The summer movie season has been a wild ride, to be sure. While many films have performed as expected, for better or worse, we’ve seen just as many surprises, where films surprised us with strong box office or found themselves surprisingly struggling. No single studio has had more of that latter situation than Disney.
For years now, Disney has not only been the king of the summer movie season, but the king of the box office, period. The company routinely has multiple movies at the top of the box office and tends to dominate all other studios. Technically, that’s still the case even now, but it’s difficult to imagine Disney wasn’t expecting to be in a much better place after the summer than it is now.
Disney’s Haunted Mansion movie opened to a disappointing $24 million domestically. If it were an outlier, that would be one thing, but it’s actually been a summer like that for the studio. Even the movies that have put up bigger numbers have still not put up big enough numbers to be considered a success. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is Disney’s only big hit of summer 2023 and its highest-grossing movie of the year so far. So what did it do right that everything else did wrong?
Guardians 3 Was A Movie Fans Were Actually Waiting For
Part of the reason that Hollywood argues that it tends to fall back on franchises is because studios are only giving audiences what they want. If they liked a certain movie, then making a sequel to that movie makes sense. That’s true as far as it goes, but all of Disney’s projects from this summer, with the exception of Elemental, were sequels or otherwise based on popular IP, and they still failed to catch on.
Indiana Jones as a franchise will always be popular, and people love going on the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland, but that’s not the same thing as saying people were desperate to see movies based on them again. If we’d never gotten another Indiana Jones movie, the world would have kept spinning just fine. Maybe people were excited at the idea when a new Indy movie was announced nearly a decade ago, but a lot has happened since then.
On the other hand, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 was a movie fans wanted. You only need to look at the outcry that was spawned by James Gunn’s firing from the project to see that. While that firing delayed the movie by a couple of years, this was a story that fans wanted to see completed.
Guardians Of The Galaxy Has A Solid Track Record
It may sound somewhat simplistic to say, but the Guardians of the Galaxy movies are really good. The first entry shocked viewers when this group of misfit characters that were largely unknown, even among a lot of comic book readers, became one of the MCU’s biggest movies to date, and the sequel proved that this was not an accident. At a time when people are still going to fewer movies, there was confidence this one would be worth it.
The same certainly could not be said about Disney’s other offerings. The last Indiana Jones movie before Dial of Destiny was, and still is, seen as the worst of the series. Disney’s live-action remakes hadn’t had a solid hit since 2019’s The Lion King, and more recently, we got a critically-panned Pinocchio. The last time Disney made a Haunted Mansion movie, it didn’t work out either.
The Guardians of the Galaxy Are A Team Of Movie Stars
It’s been said that in an era where the major selling point of many tentpole movies is the character being played, it’s less important who the actors are that are playing them. There’s almost certainly some truth to that, but it’s hard to overlook the fact that Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 had some of the biggest names of the summer attached to it.
Between Marvel movies and the Avatar franchise, Zoe Saldana is one of the highest-grossing actors in the history of Hollywood. Chris Pratt stars in two of the top three movies of the year at the box office thanks to Guardians and the billion-dollar The Super Mario Bros. Movie. Add to them names like Vin Diesel and Bradley Cooper, and you have actors people love to see on screen.
Harrison Ford will go down in history as one of the biggest stars ever, but it’s difficult to argue that he has the same drawing power he once did. Halle Bailey is excellent in The Little Mermaid, and she may be a massive movie star one day, but we’re not there yet. Most Pixar movies tend to have big names in the lead voice roles, but Elemental was one that did not. Haunted Mansion had some great actors attached, but none of them were on par with the names in Guardians 3.
Fans Knew Not To Wait For Disney+
Studios had to figure out how to continue to do business during the pandemic closure of movie theaters, and with streaming already becoming a major priority for them, of course, it became an avenue for film releases. But Disney has perhaps inadvertently trained its audience to use its streaming service so well that it’s keeping them from going to theaters.
It’s already been argued by many that Disney’s decision to release three consecutive Pixar movies directly to Disney+ during the pandemic basically told the audiences that these were “streaming movies” and not “theatrical movies.” However, going back to 2019, the last five of Disney’s live-action remakes were either streaming-only releases or, in the case of Cruella and Mulan, were released as “Premier Access" films on Disney+ alongside limited theatrical releases. It's possible that The Little Mermaid was just as much of a victim.
What’s most important to note here is that of all the things that helped Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 succeed where other Disney projects failed, the fact that it’s a great movie had nothing to do with it. Many may even agree the threequel was the best of Disney’s summer slate, but those other movies are also good. Most critics liked them, and the audiences that have seen them have a favorable opinion. Sometimes just making a good movie isn't enough.
With its theatrical run concluded, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is now available to stream with a Disney+ subscription, and you can count on the other 2023 Disney movies mentioned in this piece eventually hitting the platform.
