Batman Vs. Superman Blamed For Captain America: Civil War Lower Box Office

So why didn’t Captain America: Civil War open to $200 million at the box office? Blame Batman Vs. Superman?!

According to John Campea, who is known around the movie blogosphere, the negative response to Batman Vs. Superman affected Captain America: Civil War‘s box office.

Campea argues most of the general audience doesn’t know the difference between a DC and a Marvel film, and that since they didn’t like Batman Vs. Superman, the audience figured they wouldn’t like Captain America: Civil War as well, so some didn’t bother to go out and see it.

While Batman vs. Superman might seem like a good scapegoat, could the lower box office draw for Captain America: Civil War have anything to do with the fact that Avengers: Age Of Ultron wasn’t as well received as either The Avengers or Captain America: Winter Soldier? Perhaps some of the audience figured since Avengers 2 wasn’t that good, that Civil War wouldn’t be as good as well?

Or could it have been as simple as Civil War not being titled Avengers 3? General audiences might not have realized Civil War was essentially a third Avengers film and chalked it up to another Captain America movie, which obviously sees less of a draw than Avengers.

Or we could even argue that Captain America: Civil War simply wasn’t that good of a movie. Word-of-mouth may have caused the lower Captain America: Civil War box office draw as perhaps not enough buzz was created as Marvel played it too safe with the movie by not killing any characters (like the comics) or really anything important happening at all. Is Captain America: Civil War a “must see” movie? Looking at the big picture, it doesn’t seem so.

We all know Cap and Iron Man will make up and reteam for Avengers: Infinity War, right? So aside from the cool special effects seeing the Avengers battling each other, what was so good about the storyline? They killed off Crossbones right away (lame). Daniel Bruhl’s villain was rather bland until he teased more at the end (at least in my opinion), and Tony Stark seemed out of character. In addition, Spider-Man, Ant-Man, Black Panther and Hawkeye were shoehorned in to the movie (good or bad), which felt oddly enough pretty similar to Batman Vs. Superman‘s Justice League characters.

I could also argue Marvel and Disney – once again – revealed way too much footage online, which may have caused Captain America: Civil War to come off as rather underwhelming, which, in my opinion, is what happened with Avengers 2.

Another question to consider: Is it possible Marvel made a mistake by greenlighting Captain America: Civil War as a direct result of Warner Bros. announcing Batman Vs. Superman? Since when does Marvel play catch-up?

Perhaps the blame is not with the direct competition, but right in the mirror on this one?