How Has Henry Cavill Already Beaten a Marvel Superhero Without Joining the MCU?

We Marvel fanatics have harbored a dream for long — of seeing Henry Cavill playing a superhero in the MCU. The speculations and hard-to-not-believe rumors have ranged from him joining the franchise as Sentry to making his franchise debut as Reed Richards. But clearly, the actor doesn’t need to be in the MCU to beat a Marvel superhero and sadly, it is not a cause for celebration.

For a while now, Cavill has been constantly promoting his recently released spy-comedy Argylle and we believed his words, celebrating that even though he is not the next James Bond yet, he now has the chance to play different spy roles, like the titular character in the Universal Pictures film… which is beating Titanic in terms of how fast it is sinking at the box office.

Instead of being the miracle that was expected to break Cavill’s dry spell when it comes to box office success, Argyle is swiftly shaping up to be 2024’s first massive failure that cost $200 million to produce and only managed to scrape together a $18 million opening. It is safe to say that unless the film is on its way to being a sleeper hit — the chances of which are rather slim based on early critic and audience reviews — director Matthew Vaughn will have to bid farewell to his dream of turning it into a trilogy.

Now, the performance of the film and the fact that Cavill manages to massively disappoint in the few minutes he gets in it was bound to drag forward those old criticisms of Zack Snyder somehow being responsible for the actor playing a glorified cameo role that doesn’t fit him. Yes, we are fully aware that the actor is nothing more than a cameo in the film, but the makers of the film wanted to cash in on his star power, which is evident in how heavily he is featured in the trailer and the film’s promotional material that hinted he had more than mere minutes in it.

So, yes, Argylle is a Henry Cavill failure, even though he barely has any screen time in it. It was a bad idea, so much so that this spoof-style Bond-isque disaster might blow away any chance he ever had of becoming 007.

But not only did Argylle surpass high expectations of success to become a box office bomb, it has also triggered conversations that given what a giant letdown the Cavill-cameo-starrer is proving to be, Sony Pictures’ Madame Web might even look better in comparison.

Starring Dakota Jonhson as its titular superhero, Madame Web doesn’t even have the initial protection Argylle had in the form of misplaced hopes. The superhero flick’s trailer and subsequent posters have left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth and led to almost unanimous pre-predictions of it tanking at the box office. 

But going the way Argylle is going, Madame Web might actually lose the crown of being February 2024’s most disappointing film as well. It has already lost out on being 2024’s first disaster after all.

The former is already stuck with terms like “box office misfire,” “bomb,” and “epic disaster” – I shudder to think how badly Madame Web would have to perform to beat it. So, unless Sony decides to break its track record of making bad Marvel films, it will simply suck, but not as much as Cavill managed to in less than 10 minutes.

Safe to say, I am a lot less eager to see Cavill in the MCU and a lot more worried about the franchise since the days of Sony’s Marvel characters (apart from Spidey) stubbornly not setting foot into the sacred Earth-616 are long over, which is concerning since Madame Web is running full speed in the direction becoming the next Morbius.

We Marvel fanatics have harbored a dream for long — of seeing Henry Cavill playing a superhero in the MCU. The speculations and hard-to-not-believe rumors have ranged from him joining the franchise as Sentry to making his franchise debut as Reed Richards. But clearly, the actor doesn’t need to be in the MCU to beat a Marvel superhero and sadly, it is not a cause for celebration.

For a while now, Cavill has been constantly promoting his recently released spy-comedy Argylle and we believed his words, celebrating that even though he is not the next James Bond yet, he now has the chance to play different spy roles, like the titular character in the Universal Pictures film… which is beating Titanic in terms of how fast it is sinking at the box office.

Instead of being the miracle that was expected to break Cavill’s dry spell when it comes to box office success, Argyle is swiftly shaping up to be 2024’s first massive failure that cost $200 million to produce and only managed to scrape together a $18 million opening. It is safe to say that unless the film is on its way to being a sleeper hit — the chances of which are rather slim based on early critic and audience reviews — director Matthew Vaughn will have to bid farewell to his dream of turning it into a trilogy.

Now, the performance of the film and the fact that Cavill manages to massively disappoint in the few minutes he gets in it was bound to drag forward those old criticisms of Zack Snyder somehow being responsible for the actor playing a glorified cameo role that doesn’t fit him. Yes, we are fully aware that the actor is nothing more than a cameo in the film, but the makers of the film wanted to cash in on his star power, which is evident in how heavily he is featured in the trailer and the film’s promotional material that hinted he had more than mere minutes in it.

So, yes, Argylle is a Henry Cavill failure, even though he barely has any screen time in it. It was a bad idea, so much so that this spoof-style Bond-isque disaster might blow away any chance he ever had of becoming 007.

But not only did Argylle surpass high expectations of success to become a box office bomb, it has also triggered conversations that given what a giant letdown the Cavill-cameo-starrer is proving to be, Sony Pictures’ Madame Web might even look better in comparison.

Starring Dakota Jonhson as its titular superhero, Madame Web doesn’t even have the initial protection Argylle had in the form of misplaced hopes. The superhero flick’s trailer and subsequent posters have left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth and led to almost unanimous pre-predictions of it tanking at the box office. 

But going the way Argylle is going, Madame Web might actually lose the crown of being February 2024’s most disappointing film as well. It has already lost out on being 2024’s first disaster after all.

The former is already stuck with terms like “box office misfire,” “bomb,” and “epic disaster” – I shudder to think how badly Madame Web would have to perform to beat it. So, unless Sony decides to break its track record of making bad Marvel films, it will simply suck, but not as much as Cavill managed to in less than 10 minutes.

Safe to say, I am a lot less eager to see Cavill in the MCU and a lot more worried about the franchise since the days of Sony’s Marvel characters (apart from Spidey) stubbornly not setting foot into the sacred Earth-616 are long over, which is concerning since Madame Web is running full speed in the direction becoming the next Morbius.