Marvel fatigue, superhero saturation and the death of cinema.
No, no, and maybe yes.
There is no Marvel fatigue. There is no superhero saturation. What there is, is simply trash. Make a shit superhero movie and the movie will just be shit. It has nothing to do with there being superheroes.
Hollywood doesn’t get it. People don’t seem to get it either. But these phases are just repeating itself. It used to be cowboys. It used to be cops. Then pirates. It used to be sword and sandals.
Cowboy movies are fun. So are pirate movies and superhero movies. If they’re made well!
The moment some execs look at a bunch of numbers and think “Oh, people will pay money to see X”, THAT is when things go wrong. No, people pay to see good movies. And Marvel used to be hype when they made good movies.
Youre mostly right but personally there is definitely superhero fatigue. I used to watch most marvel movies but nowadays the formula is sort of played out.
For me it isn’t superhero fatigue as much as “oh, I’ve seen the same story a dozen times now” and “I don’t even know this superhero, why does he need a Netflix show?” fatigue. The writers seem to run out of ideas and just milk the same formula again and again.
And at the same time you get something like the new animated Spiderman movies which are a dope, super fresh new take that is oozing creativity out of every frame.
they also do some of the shenanigans that made people annoyed back in my comic book days. My brother saw the iron man movies but not the avengers. So he was lost at what was going on with stark in the movie after the avengers. So because he had not seen another movie it made that one bad for him.
Not to mention every tv show thus far has basically been 10 episodes of padding, and 1 or 2 important plot points for future experiences. I won’t watch Echo, but I’ll look at the wiki afterwards to see what I missed. I watched episode 1 of Loki s2 and I’m considering doing the same now that the finale has aired. They’re all unimportant drivel, coasting off the brand name.
I actually really really enjoyed Loki, easily the strongest thing marvel has released recently.
That’s what I’ve been telling people. My friends and I would religiously go the theatre nearly every Friday as adults. Pandemic hit and we obviously stopped, but once stuff started opening again, we went to see a couple movies but the quality has drastically dropped. We assumed it’s because we were coming out of the pandemic and stuff had been put on hold. In 2023, that excuse shouldn’t still hold up. Good writing didn’t stop during the pandemic, just production.
You couldn’t have explained it better, there is still Super Heroes stuff worth it, I like The Boys and Invincible for example.
And The Marvels wasn’t that bad honestly, I liked it more than most recent marvel products lol.
I’m feeling pretty fatigued.
I mean, a massive chunk of it is that I had no idea it was coming out, likely due to the actor’s strike preventing all sorts of advertising.
The strike…
Yeah, now all the studios will have is remaking all the movies from 20 years ago.
so dumb there’s literally great superhero and marvel movies coming out lol
Like what?
the two animated Spider-Man films, the newest Spider-Man film, guardians 3, the most recent Batman movie.
Like lol what??
Phase 4 being as long as the entire infinity saga turned the MCU from from a pleasure to a chore for me. The same is true for a lot of people I know.
that’s fine but superhero movies are still probably one of the strongest movie genres that get people to the theater
All good choices, you got me
I’m guessing the fact that no one could even talk about the movie until like 5 minutes ago didn’t help. I had no idea it was even coming out until a couple of days ago because the SAG strike kept everyone from doing press.
The marketing for this movie has been weird.
There was an absolute fuckton of marketing for it at the start of the year, like every other Twitch and YouTube ad I got was about that movie.
Then, nothing, so I thought it had been released and people weren’t talking about it because it’s just a massive snooze (Like with the Eternals movie).
I had little affinity for the movie to begin with, so seeing there was little public response after all the marketing just had me go “seems this is one to skip”And now it suddenly comes out with barely any marketing going on in the past few weeks?
Which still makes me feel it must be a snooze, both because it wasn’t marketed for release and because of the residual feeling the initial marketing caused.
Besides that, even before the pandemic neither me or my wife were big fans of going to the cinema, the noise, the seating and the gauging with drinks and food is just meh.
During the pandemic, we invested in an 75" TV, 200" projector screen and 8K projector and setup 7.1 audio in the living room.
We got as much popcorn as we want, can drink whatever we want, including alcohol and the only person that can annoy us is us.
And with most movies being available from a streaming service within a few months of cinema release, there’s not much of any FOMO either.
Marketing was weird because of the strikes, Hollywood Studios are too incompetent to know how to deal with those
It’s almost like people are getting sick of the constant Marvel drip feed of content that’s been going on for years now.
I remember when they had a big long-arc that was spread intelligently across all of the movies that built up to Endgame. I think they’ve forgotten this.
Phase 4 lost the plot. It’s like they didn’t know what to do after Endgame.
For the plot going forward, you have to see:
Wandavision (Disney+, Blu Ray this month)
Loki Season 1 (Disney+, fresh on Blu Ray)
Spider-Man: No Way Home
Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness
Ant-Man: Quantumania
Loki Season 2 (just finished)I think you’ve put your finger on it. The shows didn’t exist prior to Endgame. Now, they’re doing the same nonsense as 90s/early 2000s Marvel where if you wanted to understand everyone in large events (which happened all the time) you really needed to read a bunch of different series.
But, watching a ten episode show is a time committment and there are so many actually worthwhile shows that one can watch…
I think the biggest problem is they keep hamfisting action and comedy where it’s completely unnecessary. If something is worth watching people will find the time.
But they keep making the same mistakes on most of their stuff, like Wandavision was pretty good up until they decided they needed a big fight scene for the climax. Quantimania, Falcon & WS, Captain Marvel were milquetoast. Then you’ve got Thor L&T and Secret Invasion which were handled badly. It was weird to get Sam Raimi back for a one-off but not branching into the supernatural side of Marvel.
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I enjoyed Loki, the overall story was interesting. Season 1 felt better paced, season 2 dragged in some places then rushed other scenes. It’s definitely not like most of the other Marvel stuff so it’s not going to appeal to movie goers, the same can be somewhat said about Wandavision.
Haven’t seen a lot of recap channels, but Movies in Minutes does a decent recap of Wandavision and Loki if you’re only interested in the stuff relevant to upcoming movies and/or events.
I’d recommend watching a recap of Secret Invasion, imo that was poorly done and I feel sorry for Emilia Clarke and Cobie Smulders. Feels like a waste of good talent and plot what they did with Secret Invasion. Secret Invasion could have been a huge reveal and great interweaving throughout movies and shows in phase 2. But the whole story got turned into a generic spy thriller with no depth.
Jonathan Majors has really screwed up any plans they had for the current arc.
True, but that doesn’t fix their quality problem. Loki wasn’t bad but everything else since endgame has been unwatchable to boring and forgettable at best.
Guardians 3 was really good, but they just let Gunn do his thing and it wasn’t just trying to move the general plot along. I wish they had more stuff that was just doing it’s own thing.
I just saw Guardians three the other day finally. Did it feel to you like 20 minutes was missing out of the third act? It just suddenly stopped making linear sense.
They reached a point where they just decided to wrap this shit up. We’ve only got 10 minutes of screen time left.
Needs a directors cut. It was really jarring and Warlock made no sense
It’s been a while since I watched it. Could you elaborate a bit?
They completely glossed over how Warlock changed sides n why, and everyone was just running and changing scenes at such a frenetic pace that poorly hid the missing connector scenes. Plus that one all out fight scene and then bang they’re somewhere else for some reason
Who is actually going to all of these Marvel movies? I thought everyone came to the same conclusion that Marvel started sucking noticeably immediately after Endgame.
Yeah even the filler shit up to endgame was questionable, I just assumed they’d stop making them after that. Now you have a TV show to watch as homework so you can understand the movies.
Do people seriously have the time to waste to just watch superhero shit endlessly? There’s only so many ways you can write the same premise.
Marvel has been writing new stories in the genre (what you’re calling “the same premise”) for like 6 times longer than the MCU has been around. And they have more story arcs to deal with than the simplified MCU stuff.
Sure it’s not all great, but I don’t think there’s any shortage of possibilities within the genre.
I’m a comic fan and I’ve watched all of them, and will continue. The problem people are having is they’re expecting these movies to be like movies instead of comics, but the MCU has been thinking like comics for a long time now. Just like in comics, not every issue is going to be some enormous crossover event with huge stakes and universe-shifting impact. Most comics are character series issues, where the A plot is just some fun excuse for the hero to do cool shit and have a little bit of character growth. Comics are literally soap operas for boys and nerds, and that’s what makes them great. The same applies here. Ya’ll are attempting to compare X-Factor issue #97 to The Death of Captain Marvel, but those were never comparable things and they were never meant to be. If you go in to these films expecting X-Factor issue #97 instead, you might be able to enjoy these films for the non-serious popcorn media they’re meant to be.
This is the disconnect
I want movies, I never liked comic books. Others want comic books and weren’t huge movie fans. Disney hasn’t committed to either and it’s not working.
I know I’ve stopped caring about the MCU entirely since Endgame. I’m really not interested in this comic style storytelling, just like I wasn’t as a kid.
And that’s fine. But why assume all media has to be for you? These are comic films from a comic company; if you weren’t ever into comic books why assume you’d be into these?
Because historically they’ve been for audiences like me, and now that they’re not, they’re wondering where everyone went. I assumed I’d enjoy these because I’ve enjoyed previous marvel movies, but I can’t name a single (marvel) movie since NWH that I’ve enjoyed. It’s been a massive shift in their movies that can’t be ignored.
They weren’t originally this comic book like up until just before endgame (coincidentally when everyone started to think the quality of the content is trending down)
No, they were, it’s just that by the time people got on board we were past the issue cycle and were onto the event cycle, so people got used to the incline and expected that that was going to be how these went: endless incline in excitement. But that was all the Infinity War lead up and climax. Now we’re in the lull leading into the next build-up cycle. We’re back at the Thor through Guardians 1 stage of the cycle, basically.
I really don’t think that’s the case.
Going back to watch any of the Phase 1 movies is such a better experience than any of the Phase 4 or Phase 5 movies. There doesn’t need to be endless excitement, there just needs to be decent writing, and that’s missing from anything new. Nobody cares about any of the new characters.
There’s never been a huge number of flops from marvel with people losing more and more interest in watching them. There’s no clear plan forward, as their planned “Thanos” scale villain has been in hot water irl and will likely not be able to continue to play the character.
I can’t speak to anyone else’s experience, but I personally care about the MCU Shang-Chi, Kate Bishop, Yelena, Monica, Kamala, Moon Knight, hell I even care about Stature (Ant-Man’s daughter) a little bit.
As to the “plan forward,” I dunno man, it seems weird to borrow worry by letting speculative futures impact your opinion on and enjoyment of what’s in front of you. Maybe it’s not for you, that’s okay, but it you think it could be for you, I would suggest maybe trying to focus on what’s on the screen rather than caring about what’s happening behind the screen so much.
I’m not a business analyst; I’m not in the speculating market. I’m a media consumer, so I’m going to choose to judge them on their output, not any of the factors surrounding it or the discourse about it. For me, ignoring all the outside noise, I can only think of about 3 MCU-related properties that I watched and did not enjoy myself while watching. That’s all I’m looking for out of this relationship, so as far as I’m concerned they’re still doing right by me.
Endgame sucked too. It was just fanservicr with shit Cgi and interchangeable characters quipping.
I said from release day that Infinity War was the better movie. Endgame is good because it’s the culmination of 10+ years of movies, it wasn’t a good movie on its own. It wasn’t necessarily bad imo, but it was a step down from IW
I don’t go so therefore nobody does
Have you seen what comic fans will consume over very long time periods, good or bad? It’s almost like there are plenty of marvel fans that still watch even if it’s not Oscar worthy
I don’t go to any of the movies in the theater but I watch a lot of them on my nice big TV at home.
They are a hell of a lot more interesting than the average boring TV show about Cops, Judges, Doctors, and Lawyers. Maybe there should be a superhero that combines all those like Dr Cop Judge, Attorney at Law and Private Investigator for Hire. Judge Dredd wasn’t enough.
I am. I recognize that many of them are only okay movies, but they have a very high hit ratio and when they get it right it is amazing. GOTG3 and Spiderman NWH were amazing movies. Honestly even the bad movies are still okay. I have to admit several of the tv shows kind of suck and I hope they stop making them.
me. I’ve been watching most of the movies, a lot of them at the theater. it’s always been entertaining.
And the Loki series has been a blast, both sessions
I think the first captain marvel was horrible. I think that plays a huge part.
I thought the 1st Captain Marvel was pretty fun. I don’t have much of an interest in seeing this though.
That NIN shirt was enough for me to be into it
For what it’s worth, I think this one is more fun than the first one. Or most recent Marvel movies except for Guardians of the Galaxy 3. And I haven’t even seen Miss Marvel.
I struggle to think of a less likeable main character that wasn’t some sort of anti-hero. It takes talent to be that smug and condescending for an entire movie.
How did Captain Marvel struck you as smug in comparison to the truckload of arrogant and full-of-themselves characters in the Marvel universe? Thor, Drax, or Iron Man who is basically a narcissist.
They’re supposed to be like that though, especially Tony Stark, it’s part of their character arc. With Captain Marvel, it feels like she was supposed to be likeable, but it didn’t work out.
I try to understand what exactly made her seem “smug” to you. Especially when compared to other Marvel heroes.
I cant speak for this in particular (I gave up watching marvel halfway through endgame), but its very different if a character comes across as smug and all the other characters are saying “God isnt he smug but we need him” and having a character that comes across as smug but all the other characters love them.
You not liking the first movie means other people didn’t go? Who are you to have such an enormous effect on the cinema going audience…
Wow. That is a silly thing to be pedantic about.
I do not think that word means what you think k it means.
I think the inference to take from their comment is that by extension others probably didn’t like it either, and so there is less excitement for a sequel to a movie that wasn’t as well received.
Right, they’re inferring that their opinion was universal. There was a lot of controversy @urrounding the movie, but it had little to do with the quality and a lot to do with peoples inability to remove personal biases from their viewing experience.
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Ah, a Reddit comment :)
Yours, more so ;)
I want to see it, been looking forward to it, and will when it comes out for home viewing. But if already basically stopped going to theaters before the pandemic except for the biggest films, and the pandemic killed off the last interest I had in any of the disgusting expensive theaters near my home.
And now they’re raising prices for all the services… so we’ll see if when it gets to home viewing it it’s affordable enough to watch or not.
There was a new Marvel movie?
Same I only found out when my pirate site placed it there. I’m waiting for hd tho it’s still in cam
Of course, it’s a day in y.
They keep trying to push Kamala Kahn, but I never found her to be a very compelling character. Even less so now that they changed her powers. I watch almost all the marvel stuff but I couldn’t make it through that mini-series, and I’m not very interested in this movie either.
Maybe it was because I thought the examination of the American Muslim community was interesting and not something I’d really seen before, but I enjoyed it. It wasn’t the best show ever, but it was interesting. The examination of The Partition was also interesting.
As someone who comes from a Canadian Muslim family, that’s probably the thing that made me stop watching the show. It was just so over the top in terms of Muslim culture that it just seemed off. The way Islam was brought in to pretty much every discussion, no one actually talks or acts like that, at least no moderates. It’s no student from people of Christian backgrounds who I am sure aren’t talking about being Christian 24/7. It just felt like pandering.
Yeah the cultural exploration was probably the most interesting aspect of it, otherwise she just seems like a palette swapped Jubilee. They leaned pretty heavily into that. Honestly, I wish they’d just created a different Pakistani superhero to explore this, it might have been more interesting. Other countries should have superheroes too, right?
If I recall correctly, her original shape-shifting powers led to some interesting character development in the comics, which fit in with her thematically wrestling with her identity. That all got discarded when she got the power to summon purple glowing rock things instead, leaving behind the most interesting part of the character to me.
Also I recall there were a lot of “hello fellow kids!” cringeworthy attempts at appealing to zoomers in the miniseries.
And quite out of left field when it comes to a Marvel property.
Yeah, I felt like it was more about the American Muslim/Pakistani experience than it was about superheroing, which is why it probably wasn’t popular with some people like the person above. But I was fine with that because I was learning things about a culture I wasn’t very familiar with. But thinking on it, it’s kind of a departure from other Marvel stuff. A lot less action and mayhem.
Ms. Marvel is up there in terms of my favorite D+ series and what you mentioned had a lot to do with it. The end of the season felt extra corny and like some generic Netflix production but overall it was really fun.
Mostly because of her, I would like to check out The Marvels in theaters but I just don’t think we’ll have time and, realistically, it’s going to be streamable in, what, a couple of months? That’s probably the bigger issue - there aren’t really movies I’m so excited to see that I can’t wait that long.
Agree to disagree. I find the Kamala Kahn character to be an effervescent relief to a series that’s taking itself way too seriously or trying too hard for slap stick. Does that make this particular movie great? No. The movie itself is a pretty flimsy plot. The main trope of the movie is someone makes a mistake, the group comes together to resolve the mistake, and develop themselves during that resolution. So with that said, it’s not really good at delivering that, it’s not Trolls bad (the original one which the plot sucks, the music is quite good) but yeah there was a lot of room for lots of character development that was just not included in what was delivered. To me the movie pulled its punches on what it could have delivered.
But in these kinds of tropes you see classic character stereotype traits, in this case Kamala Kahn plays the lighthearted comedic foil and does so quite well through the movie. Needless to say the Captain Marvel character is our person who brings the conflict to be resolved and towards the end you are left with a pretty unsatisfying result. Like the issue is indeed resolved, but it’s about as exciting as how I might feel when I’ve completed my taxes. Hooray, I got that done. Maria Rambeau is our power character consistently pushing the accelerator for the characters to resolve the matter. And she’s pretty good at it, but there was absolutely more opportunity for her to flesh that out that they kept sacking her personal past to keep that in check. Which at some point one might go, yeah we get it, she’s troubled and doesn’t want to talk about it. There’s a degree of too much “I’m the aloof character in this movie”. I will say the final fight scene is actually good for the level of just skirting the level of frenetic and follow-ability. I’ve gotten to a point where I just tune out superhero fights when it just becomes a lightshow and camera pandemonium (ala the most recent Ant Man movie).
Like I said, it’s not a horrible movie. I went to the 10am showing of it on Friday (with one other friend) and that was $40 and that’s where I would say “Do NOT go see this movie for $40”. But I really enjoy the Kamala Kahn character and the level of energy the actress brings to the character. It reminds me a bit of how bubbly my twenty-two year old niece is sometimes and that serves as a nice refresher given the backdrop of generally everything else. So, I will acquiescence, there’s a likely bias on my part for the character.
Again, absolutely not disagreeing with your position on the character. I think Marvel (and this touches just every so slightly on the superhero saturation) has gotten so big that not every character is going to be widely welcomed by everyone. I think there’s a point that the Marvel Superhero movies get so numerous that you have to start considering sub-genres for the movies. And perhaps Marvel should pull back a bit on the distribution (it’s their ship ultimately to sail and sink if need be). But I really enjoyed the Kamala Kahn character in the same way that I enjoyed the Katy character from the Shang-Chi movie. I good comedic foil is like pepper, you need just enough to flavor the food and not too much to over power the food and both of those characters have carried that role quite well thus far. But like anything, Disney has every chance to run that straight into the ground.
So just my two cents.
I saw it today and I thought that it was fun.
I thought that it was way better than the latest Thor and Guardians of the Galaxy films which a really didn’t like.
Genre fatigue. Too formulaic now as well.
I mean, it also opened during an ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike that severely hampered promotion of the movie. So there is that.
I took the family to see it and we all loved it. I thought it was great personally.
The SAG-AFTRA strike ended literally the day before it was released. Talk about irony.
Just let it die. Start making original scripts.
But creativity is hard and risky. Can I interest you in a milquetoast film written by committee instead? I promise it was made with almost no planning or preparation and rushed out the door.
After seeing Dr. Strange and not understanding the entire movie engine because I don’t have Disney+ I stopped watching MCU movies. I’d love to go see this movie now that I know it’s out but why spend time and money watching actors in front of a green screen doing things I don’t understand because I didn’t watch multiple TV shows?
Good. Maybe this will mean less Disney/Marvel vomit.
I have a rule. You get 3 movies of a thing and then I stop paying attention. Marvel, star wars, fast and furious, I don’t care, 3 of the “same” story and I’m out.
Good rule.
Interesting to see the general negative impressions contrasted with the other column here saying how great it is.
I’m still deciding whether to see it in theaters - I’m a huge fan of the Marvel universe and still want more superhero movies. Iman Vellani does a great job with an excellent character, and I loved how the story connected with her culture. Fantastic. However Captain Marvel was pretty much a non-entity and we had no idea who Monica Rambeau will be yet - I hope the movie gave some much needed character development
What I don’t really like is people telling me I shouldn’t let myself be swayed by critics and should watch it and make up my own mind.
That’s stupid. I’m reading the reviews to decide if I wanna watch it or not. I don’t wanna spend my money and a couple hours of my life to decide if it was worth it if some people whose judgement I’ve trusted in the past tell me it’s gonna be trash.
I am also a huge Marvel fan and I saw it Thursday night in a packed theater. My opinion is that all the pieces of one of the best Marvel movies are there, and just weren’t put together properly. The leads have great chemistry, Iman Vellani is brilliant as always, the main plot point makes for unique and interesting fight scenes, and they let it get goofy in just the right ways (princesses and kittens, that’s all I’m saying.)
But the overall pacing of the entire movie is SO bad. It feels so rushed. None of the fun or poignant things that are legitimately good are allowed to hang around on screen long enough to sink in. There are important plot points that move so fast they leave you wondering what just happened. Which is so disappointing. I was really excited that this might be the one that finally got Marvel out of their pandemic-induced production problems. Instead it’s just another Marvel movie that I’ll only see once.
I felt the same same way. It felt like all of these important parts of the plotline were skipped or got 1 line explanations. A lot of the emotional parts got about 5 to 10 seconds of screen time before moving on to the next part.
Spoiler
Can someone explain how a giant intelligence kept the air and water on a planet from floating away and made sure the sun kept burning?
Yeah that whole thing was glossed over. I don’t think it’s much of a spoiler, but it was the civil war that happened after the Supreme Intelligence was destroyed that decimated the environment. But no explanation how or why that led to the star being too dim. And the thing that was set up as the next big battle at the end of CM1 (destroying the Supreme Intelligence) happened off screen between the movies. It was just so frustrating
Theatres are dead. The experience just isn’t as good as home and the prices are disgusting now just like the theatres themselves.
My local theater is packed almost every night of the week. There were flocks of entire families with kids dressed up in costumes to see both Mario and Barbie. I traveled an hour to see Oppenheimer in proper IMAX and there wasn’t an empty seat in the house. Theaters definitely are not dead.
If you are a big marvel fan then go see it. It is not a great MCU film but it is also not bad. You will get some good laughs and fight scenes and get some mild emotional moments. I enjoyed it in theaters, but recognize that it is not as good as say GOTG3 or Spiderman NWH.
It can be very well executed, but that doesn’t change that it’s a movie nobody really asked for. Unless there is demand to see it then it doesn’t matter how well done it is. And endorcements of “it’s actually good despite expectations” doesn’t really generate a lot of excitement either.
They spent $220 million to produce the movie…
