Are Big Franchise Movies About Side Characters Over?

Are Big Franchise Movies About Side Characters Over?

People seem to prefer waiting to catch movies about the main character’s cousin via streaming.

The new Supergirl movie is pretty good! But it starts with a shot of a dog peeing on a newspaper story about Superman, which wasn’t such a great idea, for a few reasons. Despite that shaky start, once the story picks up some steam and reveals why Supergirl is perpetually aloof, snarky, and drunk, it hits some emotional beats that make it stand out. In a lot of ways, it’s the DC equivalent to Marvel’s Thunderbolts from last year, a movie that was also about the relatives of more famous MCU characters dealing with the one-two-three punch of trauma, loss, and purposelessness.

You know what people don’t want to pay money to see in theaters? Purposelessness. It’s a contagious feeling. When the characters on screen aren’t sure why they are there, we’re bound to ask the same question. That very question is leading a lot of would-be blockbuster movies to underperform (relative to their budgets) at the box office. At the same time, more mainstream-unfriendly R-rated movies about characters who are intensely driven towards their respective goals, like Backrooms and Obsession, are raking in way more cash than expected. Sure, their protagonists are probably doomed, but at least they know what they want.

From a metatextual perspective, it makes perfect sense that many bigger films from older franchises are having this crisis of both identity and purpose. Take the sequel trilogy of the Star Wars series. Were they metaphors for how their writers and directors were working under the thumb of Disney, trying to do right by their hero George Lucas, while also trying to find their own unique stories to tell? Maybe. But regardless of whether or not they intentionally reflected the struggles of their creative teams, they ultimately didn’t find a larger story that resonated with people like the Lucas-era movies did, with each entry in the trilogy selling fewer tickets than the last.

Then you have The Mandalorian and Grogu, a movie that also underperformed. It spun off from a TV series about two characters that have almost nothing to do with the central Star Wars “Republic/Rebellion/Resistance against the Droid Army/Empire/First Order” conflict, with a movie that largely maintained the “side story” feeling of the show. Having a “problem of the week” movie about relatable-but-ultimately-inconsequential characters going on adventures led to the lowest-grossing Star Wars film ever, even though that material worked great on TV. But when a story doesn’t seem headed somewhere specific, audiences don’t pay attention to every second of story. In fact, a lot of people might say it’s less work to watch a show that you can just throw on in the background while you talk to your kids or text your friends, without worrying about missing some “important” story beat in a larger plot that will span multiple chapters across multiple mediums. 

And it can’t be understated just how much the old way of doing Star Wars movies, as well as the 23-film MCU Infinity Saga, got people to feel like it was “important” to go see these movies in theaters. When Star Wars abandoned that structure in favor of stand-alone films and TV shows, and the MCU’s overarching plot grew too spread out (between all those movies and shows) to have a central threat or cohesive theme, people dropped off in droves. That’s because these days, no matter how recognizable your brand is, people are going to wait to see your movie on streaming unless it’s seen as “an event”.

So, if you start your movie with a dog peeing on a newspaper article about the main character of your current overarching, multi-film story, you are telling your audience that you’re not too concerned about that overarching story.  For Supergirl, that would be all well and good if there were a massive audience of people who already know and care a ton about her, (or Kara Kent, Linda Lee Danvers, Matrix, or any of the other version of Supergirl floating around out there). But it’s not clear that there are many people out there who feel that kind of investment in her at present. And just being a good-to-great movie isn’t going to get their butts in seats without prior investment to tip them over.

Supergirl will still likely do better than Sony’s “Not Venom” movies about Spider-Man’s villains. Those failed experiments were about side characters, and they weren’t especially well made, so the only surprising thing about how they were received is that Sony refused to stop making them. But Supergirl probably won’t do as well, at least in terms of hitting expectations, as the Spider-Noir TV show. That’s also about a side character, but it’s pretty well done, and more importantly, it’s a TV show. Therefore, it doesn’t need big event status to hit the mark and maybe even get a second season. Supergirl probably won’t do as well as any of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies either, which also weren’t about side characters. They were about complete unknowns, not unlike the DCU’s Peacemaker, who ended up finding a huge audience by giving people something totally new and unexpected.

In short, being a side character like the second Captain America, the new Black Widow, Superman’s cousin, the grandson of the guy from the first Tron, the gorilla reboot of Optimus Prime, Wart, or even the lead of an old toy franchise, all mean you can’t claim to be the anchor to an “important” event film in a larger narrative, and you also can’t lean into any “fresh new idea” underdog energy either. You’re sort of stuck being the second fiddle in the larger establishment: an unfruitful middle ground that we can expect Hollywood to avoid more as time goes on. So don’t be too surprised if Avengers Doomsday leads to the permanent death of more than a handful of the side characters who have led many MCU films since Endgame. Right now, Red Guardian and Nightcrawler are probably worth more dead than alive. Their deaths would be super sad, which would translate to an eventful film… and that’s all that really matters to Hollywood these days.