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Since it comes up in just about any thread about film or TV these days it might be a good idea to give it its own containment thread in which to has it out.

I know it is called Superhero Fatigue or Superhero Burn Out but I don't really think it is an accurate descriptor for the issue. It just seems to be used as a broad term dealing more with audiences 1) being tired of factory produced stories and 2) Studios wanting every film to be a one billion dollar blockbuster instead of just a good movie with a reasonable viewership. To quote Top Dollar "The idea has become the institution". If a story is engaging and interesting people will still want to see it, comic based or not, but at this point just being part of a franchise isn't enough to guarantee a super money swim the vault.

It isn't Superhero Fatigue it is Meh Storytelling fatigue with a side of overly high expectations.

I agree, I don't think it's superheroes specifically, it's just that we've reached the point in time where they've become mainstream and such a fixture that they've taken for granted how much work was put into making things like the MCU as big as it is and now that the climax of that story is finished, they weren't content with taking a step back and giving time for people to breathe and figure out what the next steps were in building it back up again. Nope, they went full steam ahead (accelerated with the pandemic) and pumping out content that clearly was rushed and assumed that they would take advantage of the fanbase built over time that they would mindlessly consume new content even if it was of progressively worse quantity. This worked for a bit but now a lot of the casual audience is no longer invested with the phenomena being over and there being too much homework to bother keeping up with the minutia of each new MCU movie (which honestly feel more like ads for the next movie than a movie in itself). The chickens are coming home to roost for the presumption that the gravy train can keep running forever.

WB are failing because they too are basically unable to make good movies because they're so obsessed with trying to make their own cinematic universe at any cost that they don't bother to see if they even have any good movie ideas before they try and reboot and set up a whole universe around the idea that all their movies are under one umbrella. It's notable that the only successful movies in recent memory are the one shots of The Batman and Joker, both of which have nothing to do with the Synderverse or the other movies that came out. Somehow they're still missing the point but I guess that's what happens when management changes every 6 months.

It doesn't help that Hollywood is so risk averse that they have basically relegated themselves to being an adaptation factory of the nth degree (and a bad one at that). I basically don't see any new IP at all barring a few exceptions outside indie studios and it's a shame they don't bother investing in more medium sized movies anymore.

If you have Superhero fatigue, you better go see Napoleon!

 Easy E wrote:
Napoleon!

Adding an exclamation mark makes me think it is a historical spoof, like Airplane! or Top Secret!

I agree with Ahriman it seems that the story telling is getting worse and if anything even more lazy than before.
Seems like writers are running out of ideas and assume if it's a superhero film people will flock to watch it.

At the moment, the big issue is just Marvel not landing its beats like it needs to after a big finale. It hasn't helped that basically every plan they've made has been blindsided by one disaster or another. The pandemic, Falcon's bioweapon plot, the death of Chad Boseman, Brie Larson being weirdly targeted by... people, Sony getting a little weird about Tom Holland and most recently everything with Johnathan Majors has been compounded by a lot of unforced errors with the shift to Disney+. The overall result is an inability to build on the things that work or react appropriately to things that do not resulting in a lot less consistent quality greatly magnified by that unsuccessful push for quantity.

So... yeah, its mostly a matter of fumbly the consistency more than anything. Great films still get people hyped. No Way Home was fantastic, as was The Batman and Guardians 3. The genre likely is in need of a tone shift as it so often has before and a focus on consistently good films. It's about leaving audiences wanting more which just isn't going to happen if you feed them far too much.

We’re a spoiled brat of an audience.

Up to and including Endgame? Marvel gave us treats like nothing before. Marvel Movies are the reason we keep our bums in seats until the credits have fully finished. Because you never know where the stings and teases are going to be.

11 years of build up, with the movies all slowly coming together, whilst introducing their own tone and beats. 11 years, and 22 movies.

The only other franchise I can think of which had anything like a run that successful would be Bond. And even then, not in the same space of time.

Then Endgame shot its bolt, and was a wonderful conclusion to all that had come before.

And as the spoiled brat audience? I think we lost sight of just how long it took to get us to that stage. And instead expected Endgame level stuff from each and every entry that followed.

Now, that is not to say “but everything that followed was great and were the problem”. Some of the movies and TV shows have been of varying quality and impact. And of course, the pandemic was an absolute wildcard which meant whilst they continued to make stuff, it was under previously unseen circumstances, which directly affected the end products. Yet many of the movies remain Bloody Good Fun.

For me? The MCU absolutely still has gas in the tank and many miles to go. But, I think Disney do need to reign in the spending, and manage their own expectations.

Keep a tighter budget. Don’t assume your next entry is going to be License to Print Money. Back to film making basics of not spending more than you absolutely have to, and rely on an interesting tale to draw the punters in.

Even….rest it for a while. Let your would-be audience be bored by the offerings of others. Because fatigue is rarely anything a nice wee snooze can’t sort out.

But always keep in mind Iron Man to Endgame was 11 years and 22 movies of Bottled Lightning. And it can’t necessarily be recreated. Certainly you can’t manufacture it to order. Just keep in mind that, as Carly Simon once sang? When it comes to Comic Book Adaptations? Nobody does it better.

Take a few years off. Maybe keep a toe in the water with Loki level TV productions. Give yourself and your audience a rest. Because sure as hell ain’t nobody else coming to take your crown of the longest and most financially successful movie franchise ever.

I pretty much agree with everything MDG just said. I mostly checked out of the MCU after Endgame. I just didn't really care much about most of the characters they introduced at the end in order to carry on the MCU.

It also doesn't help that Disney wants you to really invest into the MCU by watching all of their streaming TV series. I just...don't have time for that level of commitment to the MCU. So it's not superhero fatigue for me, but MCU fatigue. After all, some superhero stuff is still going strong, like The Boys and Invincible.

Star Wars has the same problem for me, too. Want to know what your favorite characters are doing? Watch the movies, watch the TV series, read the books, etc.

I don't think it's "superhero fatigue". I think people would flood back into theatres to see characters they connect with, rather than the hodge podge of Z-listers Marvel has been attempting to prop up over Phase 4 and 5.

People also aren't connecting with the Multiverse stuff, both because it's been poorly explained and poorly used. I mean, I really like Multiverse of Madness (I appear to be in the minority here), but even I can admit that it didn't really do anything with the multiverse concept outside of a brief sequence where Strange/Chavez flew through a bunch of alternate realities.

They're also not establishing the main point of Phases 4 through 6. Kang is meant to be this great evil, yet in his three appearances thus far he has been:

1. Killed by Loki's distaff counterpart.
2. Beaten up and defeated in a fist fight by Ant-Man and Wasp.
3. A stuttering charlatan who got wiped from existence over and over and over again.

Leaving us with a stadium of screaming idiots and a few alternate Kang's playing dress-up.

You have to build up your villains. Thanos didn't have a great deal of screentime prior to Infinity War, but you knew the threat was coming. And when he did show up, the first thing they had him do was beat the Hulk into unconsciousness.

All Kang's done is lose. Consistently. And to weak characters. There's no menace. There's no gravitas. There's no dread. And because Marvel is lacking that central point for this Multiverse saga, and because the movies themselves seem disconnected from everything, scarcely engage with the whole multiverse concept (The Marvels only does it in the post-credits scene, FFS!), and because the TV shows they've made are, quite frankly, awful (with few exceptions), and most things contain characters that generally aren't resonating with audiences, you're left with this general malaise over Marvel.

It's not people being sick of it. It's people wishing it was better.

MDG, why are you calling the audience spoiled brats? Contempt for the audience is the kiss of death for creative ventures.


To me it seems like audiences would actually prefer to go back to scaled down movies, with smaller scale, smaller stakes, smaller budgets, more personal stories, and less CGI eye-blitz in the third act*.


As for Kang, I found him menacing in Loki season 1 and 2. But even more menacing was what he represented, the sheer magnitude of his crime. If Marvel could actually show a Multiversal War successfully, rather than describe it around the edges or in abstractions, he could be an effective big bad. If.

I enjoyed Ms Marvel and The Marvels, and I’d continue to hit theaters for that kind of lighthearted fun. But I’m probably in the minority there.

As for the post-Endgame MCU, the heroes they have left with any real charisma and/or screen presence are Dr Strange, Antman (only when teamed up with other Avengers or Randal Park), Wongers (especially with Madisynn), Shang Chi and Akwafina (hopefully more so now that they both have more lead experience) and Ms Marvel. And Ms Marvel is the one who seems to have any fun.





*This is not just a Marvel problem, although it might be a Disney problem. The Haunted Mansion film was pretty decent due to the actors interacting—but the last 15 minutes are a goo-blob sky-beam maelstrom of neon puke that drag the whole movie down a couple pegs.

I wonder if part of the problem is with the number of new characters introduced, rather than the number of films. Because the more characters you introduce, the more origin stories you need to make to introduce them... and ultimately, superhero origin stories are almost all really similar. The details change, but the overall 'Person has trauma, person gets superpowers, watch them develop powers, things go horribly wrong, hero knuckles down, figures out their powers and/or comes to terms with their trauma, and saves the day ' sort of format.

That's not an MCU thing, that's just superheroes in general. The origin is nice to know, but it's generally the least interesting part of that character's story arc.

So, for my money, they need to spend less time on origin stories - find clever ways to weave them in without wasting a whole movie on them - and more time on actual engaging plots.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
We’re a spoiled brat of an audience.

I have to admit that blaming the audience was not a approach I saw coming.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
We’re a spoiled brat of an audience.

Up to and including Endgame? Marvel gave us treats like nothing before. Marvel Movies are the reason we keep our bums in seats until the credits have fully finished. Because you never know where the stings and teases are going to be.

11 years of build up, with the movies all slowly coming together, whilst introducing their own tone and beats. 11 years, and 22 movies.

The only other franchise I can think of which had anything like a run that successful would be Bond. And even then, not in the same space of time.

Then Endgame shot its bolt, and was a wonderful conclusion to all that had come before.

And as the spoiled brat audience? I think we lost sight of just how long it took to get us to that stage. And instead expected Endgame level stuff from each and every entry that followed.

Clearly you're speaking of yourself. At the very least you are not speaking of me.

1) I do not consider myself spoiled for expecting to be entertained when I go to the movies or invest the time to watch a TV/streaming series. This is for any genre, not just superhero fair.

For the record, superhero wise? Even though there's a few entries I've disliked, and several more that I think are weak, The MCU - phase1 through present - has managed to do an overall excellent job of that.
The DCU on the other hand.... :( Despite DC being the home of most of my actual favorite comics characters? MoS forward, it hasn't managed so well on screen Live-action. On movies alone it breaks down to Like: 5, "Meh": 7, dislike: 3. It goes to 9/10/5 if we count CW & MAX series + The Batman and Joker side projects.

2) I am not sitting through the credits awaiting stings & teasers. Those are merely a bonus.
First; I am sitting through the credits because I am quietly paying my respect to all the hundreds (maybe thousands(?)) of people listed in the credits who've spent a great deal of time and effort trying to entertain me.
Whatever I think of the movie, I appreciate them & their efforts. The least I can do is read some of their names as they scroll past.
I've been doing this since long before studios started sticking extra bits into the credits & I will be doing it long after such goes out of style.
Second; There's a practical effect to this whenever I see a movie at peak times.
I'm simply letting everyone else surge out of the theatre, hit the restroom, & resolve the minor traffic jam as they all try & leave the parking lot at once.

 Ahtman wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
We’re a spoiled brat of an audience.

I have to admit that blaming the audience was not an approach I saw coming.

Quoting this post, replying to all three.

It’s figurative.

Iron Man to Endgame spoiled us. It raised our expectations time and again, and barring one or two duff beats? Exceeded those expectations.

But now? We’re collectively left with those expectations, and wanting the next Big Bad to manifest and wreck the house now. Forgetting it took us 10 years to see Thanos kick anyone’s arse. His presence in the build up was minimal - and thanks to credit teasers, oddly inconsistent. And amongst that build up, we had stories only tangentially linked to the Infinity Stones (Iron Man 2, GOTG 2, Civil War, Winter Soldier to name a few)

Consider we see him in Odin’s treasure house, claiming the Infinity Gauntlet. And in Ragnarok, Hela points to the Infinity Gauntlet as declares it as a fake. The implication being Odin or someone replaced the stolen Genuine Article. But in Infinity War? Nope. He went and got one made, rendering the teaser out of place with the story.

That stuff is easy to lose sight of, hence the figurative “spoiled brat audience”.

The stuff that followed immediately was considering the impact of Snap/unsnap. Yet it received criticism for not immediately introducing the Big Bad.

People knock Black Panther 2. Granted it didn’t turn out to be very good. But it was made during a pandemic, involving social distancing and other unusual necessary behaviours, and had lost an incredibly talented and charismatic lead, and it doesn’t always feel like people keep that in mind.

Iron Man to Endgame kind of made it all look very easy. Post Endgame reminds us it’s really not.

There have been more duff beats post Endgame. No denying that. Eternals whilst fun remains entirely disconnected. Black Widow should’ve preceded Endgame. Love and Thunder just isn’t quite the full shilling. And the TV shows range from fantastic (WandaVision, FalconSoldier, Loki) to the genuinely disappointing (Secret Invasion) with the others being perfectly entertaining, just not really adding that much to the wider stuff.

They don't get a pass for recent films sucking because they did well for the first three phases.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

But now? We’re collectively left with those expectations, and wanting the next Big Bad to manifest and wreck the house now. Forgetting it took us 10 years to see Thanos kick anyone’s arse.

I don't think anyone's forgetting that at all. But when you have a series of movies that continually raises the stakes to a finale as big as Endgame, it's not unreasonable for anything that comes after and resets to smaller scale conflicts to feel like a bit of a let down. It's up to the showrunners, not the audience, to find ways to rekindle that spark.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

It also doesn't help that Disney wants you to really invest into the MCU by watching all of their streaming TV series. I just...don't have time for that level of commitment to the MCU. So it's not superhero fatigue for me, but MCU fatigue. After all, some superhero stuff is still going strong, like The Boys and Invincible.

Star Wars has the same problem for me, too. Want to know what your favorite characters are doing? Watch the movies, watch the TV series, read the books, etc.

I have to +1 this and would add to it that its not just the volume of material you have to watch, but the potential hunting around you have to do to get to it. If you aren't on the one steaming service its all on, the others will get a hodge podge of films and bits of series. This means you can casually keep up with some of it some of the time, but then the series might get dropped by your chosen streaming service; and it might not have them all or have them all right at the time they go live so you're months behind etc...

I totally understand the desire to go deeper with a franchise, however it feels like the whole MCU and Starwars are trying to go deeper in a way that makes it hard to keep up unless you are heavily invested; or you are so casual that you really just want background noise and don't mind that you don't get half of what is going on.



MCU I would say goes a step further. I find that many of the actors/actresses outside of their character costumes (whilst in the film) can look either very samey or lack enough identity that you connect with them film to film. It doesn't help when on top of that you've got actor changes and different generations (spider man has 4 maybe 5 separate film versions of himself right now). They are doing with movies what they've been doing with comic books and it makes for a very messy experience for casual viewers. Mashing lots of characters together also gets messy because you've so many vying for attention in the film that the film runs out of space. The plot, pacing and character development all suffer as a result.

The worst thing is that the longer it goes on for the deeper the rabbit hole gets and the more casual people disconnect with it. It doesn't help when the whole concept of the MCU has flaws when you've insanely powerful characters like superman and others like Batman who is basically designed as "one city saviour" all running around fighting literal gods each and every film.


Which is the next issue - every threat has to be bigger than the last. The art of writing adventure stories where the end threat is variable, and doesn't have to "destroy all creation" type deals - feels like its been lost. The issue there is that each time you up the threat level, things get more and more silly or contrived. It also starts to make you question just how the heck anything in the setting ever got as far as it did because it seems that within a span of 10-20 years you've gone from a crime lord wanting to rule a city to gods fighting to destroy all creation; and its all perfectly normal (and a good many of the destructive forces are ancient weapons/things that were locked away).




Even if part of this fatigue is hyperbol, I know its set in as a mindset for some (including myself). This, of course, tarnishes any trailer or impression. Seeing Iron Man in a trailer for a separate hero character isn't a moment of "ooh team up cool" its "oh gods I'd have to go watch all 5 Ironmen films and then his separate TV series just to understand half of why he's in the film and half of his major character events in the film." It's also a case of "what films is he in; what TV series relate to him, just what the heck is going on and why do I need to watch 6 months worth of TV and have a spreadsheet to coordinate it all!"

I will note this is also a reason I never even attempted to get into DC/Marvel superhero comics.

If I'm going to spend my time and money watching something, then I want a good return on my investment. If I'm not sufficiently entertained then I get irritated about my wasted time and money.

The whole of the Infinity Saga was entertaining enough for me and I looked forward to each new entry.

Everything afterwards (with the exception of No Way Home) has not been sufficiently entertaining and I've yet to see Eternals, Black Widow, and The Marvels. Watched all the TV shows except for the last 2 episodes of She-Hulk. I have no excitement or interest in anything that they have announced for the future.

Did I change or did they?

 Ahtman wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
Napoleon!

Adding an exclamation mark makes me think it is a historical spoof, like Airplane! or Top Secret!

The last trailer has him leading a cavalry charge, so... yeah. It basically is.

Superhero fatigue is just a media thing for their own monetary earnings. Disney burned out, over worked and underpaid their writers and their effects studios and it showed.
DC is still trying to work out which way the pants go on for live action, and spent far too much time relying on a 'superstar' director who is obsessed with deconstruction.

Trying to create all the streaming shows and the effort to make 3 movies a year is too much.

I think post-Endgame MCU is also overly reliant on having seen pre-Endgame MCU.

If we look back at what came before? Most, if not all, could be quite happily watched as stand alone movies. Now like Discworld novels you do get more viewing in release order, there’s still plenty enough in them to enjoy as a singular experience.

Post Endgame? A fair bit more self-referencing. Now as someone who has watched everything MCU, usually on release day, I’m not well placed to say how offputting that calling back and need for prior knowledge is. But that need is there now, as is the risk a casual audience may be put off.

 bbb wrote:
If I'm going to spend my time and money watching something, then I want a good return on my investment. If I'm not sufficiently entertained then I get irritated about my wasted time and money.

The whole of the Infinity Saga was entertaining enough for me and I looked forward to each new entry.

Everything afterwards (with the exception of No Way Home) has not been sufficiently entertaining and I've yet to see Eternals, Black Widow, and The Marvels. Watched all the TV shows except for the last 2 episodes of She-Hulk. I have no excitement or interest in anything that they have announced for the future.

Did I change or did they?

I think you just summed up about 80% of he MCU audience right there.
Couldn’t have said it better myself.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I think post-Endgame MCU is also overly reliant on having seen pre-Endgame MCU.

If we look back at what came before? Most, if not all, could be quite happily watched as stand alone movies. Now like Discworld novels you do get more viewing in release order, there’s still plenty enough in them to enjoy as a singular experience.

Post Endgame? A fair bit more self-referencing. Now as someone who has watched everything MCU, usually on release day, I’m not well placed to say how offputting that calling back and need for prior knowledge is. But that need is there now, as is the risk a casual audience may be put off.

I've seen it all, but I notice. In part because a lot of where other shared universe attempts have failed is in trying to make things interconnected, which in hindsight makes it more apparent that the MCU largely isn't that reliant on anything to enjoy a specific movie. It's always had this structure where you're expected to see the Avengers films and any prior films in a specific franchise, but all the connectivity stuff is saved for the post credit scenes and not relevant to the film itself.

Marvel's is SUPER noticeable in the exposition dumps; particularly early on and really highlights how much the lack of a tentpole series has created this odd patchwork of relevant bits that don't have any real ties. There's a much better version of the Marvels where Monica gets her powers touching the hex on the space walk and not from Wandavision. There's a better version of Multiverse of Madness where Wanda's still driven by the loss of Vision from the last tentpole film instead of needing it to be about the kids. Where pre-Endgame succeeded is allowing things like Wandavision to be summed up later as "I tried to bring him back, I created a whole life for us" in later films, rather than making specific elements introduced in side properties become central to the new ones.

 Easy E wrote:
If you have Superhero fatigue, you better go see Napoleon!

Or Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure!

 Ahtman wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
We’re a spoiled brat of an audience.

I have to admit that blaming the audience was not a approach I saw coming.

Why not? Disney's been doing it since The Last Jedi.

 Vulcan wrote:

 Ahtman wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
We’re a spoiled brat of an audience.

I have to admit that blaming the audience was not a approach I saw coming.

Why not? Disney's been doing it since The Last Jedi.

I expect it from executives, just not from the victims.

Disney: Are we not putting enough time and thought into our product? No, it is the consumer who is wrong.

Considering how Disney openly treated their writers during the strike, it’s no surprise they’re struggling to create good movies.

It also doesn’t help that all these studios are now run by businessmen who rose to the top through cutthroat business acumen rather than movie moguls who rose through fostering connections with successful talent and selecting projects on tangentially artistic merits.

We know that they write these movies AS THEY FILM THEM. Is it any wonder that the people put in charge who only have previous credits on a couple of TV show episodes aren't producing good stories?

I think any writer, even one with more experience, would have trouble writing good movies under the apparent conditions at Disney.

 Ahtman wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:

 Ahtman wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
We’re a spoiled brat of an audience.

I have to admit that blaming the audience was not a approach I saw coming.

Why not? Disney's been doing it since The Last Jedi.

I expect it from executives, just not from the victims.

Disney: Are we not putting enough time and thought into our product? No, it is the consumer who is wrong.

To me it's not surprising, with the way Disney has cultivated their brand in the last 20 years, they've basically been trying to replicate the reality distorting field that Apple has when it comes to their core consumer base gobbling up all their products even when there's minimal changes in design or efficacy for premium prices. I wouldn't say it's worked overall on a mass scale but there's still Disney fanatics that post about going to Disney Land weekly and borderline treating it like a religious experience. I don't think MDG is quite that level but there are people so blind in their fandom that they'll froth at the mouth to defend anything that people criticize about even if it's founded in genuine reasoning. It's almost like an abusive relationship where they aren't willing to admit they're being taken advantage of for having a lack of standards.

They are literally the embodiment of the ideal that the corporate bigwigs want in an audience "Don't ask questions, just consume product and get excited for new product".