Tights, cape, mask, yawn
Dull plots, loud fights, insipid lines. Who took all the fun out of superhero movies? And what will it take to rekindle the magic?
Iron Man, 2008. Who didn’t love Tony Stark. The CGI suit, the wit, the playfulness he brought to the superhero genre. That year also gave us The Dark Knight, a grown-up reboot of the Batman story, with Heath Ledger as the unrepentantly evil Joker. It wasn’t just a superhero story, but a gripping critique of vigilantism.
The films spawned a slew of superhero movies, kicked off a healthy DC-versus-Marvel rivalry and got people excited about uru, vibranium, adamantium, kryptonite and a rich, extended universe of make-believe.
How did we go from that to a sea of superhero movies that are all starting to look the same? There are 32 movies in the Marvel cinematic universe alone. This year’s releases include Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, The Marvels, and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. Does anyone care? Don’t even start with the TV shows.
Aditya Dogra, press and communications officer for the Embassy of Finland, claims to have read every major comic from Marvel and DC. It’s safe to say he’s a superfan. Even he’s bored. “Superhero fatigue is real,” he says. “Marvel’s strategy for an interconnected universe, while in keeping with the comics, only appeals to die-hard fans.”
For the rest of us, the Easter eggs and minor foreshadowing has long felt like homework. The movies don’t have the magic they previously did. How many times can you watch Loki dying before you start rolling your eyes? Or watch Ben Kinglsey play a fantastic villain only to be told he isn’t the villain after all (Iron Man 3)? The recent disappointing reviews and dismal numbers (though still in the high millions) point to waning interest too.
For a while, the small screen offered hope. It is, after all, more immersive, allowing for better story development. But even spin-offs such as The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (Marvel, 2021) and Peacemaker (DC, 2022) seem like they’ve been churned out of a machine. “The quicker production times and low-grade CGI pulls you out of the experience,” says Dogra.
Writer and producer James Gunn, who worked on Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy and Avengers: Endgame, has talked about how he plans to combat superhero fatigue with original, unusual stories. Meanwhile, other movie studios are just getting started on the interconnected-universe template. Amazon Prime is attempting it with Citadel, the Fast and Furious franchise is expanding (with more cars and less character). Some franchises are emerging without any original source material, like Brahmastra and its extended Astraverse; and Rohit Shetty’s cop universe.
Studios have done reboots every few years (Spider-Man, The Flash). They’ve created multiverses and parallel storylines (Spider-Man again) but it just seems more of the same. Fans hope that with Avengers: The Kang Dynasty (2025), Marvel will rejig its own tired formula and fuse all those multiverses into one more exciting world.
Incidentally, 2008 also gave us Hancock, a superhero movie that reworked the formula into a tale of isolation and love. Last year’s Everything Everywhere All At Once showed that it is possible to add depth (even philosophy) to a superhero movie. So, who in Hollywood needs to fall into a vat of magic potion to harness new scripting and directing powers?
Could we hurry it up, please?