Are Superhero films dying?

[schneeland]

The crossover and big event obsession over just telling good stories.

Yeah, that's definitely a big minus for me (and it has sadly spread beyond the superhero genre). I'm not the biggest fan of superhero movies, but once in a while I watch one (and I often found them at least decent). But if I go to watch a movie about A, it should be about A and not about how it's connected to B, C and D.
I also have no interest in those X vs Y films, but that's maybe even more a matter of personal preference.

 

[amethal]

I saw something with Matt Damon talking about new movies coming out and how studios are not taking risks. There is no DVD aftermarket sales to boost the revenue by 20% anymore, so the movies are remakes and sequels that have worked in the past.

I'm still buying DVDs. Of course, the last one I bought was The Big Chill (1983), so it might take a while for me to get to the studios' more recent releases.

 

[Aldarc]

I think they have gotten too deep into their own convoluted mythologies. Iron Man, Captain America, the Spiderman movies and Guardians of the Galaxy were great movies that were fundamentally about humans that happened to have superpowers and/or fantastic adventures. They were relatable because they had characters we could understand going through things we could empathize with. Now it's all multiverses, time travel, cross overs and big events. No one gets their own movie and everything is part of some larger arc we won't understand for months or years. Bleh. This is why I stopped reading comics. The crossover and big event obsession over just telling good stories.

Same. The best movies, IMHO, are the self-contained ones that focus on characters. It's much the same with what Disney has been doing with Star Wars. I'm still interested in watching Andor, but that's mostly because it's fairly self-contained. But I've seen a number of my friends complain about this with various Star Wars and Marvel series on Disney+. They are confused because they don't watch everything but the series and movies assume that you do.

I also got a feeling at some point that the Marvel movies/series were all about "you must watch this movie/series to understand everything else." My reaction to things like this is not to keep watching. It's the opposite. I'll just stop watching. It becomes work keeping up with everything. That's pretty much what I did even at around the time of Black Panther. That's when my fatigue hit.

 

[Ryujin]

Yeah, that's definitely a big minus for me (and it has sadly spread beyond the superhero genre). I'm not the biggest fan of superhero movies, but I from time to time I watch one (and often found them at least decent). But if I go to watch a movie about A, it should be about A and not about how it's connected to B, C and D.
I also have no interest in those X vs Y films, but that's maybe even more a matter of personal preference.

If anything kills the superhero genre for me, it will be this. It's what made me completely drop the DC Arrowverse.

 

[aco175]

Part of the fatigue for me is the time spread for the movies. I liked the first Captain Marvel movie ok enough, but that was a few years ago and now I have no plans for the second Marvels movie. Some time gap happens from studio and actor plans and commitments, and I get that- to a certain extent. There is also the part of the other show/movie tie-ins that I skipped or would want to binge first to be up to speed. Maybe I will get excited again with a new Avengers movie

 

[Ryujin]

Part of the fatigue for me is the time spread for the movies. I liked the first Captain Marvel movie ok enough, but that was a few years ago and now I have no plans for the second Marvels movie. Some time gap happens from studio and actor plans and commitments, and I get that- to a certain extent. There is also the part of the other show/movie tie-ins that I skipped or would want to binge first to be up to speed. Maybe I will get excited again with a new Avengers movie

Time isn't much of a factor for me. It will have been something like 14 years between JourneyQuest season 1 and season 4

 

[Dire Bare]

Personally, I'm a fan of connected universes like the MCU and televisions Arrow-verse. But . . . there are inherent pitfalls. Story and character does need to take priority over universe building. And care needs to be taken that the growing verse doesn't collapse under it's own weight, as happened with the Arrow-verse (IMO).

 

[Clint_L]

As long as the shared universe is built on character-driven stories, it works. Up to End Game, the MCU was built very much on character, particularly the twinned stories of Iron Man and Captain American, who acted as foils for each other so that End Game was not just an epic battle but a satisfying conclusion to those and other character arcs.

Since then...there's what? The Spiderman films are great because they are kind of their own thing and very much built around character development. Shang Chi worked as well because, again, very much built around character and kind of its own thing. Maybe Black Widow. Everything else, and everything on D+, seems primarily concerned with moving forward the franchise and the setting, so that nothing seems to go anywhere and the stories are hard to emotionally engage with. They are mostly empty spectacle...and the spectacle is less and less fresh.

Up until End Game, MCU films were almost always narratively tight - they were interconnected but films felt more or less complete in themselves. That is seldom the case since then. Like, if you are planning to go see The Marvels you are expected to have seen the first film, plus End Game, plus Wandavision, plus Ms. Marvel, plus Secret Wars...it's a lot of prep.

 

[nevin]

I think they are suffering from everything being a Potentially Universe ending tragedy. 1st time it's scary. 2nd time it's serious but then it's just plain old business as usual which creates this coginitive disconnect. Like Loki, entire alternate timelines being wiped out, google's of beings and it just seems all samey boring stuff that you should care about but it really doesn't mean anything because as soon as they fix that it'll be something else that's destroying the universe. Till they figure that out they'll continue to slip.

 

[MichaelSomething]

The Question doesn't get a movie but Ant Man gets three? Where's the justice in this world??