While it may not necessarily be “superhero fatigue”, it could well be correct to say it’s “Marvel fatigue”. It’s not like Disney haven’t been pumping out content for the franchise in enormous quantities, to the point that even those who don’t really follow the franchise are aware that it’s absolutely massive and there’s a lot of content you have to consume if you want to actually know what’s going on. This is always a problem with big franchises: either you have to consume all of it (which means you get tired of it quicker), or you have to skip some and then be confused later when suddenly there’s a character or enemy or event or whatever that you’re supposed to know all about, but you don’t because you didn’t watch that other series/film.
Superheroes aren’t my favourite genre, but I like to dabble every now and then, and there are some superhero TV series and films that I have genuinely loved. But frankly at this point I wouldn’t even know where to start with Marvel because there’s literally too much of it. Keeping up with a franchise shouldn’t be a full time job. But Disney is essentially assuming that everybody has time to watch everything it pumps out for its franchises, but somehow simultaneously never go “you know what, I’ve watched a lot of this lately, I’m in the mood for something else.” The more stuff becomes required viewing, the more of the audience you lose due to people just not having enough time.
People could well be experiencing some Marvel fatigue without feeling superhero fatigue, just like I feel a little Star Wars fatigue while still being interested in other sci-fi. Disney want a monopoly on entertainment, but they also don’t want to risk spending money on a wide variety of franchises in case some of them make a loss, because the short term losses on a few failed experiments are more important than the long term gains of creating something new that endures. So all they do is recycle the same stuff over and over, oblivious to the fact that audiences won’t just keep buying the same stuff over and over. Marvel, Star Wars, remakes of animated films from 30-80 years ago… Disney won’t take risks anymore, so they’ve over-saturated their own market with repetitive products that consumers are losing interest in.
I think you've hit the nail on the head here. I think a lot of people haven't got back into going to the cinema since COVID which adds to the problem of not having the energy to see everything. My inertia for getting out to the cinema is much worse than it used to be, which seems to be the same with my social group. Collectively that makes it much more likely that as a group someone will be the voice of "anyone fancy a cinema trip".
There’s not a lot being released anymore that gains a lot from seeing it in a theater vs watching at home. The quality difference isn’t significant enough to effect the experience with most films.
Yep, that’s definitely a factor. If people are going to the cinema less, then they’re going to prioritise films that they really, really want to see, rather than just anything that looks like it might be fun. The economic issues contribute to this too, because who’s going to spend money they don’t have on a film that might be good but is also likely to be extremely mediocre? And there’s also the fact that behaviour in cinemas is… not great these days, which creates an incentive for people who want to enjoy a film instead of, you know, throwing crap and screaming and assaulting the staff, to just stay home.
And when you add onto that the issue I identified with the quantity of content, if you’re a couple of years behind on the franchise, but a TV series you haven’t got around to yet is required viewing for a film in the cinema, then you’re not going to rush to go see it the very first weekend. What you might do instead is stream it or buy the Blu-ray a couple of years from now, when you’ve caught up on X, Y, and Z you need to watch first so the film makes sense, but then your purchase doesn’t show up in the sales figures until 2-3 years in the future. And by that point, Disney have already decided the film was a failure.
And the female lead movies just didn’t appeal to me, as they have been consistently bad at writing “strong female characters” as they call it. It tends to just come off as cringy.
It’s kinda the same writing problem with “The Justice League”. Close to the entire movies dialog is just shitty one-liners. One-dimensional.
Like they only have two types of characters. The ‘über bad-ass with the one-liners’ or the ‘overly emotional one with a chip on their shoulders’.
The latter worked for ‘Scarlet Witch’, but even that got to be a bit much in the end.
I’m addition to what others have said, Marvel shows and movies with female leads get more flak than they deserve in my opinion. There still seems to be some misogyny in this niche.
Most people really don’t give a shit if the lead is female, black or a martian. They care about good movies with primarily good stories.
The captain Marvel movies were shit stories trying to push yet again the female narrative instead of just making a good story. Add to that a VERY unlikable lead actress who just bitches and brags about herself to the point that her co actors are just “suuuuuurrreee” right next to her, and you got a recipe for Disaster.
Although I’m too burned out on the franchise to be excited about new releases, Captain Marvel 2018 was one of the best movies they made in general without qualification. Wanda + Vision was phenomenal until the last episode and Ms. Marvel was great until the 3rd episode. This movie has plenty of potential that at this point I’m not sure they care about using anymore.
Tbh I’m just going to watch it on Disney Plus at some point. I don’t have an interest in it because I didn’t have an interest in Ms Marvel so the team-up just isn’t something I’ll go to a theater to see when I can stream it later.
I can recommend the first 2 episodes of Ms. Marvel. I suspect the remaining episodes suffered a series of Disney-induced comprimises and are kind of a mess. The first 2 episodes are great and enough to endear someone to Kamala who is a well-acted and fun character.
I enjoyed it as a whole and think it is worth watching. It is not particularly deep or anything but it is fun because the actor who play Kamala makes it fun. It would have been very flat without her obvious enthusiasm.
I watched the first episode and didn’t care for it. It wasn’t bad or anything, it just felt like this was one for the tweens even more than most Disney offerings, which isn’t a problem mind you, I’m just not the target audience.
All the superhero movies and star wars movies are the same. It’s like every new COD. Do non-superhero stories and quit being so risk-adverse, it’s bad for the shareholders anyways.
None of those movies have any grit. Every story told is safe, it’s meant for mass appeal, it’s sanitized corporate garbage. Even the Barbie movie had more going for it in terms of commentary, story, and backbone.
I think it’s mostly due to advertising impacted by the strike. I watched it this week and really liked it honestly. I’m glad the strike had this kind of impact, though most people are going to chalk it up to all sorts of other issues and won’t give credit to the labor movement I’ll bet.
I knew about it, but especially since the pandemic, there’s very, very little incentive for me to go to a theater.
A few reasons for this…
Streaming services supply high quality audio and video that I get a near enough theater experience at home. I’m willing to wait.
As others have stated, with buying snacks, the theater experience is effectively a $50 per person event now. It’s ridiculous. And this whole notion of “well snacks are the only way the theater makes its money” is enough of a justification that perhaps it’s time for theaters to die. For roughly the same price and enjoyment, I can go get a very nice, large steak dinner, or quite a lot of high-quality sushi, or buy a video game.
I don’t have to deal with other people.
So many people and journalists like to lament of the plight of movie theaters, but aside from the pandemic, this is of their own making (well, not my aversion to people, of course). There will still be blockbuster movies, but after Avengers Endgame, it’s going to take a lot for another Marvel superhero movie to get to that level.
In the before times, my partner and I had a monthly subscription at Cinemark. It was great, comfy seats, beer, and good enough food. We would go at least twice a month and easily got our money’s worth. Now that we are still dealing with COVID and the fact that our home theater setup is great, we have zero reason to risk it, even for a night out.
Honestly as someone who didnt catch the Marvels universe movies earlier (there is like what…dozens of movies and I dunno how many TV dramas?), I don’t even bother anymore.
The amount of “homework” needed to understand what is going on is just tiring. Can a movie just be a movie and not part of a universe?
Ehhhh they are all pretty self contained with a majority of the cross over stuff happening in after credit scenes. Way easier to follow than the comics they were derived from. As a comic book fan, having that continuity is pretty awesome. There aren’t many other tv/movie franchises that do it at that scale.
Tbh I’m not caring so much about the movies, I catch them at some point or other, but I’ve been enjoying a lot of the series. Just finished Ahsoka, I enjoyed the Mando stuff and Andor was fun too. Just watched the first episode of season 2 of Loki as well and it’s got me hooked again already.
I think it’s just the stories they’re trying to tell are too big to squeeze into a movie, 3 hours is already at the limit of what I’d watch for a movie but it’s too short to tell the story without feeling like it’s a ton of action sequences slammed together and the overall MCU doesn’t really feel like it’s building to anything in particular on the movie side. Maybe a smaller number of core movies with a more focussed narrative and faster release cadence would help.
Yeah I really, really don’t understand why dudes are so triggered about a female superhero. Like, there’s 3 out of how many male superheroes. And it’s not even new stuff, they used it from the comics! I honestly don’t know how you have so little going on in your life that you’re triggered by women playing superheroes.
If I had to guess it's not "that it takes roles away" or that it "affects the writing" like so many try to claim, but that it infringes on the power fantasy. Back in the day Charlie's Angel's was good because it plays into the mastermind behind the femme fatales,
The thing is, many of the movies that get complained about frankly get complained about for the wrong reasons. Some genuinely do have (usually minor) issues such as being written during filming with little motivation to reach an end-goal in mind, just not the rage bait that gets media attention. The reality is that it's a bunch of small decisions that make the wider movie as a whole weaker, but these idiots just hop onto the "it's bad because it's woke" train. Like, for fucks sake people. Marvel isn't bad because it has focused on female characters just like Sony isn't bad because it's woke. Morbius was a train-wreck led be a cultist and yet where is the rage for that mess? None, it got meme'd to death so hard Sony thought it did well and brought it back to theaters...
I guarantee that if 2005 Elektra were remade today and happened to be not so great it wouldn't get the Morbius treatment, it would get the Phase 5 Marvel/Sequel Star Wars treatment about how the focus on female characters is detracting from something, all too happy to ignore the production issues behind the scenes.
On an aside, I still don't understand why Sony is getting a pass with the awful villain movies. The first Venom was OK but the sequel with Carnage was abysmal and the real leaked script for Kraven didn't look much better... I'm not entirely enthused about the upcoming projects they have because I want them to do Madame Web well and.. I just hope they get it together but I personally was not a fan of TASM 1 and 2 (though 1 was far, far better by comparison). Mostly nothing to do with the cast and most of the cinematic scenes, it was just the bland changes to the story that ultimately didn't lead anywhere. So many frameworks are all set for them but instead of following it they just recreated images in live action - the side by sides are beautiful, the films are pretty terrible. That's the one thing that Sony doesn't have against DC and Marvel is at least the attempted re-imaginings of character arcs in DC and Marvel are sort of making the framework their own. Rant within rant over, thanks for reading.
P.S. for anyone else view Phase 4 Marvel as 2020's Phase 1. Endgame basically reset the universe, the actor-heroes are tired so in between the Multiverse movies they've been doing single-character focused films. Black Widow, Shang-Chi, Eternals are all pretty much stand-alone characters (with minor cosmic roles to come). The shows Hawkeye, Ms. Marvel, and She-Hulk are also completely independent character-driven shows that I really liked.
WandaVision was pretty much a setup for ending the aftermath of Endgame and leads into the movie Multiverse of Madness. Falcon and Winter Soldier had a different script about a plague being used by terrorists, then Covid-19 lockdowns happened so the show was changed and suffered because of it. With that in mind, it's an OK show. Loki S1 is pretty good, S2 was a let down but the finale set up the future well. Moon Knight had no action sequences and wasn't planned so it suffered. (Surprise surprise, all Marvel shows that sucked completely unrelated to... "wokeness", whatever they mean by that).
With that in mind, Phase 5 is simply continuing this trend. It's mostly character driven movies with a few being tie in films. Ant-Man 2 was OK, I liked it more than people online did it seemed and I honestly found Kang to be the weakest part of the movie for me. Guardians 3 was very good, but it does hinge on you caring about the events of the characters from Guardians 1, 2, and Endgame. But it's the closing chapter of the gang, so it's a good sendoff. And now we have the Marvels, which I haven't seen yet but from my understanding is another semi-introduction film for Ms. Marvel and Monica Rambeau (from WandaVision). Deadpool 3 looks to be a tie-in Multiverse, and then we'll probably get a few more character oriented movies and shows.
So honestly, while I understand the burnout for Marvel content, as of November 2023 if you've seen Endgame then you can watch the Phase 4 and 5 marvel films and shows in basically any order so don't let that be a real excuse. I listed everything except for What If (animated but canon) and Thor: Love and Thunder (production issues, I liked it but it needed tonal consistency).
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