Marvel Studios’ “Thor: Love and Thunder” took in $69 million on Friday (including previews) at the domestic box-office.
It’s a highly impressive debut and three day estimates are now in the $135-140 million range – making it the third biggest domestic opener of the year and ahead of the $122.7 million opening of its predecessor “Thor: Ragnarok”.
Those estimates are slightly down on the $150 million sky-high estimates the other day, but international is reportedly coming in ahead of expectation and so the anticipated global debut of $300 million is still on track.
The financial success comes as critics aren’t big on the film. On Rotten Tomatoes its score is dropping and is now at 68% (6.6/10) which is considerably closer to “Thor: The Dark World” at 66% (6.2/10) than the original “Thor” at 77% (6.7/10).
In fact it puts it as the fourth worst MCU film ahead of only “Eternals” at 47% (5.6/10), the aforementioned second “Thor,” and “The Incredible Hulk” 67% (6.2/10), and just behind “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” at 74% (6.5/10).
It’s a similar story on Metacritic where it’s coming in third last with a 57/100 behind only “Eternals” (52) and “Thor: The Dark World” (54). Both the original “Thor” and “Iron Man 2 ” also scored 57’s, but both had considerably higher user scores at 7.1 & 6.4 respectively (Love & Thunder sits at 5.7).
Audiences at the cinema seem to be in agreement. The film landed a B+ CinemaScore, tying with the recent “Doctor Strange” as the second-worst CinemaScore of any Marvel entry – the only worse one being “Eternals” with ‘B’. All 25 of the 28 prior MCU films, including all three previous “Thor” films, landed an A- or higher.
With a considerable budget of $250 million, the movie has to make considerable bank akin to the $854 million (or more) of its predecessor. How well it went with audiences could be revealed next week and whether the film suffers the kind of large 67% drop that this year’s “Doctor Strange” sequel did.
