Although many industry observers doubted that the latest Thor movie could keep up its momentous run at the box office — especially with Justice League mere days from release — that hasn’t proven to be a problem for the Marvel-backed blockbuster. Not only has it continued to dominate the domestic box office, where it has already earned more than $215 million, but the international one as well.
In fact, about two third of its staggering $655 million dollar haul at the box office — that is, $440 million — has been from overseas markets, where it has broken box office record after box office record. Now, three weeks into its theatrical run, it can add two more to that total.
Thor: Ragnarok, in the short time since its release, has eclipsed the total overseas earnings of two of this year’s highest-grossing blockbusters: Logan and Wonder Woman. The former isn’t especially surprising. Despite being a smash hit with both critics and audiences, Logan carried the international equivalent of an R-rating with it wherever it went. This means that, despite amazing reviews and word of mouth, less people were able to see it than your typical, teen-friendly, PG-13 rated superhero movie. Despite this, Logan made a commanding $390 million internationally: a figure that Ragnarok has already passed by $50 million.
It’s newfound lead over Wonder Woman is what I personally find far more surprising. Thor, for all intents and purposes, has always been a B-list marvel hero: a convenient strongman for giant-sized boss battles and a fun character to team up with others, but never much of a key player in Marvel’s larger comic line. He was a founding member of the Avengers, sure, but that team was originally designed as a repository of less-popular Marvel heroes that weren’t able to support their own, dedicated books. And honestly, how many movie-goers knew who the magical space Viking with the unpronounceably-named hammer was?
Wonder Woman, however, is one of the premiere names in all of superheroism. She is the big name when it comes to superheroines and one of DC’s iconic “trinity:” up there with Batman and Superman. She’s been a UN good will ambassador, the star of a hit TV series and, most recently, the breakout success story of the summer box office (despite the overwhelmingly negative reception to other recent DC movies and the studio’s apparent apathy toward the project in general).
Wonder Woman made a mind-blowing $821 million dollars worldwide: making it the second-highest grossing movie of the summer (only losing out to Spider-Man: Homecoming in the eleventh hour of their respective releases). Nearly half of that amount — $409 million — came from foreign markets, showing that the whole world would willingly embrace a good movie when they saw it, despite being a part of a perplexingly terrible franchise.
Yet Thor: Ragnarok beat them both in less than a month. What’s more is that the film shows no signs of slowing down, either at home or abroad, despite Warner Bros’ Justice League muscling in on what can easily be presumed to be the exact same demographic starting this weekend.
The next superhero films to beat for Thor 3 are the year’s two other Marvel movies: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, which earned $473 million internationally, and Spider-Man: Homecoming, which earned $545 million. Guardians of the Galaxy shouldn’t prove much of a challenge for the God of Thunder and the needed $33 million needed to match it should be easily obtainable this weekend (maybe even before it). Spider-Man‘s haul might prove to be a little harder to overtake, but is absolutely still in reach. Even with having to contend with Justice League, it’s got a long theatrical shelf-life still to come.
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