Superhero Movie Fatigue Discussion - Are Audiences Getting Tired Of CBMS?

[Detective Conan]

For a long time Capes and Cowls ruled the box office, particularly with Marvel Studios being the one to rule over the biggest box office throne previously belonging to earth 2000 film franchises like Harry Potter and Lord Of The Rings.

With the recent struggles of Marvel and DC at the box office, now with Ant-Man underperforming and Shazam outright tanking, it’s being suggested that days of Marvel and DC dominating the movies are long behind them. Do you believe audiences are fatigued on superhero movies, or are these recent examples of underperformance is merely exception to the rule - an anomaly that isn’t a sign of growing audience disinterest in the genre. What’s your take?

 

[Filmfreak]

We should define fatigue. If we mean that people will stop caring about superhero films altogether, that's not going to happen, at least not for a very long time. If by fatigue we mean that people will stop watching in masses any mediocre movie that the genre has to offer, like it was pretty much happening so far, then I think that's a given that it already has started taking place.

Based on the last year or so I'm positive we are seeing the first signs of it. But there are a lot of factors at play to know that for sure, so I'm waiting for more examples to come, especially from big projects in the next year or two, to be sure. Either way, whether it has slowly being emerging or we're just seeing exceptions to the rule lately, it's bound to happen at some point. The question is when.

 

[Milk Tray Guy]

As far as superhero fatigue goes I think at some point studios are going to have to start adjusting their expectations. No doubt CBMs are here to stay, but I think we may end up with around $500 - $600 million being reasonable routine expectations, with maybe $700 - $800 million for the big event-type movies.

 

[metaphysician]

I think its way too early to attribute to "superhero fatigue" what might very well be a more generalized shift in the movie-viewing habits of the public, especially when you have a ton of third variables like the streaming strategies of different studios.

 

[The Caped Knight]

I don’t believe in superhero fatigue it’s becoming a cliche excuse when superhero films under preformed. I believe that the audience is overwhelmed and times are tough due to higher inflation rates. Now these last two Superhero films aren’t exactly household names and truthfully the quality of these films have been subpar and the audience knows it. Now if something like Guardians vol.3 and The Flash featuring Batman doesn’t boost up the Box Office numbers that might be a problem. I suspect the numbers will speak for themselves…

 

[FunkMiller]

I believe they are certainly getting fatigued with average to poor superhero movies, featuring not particularly well loved characters.

We can't yet determine whether the genre as a whole is going to be affected, but it frankly wouldn't surprise me. Over twenty years is a great run for any genre to dominate the box office. Wouldn't surprise me to see a change in audience habits now. Nothing lasts forever. (Though the top marquee characters like Batman & Spider-man will always make bank.)

 

[MessiahDecoy123]

When every great CBM flops that's how you'll know.

But mediocre movies flopping doesn't tell you much.

 

[Joe Von Zombie]

From a personal perspective, I'm franchise fatigued. I don't give a flying **** about Star Wars anymore. Creed 3, Fast X, yada yada, get ****ed. The MCU has got to ditch the sitcom humor and actually give a **** about these characters again and James Gunn is really going to have to knock out of the park to even get me to consider going to a theater to see anything that's coming from the new DCU. I have bins full of comics, literal shelves of TPBs and they've lost me and I cannot be the only one. The Batman came out and essentially gave me the David Fincher style Batman movie I've always wanted and I still almost skipped it in theaters.

 

[AVEITWITHJAMON]

I believe they are certainly getting fatigued with average to poor superhero movies, featuring not particularly well loved characters.

We can't yet determine whether the genre as a whole is going to be affected, but it frankly wouldn't surprise me. Over twenty years is a great run for any genre to dominate the box office. Wouldn't surprise me to see a change in audience habits now. Nothing lasts forever. (Though the top marquee characters like Batman & Spider-man will always make bank.)

This. I dont think audiences will ever get tired with good-great CBMs. But average-poor ones they will get fed up of naturally.

 

[MarvelFan]

It doesn't help when both Marvel and DC have overflown the market with so many contents like currently happening.
Counting the movies and also TV shows ..there are tons of CB based movies and TV shows in the last 4 or 5 years alone.

It would only make the general and mainstream audiences getting liitle sick and yes...maybe tired of so many of them.
I think even among geeks too, some already burned out. And that's why...after superheroes has dominated the media and pop culture for almost a decade...some of the non CB materials like Top Gun, The Last of Us, House of the Dragons, etc. became such stand outs phenomena and feel fresh for so many including geeks and general audiences.

I think both Marvel and DC needs to slow down a little bit in their slates....make their movies be special again and make them feels like an event, like they were used to.
I kinda missed the time during the Avengers 1, Winter Soldier, Iron Man 3, AoU, Civil War, Infinity War, Endgame...when every movie looked like an event.

Now? Not so much...
Today is feel like "ahh another Marvel (or DC) movies...I might check it out later during the end of week or next week if I have time and in the mood".
It is weird saying that as a fan (and I am a big Marvel fan) but really...that's how I felt with the current MCU (and also DC).

Let's just hope that they can make superhero movie and comic book movie (be that Marvel or DC) as a whole be special again.

 

[Milk Tray Guy]

As fans we can afford to be more discerning now. Whereas before, although we might not have been especially into a particular CB franchise, if a movie adaptation came along we'd likely as not see it as we love the genre and would want to support it - and it could be ages before the next CBM appeared. Now, if something doesn't really grab us we can easily afford to say meh, I'll wait for what's coming next.

 

[Kahran Ramsus]

Too early to tell. Ant-Man was a disappointment, but prior to that Marvel did quite well with Black Panther 2 (which had to deal with the star of the film dying), Thor 4 (which if you take away China did what Ragnarok did), Dr. Strange 2, and Spider-Man 3 (both of which saw big improvements over the previous installment). Even Ant-Man is doing what Ant-Man has done before, they just gambled and lost on making this one more expensive. Was it superhero fatigue? Or is that just what you are going to get out of Ant-Man? The test will be Guardians of the Galaxy, if that flops then superhero fatigue needs to be start taken seriously. But if it does gangbusters, then Ant-Man was probably a one-off like Eternals was.

DC has a different issue. The brand is largely toxic right now and the DCEU in general is seen as a dead franchise just lumbering along until it gets rebooted. We saw this with Fox’s X-Men too. Fans have little interest in watching these films knowing none of it matters in the bigger picture. The Batman got away with things because it wasn’t anchored down by the rest of the DCEU.

 

[Moncton]

I wonder if with the success of the Sonic films, Last of Us show, and the hype for the Super Mario film if video game adaptations might be the next big thing.

 

[Drizzle]

I believe they are certainly getting fatigued with average to poor superhero movies, featuring not particularly well loved characters.

We can't yet determine whether the genre as a whole is going to be affected, but it frankly wouldn't surprise me. Over twenty years is a great run for any genre to dominate the box office. Wouldn't surprise me to see a change in audience habits now. Nothing lasts forever. (Though the top marquee characters like Batman & Spider-man will always make bank.)

Couldn't have said it better myself. I do think people were getting tired of the constant output of content from Marvel in particular but they've gotten the hint and began to pump the brakes a bit in that regard.

 

[Joe Von Zombie]

I wonder if with the success of the Sonic films, Last of Us show, and the hype for the Super Mario film if video game adaptations might be the next big thing.

It 100% is with Fallout, Bioshock , Gears of War down the line.

 

[Iceman]

I wonder if with the success of the Sonic films, Last of Us show, and the hype for the Super Mario film if video game adaptations might be the next big thing.

Hope so and about time if so.

 

[DA_Champion]

I don't think there's superhero movie fatigue. It was very recently that the outstanding Spider Man movie made a huge box office haul.

There may be an issue of long term decline in movie theater receipts which was exacerbated and accelerated by the lockdowns. Streaming is gradually improving for one, and many of the younger generations may not have the attention spans for movies.

 

[Iceman]

It 100% is with Fallout, Bioshock , Gears of War down the line.

Fallout can take some tips from the TLOU show. Bioshock would be awesome if done right but I would never have had faith for them to do it well till now. Gears also I didn’t expect them to take seriously but that would be huge nostalgia for me.

 

[DA_Champion]

DC has a different issue. The brand is largely toxic right now and the DCEU in general is seen as a dead franchise just lumbering along until it gets rebooted. We saw this with Fox’s X-Men too. Fans have little interest in watching these films knowing none of it matters in the bigger picture. The Batman got away with things because it wasn’t anchored down by the rest of the DCEU.

I wonder if X-Men will recover as Singer fades further into memory. First Class and Logan were pretty good. It's good underlying source material, but that doesn't matter if the director is bad.

 

[Joe Von Zombie]

Fallout can take some tips from the TLOU show. Bioshock would be awesome if done right but I would never have had faith for them to do it well till now. Gears also I didn’t expect them to take seriously but that would be huge nostalgia for me.

If the folks behind Fallout are smart they won't touch adapt anything directly from the games in terms of characters or locations. They'll take us somewhere the games haven't covered.

 

[Marvel united]

No, audiences are tired of homogeneity. In reality, superheroes shouldn't even be a genre, considering how diverse a medium comic books are. You can tell ALL types of stories with numerable tones, aesthetics, and themes, within ALL types of genres, and sub-genres. It's just that the MCU, and post-Snyder DCEU (which was trying to replicate it), seemingly do not have the ability to do that.

Luckily, James Gunn does:




James Gunn, Peter Safran Vow to Put Screenwriting First to Fix the Once ‘F—ed Up’ DC Studios

If he plays his cards right, he's gonna change the game forever.

 

[Spidey_62]

I agree that people are probably more just tired of mediocre looking samey products, if the movies look exciting then people will show up. I think the days of releasing giant blockbusters on lesser known characters isn't as exciting as it might have been a few years ago for audiences, if they want to keep making a glut of comic book movies they need to make more mid-budget fare. In general though, there is too much of it out there to get excited about anymore.

 

[Kahran Ramsus]

I wonder if X-Men will recover as Singer fades further into memory. First Class and Logan were pretty good. It's good underlying source material, but that doesn't matter if the director is bad.

Well, that would require both that superhero fatigue isn’t real and these poor grosses are something else and that Marvel manages to nail it. I certainly won’t say that X-Men is doomed to failure or anything, like I said it is too early to tell, I do think comic fans of a certain generation greatly overrate its mainstream popularity and it isn’t going to do gangbusters just because it is a new X-Men movie under the MCU. I think for that type of guaranteed success it needed Hugh Jackman interacting with RDJ and Chris Evans, and that boat got missed.

 

[metaphysician]

I wonder if with the success of the Sonic films, Last of Us show, and the hype for the Super Mario film if video game adaptations might be the next big thing.

I'm skeptical, for a couple reasons. For one, I think we are still at least another ten years away from the generational turnover inside Hollywood that would be sufficient for video games to be taken properly serious as a source material. There are still too many people at the top for whom video games are that strange new fangled thing the kids are playing, rather than something they personally grew up with as a ubiquitous part of the pop culture landscape.

For another, part of the big appeal of superheroes, to the *studios*, is that they are part of giant multi-character multi-story conglomerations, where producing one adaptation can promote and lead into others. Which is to say, its not the superhero per se that was appealing, but that fact that they came in pre-packaged universes where ( in theory ) if you had Marvel or DC you could build a multimedia meta-franchise. Video games don't really have this going for them, both because they aren't as unified as superheroes ( 95% of all the superheroes people care about are owned by two companies, and that is probably being generous ), and because even the video game characters and stories owned by the same publisher aren't usually part of the same world in any useful manner.

For a third, while the comic book industry was and is a tiny thing, where big media companies like WB or Disney either could easily come in and buy up the business, or already had decades ago, video games by contrast? Tend to already be owned by rich media corporations. Unless your name is "Sony", this means that trying to make movies out of video games means you probably *have* to deal with other corporations, its not practical to bring the IP in house. Even if Disney wanted to buy Nintendo, Nintendo isn't selling; and the idea of some Hollywood studio bullying *Microsoft* into selling them Halo is laughable on the face. ( And in the case of Sony, the big obstacle is "You are Sony". *ahem* )

All told, video games are not anywhere near the same fertile field as comic books, not for Hollywood at least.

 

[antsman41]

Yes - but, only because the effort is greatly missing across the board.

The Batman is the only outright fully and successfully realized comic related film in 3 years since MCU released Endgame.

Everything else has been marred with...

> production issues/rushed cgi/directors being hindered [SS, Love & Thunder, MoM, Wakanda Forever, Quantumania, etc.]
> issues with cast being truly evil, dumb, or simply toxic [Ezra, Wright, Heard, Leto, Levy, Majors, etc.]
> terrible scripts sold on nostalgia or on a certain actor/director addition [Love & Thunder, MoM, No Way Home, Dark Phoenix, Black Adam, probably The Flash, etc.]
> outright unnecessary/realized too late/b-level 90's-ish films [1984, Eternals, Black Widow, Morbius, probably Kraven, Quantumania, etc.]

...the only 3 that feel like lucky attempts that were fun, yet not on the talent level of The Batman;

The Suicide Squad
Birds Of Prey
Shang-Chi

Sadly, 2/3 of those were hindered greatly during their release due to Covid and resulted in lackluster appreciation.

Do you know what has more in common to The Batman than any of the above comic films;

John Wick - Chapter 4
Top Gun - Maverick
5CREAM/S6REAM
EEAAO
Avatar 2
Creed III

...actors acting off other actors, beautiful cinematography, digital effects that enhance the sets, and dope action.

You might not like or enjoy all of those, but everyone should be able to honestly say you can see effort and true desire to entertain with those films.

And, they're all breaking individual franchise box-office numbers or more right now.

It's sort of nice to see the GA finally getting fed up being sold half-made films or worse.

Yes, they're all sequels outside of EEAAO... yet they're not coasting on their franchise - I'd add in Halloween Ends to this as well.