I agree with this. I’ve seen a bunch of these movies and honestly have no idea what they were building to. And I was a nerdy kid who read comic books as a kid (although, to be fair, not these comic books specifically). I expect the vast majority of audience members are even less invested than I am.
I almost added this disclaimer myself, but didn’t. There isn’t a worldwide adjusted for inflation chart, so I don’t have exact apples to compare with. If you compare the non-adjusted worldwide to non-adjusted US ranks, they aren’t that different, so I still claim that the adjusted chart is better data.
Also, international audiences skew toward big-budget action movies in a way that I don’t really think equates to “anticipation” the way the OP is suggesting. Car chases and cool special effects work in any language, but when you go see the newest blockbuster superhero movie, are you really invested and anticipating the next installment? To generalize pretty broadly, international audiences are like me with respect to superhero movies. Sure, I’ll go see one. They’re fun and exciting and great on the big screen. But do I care about a multi-film plot arc? Not really.
Those two points strongly support my claim that whatever bias you get from ignoring international audiences is smaller than the bias from ignoring inflation over many decades.
I have actually heard of it. My teenagers are fairly big pop culture and nerd fans… but I have to say that this is barely a blip on the radar. The Phantom Menace by a mile!
I think there was far more interest in HP7(and 8) and how they were going to handle some of the scenes. So even though the ending was known Harry Potter movies anticipation.
But I just looked online to buy tickets… and I can’t but not only that there is no mention of at what date ticket sales would open. So definitively even Marvel doesn’t think this is the most anticipated movie.
Listen, I don’t think Endgame is the most Anticipated move of all time. I think Last Jedi and Phantom Menace are above it. And it’s hard to separated the hype for this with the hype for Infinity War since it’s really two parts of the same movie (regardless of what the Russo’s say). But the people acting like there’s no hype for this movie are just kidding themselves. It’s clearly the most anticipated movie this year. If we were pre-YouTube/Fandango there would be people camping out for tickets and going to see a crappy movie just to see the trailer.
I just remembered Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. There was huge anticipation for that after Spock’s death in The Wrath of Khan and the will-he, won’t-he shifting word from Leonard Nimoy regarding whether he would ever return to play Spock again.
I run with a different crowd. Sure, I’ve heard of/about Endgame, and will watch it when it comes to streaming. The big movie I’m worked up about is Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time In Hollywood.
I won’t be around to see it, but if the 75th anniversary of the release of TPM, A:EG, etc inspires a major university press to release a sumptious book about the making of those movies, then I’ll concede that those movies hype equaled GWTW in hype. But only equaled.
I, too, am far more looking forward to QT’s 9th movie than Marvel’s 10^10^10th.
Yup, it crashed the entire AMC site from 8am to about 4pm yesterday. I managed to get my ticket for opening night in IMAX at 7:50 right before it all went down!
… which brings to my mind the thought that it may be that Michael Eisner is among the greatest CEO’s ever. People talk about Apple’s success under Jobs, and it’s very impressive, but in 1983 Eisner took over an organization just as dilapidated… if not more so… than 1997-era Apple, turned it into an entertainment and earnings machine, and even just as important, developed a culture which could build upon success - something I haven’t seen much of with Tim Cook.