Thor: Love and Thunder Suffers One of MCU's Worst Box Office Drops

Taika Waititi's interpretation of the God of Thunder was a smash hit when he first appeared in the MCU with Thor: Ragnarok. So it came a...

Taika Waititi's interpretation of the God of Thunder was a smash hit when he first appeared in the MCU with Thor: Ragnarok. So it came as no surprise that he would return for a fourth time to take Chris Hemsworth on another wild and outrageous ride. What was surprising was that Love and Thunder didn't perform as well as the director's first outing.

While the initial reactions were unusually positive, when the reviews came in, the response was generally lukewarm. In fact, the film received a B+ CinemaScore. While that appears to be perfectly reasonable, it is the second lowest for a Marvel Studios film ever—Ragnarok received an A in comparison.

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The hits keep on coming for the franchise, as box office figures for its second weekend have finally been released. To put it simply, they aren't as exciting as some may have hoped.

Love and Thunder Fails at the Box Office

Box Office Guru's Gitesh Pandya revealed that Taika Waititi's Thor: Love and Thunder had one of the worst second-weekend drops in Marvel Studios history.

While the film earned $144 million in its first weekend, a record for the Thor franchise, it saw a 67.7 percent drop in its second weekend, earning $46 million. In comparison, the previous entry in the Thor series, Thor: Ragnarok, dropped by only 53.5 percent.

Love and Thunder's drop is worse than Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which dropped 67 percent in its second week when it debuted in May. Black Widow received 67.8 percent, while Spider-Man: No Way Home received 62.2 percent.

However, Deadline specifically stated that Tom Holland's latest Spider-Man film is an outlier in this equation due to the timing of the holiday, not to mention how much money it made every day of its first week of release.

Reddit user u/AvatarKanol compiled a list of all MCU films and their second-weekend releases; here are the ten worst that Marvel Studios has faced, with Thor: Love and Thunder officially arriving as the second-worst:

1. Black Widow - 67.8%

2. Thor: Love and Thunder - 67.7%

3. Spider-Man: No Way Home - 67.5%

4. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness - 67%

5. Eternals - 62.3%

6. Spider-Man: Homecoming - $62.2%

7. Ant-Man and the Wasp - 61.6%

8. Captain America: The First Avenger - 60.7%

9. The Incredible Hulk - 60.1%

10. Avengers: Age of Ultron - 59.4%

Thor Drops the Hammer

Thor: Love and Thunder's massive drop was most likely influenced by word of mouth. While some claim that reviews have no effect on box office, this is simply not true.

A similar series of events unfolded for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which received the same CinemaScore. Two other films that received mixed reviews, as well as Black Widow, did not fare well with dropouts, with Eternals ironically leading the pack, dropping only 61 percent in its second weekend.

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If Chris Hemsworth's latest adventure had received rave reviews, that drop would almost certainly have been much lower. Of course, that's just speculation, and there's no way to know for sure.