
Scarlett Johansson becomes Hollywood's highest-earning actor ever
The film took in a whopping $147.3 million in the US and $318.3 million worldwide since opening on Wednesday (2 July).
This brings Johansson's worldwide total for leading roles up to $14.61 billion.
She surpasses Samuel L. Jackson ($14.60 billion) and Robert Downey Jr ($14.3 billion).

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The Citizen
6 hours ago
- The Citizen
PICTURES: Cosplay feast at Comic Con San Diego
With Comic Con Africa coming up later this month in Johannesburg, we take a look at some of the best costumes at last week's Comic Con San Diego. Comic Con San Diego is considered to be the flagship event of the industry, having been founded in 1970. Over 130 000 attendees stream into the San Diego Convention Centre annually to quell their geeky desires at the comic book, science-fiction and fantasy convention. Cosplay forms a large part of the fair – the act involves dressing up in costumes, often skillfully made by the cosplayers themselves, and being seen at the event. A cosplayer dressed as X-Men's Magik. (Photo by) Back To The Future cosplayers Natalie Nielsen as Doc Brown (L) and Mae Catt as Marty McFly. (Photo by) A cosplayer dressed as Dani from 'Midsommar'. (Photo by) (Photo by) Harley Quinn cosplayer Audrey Church. (Photo by) A cosplayer dressed as Maleficent. (Photo by) Star Wars cosplayers Vic Silva as Boba Fett (L) and Mercedes Anderson as Princess Leia. (Photo by) (L-R) Flintstones cosplayers Lucy Capuchino as Betty, Miguel Capuchino as Barney, Shawn Richter as Bam-Bam, Lisa Lower-Richter as Pebbles, Shelly Grace as Wilma, and Ed Gonzales as Fred. (Photo by) Cosplayers dressed as Ghostface from 'Scream'. (Photo by) Cosplayer dressed as The Scarlet Witch. (Photo by) A cosplayer dressed as The Mad Hatter. (Photo by) A cosplayers dressed as Bender. (Photo by) Star Wars cosplayer Justin Wu. (Photo by) A group of DC cosplayers pose for a group photo. (Photo by) Fantastic Four cosplayer Lisa Lower-Richter as Galactus poses at the Marvel booth. (Photo by) Fallout cosplayer Rebecca Eusey as a Wastelander. (Photo by) A Deadpool cosplayer drives through the Gaslamp District. (Photo by) A group of Star Wars cosplayers pose for photos. (Photo by) PICTURES: Jonathan Roxmouth and Egoli orchestra shine on Broadway favourites

TimesLIVE
a day ago
- TimesLIVE
'Ironheart' and the male fans of the MCU
The Marvel Cinematic Universe has a male fan problem that seems to stem from manosphere rhetoric. A problem that has become increasingly clear since fans have not been challenged enough to consume anything they cannot relate to. The latest victim of manosphere attacks is Ironheart, which Disney haphazardly dropped last month with no promotion or marketing. The sudden nature of its release not only reveals the problems plaguing the studios but also the problems that have made the Marvel Cinematic Universe a hard watch. Whether you attribute it to Black Lives Matter or Me Too, there has been an extreme pushback on cancel culture and the need to hold people accountable. The rise of the manosphere and its heralds, including Andrew Tate and Armond White, has seen a repeat of the 2014 and 2015 Gamergate phenomenon. During that time, women in the video gaming space were subjected to an intense harassment campaign, something that echoes the behaviour towards shows like Ironheart and its stars. The series follows Riri Williams (played by Dominique Thorne) who flees back home after her scholarship is terminated. Feeling financial strain in her attempt to build and maintain a supersuit inspired by Tony Stark's (Robert Downey Jr) iron suit, she gets embroiled in a Robin Hood-style gang led by Parker Robbins (Anthony Ramos), a version of the troubled Hood from the comic books. Before its initial release, the series had already garnered negative fan reaction on movie rating sites, a technique eerily similar to the intense bullying seen during Gamergate. Dogpiling on the series as garbage, much of the conversation reduced Riri to her race, with many of the fans being misogynistic and prejudicial to her plight without having seen the show. While this can all be blamed on the rise of how lucrative it is to participate in the manosphere, Marvel and its affiliates are also to blame. While the conclusion of each episode and the season as a whole is trite, as it continues Marvel's trend of unresolved or flash-in-the-pan resolutions, Riri's story is one that directly confronts Faustian bargains. It's a tale that looks at the high price of success or power. Riri and Parker are set as opposites in this regard. While Parker seeks revenge on his wealthy father by striking a deal with the devil (brought to life by Sacha Baren Cohen as the comic book universe's answer to Satan, known as Mephisto), Riri seeks to help him steal from the rich so she can continue to build a supersuit that will help her protect her community and others. While her predecessor had similar objectives, Riri's is charged mainly by the trauma of being the sole survivor of a shooting that killed her stepfather and best friend. While the story could easily zoom in on an Ocean's 11 storyline, it moves away from glamorising Parker's misfits and uses the environments they expose themselves to as reflections of the traumas Riri and Parker have not quite dealt with. In the end, Riri also faces Mephisto and must decide whether she can strike a deal with him. Faustian bargains are not always made for a neat or happy ending, but can tell a tragedy and that is where it leaves both leads. While fans have come to have high expectations of being rewarded with connective storytelling that ties movies and series together, Ironheart feels a lot more like an island rather than another cog in the MCU machine. A feature that does not help, considering it is one of the shows most affected by the misogynistic vitriol from its fandom. In its telling of Captain America's story, they never confronted the two black successors and predecessors. This is a decision that has created the false idea that Marvel movies have never been political. Especially with non-white male leads being the ones to lead stories dealing with racism, female empowerment and PTSD that have been explored in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Captain Marvel and Wanda/Vision, respectively. Much like fans who have actors to hold fans accountable for attacking co-stars in movies or theatre productions, production houses and studios also need to play their part. If the manosphere or other problematic ideologies continue to dominate, we will be limited in the kinds of journeys we can go through and which stories are told. This would be a shame, especially with scene stealers such as Lyric Ross, who plays the late best friend Natalie, and Regan Aliyah, who plays the resident witch of the show, Zelma. As Marvel charts new territory, let's hope they take the bold step to hold fans accountable before they fail their diverse cast and crew.


Daily Maverick
a day ago
- Daily Maverick
From Silver Age to Silver Screen — The Fantastic Four: First Steps
The Fantastic Four: First Steps performs double duty as this stylish superhero blockbuster brings Marvel's First Family into the Marvel Cinematic Universe and works to restore the reputation and relevance of these Silver Age comic characters. The key words in the title The Fantastic Four: First Steps are those last two. First Steps. Because it needs to be noted upfront that despite all the marketing that has been trumpeting how this new superhero ensemble finally brings the Fantastic Four into the established Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), The Fantastic Four: First Steps doesn't actually do that. Well, at least in the most obvious sense. If you were expecting to see element-inspired heroes Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic (Pedro Pascal), Sue Storm/The Invisible Woman (Vanessa Kirby), Johnny Storm/Human Torch (Joseph Quinn) and Ben Grimm/The Thing (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) rub shoulders with Avengers like Mark Ruffalo's Hulk and Anthony Mackie's new Captain America, rein in those expectations now. In First Steps, the Fantastics aren't even overtly manoeuvred into place by the end of the film to meet those champions in the next MCU entry. A door is opened to that eventuality, but it's hardly a dramatic cliffhanger. No, First Steps is the very start of the process that is marrying Marvel's First Family and the Avengers across the tangled Multiverse. However, The Fantastic Four: First Steps has another important function to complete before all that: after three Fox Studios-made movies of varying quality, First Steps needs to reclaim and elevate its costumed quartet. They're not just proto-X-Men after all, living together, bickering and dealing with their insecurities in between saving the world. Why do the Fantastic Four matter? What do they stand for? How are they different from every other superhero squad? First Steps sets out to answer all those questions, unlike the first two Fox movies, which adopted a more joking tone and distilled its characters down to hot-headed, hottie and absent-minded professor archetypes. As for the 2015 'gritty' reboot that reimagined the Four as tormented teenagers, the less said about that the better. First Steps, by contrast, goes out of its way to show that Mister Fantastic's brain is his greatest power, not his elasticity; while Sue is a multiskilled MVP far from fragile; and both Johnny and Grimm are competent, well-rounded figures instead of bratty man-children captive to knee-jerk emotional reactions. It's a strange coincidence that The Fantastic Four: First Steps releases two weeks apart from Superman, because both blockbusters adopt a similar approach to establishing the relevance and importance of their characters. In both cases, the films bypass an origin story to instead show heroes already a handful of years into their costumed, world-saving careers. Also, in both cases, the movies aren't reluctant to draw on their comic book roots. Without embarrassment or wink-wink cynicism, they embrace the far-fetched, frequently cheesy antics seen on the page. The Fantastic Four: First Steps goes even further in this regard than Superman, in the sense that it plops its characters down in a Silver Age setting instead of merely drawing inspiration from it. First Steps stands out from its MCU peers thanks to its retro-futuristic 1960s world, which mixes science fiction with recognisable real-world history. Forgetting for a second how this timeline choice naturally layers on nostalgic (and progressive) values of yesteryear – public trust in science, hopefulness, openness to collaboration and selfless sacrifice for the greater good – First Steps is by far the most aesthetically distinct of the MCU movies. Filmmaker Matt Shakman, who directed every episode of WandaVision, maintains the same tight grip on both throwback stylings and timeless emotion as he did with the first live-action Marvel series. It's the emotional part that is really important to First Steps, granting the audience access to the characters' inner workings that they've never had before. Pascal and Kirby have the most to do, and the most screen time, as Reed and Sue grapple with the relatable anxieties of parenthood; things they can't control despite their immense power. Complicating matters, and serving as the main narrative driver of the film, billions-year-old alien entity Galactus (Ralph Ineson) has announced his intention to devour Earth. This message is delivered by his herald, the enigmatic Silver Surfer (Julia Garner), who offers a solution: if Sue and Reed give Galactus their baby, the planet will be spared. There's a danger of overselling The Fantastic Four: First Steps. A waft of MCU 'safeness' lingers in the air – despite the surprisingly raw and forceful work of Kirby, especially – and chances are that a few days after viewing, you won't remember many of the plot details. The Silver Surfer's motion-capture CGI also is oddly underwhelming. That said, sincerity goes a long way, and despite leaning into the cosmic science side of the Fantastic Four comics, the film never feels goofy in an eye-rolling sense. Galactus, a world-eating space god, is honestly a ridiculous concept on paper, but Shakman, Ineson and the rest of the team have translated the character perfectly for the screen, making Galactus an unstoppable, matter-of-fact force with undercurrents of tragedy. There's a scene in The Fantastic Four: First Steps where our heroes try to decipher the intentions of another character. Repeatedly, the word 'warm' is used, and that's the powerful feeling at the heart of First Steps. Even Natasha Lyonne, who has a small role in the film as Grimm's love interest, casts aside her smart-mouth screen image to instead appear convincingly kind-hearted and welcoming. And that's the impression given off by First Steps overall, with its self-contained universe that calls to mind The Incredibles in many ways. Of course, soon enough, the Fantastic Four will need to enter fish-out-of-water mode and appear in the meaner, snarkier world that houses the Avengers, and closely parallels our reality. Until then, though, you can enjoy a reprieve with a piece of colourful escapism that refreshingly doesn't require an encyclopaedic knowledge of the MCU and hearkens back to a yesteryear rich in potential for human advancement, paired with a commitment to achieving that vision. Plus, it looks fantastic! DM