But people knew Avatar 2 was gonna be more Avatar that they at least liked to some degree. I thought it was a shit movie (even worse than the recent Marvel stuff), it was a unique experience with the 3D and all that, it had something you don't really get from anything else. Yeah, I know MCU movies that weren't great made tons of money but people also cared about the overall MCU plot and characters so even if a movie wasn't amazing or anything, it was worth the watch. Now, what is the actual appeal of the MCU post-Endgame? Sure, just one movie isn't gonna derail it but when we did a complete phrase and there's no plot-line or characters people care about anymore, people will stop going to see these movies. The Flash did horrible because no one cares about the DCEU and everyone knows it's dead and James Gunn is rebooting the whole thing. The only thing The Flash had going for it was Michael Keaton's Batman, that's literally the only reason I saw it. Even Disney knew Elemental was gonna be a stinker because they gave up on the marketing and didn't even try because why put more money into something you know is gonna lose money?Nobody was exactly looking forward to Avatar 2. It didn't really ride the wave of popularity of the first movie afterall. And really not great blockbusters have been making huge profits for decades. Whether Thor 4, Black Panther 2, and The Enternals are worse than The Flash didn't stop them from having a better box office, and The Flash utterly tanking.
There's something else going on here. A lot of these June/July releases - Indy 5, The Flash, Elemental, Ruby Gilman; Teenaged Kraken - are movies that typically make a decent return, quality be damned. Though Elemental seems to be pulling itself up somewhat. It could be overcrowding, it could be audiences not exactly being in a movie going mood this summer, it could be streaming services having made people less willing to leave their homes and pay for tickets, or it's all of the above. Also, China being less welcoming to foreign blockbusters now also probably has something to do with it.
But to say that general audiences suddenly colllectively just got picky about the quality of blockbusters is doubtful. Not to say general audiences are just stupid, but most people who go to the movies usually do so as a night out, and they'll watch whatever is the new big movie. Same for families who take their kids to watch the next big animated movie.
I'm not saying that people care about a movie being good, but the chances of it being good. I know Mission Impossible will be trying it's hardest to be good so I'll go see it, I'm not going to try to figure out if it's good (by looking at reviews or even just the RT score) because I like going into a movie as blind as possible. The fact that the new MI is good or not isn't that big of a factor, it's going in knowing it could be really good that matters. I already know that The Marvels is gonna be shit, I knew that Indy 5 was gonna be shit (the trailer using Sympathy for the Devil was enough to know it wasn't gonna be an Indy movie I wanted to see). What they could've and should've done with the Indy franchise was to make it similar to James Bond where you just replace the actor and just continue making similar movies and don't really care about canon and whatnot.
Funny how I mentioned theaters being overpriced as one of the reasons. Also, you apparently have no idea what goal posting is and just throw it out because it's something you think you win arguments automatically with.Like I said before, I'll say it again: June was overcrowded and all of theaters overcharge the price for food, drinks, and tickets. There's a reason why I rarely ever go to an evening show now. Been that way for a good long while now. We already gave the reasons, he just don't want to listen and keeps goal posting like usual. I don't even bother wasting your breath at this point.