As a close observer of the MCU, I approve of this great analysis. The only thing I’d add is Marvel was hurt more by what I’d call politics than the pandemic.
After Endgame, there was an announced effort to diversify the MCU, especially by adding women. That was seen in the Eternals, the first creative and box office disappointment for the MCU. It led to two of the biggest comic book movie failures, The Marvels and now Supergirl.
It’s not that women are rejected per se in these films; Wonder Woman was a huge hit a decade ago. Instead, the push has had two problems. The first is directors and screen writers being hired because they are women instead of because their proven talent in the genre (like Supergirl’s novice scriptwriter). Second, and more importantly, there’s a reluctance to have female characters undergo a hero’s journey because of concerns about them ever appearing weak or incompetent.
I understand that thinking. But the result is overpowered characters who are too perfect to be engaging. Compare the character arcs of, say, Tony Stark and Riri Williams. Or, in a related genre, Luke and Rey in Star Wars.
Pattern recognition now causes many to avoid these films—unfairly in cases like Furiosa—while putting the last Deadpool over $1B. And, critically, the female leads have not grown the female audience. It’s notable that 60% of the opening weekend for Supergirl was male.
It seems critical that you're excluding the massive drop in quality and audience appeal around 2020.
Streaming and superhero fatigue are certainly aspects, but large swathes of the new content was made with a much lower bar of quality and attempts at audience appeal - instead prioritizing political posturing first at all levels, from the characters and writing to the people hired/promoted to create those stories.
Spider Man famously keeps both the existing spider man and high quality standards. Meanwhile most of the avengers that were replaced have not been able to spark new interest. And the pattern matching has been working against them - so many recent movies in these genres with DEI-based leads also had terrible writing, which now has people shunning even the well-written ones if they give the signs of maybe being another girlboss project with no character arc or growth.
The surprise success of KPop Demon Hunters was in many ways a rejection of the "unfallible girlboss without a character arc"-trope that's been dooming many of the recent superhero and Star Wars projects. With people eagerly embracing great female (and non-white) characters when those tropes are replaced with deep characters and great writing.
I think superhero movies became victims of their own success. For a while they were doing something genuinely exciting, but then every film started feeling like it had one eye on the next sequel instead of telling a complete story. I don't think audiences suddenly stopped loving superheroes. They just got tired of feeling like every movie was homework. The genre isn't dead, it just needs filmmakers to make us care about the people again before the universe they're trying to build.
Good essay. Even your average for non-Spider-Man films was brought up by the third Deadpool movie, which was a comic reconstruction of post-Endgame superhero movies, and rich with sentimentality.
The generations that cared the most are getting older. The younger generation seems to be moving towards something a little more Gen X-like in its cynicism. It’s not a dead market, but it’s shrunk.
Here's a theory. While some superhero films certainly still have some pop at the box office. Maybe people started to live in the reality of climate change (Super El Nino), distribution of wealth and no universal health care. They then realized there is no fictional magical character coming to save them.
I think we will discover Chris Evan’s as Captain America will be a success if they write something that is interesting and DOES NOT involve some alternate universe nonsense. Cap may have died, but it was years “later” in his lifetime. Evan’s was perfect as Cap, bring back Haley Atwell and you’ve got a great combination to tell a story about their time together and secret missions they did. I always thought that it was Captain America and not Iron Man that kept Marvel in the bucks.
As a close observer of the MCU, I approve of this great analysis. The only thing I’d add is Marvel was hurt more by what I’d call politics than the pandemic.
After Endgame, there was an announced effort to diversify the MCU, especially by adding women. That was seen in the Eternals, the first creative and box office disappointment for the MCU. It led to two of the biggest comic book movie failures, The Marvels and now Supergirl.
It’s not that women are rejected per se in these films; Wonder Woman was a huge hit a decade ago. Instead, the push has had two problems. The first is directors and screen writers being hired because they are women instead of because their proven talent in the genre (like Supergirl’s novice scriptwriter). Second, and more importantly, there’s a reluctance to have female characters undergo a hero’s journey because of concerns about them ever appearing weak or incompetent.
I understand that thinking. But the result is overpowered characters who are too perfect to be engaging. Compare the character arcs of, say, Tony Stark and Riri Williams. Or, in a related genre, Luke and Rey in Star Wars.
Pattern recognition now causes many to avoid these films—unfairly in cases like Furiosa—while putting the last Deadpool over $1B. And, critically, the female leads have not grown the female audience. It’s notable that 60% of the opening weekend for Supergirl was male.
It seems critical that you're excluding the massive drop in quality and audience appeal around 2020.
Streaming and superhero fatigue are certainly aspects, but large swathes of the new content was made with a much lower bar of quality and attempts at audience appeal - instead prioritizing political posturing first at all levels, from the characters and writing to the people hired/promoted to create those stories.
Spider Man famously keeps both the existing spider man and high quality standards. Meanwhile most of the avengers that were replaced have not been able to spark new interest. And the pattern matching has been working against them - so many recent movies in these genres with DEI-based leads also had terrible writing, which now has people shunning even the well-written ones if they give the signs of maybe being another girlboss project with no character arc or growth.
The surprise success of KPop Demon Hunters was in many ways a rejection of the "unfallible girlboss without a character arc"-trope that's been dooming many of the recent superhero and Star Wars projects. With people eagerly embracing great female (and non-white) characters when those tropes are replaced with deep characters and great writing.
I think superhero movies became victims of their own success. For a while they were doing something genuinely exciting, but then every film started feeling like it had one eye on the next sequel instead of telling a complete story. I don't think audiences suddenly stopped loving superheroes. They just got tired of feeling like every movie was homework. The genre isn't dead, it just needs filmmakers to make us care about the people again before the universe they're trying to build.
Good essay. Even your average for non-Spider-Man films was brought up by the third Deadpool movie, which was a comic reconstruction of post-Endgame superhero movies, and rich with sentimentality.
The generations that cared the most are getting older. The younger generation seems to be moving towards something a little more Gen X-like in its cynicism. It’s not a dead market, but it’s shrunk.
Here's a theory. While some superhero films certainly still have some pop at the box office. Maybe people started to live in the reality of climate change (Super El Nino), distribution of wealth and no universal health care. They then realized there is no fictional magical character coming to save them.
I think we will discover Chris Evan’s as Captain America will be a success if they write something that is interesting and DOES NOT involve some alternate universe nonsense. Cap may have died, but it was years “later” in his lifetime. Evan’s was perfect as Cap, bring back Haley Atwell and you’ve got a great combination to tell a story about their time together and secret missions they did. I always thought that it was Captain America and not Iron Man that kept Marvel in the bucks.