6 Years Ago, This Superhero Movie Was Supposed To Start a New MCU Rival (but Was a Huge Box Office Bomb)

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The second Wonder Woman‘s $46.8 million domestic haul was, naturally and expectedly, far less than a movie of its size was accustomed to making during normal times. But compared to Bloodshot, with Vin Diesel, it made a killing. And Bloodshot didn’t even simultaneously release on a streaming service. When it was made available to rent less than two weeks later, it still failed to develop much of a fanbase, resulting in the first part of an intended universe that failed to get the universe off the ground. What happened with Bloodshot? Let’s find out.

What Went Wrong With Bloodshot?

Bloodshot was intended to be the first installment in a Valiant Comics shared cinematic universe. Valiant is the publisher behind Doctor Mirage, Ninjak, Shadowman, and Rai. Not quite name-brand individuals, but neither were the Guardians of the Galaxy when James Gunn’s movie took off.

Bloodshot is almost certainly their most recognizable name and or character design. All of the nanites injected in his blood have given him a crisp white skin tone with only a red circle over his chest standing out. And, if you’re looking at the character on the pages of the comics, you’d see that Diesel was a fine choice to play him. But the movie really couldn’t be any blander.

What you have with Bloodshot is a standard memory lapse movie. The character has to slowly piece together what happened in their past only to come to a startling realization. In that comes the only thing about Bloodshot that is clever. Not so much its plotline, but the fact that it, like Memento, features Guy Pearce.

It wouldn’t be fair to say that Bloodshot is the worst superhero movie of the 2020s but it never really does have a moment that makes a case for it being worth a $45 million investment. Its action scenes are chaotic in a fun way, and its visuals are stronger than one might expect from a modestly budgeted IP movie, but there’s not much here you can’t find done better elsewhere.

That was clear from the trailers, which sold the movie as muddled and generic. By the time it left theaters it had only accrued $39.9 million worldwide and, once more accessible via rental, it never generated the following that makes a movie a cult hit. A sequel was announced towards the tail end of 2020, but nothing has come of it, and when there’s no forward momentum for five and a half years, you basically have your answer on the sequel’s status.

Stream Bloodshot on fuboTV.

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