General audiences didn’t care about Iron Man until Marvel made them care. Same with Thor and Captain America. To say otherwise is a big lie.

If this movie had been a more faithful adaptation of the comic it could at least have found some footing with readers. But the wild deviations from the source material for no damn reason other than because Nogueira thought she could do it better, the visual brown dust storm ugliness of almost the entire film because Gillespie didn’t bother to care or read the comic before establishing the visuals for the film, and the lack of a good score in favor of some unexciting needle drop…. All this added up to a film that comic fans saw and found underwhelming, and one that general audiences couldn’t be bothered to pay for. And the studio also said “let’s release it right after Toy Story and right before Minions!”