Marvel’s The Marvels stands as the biggest box office flop in the history of the MCU, having made less than $80 million domestically since it came out about a month ago, and while star Iman Vellani doesn’t care and is happy with the work she did, others are desperately looking for someone to blame. Disney CEO Bob Iger is one of those people, and he has decided to magnanimously blame himself and other Disney execs for the film’s struggles—in what may be the crappiest, most insulting way possible.
Iger fell on his sword (while waving his arms and shouting “look at me falling on this sword”) while at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit (via CNBC), saying that, since The Marvels was filmed during COVID (the virus is still around, for the record), there “wasn’t as much supervision on the set” from executives who would normally be “looking over what’s being done day after day after day.” In other words, the movie is bad because people like him weren’t hanging around on set and giving director Nia DaCosta constant notes.
Except the movie’s not bad, especially compared to some other Marvel movies that have come out recently. Its box office struggles almost certainly have more to do with marketing or general Marvel fatigue than anything that could’ve been solved on set, so pinning the movie’s problems on a lack of “supervision” does nothing but throw DaCosta (and the cast and crew who were on set) under the bus. It’s like when you make a mistake on a task that someone gives you and they say “it’s my fault for asking you to do it,” as if that’s not incredibly insulting. It’s a bad way to treat people, especially coming from a boss, and it’s not going to encourage good work from anyone in the future.