Is Marvel’s ‘Cure’ For Superhero Fatigue Fewer Releases?
Last year seemed like it was a never-ending cycle of superhero movies and TV shows being pumped out. Sure, one can argue that most superhero movies generate big headlines and obviously big money, but does “superhero fatigue” mean anything to these big companies?
What Exactly Is “Superhero Fatigue”?
Many people define superhero fatigue as people claiming to be bored of superhero content because there is just too much content. The Marvel Cinematic Universe, unfortunately, got caught up in this, especially last year. The animated Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (from Sony) and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 both came out last year. Following Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
It’s worth mentioning that Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 crushed it at the box office. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said about Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. That same year, DC Comics also had a few movies come out. These include Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom and Shazam!. This doesn’t even include the shows that came out.
Marvel To Slow Down
Variety reported that Disney CEO Bob Iger said the company is “shrinking the MCU” with a new mission to drop the number of Marvel TV series to two a year and the film output to no more than three movies per year.
Iger said this is part of Disney’s overall strategy to reduce output and focus on quality, a strategy “that’s particularly true with Marvel.”
Marvel Studios Co-President Louis D’Esposito and Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige are addressing the rough patch the studio has been through over the last few years.
“If we just stayed on top, that would have been the worst thing that could have happened to us,” D’Esposito said in an interview with Empire. “We took a little hit, we’re coming back strong.”
He continued, “Maybe when you do too much, you dilute yourself a little bit. We’re not going to do that anymore. We learned our lesson. Maybe two to three films a year and one or two shows, as opposed to doing four films and four shows.”
The most recent release calendar distributed by Disney has four films from Marvel Studios slated for 2025. These include Captain America: Brave New World, Thunderbolts, The Fantastic Four, and Blade, and four more Marvel movies slated for 2026, including the fifth Avengers movie.
Marvel is releasing a single film in 2024, Deadpool & Wolverine. Historically, the only time Marvel has released more than three movies in a year was in 2021, after the studio sat out 2020 due to the pandemic. The year after they released Black Widow, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Eternals, and Spider-Man: No Way Home, the latter of which was a co-production with Sony Pictures.
On the TV side, Iger says that a portion of the upcoming series, a slate that includes the Kathryn Hahn-led WandaVision spinoff Agatha, set for release are “a vestige of basically a desire in the past to increase volume,” as reported by Variety.
This year, DC only has one live-action movie releasing which is Joker: Folie à Deux, a sequel to 2019’s Joker. And streaming service Max will also feature The Penguin live-action spinoff series set in the world of The Batman.
Not Helping the Cause
Unfortunately, many superhero movies over the last year have struggled to deliver at the box office. The Marvels, the follow-up to 2019’s Captain Marvel starring Brie Larson, had the franchise’s worst-ever opening weekend box office, with $47 million domestically.
Fans have pointed out “shoddy” special effects in Ant-Man: Quantumania and other Marvel features and series.
And then there’s Jonathan Majors, the villain in the Loki series, and Quantumania, who is meant to be a huge part of future films but was found guilty of misdemeanor assault and harassment in a split verdict. Forbes reported that Marvel’s current plan is to keep Kang around as the villain of Avengers 5, which was previously called The Kang Dynasty.
Variety reported that Marvel‘s Thor: Love and Thunder was a box office hit with $760 million worldwide, but a lot of Marvel fans were turned off by writer-director Taika Waititi’s silly humor and the film’s “unappealing visual effects.”
The Thor actor himself, Chris Hemsworth, is aware of the negativity around his fourth Thor movie, and he even admitted in a new GQ magazine profile that Love and Thunder was “too silly” for its own good.
Some can point out that many of Marvel’s movies and TV shows became confusing to fans once the multiverse got involved. One minute you’re looking at one universe that you’re familiar with and another moment you’re engaging in unfamiliar territory. So, when you continue to add more, one can easily get lost in it all.
Sony’s Madame Web also made headlines for being a miss. According to Forbes, it has been described as “the worst Spider-Man film,” the “worst superhero film of all time,” and “one of the worst films ever made.”
If Marvel and DC get their superhero stuff together, 2025 might finally see an end to superhero fatigue. If they give fans the movies we want and expect, the ones Marvel and DC are good at making, people will watch as many as they can churn out.
'Secret Invasion': How It Changes The Marvel Universe
There's At Least One Super Skrull
G’iah now has the powers of lots of heroes and villains. When we see Gravik reading that the blood of Captain America, Gamora, Thanos, Captain Marvel, Abomination, Mantis, Cull Obsidian, Drax, Korg, Hulk, Thor Odinson, Valkyrie, Winter Soldier, are in the vial, he says, “It’s pure. You really wanna die.” After he turns the machine on to merge with the powers, Gravik’s Skrull form attacks Fury, but he blocks the punch with what turns out to be Hulk’s arm and punches him into oblivion. We then see it’s not really Fury, but G’iah. “You killed my mother. My father,” she says to Gravik. The two have an epic fight using these new powers and she stabs him in the chest with an ice arm. They use Captain Marvel’s powers to go airborne, and after Gravik thinks she’s knocked out, G’iah uses Mantis’ powers to make him sleep and crash head first back down. After G’iah rocks the classic superhero landing to end the battle, he says she’s just like her father. Just like “them,” she corrects him and blasts a huge hole through Gravik, killing him.
Rhodey and Ross Were Replaced By Skrulls
Following her battle with Gravik, G’iah goes back to the Skrull compound to free the hostages. Among them is the real Rhodey and Agent Ross (Martin Freeman). G’iah tells a weakened Rhodey that he’s been held hostage “for a long time.” But how long? Rhodey’s personality was obviously changed in Secret Invasion, but it’s hard to tell how long the Skrulls that took over him and Ross were impersonating them. Has Rhodey been a Skrull since the first Iron Man? Does he know anything about superheros? Was it ever him in the War Machine armor? Does he know that Tony Stark is dead? Have we ever known the real Ross? Was the ally of the Wakandians a Skrull the whole time? Was Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine married to and divorced from a Skrull (and if so, did she know it? She seems to know everything).
Ritson Started A War
When Ritson addresses the American people about the motorcade attack, he reveals it was solely the work of the shape-shifting, alien-born species known as Skrulls. He reveals he will be presenting to Congress for immediate emergency authorization to designate all “off-world born species enemy combatants.” He then declared: “We know who you are. We know how to find you. And we will kill every last one of you.” With this kind of call-to-arms, he’s making the dire mistake of not distinguishing between those who want to leave peacefully and those who don’t. Following his announcement, Fury tells Ritson he took a bad situation and made it worse. “That’s real one-term-President stuff. But we have to act now.” As people are getting dropped for being Skrulls, Fury warns that the President’s “hit squads” are now inspired to kill the Skrulls who still want to help them. They are killing innocent people of power with no proof they are a Skrull, or putting themselves in danger of getting killed off by the real Skrulls. Ritson tells Fury that if he wants the Skrulls saved, he’s got to get them off his planet. With this war launched against Skrulls, will Ritson get killed off or be a one-term President like Fury predicted? In the upcoming Captain America: Brave New World, Harrison Ford is set to play President Thunderbolt Ross, so it’s got to be one of those two outcomes.
