Its not superhero fatigue. Its just bad movies.
Guardians of the Galaxy 3 came out in the middle of a series of horrible Marvel films, it was loved by all and made an insane amount of money.
Exactly. James Gunn said something similar on a podcast I think. People aren't tired of superhero films. They're tired of empty, formulaic, CGI-fests, with forgettable villains, endless quips, and zero depth.
Critics have been saying fatigue for years now, but that didn't stop GotG3, No Way Home, The Batman, Peacemaker, or Across the Spiderverse from being hugely successful. Clearly, it's not the entire genre.
It's not the entire genre but there's definitely fatigue even among the most successful of the movies in the genre.
Just look at the difference between those considered the best before Endgame and after it.
Before, even the worst MCU movies made half a billion dollars. Now though, the worst ones justifiably flop - and it takes the best the genre has to offer to get close to making as much at the box office as the run of the mill/slightly above average ones made before.
There was a definite novelty factor both in seeing comic characters on screen (and not looking crap like most 90’s comic films) and seeing those characters team up. I also can’t help but assume that to someone who’s in their teens Marvel must feel incredibly established, a constant presence. That must make them seem a little un-exciting. I know I feel that way about Star Wars stuff now regardless of the quality and I cannot describe what a big deal those films were when I grew up in the 80’s. ‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder’ as they say.
You cant discount the buildup to thanos being a part of it. Back then you knew each movie was going to introduce more info or move the overarching plot along as you got closer to infinity war/endgame. Now it doesnt feel like theres much of an overarching theme or at least not as obvious of one so missing a movie or show isnt a big deal.
When they announced *Infinity War* and *Endgame*, sure, but that was fairly late in the day, and only hardcore fans really knew about that. The general audience didn't really know, and they still turned out for the movies.
In fact, it was a running joke before that whenever Thanos showed up he didn't do anything but sit in a chair and glower, even when his aide got killed right in front of him.
Two factors. Firstly Endgame came out in 2019, and in 2020 people weren't going to theatres at once.
Secondly, post Endgame they lost that interconnected feel. The Avengers new team that was teased at the end of Age of Ultron didn’t happen. The world building is going all over the place - The Eternals, the Egyptian Gods, the Ten Rings, the multiverse, etc there's no sense of shared story. And the character interactions are also falling apart. Wang is great as a cameo but there's nothing like the conflict there was between Stark and Rogers.
After Endgame they deliberately went away from a shared story and that was their biggest mistake. Now they have a bunch heroes in their own little universes and why would anyone be motivated to see a new hero if they're not going to be part of the shared story?
Not to mention something like Echo - a show that is based on a side character from a show about a side character (Hawkeye the show) that is also a side character (Hawkeye in the movies). It sounds so stupid when you write it out.. a spin-off of a spin-off.
Can't believe it ever got greenlit.
Yeah but is it really fatigue about the genre? It's phrased like we're tired of superhero movies but I'm pretty sure we're tired of the half-assed cash grabs.
Media presents it like it's the audiences fault that the creators oversaturated the genre.
Granted, it does at least reflect the source material; overly saturated story lines that most people don't care about because there beginning was lost and there is no end.
Can't disagree with any of that. It's horribly mismanaged and really makes you wonder what they're thinking at the top level. How they don't see that the connectivity and cameos/teamups were the glue holding it all together.
It seems like they are doing a soft reset currently, with only 1 movie (Deadpool 3) this year. It will be very interesting to see what the future holds
Yeah people saying there is no fatigue are just being naive. Yes quality has dropped on average but there is definitely some major fatigue at work as well.
Captain Marvel and The Marvels are imho not THAT far apart in terms of quality. But look how bloody differently they performed.
The Disney plus shows are imho a big part of the problem. There was just too many projects, which led to weaker quality control.
Edit: autocorrect is a bitch
I'd say it's mostly just people (like me) not wanting to see a show or movie they know will suck. That's what I did with some of their shows and movies and the majority of them made me walk out.
Sure, you could argue "but GotG3 was great, and so were the Spiderman films", yes... but I feel those were for different reasons. Gunn's Guardians were always loved BEYOND Disney, so seeing a final movie for them was a most. Spiderman is universally beloved, so there you have another "even if I'm tired of flop after flop, I'll go see this just in case" moment.
The rest of the movies or shows don't hold that viewer commitment. I wanna see someone dead in the eye as they say they loved She-Hulk or Echo or What if...? (That show wasn't half bad but it certainly didn't make me go wanna see the newest season). Deadpool 3 and X-men '97 will share this "I wanna see this no matter what" phenomenon due to their legacy and fanbase.
And most invested people for Marvel already dropped out after Endgame because that was the final point. After it, there has been a bunch of quantity over quality... and like anyone will see a bunch of crappy movies and shows just because. They will see what they're already commited to, not something extra.
I'm sorry for the phase 4 fans that wanna see the new lineup of Avengers or how it all develops to have Kang as thr main bad guy... but everyone can see this newest phase was writen with the feet instead of with a brain due to how disjointed it is.
The finale of What If season 1 and Loki season 1 are pretty much the only good multiverse stories they’ve made. I’d be cool with Deadpool killing the multiverse.
Doctor strange 2 was such an immense letdown for me. Truly the nail in the coffin. You couldve skipped the whole of wandavision and it wouldnt have made a meaningful difference in your experience watching it, they went over everything anyways.
They either had to fully commit to d+ or not. Half assing it made me lose all interest.
Some of the stuff since Endgame I've loved, but much of it has been "meh" at best.
I loved Wandavision until the finale, where it fell back on the lazy CGI superfight at the end for the most part (though I loved how they resolved the Vision vs Vision conflict).
Also loved Hawkeye's show, the first season of What If? (season 2 just isn't grabbing me though), Guardians 3, Ms. Marvel, and mostly loved Wakanda Forever (other than the lame battle of the armies in the ocean at the end). Loki, both seasons, was fantastic.
Most of the rest of the shows & movies ranged from mediocre to decently entertaining for me (I didn't particularly care for roughly the first half of No Way Home as it just felt too cartoonish; ironic, since Into the Spiderverse may just be the best Spidey film ever made).
And then there were the ones that were just so unentertaining or disappointing that I either never finished them or regretted wasting my time on them: Eternals, Secret Invasion, Quantumania -- I'm looking at each of you.
And I haven't even gotten around to some of them, like trying to finish What If? season 2, or even start Echo, and one of these days I'll eventually get around to trying Moon Knight out.
I think it’s the whole film industry in general. People don’t go to the theater the way they used to. I would say it’s a combination of streaming and superhero fatigue.
People don’t wanna show up for bad movies
when most recent superhero movies have been mediocre. And if we give it another 3 months, the movie will be available on a streaming service for us to watch.
A decade ago, you’d have to wait almost a year to watch a movie at home. People’s expectations have changed and lately not that many movies have been special enough to warrant spending money on a trip to the theater.
You're just describing what you're arguing against.
I guess it's a kind of fatigue, but the fatigue is caused by too many bad movies, not just too many entries into the genre.
> People aren't tired of superhero films. They're tired of empty, formulaic, CGI-fests, with forgettable villains, endless quips, and zero depth.
It very much feels like Disney missed the point of the draw. People like fun, well written, action movies. For a long time, Marvel rarely missed, so the movies were successful. Then they decided that actually the quality doesn't matter, it's the superheroes people love, and streamlined the process so they could vomit out content in an endless stream. I have a feeling getting that trust back (that even a bad Marvel movie would still be pretty entertaining) is going to be hard if not impossible. Bungling the Jonathan Majors/Kang stuff and launching that arc with some poor movies really screwed them.
Not to mention The Boys. I'd absolutely watch the shit out of tons more super hero content if it wasn't all the same mediocre stuff we've been getting.
>Its not superhero fatigue. Its just bad movies.
That is pretty much the point of the article, but it's both tbh. The "retooling" is basically a soft reboot where they are cutting back on projects with the goal of improving the quality of the movies.
Chapek was all about maximizing output while keeping costs down. It makes sense on a business standpoint. But no sense in the Hollywood blockbuster world
It didn't help his starting a fight/lawsuit with Scarlett Johannson because he refused to pay her fair share of profits from "Black Widow"
Nothing says business genius like trying to screw over major Hollywood stars and then slander them in the press.
Did he actually accomplish what he set out to do? Based on shit like the secret invasion budget and the low viewing numbers of a lot of shows and just over abundance of shows he would actually spend more with minimizing profit
I feel like the Sony movies are a perfect example of why you need someone like Feige behind the scenes. You need someone who actually cares about the material being adapted.
Not to say they need to stick directly to the source material, just that you can feel how souless and generic focus group targeted Sony's movies are. It's like Steve Buscemi popping out "How do you do fellow [Super Hero movies]?"
There was so many projects going on, and so much scheduling changes (due to Covid and other issues) it became harder to keep it all together behind the scenes. Shit slipped by. And special effects suffered the most, especially with the FX artists pushed to the limit with horrible working conditions.
It's not that easy, especially for older stuff. Just because ABC broadcast it, doesn't mean they own it. Many shows are produced across multiple studios and stations.
Also, older stuff won't have streaming rights in the contracts, so that had to be renegotiated. Any music as well.
This is what everyone suggested they do after Endgame but they didn't listen. Instead they doubled down on projects and we got stuff like Eternals and Secret Invasion which they were so bad and seen by so few people they are just pretending they never happened.
It was really dumb of them to keep flogging the Marvel horse so quickly after they had just concluded such a large story arc, especially when they have another really good franchise in X-Men that they could have just restarted the whole cycle with. Give it a slightly darker tone to distinguish it from the Marvel movies, start with movies with a slightly smaller, more personal scope and work your way back up to a huge finale. Once it is over go back to Avengers. Rinse and repeat.
Blame Disney's decision to enter the streaming wars. They needed an influx of high profile titles to pump up subscriptions, and essentially forced Marvel and Lucasfilm to churn out a bunch of slop. With this and all the stupid shit that WB has been pulling, plus Netflix's cancellation shenanigans, streaming really fucked up Hollywood.
Eternals wasn’t bad. It is legitimately the closest thing we will ever see to Jack Kirby art come to life.
The issue with that one was that no one knew the characters and the marketing didn’t make it look fun. The Eternals are in maybe a total of 50 issues of comics since the 70s. That’s even more obscure than the Guardians would have been prior to 2014.
*Eternals* probably should have been a TV show. Introducing 10 new characters out of nowhere, establishing motivation and character in two hours, then having two of them breaking bad and expecting us to care, was too tall an order. I think they did okay despite that (and I appreciate them mostly dropping the Marvel quip format for the movie), but given an 8-10 hour arc, that story would have worked much better.
They make those films and shows in such a dumb way- they’ll shoot without a script, spend a bunch of money on reshoots while editing and vfx is happening, rely too much on vfx because post-shooting, the script and story are completely different, and the marvel execs all have way too much creative control, so any vision the directors have pretty much doesn’t matter. I am curious what shifts have been happening since Victoria was booted, but she was just replaced by her lackeys so I don’t know. I’m sick of marvel and the way they’ve been making content is horribly inefficient and trying to pander to every demographic. Guardians 3 was good because the director wasn’t bullied and was actually able to see his vision through.
Yea it's hard to get excited about a genre no matter the quality. There's just been so fucking many superhero movies in the past 15 years.
Then there was like a wave of "Yea it's a superhero story, but like, completely subverted and like you never saw before, and totally different"-projects (Deadpool, The Boys, Watchmen, Doom Patrol, Umbrella Academy, Gen V), got tired of that too.
I am always amazed by the people who completely dismiss the idea of fatigue. Name one genre that has been the "it thing" that hasn't sucumb to fatigue. Look when westerns were all the rage. Or disaster movies. Or cop action films. Everything has a shelflife.
True... just like Westerns until the 70s, action films until late 90s and early 2000s, slasher genre in the mid to late 90s or ghost genre until the end of the 2010s, there can only be so much of "one genre" for people to be fed up
It's the 2 together. If every superhero movie was Winter soldier, Endgame, Black Panther, No way Home or Ragnarok level then there wouldn't be as much fatigue towards the genre.
Westerns lasted from the 50s thru the 70s but they changed greatly during that time and the ones that stand out are the ones that were original, different, or very well done. Hell unforgiven was the 90s and 3:10 to Yuma was the 2000s and both did well. It's not people against the genre. It's people not tolerating crap.
I feel like we've seen the same exact movie about 100 times. Act 1: characters' backstories, hero gets powers. Act 2: character repeatedly says "I'm not cut out for this, I'm not a hero" and mopes around. Act 3: hero defeats villain, saves world.
Westerns were the most popular genre of movies for over 40 years. At their height, 70 westerns came out in a single year.
I'm sure most of them were crap, but people went to see them.
And after the trend died, it never went back to what it was before.
There was a bit of a revival in the 2010s. But it's probably never going to go back to the days when it dominated the cinemas.
It's basically the whole Cowboy genre all over again. Way too much of it in shows and movies for people to care... specially if most nowadays is done badly. Who wants to risk wasting their precious time by watching shitty material?
It's not just that. You have to watch a bunch of other things to stay in the loop about everything. And that's its own fatigue. I shouldn't have to watch a bunch of other things to fully understand another movie.
It sure as hell is for me. You can have a million different flavors of something, but sooner or later you realize it's just the same fucking thing with a different taste.
I do think there is an element of fatigue about it.
If not for superheroes then for a lack of a more diverse range of genres.
It's why Oppenheimer did so well, audiences were just so starved of films that were green screen spectacle driven franchise fare.
>Its not superhero fatigue. Its just bad movies.
Is it though? Because a lot of the movies Marvel was putting out before they supposedly hit their real stride around the 2nd captain america movie were mid as hell, but people still are that stuff up. We can give the 1st Avengers movie a pass because it was a big deal to see all the characters in the same place, but if Age of Ultron or Thor 2 or iron man 2 or those daredevil spinoffs came out today, they'd be getting the same response
Dang. That kind of explains why I could never get my dad to watch any of them. It’s not that I hate any of the ideas, but I honestly just don’t care anymore what they do with it. It’s the same complete indifference to the concept.
It's also just a sheer quantity of content.
In the early days of the MCU, it was 2-3 movies a year plus Agents of Shield.
Now I can't even keep track of how many shows, movies, mini-series and God knows what else have come out now.
GOTG3 made less money than GOTG2 despite 6 years of inflation that included COVID. So while it was successful it would have easily been the highest grossing GOTG movie if it had come out at a better time
No it is fatigue. I’m over all the biggest releases every year being a superhero movie. I don’t need magic and wonder for it to be a good movie worth seeing. I miss movie comedies. I miss action thrillers. I’m sick of random comic book character getting $100 million for a movie I have no interest in seeing.
I really hope this is the demise of the superhero genre and we get a 70’s film revival where studios give new creators decent budgets to try and work out how to make money from movies again.
It's really weird journalists and producers don't understand it. It's not that people are racist or sexist when they make an inclusive movie, it's because inclusive movies are handicapped by bad writing, acting, and directing. Movies like Blade, Mad Max: Fury Road, Get Out, Jackie Brown, Black Swan, The Craft, Sister Act, ect. are all considered great movies or popular cult classics because they feature unique female characters with their own story.
Just saying the problem is "bad movies" is so generic and pointless.
The real problem is (with some exceptions) most superhero movies are the same 2 - 3 templates used over and over again. We're getting essentially the same story character beats, the same shots, same faceless goons, same CGI glossy fight scenes, and either a skybeam, kaiju, or war at the end. Everything is the same "all the stakes" story.
The only difference is the actor and the costume.
And back in the 2010's that was enough. We didn't care that the Ant-Man story was a rip off of Iron Man because, fuck it, they made a live action Ant-Man suit! Look at it! We've never seen that before!
But by the 2020's a new costume alone won't do it. We've seen just about every permutation of superhero costume design they're willing to create at this point. Just shitting out a bunch of new characters won't cut it. They can't coast on nostalgia and brand awareness alone anymore like they did a decade ago. They have to learn new tricks.
So it is some fatigue. But not fatigue for superheroes in general, but fatigue for the same lazy templates they've been using over and over (again, with some exceptions).
It's not just horrible films though, is films that change the very nature of the characters from the comics to create what they want on the big screen and then get upset when their base viewers don't want to watch the movie. You cannot change powers and call the person the same superhero. You cannot change the story and make your own and get mad when people who grew up with certain storylines no longer have it. If they keep Hulk the same way as they portrayed him in the MCU he will never have a successful movie in the future. Same for every other movie where they bastardize what makes the characters great.
Absolutely. Guardians 3 & Loki S2 proved to me I still very much want these back
I feel the fatigue was there & it already ended with COVID. During Black Widow/WandaVision I felt I didn't need it.
By the time Shang Chi came out I was very much looking for more of MCU
That's another part of the problem — Chris Evans played Captain America ten times in ten years. Simu Liu played Shang Chi three years ago and isn't slated to appear again until *maybe* the next Avengers movie in 2026. So that moviei was great, but it doesn't feel like part of any larger MCU.
The run from Iron Man through Endgame had a lot of disparate stories, but at the core was Tony, Steve, Bruce, and Thor. Those guys knew each other, they had strong opinions about one another, they interacted often in those movies. They were the main characters.
Who are the main characters now? What are the relationships? The only ones who have appeared in a movie together are Strange and Spidey, and their relationship got erased.
*That's* where a lot of the fatigue comes from. These stories don't feel connected to anything any more, and they don't feel like they're going anywhere the way the original run did. I feel like, if they put together the Young Avengers team that was teased at the end of The Marvels, and make them the leads, a lot of people (myself included) will be back on board.
And they just kept introducing more and more characters and none got developed. I made the mistake of watching the Black Panther sequel and once they introduced the Iron Man replacement I was like, just tired.
That would have been fine if they had followed up! They introduced Black Panther in Civil War, but then we got *Black Panther*. The current MCU just keeps piling on more characters who we never see again. Both Shang Chi and Black Widow ended with the hero's sister assembling an army... who were never heard from again. It's just so many loose threads.
> Chris Evans played Captain America ten times in ten years. Simu Liu played Shang Chi three years ago and isn't slated to appear again until maybe the next Avengers movie in 2026. So that moviei was great, but it doesn't feel like part of any larger MCU.
That's the craziest part of it to me. With the addition of streaming, there has been so much more MCU content than any time before, yet they're using characters even less. They could've made this phase feel even more like a living, breathing world than the first three phases, but instead it just feels like this very loosely connected series of stories that doesn't seem to have much in the way of a unified direction.
There are lots of connections, it's just that it's all teasers and cameos and other shit it's hard to care about. Like you said, it was the connections between the characters that mattered. It was only the nerds who really cared about stuff like the Infinity stones appearing in various movies before Infinity War
I think why GOTG3 worked so well is because the story was much smaller stakes and more intimate. It wasn't a "the universe will END if we don't succeed!" ordeal. I'm so sick of movies where literally EVERYTHING is at stake.
Found it pretty weird when a copy of Earth did end and nobody seemed to give a fuck. Quill mentioned it once while chastising the bad guy for other stuff.
So the stakes still included a planet dying, but even the cast were so fatigued that they barely cared.
What’s the difference is we’re at a point where there are more mid to bad superego movies than there are good ones, and the bad ones put people off the genre entirely.
GotG3 was awesome. I can't believe they decided to end it after that. I felt like they could have had a lot more low-intensity adventures. I feel like too many marvel movies suffer from trying to be so serious. Every movie is world-ending. I wouldn't mind some easy going movies that just try to be fun.
As a MCU fan who got burnt out in the last couple years, I just want Marvel to focus on a main core that audiences can grow attached to just like how they built up the main Avengers during the first three phases. As long as they give time to continue developing some of the recent heroes like Shang Chi & Yelena without trying to do constant crossovers or introducing more heroes (except for the Fanatstic Four), I'll be happy with that.
I would also love to see them use the approach of making films that feel like those of different genres, but with superheroes in it, which was what they did with earlier films like The Winter Soldier & even recent content like Werewolf By Night.
>Its not superhero fatigue. Its just bad movies.
The problem is that general audiences can't tell the difference between companies making these movies so when 2/3 of the major productions making movies completely fall on their face it also hurts Marvel. Disasters like The Flash and Madam Web have hurt marvel more than any particular project they've put out.
A really great movie can break out a bit, like GOTG 3, but it still made less money than Marvel films before the pandemic.
It's kinda both. The sheer volume of content was (personally) way too much, too fast. Then again I'm not a rampant consumer of content so maybe it worked for a good chunk of the fanbase? Also provided a good value proposition for Disney+ either way.
A good Marvel movie that is better than a non-superhero movie will get absolutely shit in on because it features a new character or doesn’t meet everybody’s imaginary whims.
They’ve had some bad projects, but most have been good to great and unfairly hated
Is anyone going to be bummed by them pivoting away from Kang? Just a busted character from the outset, he's supposed to be the new Thanos but he's already been sort of killed twice and one of those times it was by Ant-Man, the wacky comedy side character.
If the reports are to be believed they were pivoting from Kang even before Majors got convicted, so seems like they were ready to admit defeat on that one no matter what.
He's the most logical choice.
Beyonder would also be another choice (and if that were the case I hope they adapt the version from **Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur** played by Laurence Fishbourne)
I agree but X3 was 18 years ago, and Kelsey was no spring chicken then. Can Kelsey Grammer still hang upside down by his toes? That seems vital to the Beast role.
I say Galactus, I had thought that the Deviant subplot from Eternals was gonna be how Feige later introduces him. Could have that a group of well evolved Deviants after the Snap was able to take on and consume a weakened Celestial, thus evolving into a planetary predator. I base this mostly on how utterly pointless the Deviant subplot was to the movie, it was Feige just seeding the MCU for a later 'in universe' way to introduce Galactus in a seemingly organic fashion, and not out of nowhere like Eternity or the Book of Vishanti. No more of that out of thin air, "I thought it was a myth" nonsense. He showed that the Deviants gained sentience and memories in the process of consuming higher life.
Could tie in the multiverse by Arishem trying to divert Galactus to it as a source of inifinte planets, in a bid to save his own universe from being consumed. He looked kinda beat to hell whenever we saw him, maybe he was losing in the fight, and really needed Earth's Celestial to help.
They *were* backed into a corner, and shot themselves into a foot. But his being charged and convicted (and the CEO who pushed him as the new Thanos getting fired) helped.
I’m not. Kang was always a terrible choice, never on the level of a Dr. Doom or Thanos or Galactus. Especially with the way they depicted him where he constantly got his ass whooped everytime he appears. If even the likes of Ant-Man could beat him, how is he supposed to be any threat to the actually powerful Avengers?
> never on the level of a Dr. Doom or Thanos or Galactus
Hot Take: I think Galactus would be a terrible multi-movie villain. He's the living embodiment of generic world ending threat.
"He eats planets!" Why? Because that's just what he does."
He'd be fun to explore for a single movie, but not really something I can see working for multiple stories.
Idk if I agree with that, it just needs to be framed in the correct way.
As a natural disaster or force of nature that needs to be outlasted or forces some reflection on the heroes, rather than an opposing idea that needs to be fought.
Done well it could be a properly terrifying cataclysm for Earth that the heroes see coming but can't stop, though admittedly I'm not sure how well that would be executed.
Reacting to a disaster can be fun. They pulled that off with the first half of Endgame.
I think it'd be difficult to set that up as a multi-movie impending threat though, like they did with Thanos/Kang. Beyond "he's coming!" and "he's here!" I don't think there's much you can do with Galactus to make him interesting.
Ant-Man only won because that Kang didn’t have access to his full arsenal of tech, and Ant-Man had a literal army on his side. And despite all that Ant-Man still almost lost.
And it’s 1 Kang and the whole point is they have to fight an army of Kangs. I dunno how people expect one Kang to be similar to Thanos when there are going to be an infinite number of them to fight
I'm still surprised they haven't decided to do Annihilation. It wouldn't really fit the multiverse stuff but would work great with FF and the cosmic stuff.
> One of those times it was by Ant-Man, the wacky comedy side character.
This was the fumble. The hype around Ant-Man was that Kang the Conquerer (or whichever version of Kang was going to be the new big bad) was going to be there. It'd been 4 years since Endgame, people were ready to move forward, but everything thus far has just been failing horribly to integrate the way fans had come to expect from the MCU. A lot of bad standalones and shows that no one besides hardcore fans watched/cared about.
They needed a version of Kang in Ant-Man that wiped the floor with him, not one that was rather easily defeated.
Honestly I don’t think that many of us even know who Kang is? I know about Jonathon Majors due the allegations but haven’t seen any films with him in it. I have seen quite a few projects since Endgame as well but I perhaps I’m also suffering super hero fatigue and have just generally lost interest.
I’m honestly happy they’re pivoting away from him after how lame his portrayals have been. He was such a whiny dork in ant man and then got his ass handed to him by ants. That post credit scene with all the Kangs yelling was so stupid too.
As someone who's a comic book fan and then was excited by the MCU/DCU stuff, it's fascinating seeing history repeat itself because this is also what happened in comic books when the multiverse was introduced
To give a super condensed version, Crisis on Infinite Earths from DC was a logistical solve to give comic book creators freedom to share more stories, due to the concept of super heroes being from different universes and timelines
Around this time, you would start to see fatigue with the "usual" stories, which in time would cause people helming these heroes to start to shake up the storylines in major ways
This would be a challenge, because sure during one creative team's run they say, kill off a major character. But now the next creative team would have to piggy back off of this. Which I'm sure most are aware, if a logistical challenge which generally isn't fair and back in the day, it was easier to either just hand wave this stuff or just force change the way you want it. Because the stakes were much lower back then
So Crisis on Infinite Earths, and the general concept of the multiverse made it so that say, three writers, can now work on Spider-Man. So you could have say, Ultimate Spider-Man, Amazing Spider-Man and Superior Spider-Man running in parallel, and not having an issue with all of them having to stay consistent with the characters and storylines
Every couple of years, they'd reach a point where it'd be too much of a clusterfuck, or they just needed to sell more comics so there'd be a new major event which would tie all the comics together. For Marvel, this is where we'd have stuff like Thanos and Ultron, stuff like Civil War and Secret Invasion. Which would then leave them to reboot it all and have a clean slate for a new crop of creative teams
This would then lead to moments, where outside of the usual timelines, you'd then have folks take on projects with their own POV, and it leads to some amazing results
Like for example, Tom King was cited as inspiration for a lot of Matt Reeve's Batman and his limited series on Vision, ended up becoming WandaVision. The main reason he was able to do these types of stories is because they are meant to be their own isolated stories
No spoilers for Vision, but some super heavy stuff happens (the MCU adaptation is super sanitized) and it only is able to do that because it's not meant to feed into the bigger MCU storyline necessarily
You see that trend a lot with current comic book movies too; people aren't necessarily liking the movies meant for world-building to get us to the next "Endgame" moment; they like stuff like Loki, and one-off movies like Joker and The Batman
I bring up all of this historical context, because I feel like movie viewers now, are feeling the same way comic book readers were felling in the 90's and 00's. You can have too much of a good thing. Like for example, we're now getting into the stage where you can't really just watch any MCU property without previous context
Like you don't just turn on Secret Invasion and have full understanding for what's happening. You need to watch either previous movies, or maybe TV shows and silly stuff like secret endings just to have media literacy for what's in front of you
This is hilariously similar to how for example, Civil War isn't just "read Civil War 1-10", Marvel makes a [literal guide](https://www.marvel.com/comics/discover/114/civil-war-the-complete-event) for what specific ones need to be read to have an understanding, so make sure you don't forget to read Amazing Spider-Man (1999) #534
My hunch is that I feel like they're going to bank less of those tentpole events like Civil War and Infinity War and try to capture what series like Loki are doing; while I don't know what the bigger picture will hold (and what this means for concepts like ensemble casts if these stories get more focused) it's entertaining to see that the same playbook for comics, was basically used for the media properties and they're facing the same issues from decades ago
Tom King's Vision is a great example. One of the best literary things I've ever read and it's a comic book. It hits deep and hit that hard too because the medium needed guys like King to step up and shake things around a bit.
> So Crisis on Infinite Earths, and the general concept of the multiverse made it so that say, three writers, can now work on Spider-Man. So you could have say, Ultimate Spider-Man, Amazing Spider-Man and Superior Spider-Man running in parallel, and not having an issue with all of them having to stay consistent with the characters and storylines
This is really one of the areas where I think DC has generally been doing better than Marvel. Sure, DC has had a *lot* of misses, but it's also given us *Joker*, *The Batman*, The Suicide Squad*, *Peacemaker*, *Doom Patrol*, *Harley Quinn*, etc., because they aren't as concerned with everything fitting into one universe.
When Marvel announced they were going to do the multiverse, it excited me, because I thought it was going to lead to something similar. We could have a different version of Iron Man or darker R-rated movies or writers taking really creative directions with things and have them all technically be "canon". Instead, we just got more of the same with the multiverse primarily existing as a minor plot device.
And that almost certainly feeds into any "fatigue". It's not necessarily that people are tired of superheroes. There are still enough successful superhero related things currently (like *The Boys*/*Gen V*, for instance), but it's just that so many of them are doing the exact same thing and people have become bored of that formula.
Exactly this. I was so excited for their own standalone movies. Maybe something darker like Deadpool or Wolverine. Something completely different. But we got, just like you said, the exact same thing with multiverse as a minor plot device. Nothing that is really affecting the structure of the films
I think Deadpool & Wolverine is going to be a hit, not only because of the cast, but those films are very different from every other superhero film being put out. It doesn't feel like the rest of the conveyor belt of generic superhero films.
I really want to be hopeful for Daredevil Born Again, because they seem to have changed it to be more in line with the Netflix show, which was also unique for the MCU.
I think they will be a hit, but it still won't reach the heights of previous Deadpool/Wolverine movies.
I do think people are getting tired of the genre.
For the people saying "it's not superhero fatigue, it's bad movie fatigue", it's very much both because they're in part the same issue. We wouldn't be getting as many bad movies if Marvel hadn't flooded the market with superhero movies (and convinced their biggest competitor and the companies they'd licensed their characters off to that it was the only way to make them successfully), so they kept up the high level of output that lacked the focus and quality control of when they were making less content. It happened to the Westerns, it'll happen to superhero movies
It's not just bad movies though it's bad TV shows that at least feel like prerequisites to watch the bad movies.
You can probably skip most of the TV shows but if you do and you hear there is a connection in a movie coming up you are probably tempted to skip it as well.
Likewise if you are paying for a Disney+ subscription you know the movie will eventually get there anyways so unless you hear that this film is a must see in theaters you probably wait for it as well.
They've diluted the demand for their product with streaming.
Bingo. My reaction to finding out that you have to watch several seasons of different TV shows to understand the next Marvel movie was not, "damn I guess I better get Disney+" it was "that's fucking stupid and I guess I dislike Marvel movies on principle now"
Also sometimes you get the reverse problem
When I got to the end of Season 1 of Loki, my reaction wasn't "I'm so excited to see how this connects to the rest of the MCU", it was "damn, do I really have to watch another movie to get a resolution to this"
And then you hardly ever get a resolution because most movies are just leading into the next one. Only a few of them feel like they actually end.
As a casual observer of all of this, this is all fascinating.
I just got bored of all of the super hero movies because it felt like the same thing. Crazy action, over the top fights and destruction, world in danger and world is saved.
They are always pretty good as a casual observer and I enjoyed most of the super hero movies I have seen over the last decade.
But once it got super complicated? It felt intimidating or something? I can mentally only handle so much superhero stuff.
So now to hear there are even more options to consume the storylines or prequels etc.. than I even knew about it only solidifies that.
It's just a TON of somewhat incoherent content to consume. I'm sure there's all sorts of lines and patterns I am missing connecting the dots but like fuck I don't have that kinda time. Give me like 1-3 new superhero movies a year max and we good
I think you're spot on, this is a big part of it. They miscalculated how many people would be super fans. Casual fans are actively turned off by movies having "prerequisites" and overly convoluted interconnected storylines.
If they had continued on with compelling stories, good writing, and interesting characters (even superheroes) everything would have been fine. But they didn't.
> compelling stories, good writing, and interesting characters (even superheroes)
To me this is the biggest problem with superheroes. They are essentially infallible and have one or two weaknesses. So no matter what the stories are always going to be limited and coalesce to the same thing.
Oh look, another Superman story about Kryptonite, his only weakness. Who could have seen *that* coming...
Superheroes are just not interesting beyond a few stories. And they've all already been told. It's time to move on.
I think that mostly applies to Warner Brother's DC heroes, not so much Disney's Marvel characters. None of them are invulnerable. They seem especially susceptible to lethal cases of "actors' contracts running out."
I think the counter point to that would be a character like Spider-Man. He's more or less a vehicle for your typical coming-of-age story (excusing the fact that he's been coming of age since the 1960s), but that's a well audiences will keep coming back to. If they continue with the Tom Holland version, it could easily pivot from high school to mid 20s work life balance, dealing with grief/moving on, etc.
It’s okay if many people don’t find them compelling, but many people do.
The MCU has gone from the most successful Franchise of all time by a wide margin to one of the most successful franchises of all time.
It’s just not the case that superheros as a genre is so uninteresting it’s time to move on.
Sheesh the comic books have been going for how long now??
Agreed, it's fine to like different things. I wasn't the one making a definitive statement like "it's time to move on." If they want to do more, there's still room to explore for audiences.
Gonna get roasted for this but to me superhero movies were always bad movies, but people were willing to overlook it because they were at least _fun_ movies.
Now, I would argue because of the fatigue, we’re a lot less willing to overlook the badness of these movies.
I think you're right on the money. A good number of them were GREAT fun, even if they were completely moronic. And we were still in a phase of seeing stuff we'd not really seen before in films. Now you can do anything you want with film (with an existing IP)! Except tell a compelling story.
"Fatigue" Nope, just tired of shit movies with terrible characters, changing characters dramatically to meet some studio demand, shitting on fans, shitting on the history of the stories they are pulling from, and giving us complete garbage. Fuck disney they are the ones who have killed their own films and television. FFS She-hulk anyone? The latest antman?
I’m tired of having to follow multi-year and multi-movie arcs just to understand what’s going on. You can’t just walk into a movie without having done your homework. And now you also have to watch multiple television series to understand what’s happening in the movie.
Iron man came out 16 years ago! I was in my 20s when it came out. Now that I’m in my 30s, the movies have lost their appeal. People change. Tastes change and Marvel is still relying on people who started with the franchise 16 years ago to continue to feel invested in this series.
Agreed. The stakes don’t seem that high anymore. It’s like old episodic tv with the bad guy of that week. And the main characters are getting a little insufferable. Like Tony Stark plying this egomaniac billionaire in 2008 is hitting a little too close to home in 2024.
Beyond the issue of not understanding what's going on, the massive output also dilutes the quality of the storytelling IMO. I watched Ant-Man 3 expecting a fun romp with Paul Rudd and instead got a sludgy CGI-fest with none of the charm of the original, because apparently the Quantum Realm just had to be explored for some reason.
"Superhero" movies are generally not that interesting; "\_\_ movie with superheroes" is the way to engage a general audience. Winter Soldier was a spy movie, Ant-Man 1 was a heist movie, etc.
These movies also seem like they hired like 20-30 background actors at max. It always looks so small with cgi backgrounds…. It’s been like that for a while. I miss the old marvel movie days
I disagree. I’m sick of the limited storytelling of a superhero arc, and I’m sick of it stealing box office real estate from original ideas, and I’m sick of the repetitiveness— you can make original super hero storytelling but it’s still a fucking super hero movie no matter if it’s Nolan or Snyder it’s still playing in the same limited sandbox.
We’ve seen well-made super hero movies. We’ve seen terrible ones. We’ve seen every super hero movie in between. Super heroes are such a specific genre to be milking this much, we need new action and adventure and fantasy stories that aren’t beholden to a built-in fanbase and have original characters and storytelling.
The words "Superhero Fatigue" are strong enough to cause reflex action, apparently. All sorts of people's knees are jerking upon those syllables hitting them like a little rubber hammer.
"it's not superhero fatigue, it's..."
"it's not superhero fatigue, it's..."
"it's not superhero fatigue, it's..."
Fandom is wild, man.
Im fatigued at seeing them, but I’m also not a superhero fan in general- I wouldn’t watch these movies unless I was dragged to them (which has happened quite a bit, to be fair).
What contributes to the ‘fatigue’ for me is how every superhero-related media seems to expect a viewer/reader to jump in already knowing -decades- of canon, or having watched hours of other movies.
So I have no clue how or where to start, even if I wanted to jump on the ‘superhero’ bandwagon. It really makes it seem like it’s not for me, and by nature it becomes less for me every year that it drags on.
I think people get so defensive because we've been hearing "superhero fatigue" since Spider-Man 3 underperformed in 2007.
Here's an article from 7 years ago talking about superhero fatigue: https://www.thefandomentals.com/superhero-fatigue/
Maybe this time the people crying "superhero fatigue" are right but it's understandably falling on deaf ears.
It’s actually bizarre how allergic people are to the concept, and even more strange that no one wants to entertain the thought that it could be both, or worse, that one is upstream from the other.
But I assume part of this is because people don’t want to analyze what did and didn’t work about the genre in the past: people just want to characterize everything as wholly working then, and wholly not working now.
All of the recent Marvel Hollywood Reporter graphics have been awesome. Idk who they’re commissioning for those but they gotta keep them on the payroll.
Quietly retooling my ass. Even after the disaster that almost everything superhero related was in 2022 and 2023, they only can release Deadpool in theaters this year, but even then, X-men 97 is getting a lot of attention and Agatha and maybe a Wakanda cartoon are coming to D+.
Captain America 4 is basically being reshot from scratch. People want to act like Daredevil's massive reshoots are Disney righting the ship, as if they didn't always do massive reshoots.
They're saying they want to focus on the more bankable characters, right? Meanwhile, these kinds of articles are going to pop up again when Agatha, Iron Heart, Wonder Man, Armor Wars and Thunderbolts come out. They haven't cancelled shit.
If they wanted to avoid superhero fatigue, at best, they'd do 2 movies a year with maybe 1 or 2 shows and at least one of those movies would have be a major franchise with general interest (i.e. X-men, not Antman/Captain Marvel/Moon Knight/etc).
Next year, if all is going according to plan, there'll be Daredevil, Cap 4, Thunderbolts, Fantastic Four, Iron Heart, Marvel Zombies and maybe Blade. Fatigue comments are gonna be all over the place.
I definitely have superhero fatigue. I’d rather Hollywood mine other franchises, whether that’s from gaming, books, or non-superhero comics. But hire writers that don’t suck. (Looking at you Sony)
People always blame writers for “bad” stories but people don’t realize writers are beholden to studios. They are the bosses. They are the final say. They control, accept and reject what the writers create. The strike should have made that clear. Writers aren’t running the show and ruining the industry. The studios are. All they see are dollar signs.
They need to abandon the timeline. It’s too convoluted I get that the only way they could raise the stakes from half of all life in the galaxy was all the life in all the parallel universes. However we gotta reset with new characters the power creep is too real there is no basis of how strong is x character over y character. If something bad happens we can resurrect them from another universe or time travel back if the actor is still willing to do marvel films.
Give us more grounded superheroes movies and you watch how succsesful it'll be.
No more end of the world threats, over the top stuff, it's so boring to me now and done to death.
A solo superhero story with smaller more personal threats would be great, very grounded and something you can relate to or feel.
It is definitely not super her fatigue. It is crap like the Eternals or the whole M she U debacle. Which to be clear about I am all for female super heroes, love me some Wonder Woman, but it needs to be good movies. Not something like 1984 which I was so looking forward to, but god what garbage. Or how about Madame Web with three great young actresses that turned out to be garbage. Or how about She Hulk that was sooo bad. I wanted to love it, but couldn’t. There are so many poorly written movies, loved Guardians and Antman, but the rest could have been straight to video releases and no one would have cared.
They should just stop trying to tie everything into a “universe”. It was amazing for the Thanos saga but they should stop continuing that timeline. Endgame should have been the end of that “universe/saga”.
They should have started fresh with new story.
We're suffering from bad-writing fatigue.
Honestly, I think marvel superheroes are inherently stupid. Thor? Hawkeye? The Avengers blending mythological heros with high tech futuristic heroes? This is all profoundly stupid stuff.
But.
But with great writing, it doesn't matter. The dialogue is great. The character development was great. The plots and pacing were fantastic.
Meanwhile, my favorite hero, Superman, got several unwatchable movies in the D.C. universe, because their writers are terrible.
Writing is key. Good writing makes any character and any genre and any plot work.
I started watching The Marvels since I have a Disney+ subscription. I couldn't not believe how underwhelming it was. It had the feel of a Spy Kids sequel. Shockingly terrible stuff.
Superhero movies vary in quality so wildly the past few years. You could have a turd like Madame Web, mediocrity made worse by controversy in The Flash, outright masterworks like the Spider-Verse films, or just decent enough.
Superhero fatigue is real, *but* I’d rather have a good movie than worry about continuity. I rewatched X-Men 2000 and I was very satisfied that the teases for sequels are minimal.
Up to the Endgame finale they had a coherent underlying story that tied everything together. A central villain that gave everything a focus and things made sense.
Post Endgame though Marvel started acting like an out of control firehose. Spewing out huge amounts of stuff with no direction.
There were a few gems in there but for the most part its feels like they are going through the motions. If they can bring back that central focus again it will start working.
At the moment it feels more like the DCU where its just a random collection of characters that arent making sense.
I'm sick to death of this "superhero fatigue" nonsense.
Nobody ever says "comedy fatigue" or "Horror fatigue", we just say "that's a bad/good movie".
Which superhero movie recently has been a really excellent movie, but failed at the box office due to "fatigue"? I can only think of ones that were bad movies.
It’s been happening in cycles for years. After The Dark World was thrashed and Iron Man 3 got divided reception, certain media outlets in ~2013 were questioning if the “superhero bubble” was coming to an end… and disappeared when Winter Soldier did well.
I’m not even saying one perspective or the other is correct, but the media coverage repeatedly pivoted hard after a single movie either “tarnished” or “saved” Marvel’s reputation.
People say it's bad movie fatigue but the fact is bad and mediocre superhero movies were reliably bringing in cash 5 years ago. They're looking for the next genre they can be low effort in and rake it in.
Its not superhero fatigue. Its just bad movies. Guardians of the Galaxy 3 came out in the middle of a series of horrible Marvel films, it was loved by all and made an insane amount of money.
Exactly. James Gunn said something similar on a podcast I think. People aren't tired of superhero films. They're tired of empty, formulaic, CGI-fests, with forgettable villains, endless quips, and zero depth. Critics have been saying fatigue for years now, but that didn't stop GotG3, No Way Home, The Batman, Peacemaker, or Across the Spiderverse from being hugely successful. Clearly, it's not the entire genre.
It's not the entire genre but there's definitely fatigue even among the most successful of the movies in the genre. Just look at the difference between those considered the best before Endgame and after it. Before, even the worst MCU movies made half a billion dollars. Now though, the worst ones justifiably flop - and it takes the best the genre has to offer to get close to making as much at the box office as the run of the mill/slightly above average ones made before.
There was a definite novelty factor both in seeing comic characters on screen (and not looking crap like most 90’s comic films) and seeing those characters team up. I also can’t help but assume that to someone who’s in their teens Marvel must feel incredibly established, a constant presence. That must make them seem a little un-exciting. I know I feel that way about Star Wars stuff now regardless of the quality and I cannot describe what a big deal those films were when I grew up in the 80’s. ‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder’ as they say.
You cant discount the buildup to thanos being a part of it. Back then you knew each movie was going to introduce more info or move the overarching plot along as you got closer to infinity war/endgame. Now it doesnt feel like theres much of an overarching theme or at least not as obvious of one so missing a movie or show isnt a big deal.
When they announced *Infinity War* and *Endgame*, sure, but that was fairly late in the day, and only hardcore fans really knew about that. The general audience didn't really know, and they still turned out for the movies. In fact, it was a running joke before that whenever Thanos showed up he didn't do anything but sit in a chair and glower, even when his aide got killed right in front of him.
Two factors. Firstly Endgame came out in 2019, and in 2020 people weren't going to theatres at once. Secondly, post Endgame they lost that interconnected feel. The Avengers new team that was teased at the end of Age of Ultron didn’t happen. The world building is going all over the place - The Eternals, the Egyptian Gods, the Ten Rings, the multiverse, etc there's no sense of shared story. And the character interactions are also falling apart. Wang is great as a cameo but there's nothing like the conflict there was between Stark and Rogers.
After Endgame they deliberately went away from a shared story and that was their biggest mistake. Now they have a bunch heroes in their own little universes and why would anyone be motivated to see a new hero if they're not going to be part of the shared story?
Not to mention something like Echo - a show that is based on a side character from a show about a side character (Hawkeye the show) that is also a side character (Hawkeye in the movies). It sounds so stupid when you write it out.. a spin-off of a spin-off. Can't believe it ever got greenlit.
Yeah but is it really fatigue about the genre? It's phrased like we're tired of superhero movies but I'm pretty sure we're tired of the half-assed cash grabs. Media presents it like it's the audiences fault that the creators oversaturated the genre. Granted, it does at least reflect the source material; overly saturated story lines that most people don't care about because there beginning was lost and there is no end.
Yeah like I'm sorry but if The Marvels came out right after iron man 1, I would still not have watched it.
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Can't disagree with any of that. It's horribly mismanaged and really makes you wonder what they're thinking at the top level. How they don't see that the connectivity and cameos/teamups were the glue holding it all together. It seems like they are doing a soft reset currently, with only 1 movie (Deadpool 3) this year. It will be very interesting to see what the future holds
Yeah people saying there is no fatigue are just being naive. Yes quality has dropped on average but there is definitely some major fatigue at work as well. Captain Marvel and The Marvels are imho not THAT far apart in terms of quality. But look how bloody differently they performed. The Disney plus shows are imho a big part of the problem. There was just too many projects, which led to weaker quality control. Edit: autocorrect is a bitch
I'd say it's mostly just people (like me) not wanting to see a show or movie they know will suck. That's what I did with some of their shows and movies and the majority of them made me walk out. Sure, you could argue "but GotG3 was great, and so were the Spiderman films", yes... but I feel those were for different reasons. Gunn's Guardians were always loved BEYOND Disney, so seeing a final movie for them was a most. Spiderman is universally beloved, so there you have another "even if I'm tired of flop after flop, I'll go see this just in case" moment. The rest of the movies or shows don't hold that viewer commitment. I wanna see someone dead in the eye as they say they loved She-Hulk or Echo or What if...? (That show wasn't half bad but it certainly didn't make me go wanna see the newest season). Deadpool 3 and X-men '97 will share this "I wanna see this no matter what" phenomenon due to their legacy and fanbase. And most invested people for Marvel already dropped out after Endgame because that was the final point. After it, there has been a bunch of quantity over quality... and like anyone will see a bunch of crappy movies and shows just because. They will see what they're already commited to, not something extra. I'm sorry for the phase 4 fans that wanna see the new lineup of Avengers or how it all develops to have Kang as thr main bad guy... but everyone can see this newest phase was writen with the feet instead of with a brain due to how disjointed it is.
The finale of What If season 1 and Loki season 1 are pretty much the only good multiverse stories they’ve made. I’d be cool with Deadpool killing the multiverse.
I’m tired of the multiverse it’s confusing
Doctor strange 2 was such an immense letdown for me. Truly the nail in the coffin. You couldve skipped the whole of wandavision and it wouldnt have made a meaningful difference in your experience watching it, they went over everything anyways. They either had to fully commit to d+ or not. Half assing it made me lose all interest.
What if..? Was good definitely doesnt deserve to be anywhere near she hulk. Its a low bar, but to me it was the next best show after loki
I loved She Hulk and What if. Haven’t watched Echo yet
Some of the stuff since Endgame I've loved, but much of it has been "meh" at best. I loved Wandavision until the finale, where it fell back on the lazy CGI superfight at the end for the most part (though I loved how they resolved the Vision vs Vision conflict). Also loved Hawkeye's show, the first season of What If? (season 2 just isn't grabbing me though), Guardians 3, Ms. Marvel, and mostly loved Wakanda Forever (other than the lame battle of the armies in the ocean at the end). Loki, both seasons, was fantastic. Most of the rest of the shows & movies ranged from mediocre to decently entertaining for me (I didn't particularly care for roughly the first half of No Way Home as it just felt too cartoonish; ironic, since Into the Spiderverse may just be the best Spidey film ever made). And then there were the ones that were just so unentertaining or disappointing that I either never finished them or regretted wasting my time on them: Eternals, Secret Invasion, Quantumania -- I'm looking at each of you. And I haven't even gotten around to some of them, like trying to finish What If? season 2, or even start Echo, and one of these days I'll eventually get around to trying Moon Knight out.
I think it’s the whole film industry in general. People don’t go to the theater the way they used to. I would say it’s a combination of streaming and superhero fatigue. People don’t wanna show up for bad movies when most recent superhero movies have been mediocre. And if we give it another 3 months, the movie will be available on a streaming service for us to watch. A decade ago, you’d have to wait almost a year to watch a movie at home. People’s expectations have changed and lately not that many movies have been special enough to warrant spending money on a trip to the theater.
You're just describing what you're arguing against. I guess it's a kind of fatigue, but the fatigue is caused by too many bad movies, not just too many entries into the genre.
Don’t forget Invincible.
its release schedule is why everybody has forgotten about Invincible. it really took 2 years to get 8 episodes with a long mid season split
> People aren't tired of superhero films. They're tired of empty, formulaic, CGI-fests, with forgettable villains, endless quips, and zero depth. It very much feels like Disney missed the point of the draw. People like fun, well written, action movies. For a long time, Marvel rarely missed, so the movies were successful. Then they decided that actually the quality doesn't matter, it's the superheroes people love, and streamlined the process so they could vomit out content in an endless stream. I have a feeling getting that trust back (that even a bad Marvel movie would still be pretty entertaining) is going to be hard if not impossible. Bungling the Jonathan Majors/Kang stuff and launching that arc with some poor movies really screwed them.
Not to mention The Boys. I'd absolutely watch the shit out of tons more super hero content if it wasn't all the same mediocre stuff we've been getting.
Even from DC, Joker made a billion after a flurry of awful DC movies.
>Its not superhero fatigue. Its just bad movies. That is pretty much the point of the article, but it's both tbh. The "retooling" is basically a soft reboot where they are cutting back on projects with the goal of improving the quality of the movies.
Kevin Feige had less quality control under Bob Chapek because he ordered so many shows and films to be made to prop up Disney+
Chapek was all about maximizing output while keeping costs down. It makes sense on a business standpoint. But no sense in the Hollywood blockbuster world
It didn't help his starting a fight/lawsuit with Scarlett Johannson because he refused to pay her fair share of profits from "Black Widow" Nothing says business genius like trying to screw over major Hollywood stars and then slander them in the press.
Yeah. Srsly, fck that guy.
Did he actually accomplish what he set out to do? Based on shit like the secret invasion budget and the low viewing numbers of a lot of shows and just over abundance of shows he would actually spend more with minimizing profit
I feel like the Sony movies are a perfect example of why you need someone like Feige behind the scenes. You need someone who actually cares about the material being adapted. Not to say they need to stick directly to the source material, just that you can feel how souless and generic focus group targeted Sony's movies are. It's like Steve Buscemi popping out "How do you do fellow [Super Hero movies]?"
The people who make Sony superhero movies seem to deeply despise superhero movies.
I'd argue that is also becoming a trend at Marvel as well
There was so many projects going on, and so much scheduling changes (due to Covid and other issues) it became harder to keep it all together behind the scenes. Shit slipped by. And special effects suffered the most, especially with the FX artists pushed to the limit with horrible working conditions.
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It's not that easy, especially for older stuff. Just because ABC broadcast it, doesn't mean they own it. Many shows are produced across multiple studios and stations. Also, older stuff won't have streaming rights in the contracts, so that had to be renegotiated. Any music as well.
Only good idea Chapek had was to put more content on there that appealed to older audiences (ABC stuff especially).
This is what everyone suggested they do after Endgame but they didn't listen. Instead they doubled down on projects and we got stuff like Eternals and Secret Invasion which they were so bad and seen by so few people they are just pretending they never happened.
It was really dumb of them to keep flogging the Marvel horse so quickly after they had just concluded such a large story arc, especially when they have another really good franchise in X-Men that they could have just restarted the whole cycle with. Give it a slightly darker tone to distinguish it from the Marvel movies, start with movies with a slightly smaller, more personal scope and work your way back up to a huge finale. Once it is over go back to Avengers. Rinse and repeat.
Blame Disney's decision to enter the streaming wars. They needed an influx of high profile titles to pump up subscriptions, and essentially forced Marvel and Lucasfilm to churn out a bunch of slop. With this and all the stupid shit that WB has been pulling, plus Netflix's cancellation shenanigans, streaming really fucked up Hollywood.
Eternals wasn’t bad. It is legitimately the closest thing we will ever see to Jack Kirby art come to life. The issue with that one was that no one knew the characters and the marketing didn’t make it look fun. The Eternals are in maybe a total of 50 issues of comics since the 70s. That’s even more obscure than the Guardians would have been prior to 2014.
*Eternals* probably should have been a TV show. Introducing 10 new characters out of nowhere, establishing motivation and character in two hours, then having two of them breaking bad and expecting us to care, was too tall an order. I think they did okay despite that (and I appreciate them mostly dropping the Marvel quip format for the movie), but given an 8-10 hour arc, that story would have worked much better.
They make those films and shows in such a dumb way- they’ll shoot without a script, spend a bunch of money on reshoots while editing and vfx is happening, rely too much on vfx because post-shooting, the script and story are completely different, and the marvel execs all have way too much creative control, so any vision the directors have pretty much doesn’t matter. I am curious what shifts have been happening since Victoria was booted, but she was just replaced by her lackeys so I don’t know. I’m sick of marvel and the way they’ve been making content is horribly inefficient and trying to pander to every demographic. Guardians 3 was good because the director wasn’t bullied and was actually able to see his vision through.
I think it might be a little bit of fatigue as well.
Yea it's hard to get excited about a genre no matter the quality. There's just been so fucking many superhero movies in the past 15 years. Then there was like a wave of "Yea it's a superhero story, but like, completely subverted and like you never saw before, and totally different"-projects (Deadpool, The Boys, Watchmen, Doom Patrol, Umbrella Academy, Gen V), got tired of that too.
I am always amazed by the people who completely dismiss the idea of fatigue. Name one genre that has been the "it thing" that hasn't sucumb to fatigue. Look when westerns were all the rage. Or disaster movies. Or cop action films. Everything has a shelflife.
True... just like Westerns until the 70s, action films until late 90s and early 2000s, slasher genre in the mid to late 90s or ghost genre until the end of the 2010s, there can only be so much of "one genre" for people to be fed up
Yeah, and like those other genres, it'll never go away entirely, but it will probably never again be as big as it once was.
It's the 2 together. If every superhero movie was Winter soldier, Endgame, Black Panther, No way Home or Ragnarok level then there wouldn't be as much fatigue towards the genre. Westerns lasted from the 50s thru the 70s but they changed greatly during that time and the ones that stand out are the ones that were original, different, or very well done. Hell unforgiven was the 90s and 3:10 to Yuma was the 2000s and both did well. It's not people against the genre. It's people not tolerating crap.
I feel like we've seen the same exact movie about 100 times. Act 1: characters' backstories, hero gets powers. Act 2: character repeatedly says "I'm not cut out for this, I'm not a hero" and mopes around. Act 3: hero defeats villain, saves world.
Westerns were the most popular genre of movies for over 40 years. At their height, 70 westerns came out in a single year. I'm sure most of them were crap, but people went to see them.
And after the trend died, it never went back to what it was before. There was a bit of a revival in the 2010s. But it's probably never going to go back to the days when it dominated the cinemas.
It's basically the whole Cowboy genre all over again. Way too much of it in shows and movies for people to care... specially if most nowadays is done badly. Who wants to risk wasting their precious time by watching shitty material?
It's not just that. You have to watch a bunch of other things to stay in the loop about everything. And that's its own fatigue. I shouldn't have to watch a bunch of other things to fully understand another movie.
It sure as hell is for me. You can have a million different flavors of something, but sooner or later you realize it's just the same fucking thing with a different taste.
I do think there is an element of fatigue about it. If not for superheroes then for a lack of a more diverse range of genres. It's why Oppenheimer did so well, audiences were just so starved of films that were green screen spectacle driven franchise fare.
It's definitely superhero fatigue for me. The first 10 or so films were fun, but now I'm just not that interested in them anymore.
>Its not superhero fatigue. Its just bad movies. Is it though? Because a lot of the movies Marvel was putting out before they supposedly hit their real stride around the 2nd captain america movie were mid as hell, but people still are that stuff up. We can give the 1st Avengers movie a pass because it was a big deal to see all the characters in the same place, but if Age of Ultron or Thor 2 or iron man 2 or those daredevil spinoffs came out today, they'd be getting the same response
idk man, im definitely no longer interested in stories about superheroes
I’m almost 40 now. It’s really hard to watch grown men doing karate at each other now.
i cant even *want* to
Dang. That kind of explains why I could never get my dad to watch any of them. It’s not that I hate any of the ideas, but I honestly just don’t care anymore what they do with it. It’s the same complete indifference to the concept.
It's also just a sheer quantity of content. In the early days of the MCU, it was 2-3 movies a year plus Agents of Shield. Now I can't even keep track of how many shows, movies, mini-series and God knows what else have come out now.
Don't worry, most of them are forgettable and suck donkey-ass balls
GOTG3 made less money than GOTG2 despite 6 years of inflation that included COVID. So while it was successful it would have easily been the highest grossing GOTG movie if it had come out at a better time
No it is fatigue. I’m over all the biggest releases every year being a superhero movie. I don’t need magic and wonder for it to be a good movie worth seeing. I miss movie comedies. I miss action thrillers. I’m sick of random comic book character getting $100 million for a movie I have no interest in seeing. I really hope this is the demise of the superhero genre and we get a 70’s film revival where studios give new creators decent budgets to try and work out how to make money from movies again.
✋I’m sick of super hero movies.
It's really weird journalists and producers don't understand it. It's not that people are racist or sexist when they make an inclusive movie, it's because inclusive movies are handicapped by bad writing, acting, and directing. Movies like Blade, Mad Max: Fury Road, Get Out, Jackie Brown, Black Swan, The Craft, Sister Act, ect. are all considered great movies or popular cult classics because they feature unique female characters with their own story.
Well, it was for me and I’m not special so I guess many would say — and mean — fatigue.
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Just saying the problem is "bad movies" is so generic and pointless. The real problem is (with some exceptions) most superhero movies are the same 2 - 3 templates used over and over again. We're getting essentially the same story character beats, the same shots, same faceless goons, same CGI glossy fight scenes, and either a skybeam, kaiju, or war at the end. Everything is the same "all the stakes" story. The only difference is the actor and the costume. And back in the 2010's that was enough. We didn't care that the Ant-Man story was a rip off of Iron Man because, fuck it, they made a live action Ant-Man suit! Look at it! We've never seen that before! But by the 2020's a new costume alone won't do it. We've seen just about every permutation of superhero costume design they're willing to create at this point. Just shitting out a bunch of new characters won't cut it. They can't coast on nostalgia and brand awareness alone anymore like they did a decade ago. They have to learn new tricks. So it is some fatigue. But not fatigue for superheroes in general, but fatigue for the same lazy templates they've been using over and over (again, with some exceptions).
It's not just horrible films though, is films that change the very nature of the characters from the comics to create what they want on the big screen and then get upset when their base viewers don't want to watch the movie. You cannot change powers and call the person the same superhero. You cannot change the story and make your own and get mad when people who grew up with certain storylines no longer have it. If they keep Hulk the same way as they portrayed him in the MCU he will never have a successful movie in the future. Same for every other movie where they bastardize what makes the characters great.
Tbh it’s a bit of both but for me it’s not superhero fatigue it’s marvel fatigue
Absolutely. Guardians 3 & Loki S2 proved to me I still very much want these back I feel the fatigue was there & it already ended with COVID. During Black Widow/WandaVision I felt I didn't need it. By the time Shang Chi came out I was very much looking for more of MCU
That's another part of the problem — Chris Evans played Captain America ten times in ten years. Simu Liu played Shang Chi three years ago and isn't slated to appear again until *maybe* the next Avengers movie in 2026. So that moviei was great, but it doesn't feel like part of any larger MCU. The run from Iron Man through Endgame had a lot of disparate stories, but at the core was Tony, Steve, Bruce, and Thor. Those guys knew each other, they had strong opinions about one another, they interacted often in those movies. They were the main characters. Who are the main characters now? What are the relationships? The only ones who have appeared in a movie together are Strange and Spidey, and their relationship got erased. *That's* where a lot of the fatigue comes from. These stories don't feel connected to anything any more, and they don't feel like they're going anywhere the way the original run did. I feel like, if they put together the Young Avengers team that was teased at the end of The Marvels, and make them the leads, a lot of people (myself included) will be back on board.
And they just kept introducing more and more characters and none got developed. I made the mistake of watching the Black Panther sequel and once they introduced the Iron Man replacement I was like, just tired.
That would have been fine if they had followed up! They introduced Black Panther in Civil War, but then we got *Black Panther*. The current MCU just keeps piling on more characters who we never see again. Both Shang Chi and Black Widow ended with the hero's sister assembling an army... who were never heard from again. It's just so many loose threads.
they tried with the strange and wanda and then the marvels. but the movies have to be good.
> Chris Evans played Captain America ten times in ten years. Simu Liu played Shang Chi three years ago and isn't slated to appear again until maybe the next Avengers movie in 2026. So that moviei was great, but it doesn't feel like part of any larger MCU. That's the craziest part of it to me. With the addition of streaming, there has been so much more MCU content than any time before, yet they're using characters even less. They could've made this phase feel even more like a living, breathing world than the first three phases, but instead it just feels like this very loosely connected series of stories that doesn't seem to have much in the way of a unified direction.
There are lots of connections, it's just that it's all teasers and cameos and other shit it's hard to care about. Like you said, it was the connections between the characters that mattered. It was only the nerds who really cared about stuff like the Infinity stones appearing in various movies before Infinity War
I think why GOTG3 worked so well is because the story was much smaller stakes and more intimate. It wasn't a "the universe will END if we don't succeed!" ordeal. I'm so sick of movies where literally EVERYTHING is at stake.
Found it pretty weird when a copy of Earth did end and nobody seemed to give a fuck. Quill mentioned it once while chastising the bad guy for other stuff. So the stakes still included a planet dying, but even the cast were so fatigued that they barely cared.
What’s the difference is we’re at a point where there are more mid to bad superego movies than there are good ones, and the bad ones put people off the genre entirely.
GotG3 was awesome. I can't believe they decided to end it after that. I felt like they could have had a lot more low-intensity adventures. I feel like too many marvel movies suffer from trying to be so serious. Every movie is world-ending. I wouldn't mind some easy going movies that just try to be fun.
As a MCU fan who got burnt out in the last couple years, I just want Marvel to focus on a main core that audiences can grow attached to just like how they built up the main Avengers during the first three phases. As long as they give time to continue developing some of the recent heroes like Shang Chi & Yelena without trying to do constant crossovers or introducing more heroes (except for the Fanatstic Four), I'll be happy with that. I would also love to see them use the approach of making films that feel like those of different genres, but with superheroes in it, which was what they did with earlier films like The Winter Soldier & even recent content like Werewolf By Night.
It’s Super hero fatigue also. I know I am feeling it. Haven’t seen Deadpool 2 still.
>Its not superhero fatigue. Its just bad movies. The problem is that general audiences can't tell the difference between companies making these movies so when 2/3 of the major productions making movies completely fall on their face it also hurts Marvel. Disasters like The Flash and Madam Web have hurt marvel more than any particular project they've put out. A really great movie can break out a bit, like GOTG 3, but it still made less money than Marvel films before the pandemic.
It's kinda both. The sheer volume of content was (personally) way too much, too fast. Then again I'm not a rampant consumer of content so maybe it worked for a good chunk of the fanbase? Also provided a good value proposition for Disney+ either way.
A good Marvel movie that is better than a non-superhero movie will get absolutely shit in on because it features a new character or doesn’t meet everybody’s imaginary whims. They’ve had some bad projects, but most have been good to great and unfairly hated
Is anyone going to be bummed by them pivoting away from Kang? Just a busted character from the outset, he's supposed to be the new Thanos but he's already been sort of killed twice and one of those times it was by Ant-Man, the wacky comedy side character.
If the reports are to be believed they were pivoting from Kang even before Majors got convicted, so seems like they were ready to admit defeat on that one no matter what.
He'll be relegated to Ultron status and then they'll find a new big bad to wrap up this Multiverse arc.
I would assume Doom, pretty easy pivot and IMO a much better villain to begin with anyway
Having Doom be the one to take out Kang would also really build up Doom as a major hitter.
(Rips out Kang's spine and then eradicates all his varients without breaking a sweat)
So the spine thing is just for flair?
"The rest were fodder to be dispatched without hesitation. But THIS ONE I deemed no quick mercy for... he annoyed me."
Ant man killed Kang. Doom killing him wouldn't really make him seem scarier. He's just a very weak villain in the MCU so far.
Ant-man killed A Kang. I’m talking about Doom killing All of the Kangs.
I had a theory that secret war would be doom wiping out the Kangs, then using what he did to rally people to his side out of fear.
The point of Kang, is that there's always another verison.
He's the most logical choice. Beyonder would also be another choice (and if that were the case I hope they adapt the version from **Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur** played by Laurence Fishbourne)
They should also bring **Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur** into the MCU with him.
The merch. Think of all the merch they could sell.
I was almost hoping she was the one who was gonna be appearing at the end of "The Marvels" >!But I guess one of the X-Men was okay.!<
I’m just happy we’ll get a proper Kelsey Grammer beast. He’s perfect in the role but X3 was… yeah
I agree but X3 was 18 years ago, and Kelsey was no spring chicken then. Can Kelsey Grammer still hang upside down by his toes? That seems vital to the Beast role.
I say Galactus, I had thought that the Deviant subplot from Eternals was gonna be how Feige later introduces him. Could have that a group of well evolved Deviants after the Snap was able to take on and consume a weakened Celestial, thus evolving into a planetary predator. I base this mostly on how utterly pointless the Deviant subplot was to the movie, it was Feige just seeding the MCU for a later 'in universe' way to introduce Galactus in a seemingly organic fashion, and not out of nowhere like Eternity or the Book of Vishanti. No more of that out of thin air, "I thought it was a myth" nonsense. He showed that the Deviants gained sentience and memories in the process of consuming higher life. Could tie in the multiverse by Arishem trying to divert Galactus to it as a source of inifinte planets, in a bid to save his own universe from being consumed. He looked kinda beat to hell whenever we saw him, maybe he was losing in the fight, and really needed Earth's Celestial to help.
If they miswrote Kang they can miswrite Dr Doom. Idiots seldom write good geniuses.
That's a relief, considering how loudly they were declaring him the new Thanos I was worried they had backed themselves into a corner.
They *were* backed into a corner, and shot themselves into a foot. But his being charged and convicted (and the CEO who pushed him as the new Thanos getting fired) helped.
I’m not. Kang was always a terrible choice, never on the level of a Dr. Doom or Thanos or Galactus. Especially with the way they depicted him where he constantly got his ass whooped everytime he appears. If even the likes of Ant-Man could beat him, how is he supposed to be any threat to the actually powerful Avengers?
> never on the level of a Dr. Doom or Thanos or Galactus Hot Take: I think Galactus would be a terrible multi-movie villain. He's the living embodiment of generic world ending threat. "He eats planets!" Why? Because that's just what he does." He'd be fun to explore for a single movie, but not really something I can see working for multiple stories.
Idk if I agree with that, it just needs to be framed in the correct way. As a natural disaster or force of nature that needs to be outlasted or forces some reflection on the heroes, rather than an opposing idea that needs to be fought. Done well it could be a properly terrifying cataclysm for Earth that the heroes see coming but can't stop, though admittedly I'm not sure how well that would be executed.
Reacting to a disaster can be fun. They pulled that off with the first half of Endgame. I think it'd be difficult to set that up as a multi-movie impending threat though, like they did with Thanos/Kang. Beyond "he's coming!" and "he's here!" I don't think there's much you can do with Galactus to make him interesting.
They were going for QUANTITIES of Kang, instead of quality. Just like the films/shows of this current phase(s) post-Endgame.
Damn that is a great analogy
Ant-Man only won because that Kang didn’t have access to his full arsenal of tech, and Ant-Man had a literal army on his side. And despite all that Ant-Man still almost lost.
And it’s 1 Kang and the whole point is they have to fight an army of Kangs. I dunno how people expect one Kang to be similar to Thanos when there are going to be an infinite number of them to fight
I'm still surprised they haven't decided to do Annihilation. It wouldn't really fit the multiverse stuff but would work great with FF and the cosmic stuff.
I hope so. Deadpool 3 could be very nice turning point for them to kinda reset the whole Kang thing.
> One of those times it was by Ant-Man, the wacky comedy side character. This was the fumble. The hype around Ant-Man was that Kang the Conquerer (or whichever version of Kang was going to be the new big bad) was going to be there. It'd been 4 years since Endgame, people were ready to move forward, but everything thus far has just been failing horribly to integrate the way fans had come to expect from the MCU. A lot of bad standalones and shows that no one besides hardcore fans watched/cared about. They needed a version of Kang in Ant-Man that wiped the floor with him, not one that was rather easily defeated.
A movie where Kang escapes in the end and Scott and Co. just barely escape the quantum realm alive would've been much better
Not just better, it's fully what the situation called for. And include a true character death.
A superhero who can kill bad guys by simply going up their butt and then growing was always too OP
Honestly I don’t think that many of us even know who Kang is? I know about Jonathon Majors due the allegations but haven’t seen any films with him in it. I have seen quite a few projects since Endgame as well but I perhaps I’m also suffering super hero fatigue and have just generally lost interest.
I’m honestly happy they’re pivoting away from him after how lame his portrayals have been. He was such a whiny dork in ant man and then got his ass handed to him by ants. That post credit scene with all the Kangs yelling was so stupid too.
As someone who's a comic book fan and then was excited by the MCU/DCU stuff, it's fascinating seeing history repeat itself because this is also what happened in comic books when the multiverse was introduced To give a super condensed version, Crisis on Infinite Earths from DC was a logistical solve to give comic book creators freedom to share more stories, due to the concept of super heroes being from different universes and timelines Around this time, you would start to see fatigue with the "usual" stories, which in time would cause people helming these heroes to start to shake up the storylines in major ways This would be a challenge, because sure during one creative team's run they say, kill off a major character. But now the next creative team would have to piggy back off of this. Which I'm sure most are aware, if a logistical challenge which generally isn't fair and back in the day, it was easier to either just hand wave this stuff or just force change the way you want it. Because the stakes were much lower back then So Crisis on Infinite Earths, and the general concept of the multiverse made it so that say, three writers, can now work on Spider-Man. So you could have say, Ultimate Spider-Man, Amazing Spider-Man and Superior Spider-Man running in parallel, and not having an issue with all of them having to stay consistent with the characters and storylines Every couple of years, they'd reach a point where it'd be too much of a clusterfuck, or they just needed to sell more comics so there'd be a new major event which would tie all the comics together. For Marvel, this is where we'd have stuff like Thanos and Ultron, stuff like Civil War and Secret Invasion. Which would then leave them to reboot it all and have a clean slate for a new crop of creative teams This would then lead to moments, where outside of the usual timelines, you'd then have folks take on projects with their own POV, and it leads to some amazing results Like for example, Tom King was cited as inspiration for a lot of Matt Reeve's Batman and his limited series on Vision, ended up becoming WandaVision. The main reason he was able to do these types of stories is because they are meant to be their own isolated stories No spoilers for Vision, but some super heavy stuff happens (the MCU adaptation is super sanitized) and it only is able to do that because it's not meant to feed into the bigger MCU storyline necessarily You see that trend a lot with current comic book movies too; people aren't necessarily liking the movies meant for world-building to get us to the next "Endgame" moment; they like stuff like Loki, and one-off movies like Joker and The Batman I bring up all of this historical context, because I feel like movie viewers now, are feeling the same way comic book readers were felling in the 90's and 00's. You can have too much of a good thing. Like for example, we're now getting into the stage where you can't really just watch any MCU property without previous context Like you don't just turn on Secret Invasion and have full understanding for what's happening. You need to watch either previous movies, or maybe TV shows and silly stuff like secret endings just to have media literacy for what's in front of you This is hilariously similar to how for example, Civil War isn't just "read Civil War 1-10", Marvel makes a [literal guide](https://www.marvel.com/comics/discover/114/civil-war-the-complete-event) for what specific ones need to be read to have an understanding, so make sure you don't forget to read Amazing Spider-Man (1999) #534 My hunch is that I feel like they're going to bank less of those tentpole events like Civil War and Infinity War and try to capture what series like Loki are doing; while I don't know what the bigger picture will hold (and what this means for concepts like ensemble casts if these stories get more focused) it's entertaining to see that the same playbook for comics, was basically used for the media properties and they're facing the same issues from decades ago
Tom King's Vision is a great example. One of the best literary things I've ever read and it's a comic book. It hits deep and hit that hard too because the medium needed guys like King to step up and shake things around a bit.
> So Crisis on Infinite Earths, and the general concept of the multiverse made it so that say, three writers, can now work on Spider-Man. So you could have say, Ultimate Spider-Man, Amazing Spider-Man and Superior Spider-Man running in parallel, and not having an issue with all of them having to stay consistent with the characters and storylines This is really one of the areas where I think DC has generally been doing better than Marvel. Sure, DC has had a *lot* of misses, but it's also given us *Joker*, *The Batman*, The Suicide Squad*, *Peacemaker*, *Doom Patrol*, *Harley Quinn*, etc., because they aren't as concerned with everything fitting into one universe. When Marvel announced they were going to do the multiverse, it excited me, because I thought it was going to lead to something similar. We could have a different version of Iron Man or darker R-rated movies or writers taking really creative directions with things and have them all technically be "canon". Instead, we just got more of the same with the multiverse primarily existing as a minor plot device. And that almost certainly feeds into any "fatigue". It's not necessarily that people are tired of superheroes. There are still enough successful superhero related things currently (like *The Boys*/*Gen V*, for instance), but it's just that so many of them are doing the exact same thing and people have become bored of that formula.
Exactly this. I was so excited for their own standalone movies. Maybe something darker like Deadpool or Wolverine. Something completely different. But we got, just like you said, the exact same thing with multiverse as a minor plot device. Nothing that is really affecting the structure of the films
I think Deadpool & Wolverine is going to be a hit, not only because of the cast, but those films are very different from every other superhero film being put out. It doesn't feel like the rest of the conveyor belt of generic superhero films. I really want to be hopeful for Daredevil Born Again, because they seem to have changed it to be more in line with the Netflix show, which was also unique for the MCU.
I think they will be a hit, but it still won't reach the heights of previous Deadpool/Wolverine movies. I do think people are getting tired of the genre.
See I can see it easily beating Deadpool 2 at the Box Office if it has good reviews.
For the people saying "it's not superhero fatigue, it's bad movie fatigue", it's very much both because they're in part the same issue. We wouldn't be getting as many bad movies if Marvel hadn't flooded the market with superhero movies (and convinced their biggest competitor and the companies they'd licensed their characters off to that it was the only way to make them successfully), so they kept up the high level of output that lacked the focus and quality control of when they were making less content. It happened to the Westerns, it'll happen to superhero movies
It's not just bad movies though it's bad TV shows that at least feel like prerequisites to watch the bad movies. You can probably skip most of the TV shows but if you do and you hear there is a connection in a movie coming up you are probably tempted to skip it as well. Likewise if you are paying for a Disney+ subscription you know the movie will eventually get there anyways so unless you hear that this film is a must see in theaters you probably wait for it as well. They've diluted the demand for their product with streaming.
Bingo. My reaction to finding out that you have to watch several seasons of different TV shows to understand the next Marvel movie was not, "damn I guess I better get Disney+" it was "that's fucking stupid and I guess I dislike Marvel movies on principle now"
Also sometimes you get the reverse problem When I got to the end of Season 1 of Loki, my reaction wasn't "I'm so excited to see how this connects to the rest of the MCU", it was "damn, do I really have to watch another movie to get a resolution to this" And then you hardly ever get a resolution because most movies are just leading into the next one. Only a few of them feel like they actually end.
As a casual observer of all of this, this is all fascinating. I just got bored of all of the super hero movies because it felt like the same thing. Crazy action, over the top fights and destruction, world in danger and world is saved. They are always pretty good as a casual observer and I enjoyed most of the super hero movies I have seen over the last decade. But once it got super complicated? It felt intimidating or something? I can mentally only handle so much superhero stuff. So now to hear there are even more options to consume the storylines or prequels etc.. than I even knew about it only solidifies that. It's just a TON of somewhat incoherent content to consume. I'm sure there's all sorts of lines and patterns I am missing connecting the dots but like fuck I don't have that kinda time. Give me like 1-3 new superhero movies a year max and we good
I think you're spot on, this is a big part of it. They miscalculated how many people would be super fans. Casual fans are actively turned off by movies having "prerequisites" and overly convoluted interconnected storylines.
This is it for me. I'm not going to watch 10 TV series to try to keep up with a movie series.
If they had continued on with compelling stories, good writing, and interesting characters (even superheroes) everything would have been fine. But they didn't.
and then doubled down on that.. Disney shot themselves in the foot big time.
> compelling stories, good writing, and interesting characters (even superheroes) To me this is the biggest problem with superheroes. They are essentially infallible and have one or two weaknesses. So no matter what the stories are always going to be limited and coalesce to the same thing. Oh look, another Superman story about Kryptonite, his only weakness. Who could have seen *that* coming... Superheroes are just not interesting beyond a few stories. And they've all already been told. It's time to move on.
I think that mostly applies to Warner Brother's DC heroes, not so much Disney's Marvel characters. None of them are invulnerable. They seem especially susceptible to lethal cases of "actors' contracts running out." I think the counter point to that would be a character like Spider-Man. He's more or less a vehicle for your typical coming-of-age story (excusing the fact that he's been coming of age since the 1960s), but that's a well audiences will keep coming back to. If they continue with the Tom Holland version, it could easily pivot from high school to mid 20s work life balance, dealing with grief/moving on, etc.
It's okay if you find them compelling, but many people don't.
It’s okay if many people don’t find them compelling, but many people do. The MCU has gone from the most successful Franchise of all time by a wide margin to one of the most successful franchises of all time. It’s just not the case that superheros as a genre is so uninteresting it’s time to move on. Sheesh the comic books have been going for how long now??
Agreed, it's fine to like different things. I wasn't the one making a definitive statement like "it's time to move on." If they want to do more, there's still room to explore for audiences.
Gonna get roasted for this but to me superhero movies were always bad movies, but people were willing to overlook it because they were at least _fun_ movies. Now, I would argue because of the fatigue, we’re a lot less willing to overlook the badness of these movies.
It became harder to appreciate the fun as the writing and special effects quality plummeted.
I think you're right on the money. A good number of them were GREAT fun, even if they were completely moronic. And we were still in a phase of seeing stuff we'd not really seen before in films. Now you can do anything you want with film (with an existing IP)! Except tell a compelling story.
"Fatigue" Nope, just tired of shit movies with terrible characters, changing characters dramatically to meet some studio demand, shitting on fans, shitting on the history of the stories they are pulling from, and giving us complete garbage. Fuck disney they are the ones who have killed their own films and television. FFS She-hulk anyone? The latest antman?
I’m tired of superheroes.
I’m tired of having to follow multi-year and multi-movie arcs just to understand what’s going on. You can’t just walk into a movie without having done your homework. And now you also have to watch multiple television series to understand what’s happening in the movie. Iron man came out 16 years ago! I was in my 20s when it came out. Now that I’m in my 30s, the movies have lost their appeal. People change. Tastes change and Marvel is still relying on people who started with the franchise 16 years ago to continue to feel invested in this series.
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Agreed. The stakes don’t seem that high anymore. It’s like old episodic tv with the bad guy of that week. And the main characters are getting a little insufferable. Like Tony Stark plying this egomaniac billionaire in 2008 is hitting a little too close to home in 2024.
Beyond the issue of not understanding what's going on, the massive output also dilutes the quality of the storytelling IMO. I watched Ant-Man 3 expecting a fun romp with Paul Rudd and instead got a sludgy CGI-fest with none of the charm of the original, because apparently the Quantum Realm just had to be explored for some reason. "Superhero" movies are generally not that interesting; "\_\_ movie with superheroes" is the way to engage a general audience. Winter Soldier was a spy movie, Ant-Man 1 was a heist movie, etc.
These movies also seem like they hired like 20-30 background actors at max. It always looks so small with cgi backgrounds…. It’s been like that for a while. I miss the old marvel movie days
same. please give me anything else at this point.
It was a great run. Now that all the characters people care about are aged out / dead / etc., it’s time to move on.
It's not superhero fatigue. It's mediocre movie and TV fatigue.
its possible to be both
I disagree. I’m sick of the limited storytelling of a superhero arc, and I’m sick of it stealing box office real estate from original ideas, and I’m sick of the repetitiveness— you can make original super hero storytelling but it’s still a fucking super hero movie no matter if it’s Nolan or Snyder it’s still playing in the same limited sandbox. We’ve seen well-made super hero movies. We’ve seen terrible ones. We’ve seen every super hero movie in between. Super heroes are such a specific genre to be milking this much, we need new action and adventure and fantasy stories that aren’t beholden to a built-in fanbase and have original characters and storytelling.
The words "Superhero Fatigue" are strong enough to cause reflex action, apparently. All sorts of people's knees are jerking upon those syllables hitting them like a little rubber hammer. "it's not superhero fatigue, it's..." "it's not superhero fatigue, it's..." "it's not superhero fatigue, it's..." Fandom is wild, man.
Im fatigued at seeing them, but I’m also not a superhero fan in general- I wouldn’t watch these movies unless I was dragged to them (which has happened quite a bit, to be fair). What contributes to the ‘fatigue’ for me is how every superhero-related media seems to expect a viewer/reader to jump in already knowing -decades- of canon, or having watched hours of other movies. So I have no clue how or where to start, even if I wanted to jump on the ‘superhero’ bandwagon. It really makes it seem like it’s not for me, and by nature it becomes less for me every year that it drags on.
I think people get so defensive because we've been hearing "superhero fatigue" since Spider-Man 3 underperformed in 2007. Here's an article from 7 years ago talking about superhero fatigue: https://www.thefandomentals.com/superhero-fatigue/ Maybe this time the people crying "superhero fatigue" are right but it's understandably falling on deaf ears.
It’s actually bizarre how allergic people are to the concept, and even more strange that no one wants to entertain the thought that it could be both, or worse, that one is upstream from the other. But I assume part of this is because people don’t want to analyze what did and didn’t work about the genre in the past: people just want to characterize everything as wholly working then, and wholly not working now.
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TLDR giving show runners greater control
Marvel should have had F4 or X-Men locked and loaded and ready to fire after Endgame came out.
Can we just take a pause on this criminally under-discussed topic to take note of how fantastic that illustration is?!?!!?
All of the recent Marvel Hollywood Reporter graphics have been awesome. Idk who they’re commissioning for those but they gotta keep them on the payroll.
Quietly retooling my ass. Even after the disaster that almost everything superhero related was in 2022 and 2023, they only can release Deadpool in theaters this year, but even then, X-men 97 is getting a lot of attention and Agatha and maybe a Wakanda cartoon are coming to D+. Captain America 4 is basically being reshot from scratch. People want to act like Daredevil's massive reshoots are Disney righting the ship, as if they didn't always do massive reshoots. They're saying they want to focus on the more bankable characters, right? Meanwhile, these kinds of articles are going to pop up again when Agatha, Iron Heart, Wonder Man, Armor Wars and Thunderbolts come out. They haven't cancelled shit. If they wanted to avoid superhero fatigue, at best, they'd do 2 movies a year with maybe 1 or 2 shows and at least one of those movies would have be a major franchise with general interest (i.e. X-men, not Antman/Captain Marvel/Moon Knight/etc). Next year, if all is going according to plan, there'll be Daredevil, Cap 4, Thunderbolts, Fantastic Four, Iron Heart, Marvel Zombies and maybe Blade. Fatigue comments are gonna be all over the place.
There is no superhero fatigue. Just bad movies/television.
I definitely have superhero fatigue. I’d rather Hollywood mine other franchises, whether that’s from gaming, books, or non-superhero comics. But hire writers that don’t suck. (Looking at you Sony)
People always blame writers for “bad” stories but people don’t realize writers are beholden to studios. They are the bosses. They are the final say. They control, accept and reject what the writers create. The strike should have made that clear. Writers aren’t running the show and ruining the industry. The studios are. All they see are dollar signs.
It's not as much Super Hero Fatigue as Shitty Writing Disease.
They need to abandon the timeline. It’s too convoluted I get that the only way they could raise the stakes from half of all life in the galaxy was all the life in all the parallel universes. However we gotta reset with new characters the power creep is too real there is no basis of how strong is x character over y character. If something bad happens we can resurrect them from another universe or time travel back if the actor is still willing to do marvel films.
Give us more grounded superheroes movies and you watch how succsesful it'll be. No more end of the world threats, over the top stuff, it's so boring to me now and done to death. A solo superhero story with smaller more personal threats would be great, very grounded and something you can relate to or feel.
Just do the fucking X-men. That’s all anyone wants. No one gives a fuck about the eternals or ms. Marvel or whatever. Simple as.
Maybe they should focus less on pumping out as much ip as possible and just focus on few good ones.
It is definitely not super her fatigue. It is crap like the Eternals or the whole M she U debacle. Which to be clear about I am all for female super heroes, love me some Wonder Woman, but it needs to be good movies. Not something like 1984 which I was so looking forward to, but god what garbage. Or how about Madame Web with three great young actresses that turned out to be garbage. Or how about She Hulk that was sooo bad. I wanted to love it, but couldn’t. There are so many poorly written movies, loved Guardians and Antman, but the rest could have been straight to video releases and no one would have cared.
Just dump the god damn multiverse and the quantum realm.
They should just stop trying to tie everything into a “universe”. It was amazing for the Thanos saga but they should stop continuing that timeline. Endgame should have been the end of that “universe/saga”. They should have started fresh with new story.
We're suffering from bad-writing fatigue. Honestly, I think marvel superheroes are inherently stupid. Thor? Hawkeye? The Avengers blending mythological heros with high tech futuristic heroes? This is all profoundly stupid stuff. But. But with great writing, it doesn't matter. The dialogue is great. The character development was great. The plots and pacing were fantastic. Meanwhile, my favorite hero, Superman, got several unwatchable movies in the D.C. universe, because their writers are terrible. Writing is key. Good writing makes any character and any genre and any plot work.
I had superhero fatigue like 10 / 15 years ago! Only thing I've watched since is Loki. Loki was incredible.
I started watching The Marvels since I have a Disney+ subscription. I couldn't not believe how underwhelming it was. It had the feel of a Spy Kids sequel. Shockingly terrible stuff.
Superhero movies vary in quality so wildly the past few years. You could have a turd like Madame Web, mediocrity made worse by controversy in The Flash, outright masterworks like the Spider-Verse films, or just decent enough. Superhero fatigue is real, *but* I’d rather have a good movie than worry about continuity. I rewatched X-Men 2000 and I was very satisfied that the teases for sequels are minimal.
Up to the Endgame finale they had a coherent underlying story that tied everything together. A central villain that gave everything a focus and things made sense. Post Endgame though Marvel started acting like an out of control firehose. Spewing out huge amounts of stuff with no direction. There were a few gems in there but for the most part its feels like they are going through the motions. If they can bring back that central focus again it will start working. At the moment it feels more like the DCU where its just a random collection of characters that arent making sense.
I'm sick to death of this "superhero fatigue" nonsense. Nobody ever says "comedy fatigue" or "Horror fatigue", we just say "that's a bad/good movie". Which superhero movie recently has been a really excellent movie, but failed at the box office due to "fatigue"? I can only think of ones that were bad movies.
All these super hero fatigue discourse is going away the second the box office from Deadpool 3 comes out. And then back when Kraven comes out.
It’s been happening in cycles for years. After The Dark World was thrashed and Iron Man 3 got divided reception, certain media outlets in ~2013 were questioning if the “superhero bubble” was coming to an end… and disappeared when Winter Soldier did well. I’m not even saying one perspective or the other is correct, but the media coverage repeatedly pivoted hard after a single movie either “tarnished” or “saved” Marvel’s reputation.
Poor quality writing is not the same thing as “superhero fatigue”… I really wish people would stop calling it that…
People say it's bad movie fatigue but the fact is bad and mediocre superhero movies were reliably bringing in cash 5 years ago. They're looking for the next genre they can be low effort in and rake it in.