Picture via Rolling Stone
The superhero genre has become one of the most popular and profitable movie genres in the last two decades, especially since the beginning of shared universes like the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2008. However, the genre has been flipped on its head recently, with more movies being more negatively received, and most movies now making less money than before.
Many have chalked this up to the new phenomenon of “superhero fatigue,” which has been described as an overload of genre content. While this is not wrong, there has been a significant jump in the amount of content, it is not the clear source of the problem. The problem has not become the amount. People are fine with going to the movies–the problem has become the quality of content.
The quality of the movies that have been released is what makes the market feel like it has had an oversaturation. Too many subpar movies have come out, creating a ratio of around four bad or mediocre movies for one truly good movie. One good example are the movies of 2023. Of the six films released so far, only two have been considered a critical and financial success. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3. and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse are the two with high earnings and high acclaim. Other movies have either been poorly received by critics (Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Shazam! Fury of the Gods), or failed to make money at the box office (The Flash, Blue Beetle). The most recent release in the genre, The Marvels, has shown this definition of subpar. Based on reviews, The Marvels has a 62% on Rotten Tomatoes, a 50 Metascore on IMDB, and an average rating of 2.9 stars on Letterboxd. It also is failing to make money, having the lowest opening weekend of any MCU movie, and as of 11/15, has made $111.4 million worldwide, only half of its budget. This opinion on quality has been shared by Collider, which stated that “Quality superhero movies and shows can still be successful, as we can see with Across the Spider-Verse and Gen V. The real problem is that audiences are growing tired of bad (or worse, thoroughly mediocre) superhero stories, and that is what’s starting to be reflected in the box office and viewership numbers”
Many believe that movies have suffered from being all too similar, as many have taken the same formula for a movie. This was pointed out in an article highlighting Blue Beetle by NPR, which gave the set formula of “Jaime, played by Xolo Maridueña, is a Reluctant HeroTM whose Heroic TrialsTM include a Training MontageTM and a Tragic LossTM that places him into a CGI-Driven Third-Act ShowdownTM with a Villain Who Is An Evil Version of Our HeroTM” This formula could describe ten different movies, and is one of the reasons people have become bored with the genre.
Some people would call the amount of movies the problem, even if they are good, people won’t come out to see them. A list from Forbes cites the poor opening weekend performance of movies like Kick-Ass (2010) and Hellboy (2004) as the two lowest-grossing opening weekends of the genre. But this was from a time when these heroes were less recognizable, superhero films were less frequent, and in hindsight, these movies have been considered some of the best of the genre. Also, there have been years with multiple critically acclaimed movies releasing within a short window of time, like 2014 and 2021 for example (where only two movies, out of six and seven respectively, from each year were received as rotten, or below 60% on Rotten Tomatoes). The lowest grossing opening weekend when there were common releases was Blue Beetle at $25 million, the next was 2015’s Fantastic Four (which was critically received very poorly, a possible factor for low income).
A solution to too many low-quality movies at a time would be to decrease the quantity of content per year to focus on quality. Currently, five movies are set to be released in 2024, as well as either two or three streaming series. This is just Marvel and DC, not accounting for other companies like Amazon and what they could release on their streaming service next year, (since originally writing this article, Amazon confirmed releases such as season 4 of The Boys and episodes of season 2 of Invincible in 2024). This came from a total of seven movies originally, but multiple delays pushed movies into 2025. Many of these delays have been due to both the Writer’s Strike and Actor’s Strike causing stops in production, while others have been due to issues in production, which have caused multiple rewrites or reshoots of movies.
Companies should be prioritizing quality over quantity, and releasing less content in a year would allow for more time to be taken on the content, to make sure that it is quality. Spreading out content would also allow for people to be less tired of trying to go and see it, instead of seven movies per year, maybe releasing four movies (two for each company) and one or two streaming series would help.