The Flash vs Beetlejuice Beetlejuice! More Excitement for Beetlejuice Than Batman? What Happened?
Over the last two years, Michael Keaton has returned to two of his most iconic characters, Batman and Beetlejuice. One movie succeeded at the box office, while the other failed at the box office. Why were people more excited for Keaton’s return to Beetlejuice than his return as Batman? What Happened? Let’s talk about it!
The Box Office Numbers: When it comes to something like this, I feel like it’s important to talk about the box office numbers and the big differences between The Flash and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice in terms of box office. In case you didn’t know and you were living under a rock in 2023, The Flash bombed hard at the box office. It did not do great numbers, it was projected to open about $70. At first that seemed a bit low, considering it’s Michael Keaton’s return as Batman. All of the multiverse films prior had big opening weekends, a lot of them over $100 million. The actual opening weekend numbers came out and it was $55 million. About $15 million less than what the projections were saying. The movie was dead on arrival, there was no interest, no buzz for that movie. One thing to keep in mind here, The Flash ended its worldwide run at $271 million, against a $200 million budget. The rule of thumb, when determining a movie’s profitability. It needs to make 2.5 to 3 times its budget. The Flash, only made 1.3 times its budget. Its domestic run ended at $108.1 million, 51% of that came from its opening weekend. I believe it has the third biggest second weekend drop off for a comic book movie behind The Marvels and Joker: Folie A Deux. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice came out about two months ago and it’s still making money. The numbers of its box office will go up. The day that I’m writing this, it’s made $284 million domestically. I don’t think it’s going to make $300 million domestically, but it’s going to come very close. Worldwide, it’s pushing $450 million against a $100 million budget. This movie is already profitable, it became profitable weeks ago. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice made $111 million in its opening weekend. This movie made more in its domestic opening than The Flash did in its entire domestic run. That’s crazy! With all of that information out of the way, it’s time to ask that question: why did Beetlejuice Beetlejuice make people more excited for Keaton’s return to Beetlejuice then The Flash did for Keaton’s Batman?
Why?
- THE FLASH: I think the main reasons for this comes down to why The Flash bombed hard at the box office. There’s several different reasons why that movie bombed at the box office. I did several blog posts last summer talking about its box office. I think there’s three reasons why this movie bombed hard at the box office. First up, the DCEU brand was broken, that universe broke a lot of trust with people. WB wasn’t managing it well, people thought they disrespected Henry Cavill and Ben Affleck. Beyond that, we knew the DCEU was ending. So all of the movies from last year either underperformed or bombed at the box office. There was just this sense of “so what” with the 2023 DCEU movies, because nobody cared because we all knew they meant nothing after this year. Kind of tied to that, there’s superhero fatigue. People aren’t tired of comic book movies, they’re tired of mediocre comic book movie fatigue. If a comic book movie is great and worth seeing, they’ll go see it. The Flash was very polarizing, it does have its fans. But there’s a lot of people burned out on the genre, so if they hear it’s not that good plus it doesn’t matter why would they even bother in seeing it. Second, summer 2023 has a stacked year of movies. Every week of the summer, there were new summer blockbusters hitting theaters. Two weeks before we got The Flash, Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse came out that of course got much better reviews and was another multiverse movie. People didn’t want to go see another multiverse comic book movie because they saw it two weeks ago. Third, people weren’t all that excited for Michael Keaton’s return as Batman. To a certain generation of people, Michael Keaton is fundamental to their childhoods. Back in the 80s and 90s, all you had was him and Christopher Reeves. To a certain group of people, having Michael Keaton return as Batman was awesome. But to younger generations and middle schoolers, people didn’t care. I thought it was cool because I love Michael Keaton in general and as Batman. I thought it was very cool that we were getting Keaton returning as Batman using the multiverse. Once again, there’s a lot of other reasons factoring into the movie’s failure. People could argue the scandals with Ezra Miller also factored into it. Sure, we can debate this for hours. But I think those are the three main reasons as to why the film bombed. Perhaps if the DCEU was handled better and they announced at the beginning 2023, that the DCEU ends with Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. The air was let out of the balloon for this movie, people didn’t care.
- BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE: This is one of the surprise hits of the year, I don’t know what I expected this movie to do. This movie is doing very well at the box office, I wasn’t expecting it to have the legs it’s gotten. I didn’t grow up watching the original movie, I watched it for the first time leading up to the release of the new one. One of the big things that helped this movie was its release date, which hurt The Flash. This movie came out the beginning of September, to most it was the movie that started the fall 2024 movie season. I think this type of movie plays great in the spooky season. This movie feels like a great kick off to Halloween season. It’s not a full on horror movie, but there’s spooky elements that very much is a family friendly horror movie. Therefore, people are in the middle of spooky movies. But not everybody likes horror movies, so Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is that perfect spooky movie for those who aren’t horror fans. Even though it's been playing for six or seven weeks now, it’s still going strong at the box office. A large part of that goes back to its still spooky season, so people want to go see it. If this movie came out in October, it only had three weeks till the spooky season this movie probably wouldn’t have done as well. Because as soon as November 1st roles around, people move past Halloween and are focused on Christmas. Another thing to consider here, Jenna Ortega is beloved by my generation. A lot of people have been saying she’s this generation's Winona Ryder, some have thrown out calling her a modern scream queen. She seems to enjoy working with Tim Burton, just like Ryder did early on in her career. Even some data was released about the movie’s box office. Something like 20% of the movie goers, went because they wanted to see Jenna Ortega interact with Winona Ryder. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice isn’t a horror movie, but it fits into the horror genre. Ortega with being in Scream and X, have very much dipped her toe into horror. Of course, Wednesday fits nicely into this genre as well. I think the other big reason to factor in here, this was a career comeback for Tim Burton. He’s been a legend for 40 years now, Beetlejuice was one of those movies that propelled him in popularity. Over the last 10 years, it seems like Burton had lost his way. The magic of his earlier films wasn’t there. He was doing projects like Alice in Wonderland and Dumbo, where he felt like a director for hire. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice felt like a return to form for him. He has such a massive fan base, that people that missed this unique style that was so present in the 90s and 2000s were happy that he was back. People rushed to see his new movie that felt like a return to form.
CLOSING THOUGHTS: This is an interesting analysis of the two, because who’s more important in pop culture? Batman or Beetlejuice? Of course, it’s Batman. He’s much more infused in popular culture then Beetlejuice is. Michael Keaton is one of the defining Batman, we owe him a lot to getting us where the genre is today and what it’s turned into. Maybe part of the problem is that Keaton’s Batman is very dated. It’s not a version of the character that younger generations latch onto. Since Keaton stopped being with his Batman movies in 1992, we’ve gotten several different variations of the character. Including what most people consider the best version of the character, Christian Bale. We also have Robert Pattinson’s Batman that’s getting a lot of praise right now. There’s a sense in which the more new Batman we get, the more the older ones become a distant memory. But with Beetlejuice, we only have one of him and that’s Michael Keaton. It’s not like they were cranking out sequels to this movie, they waited 36 years for a sequel. Beetlejuice is one of Keaton’s more iconic characters, therefore people were excited to see him in the role again. But there wasn’t this fatigue surrounding the Beetlejuice character or brand. There is something interesting about the fact that one of Keaton’s returns exceeded expectations while the other one came in below expectations.
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