“Why are they advertising that Suicide Squad movie now? Didn’t it come out 5 years ago?”
A major gap in the now enormous industry of producing nine-figure, blockbuster superhero movies is that the movie studios are missing an opportunity to retain audiences. No doubt more than half of the audience for Avengers: Endgame, which earned nearly $2.8 billion at the box office, was from moviegoers that were merely passing fans of the MCU. Maybe they accompanied a spouse or a kid to the movie. Most probably had never read a comic book before or since. Studios today assume audiences will just show up for the spectacle. But are they right? Take the trailers for competing superhero movie studio DC Entertainment’s The Suicide Squad. Nothing in the movie trailers–the only glimpse most prospective moviegoers will see via their TVs–explains why there is another movie called The Suicide Squad. Do they think most TV viewers catching the commercial notice the addition of the “The” in the title? Do they assume everyone still reads a newspaper or online entertainment source and is going to make an effort to understand that this new movie is different than the universally panned Suicide Squad of 2016? Do they really think most prospective movie ticket buyers know or care who the director is?
Which is why it’s refreshing, and a wise move, to see Kevin Feige, mastermind behind all the Marvel Cinematic Universe, discussing the background for the latest new Marvel superhero in a new short feature clip for Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.
