Are audiences tired of watching superhero films?

With characters making appearances across films of a franchise, multiple cross-references and series that don’t seem to end, are audiences becoming averse to superhero entertainment?

Marvel’s third installment of Guardians of the Galaxy has dropped, and the hope is that it fares better than the debacle that was Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania, their last film release in February this year. In June, Sony will release the first of their 2023 superhero slate with Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. The month will also see DC trying to make amends for the much-panned Shazam: Fury of the Gods (2023) by debuting The Flash on the big screen. Also set to hit theatres this year are sequels to DC’s Aquaman and Captain Marvel. The new Captain Marvel film (The Marvels) will feature Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris), who was last seen in Marvel’s TV series WandaVision (2021) and Iman Vellani's Ms. Marvel . Not to be left behind, Sony will look at expanding their Spider-Man universe later this year with Kraven the Hunter, the story of a maniacal big-game hunter who sets his sights on the biggest prey of all—Spider-Man!

At this point, if you’re desperately trying to connect the dots, figure out who featured in which film or series, and what happened last with each of these characters, you’d hardly be the only person suffering from ‘superhero fatigue’. Even James Gunn, who has directed the new Guardians of the Galaxy film admitted to superhero fatigue being “very real”,, and that “just watching things bash each other” is not much fun. These comments come from the man now in charge of reviving DC Studios, which recently gave us Black Adam (2022) that had Dwayne Johnson smashing people and things for over two hours.

A point of saturation

To make matters worse, the quality across these films is far from consistent. An Ant-Man or Black Widow film will never have the same budgets that a Black Panther film would, and the difference is evident—particularly in the visual effects and action sequences. And if the spectacle isn’t guaranteed, why bother making these films at all? Today, Marvel introducing a new superhero franchise elicits levels of suspicion from the audience and it’s possibly why they wouldn’t do it unless cushioned by an additional layer like inclusivity (Shang-Chi, Black Panther, Ms Marvel). It’s a matter of time though, before that loses its novelty too.

Fans are simply not going to show up if they aren’t guaranteed a good time at the movies. While their release was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) Black Widow (2021) and Eternals (2021) were indifferently received, both critically and commercially. One of 2022’s biggest flops, Jared Leto’s Morbius legacy would be all the memes it inspired. This, some might say, is better than Johnson’s outing as Black Adam that sank without a trace.

The problem isn’t just the effects-laden material or even the brain-numbing violence. Marvel released just six films between the first Iron Man (2008) film and the first edition of The Avengers (2012)—a period of four years. The decade after that has seen Marvel cashing in with 25 films and countless shows across television and streaming platforms. Much like everything else, too much of a good thing can be bad.

A problem of plenty? 

To immerse their fans further into their universe, Marvel exacerbated the problem of plenty by having their superheroes walk into each other’s spaces; and where there weren’t physical appearances, there were references. Sunny Warbah, a 26-year-old from Bengaluru grew up with superhero films but is now ‘beginning to feel exhausted’ by them. He explains, “To enjoy the series Wanda Vision (2021), I would need to have seen Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) where Wanda Maximoff was first introduced and then the subsequent Avenger films. To make sense of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022), I would have needed to see all these films and Wanda Vision too. I used to really look forward to superhero films when it was one film a year but now it’s just too much and too interconnected.”

Kamal Gianchandani, Chief Business Planning and Strategy, PVR INOX, however, isn’t so worried about the future of the genre. “Ant-Man did well in India while Shazam was below expectations but that can happen to any franchise. Going by the advance booking for Guardians…, I think there continues to be a lot of interest and anticipation for this genre.” he says. While it’s this interest that drives audiences in on opening weekends, the films that end up doing well are those that bring something new to the table.

Rediscovery through a fresh lens

It’s perhaps why Matt Reeves’ brand new take on Gotham’s caped crusader in Robert Pattinson’s Batman (2022) or Todd Phillip’s human drama with Joker (2019) really stand out. The writing in these films would match that of any prestige drama, and the fact that these were superhero films could just be incidental. It’s also probably where Sony, with its solo act (Spider-Man), and DC might have less to worry about in future, purely because they haven’t dug themselves in that deep into the entire Universe game. While this might seem counterintuitive, it allows an audience to enjoy a film as a single entity. It creates space for newer generations to rediscover much-loved characters, thus explaining the number of Superman, Spider-Man and Batman reboots. This August, DC plans to introduce Blue Beetle, a new franchise and their first attempt at inclusivity with a Latino superhero. And the fact that there are no references to anything already existing is most refreshing, to say the least.

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