Last weekend, Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania suffered the biggest second weekend drop ever for a Marvel movie and the worst drop ever for a superhero flick that opened to over $100 million. Quantumania is also only the second MCU movie to get a rotten rating on Rotten Tomatoes, where it's currently hovering one percentage point above Eternals.

Since Spider-Man: No Way Home, none of Marvel's movies have made it to the billion dollar mark at the global box office. 2022 was the first year since 2014 that the top two at the global box office didn't include a Marvel or Star Wars movie (save the pandemic-hit 2020, when neither franchise released a movie). As for the MCU movies that were released in 2022, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever underperformed its predecessor by almost $500 million.

RELATED: Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania Is A New Low For The MCU

The MCU has been showing signs of shakiness for a while now. Back in 2021, Eternals almost certainly lost money, grossing $400 million on a $200 million budget. Without a Spider-Man to redeem them, 2022 belonged to Avatar: The Way of Water and Top Gun: Maverick, and Marvel struggled to keep up.

eternals diversity

DC also had a flop on its hands with Black Adam, which was estimated to cost between $190 and $260 million and only made $393 million at the box office. Meanwhile, the upcoming Shazam! Fury of the Gods is projected to open at anywhere between $35 million to $52 million, a range that puts it below its predecessor either way. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is reportedly undergoing significant post-production changes after getting awful responses from test screening audiences.

You might say that I'm cherry-picking examples and that the news for superhero movies isn't all doom and gloom. That's true. Though the MCU was beaten by Avatar and Top Gun in 2022, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness still managed a number four finish at the global box office, which doesn't exactly spell catastrophe. But Ant-Man 3 and Eternals have proved that the MCU isn't untouchable, though it seemed so for a long time.

The whole enterprise seemed unlikely when it began. In 2023, it's easy to forget that Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America weren't A-list characters when their first movies debuted. Kevin Feige managed something unprecedented with his hands tied behind his back, building a franchise that now spans 31 movies and eight Disney+ shows without the solid foundation that established characters like Spider-Man and the X-Men would have provided.

Scott and Hope in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

In the process, Feige was able to make C and D-list characters — at least in terms of broader cultural awareness — like Ant-Man and the Guardians of the Galaxy into well-known, box office conquering icons. But, 15 years out from Iron Man, it seems like the MCU is paying for the hubris of thinking that any character could be a star. Thirty-one films deep — mostly financial successes — it seemed reasonable that audiences would continue to show up in the same numbers. The problem is Marvel has released a series of movies that look increasingly rushed and often feel like they exist to set up other, better movies down the line.

The last year or so of MCU performance seems to suggest that audiences and critics are getting tired of that. Critics seem to be taking the gloves off, awarding the franchise its first two Rotten movies. And audiences seem less willing to show up for movies that don't have good word of mouth, whether it's Marvel or DC making them.

Well-reviewed movies and/or the ones with big heroes, like Batman or Spider-Man, are still making a dent at the box office. The era of superheroes may not be ending. But the era of audiences being willing to show up for anything with the Marvel or DC stamp on it seems to be over.

NEXT: The MCU Is Finally Entering Its Villain Era