need to bring in women at some point. Boys and men accounted for 76% of opening weekend moviegoers, with 59% of that group over the age of 25.
Gareth Edwards' Godzilla opened strong with a $38 million opening day. But following that $93 million opening weekend it only ended up making $200 million over its entire run.
That suggests the majority of people who were curious about the film rushed out to see it, then didn't tell their friends they needed to do the same.
That's a kaiju-sized problem, and it's slightly baffling that Warner Brothers decided to roll the dice on a $200 million-budgeted sequel on those numbers, especially factoring in the five-year gap between movies. If King of the Monsters follows the same pattern, it definitely won't earn back its budget.
When you add in the estimated $100 million marketing campaign, that's a potential sizeable loss. Speaking of the marketing campaign...
Self-important marketing campaign
Woah, boy. When are Warner Brothers going to learn that people don't want to see self-important blockbusters that end with a city being smashed up by four beings with enhanced strength any more? We're in 2019, people want to have fun. Just like they did in 2017 when Batman vs Superman came out.
As with BvS, the tone of the marketing campaign was very much THIS IS AN IMPORTANT FILM ABOUT IMPORTANT THINGS, which made it feel a bit like homework.
WB did well to hide the fact King of the Monsters is a metaphor for climate change (another box office killer – people don't like being told off during popcorn-munchers), but that obfuscation made the trailers feel like they were missing something, otherwise known as a plot.
There just wasn't enough in any of the marketing material to bring in an audience outside of the built-in (and, as we've outlined, limited) fanbase.
If WB want to bring in more people to Godzilla Vs Kong, they really, really need to sell it as a fun night out at the movies, as opposed to a sacred text that'll increase your IQ over the course of its 10-hour run time.
Rotten reviews
All of the above might have been circumnavigated (to a certain extent) if reviewers had loved the film. A tidal wave of five-star reviews with 'see it on the biggest screen possible' pull-quotes might have convinced audiences to switch off Netflix and clamber off their sofas to head into cinemas.
Unfortunately, King of the Monsters' mixture of unlikeable characters, messy themes, and general bombast turned critics off, leading to a 'rotten' ranking on Rotten Tomatoes.
Audiences use Rotten Tomatoes as a guide for how to spend their weekend, often only looking at the overall score, without even reading the full reviews. At the time of reporting, King of the Monsters has just 39% positive reviews.
Too soon after Endgame
Of course there's another factor WB should have seen coming.
By releasing King of the Monsters so soon after Avengers: Endgame, they totally assumed people would be ready for another lengthy effects-heavy sci-fi-infused blockbuster in which made-up characters grapple with other made-up characters in a battle on which the fate of the planet rests. They were wrong.
To be fair, we just bored ourselves writing that description, so we can kind of understand why just one of these films in the space of a few months is probably more than enough.
Endgame was so satisfying we don't want to see another MCU movie again for a while, let alone one of the (many) attempts to piggyback on the success of its crossover template.
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