On the superhero question
The year is over. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom was released, marking the official end of the DCEU. It goes out with a whimper. Aquaman won't be profitable, but it won't lose as much as The Marvels of The Flash did this year, which I suppose is some consolation prize.
As I said in my summer of busts post only two superhero movies this year made a profit theatrically. In certain corners of the box office community, there was a belief that The Marvels would beat Spider-Verse, but that never seemed realistic. It even came up short of the most conservative initial predictions for it. It did so poorly that it made The Flash's performance look decent.
So what happened? Last year Superhero movies dominated the box office. Although, Top Gun: Maverick and Avatar: The Way of Water were the top 2 grossing movies. Both domestic and worldwide. But still, all three Marvel films opened to over 100M. Two made over 400M DOM, although, one had poor word of mouth. Even Thor: Love and Thunder, with some horrendous word of mouth, almost grossed 350M DOM. And all three were some of the most profitable blockbusters of the year.
I think 2022 laid the groundwork for what happened this year. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Thor: Love and Thunder were received poorly among general audiences. I would also say even though Black Panther: Wakanda Forever was well received, its reception was still pretty tepid, especially compared to the first. And people started enjoying blockbusters with a different look and flavor with Top Gun and Avatar, which made audiences reconsider what types of movies they should watch. Something I think falls in between here is The Batman, which, of course, is a superhero movie, but one that has a distinct look and feel. So, I would place that next to the blockbusters that offered something different than the MCU formula audiences had gotten used to consuming.
Going into 2023, audiences were still interested in superhero movies and, specifically, the MCU. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania opened to over 100M, a franchise high. The poor reception of the film was, apparently, the straw that broke the camel's back for audiences.
This wasn't evident right away since the two superhero movies that were released right after (Guardians 3 and Across the Spider-Verse) were well-received and were some of the biggest hits of the year. Even with a softer opening, Guardians 3 managed to leg out incredibly well to outgross the first installment of the franchise. The post I made directly after Guardians 3 opened was perhaps premature in this regard. But I think the superhero films to come out after Spider-Verse proved that point right. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse required fantastic word of mouth to be the hits that they were. If they were received as poorly as the 2022 MCU films, they wouldn't have become the hits they are.
This might seem obvious, you need a good movie that audiences like to be a hit at the box office. But, this was not the case in the prime era of superhero movies. In 2016, Suicide Squad was released with poor critical and audience reception. Yet it grossed 325M DOM and 745M WW. That same year X-Men: Apocalypse still managed to make over 500M WW also with poor reception. Venom would make over 800M WW two years later. Even as recently as 2021, the poorly received Eternals (while the pandemic was still ongoing) made over 400M WW which is double The Marvel's gross.
Quantumania was the start of it but The Flash, Blue Beetle, The Marvels, and Aquaman cemented it. This is a dead genre, and it had an explosive death this year. The top three grossing movies this year worldwide are Barbie, The Super Mario Bros Movies, and Oppenheimer. All three are quite different. And I think they show that audiences are ready for something else, and are shopping around. What used to excite audiences in the 2010s simply isn't exciting them anymore. As GenZ becomes the same age Millennials were ten years ago, they're simply not into superhero movies. The demographic for superhero movies will continue to get older as they continue to fall out of fashion. GenZ is finding interest elsewhere as they made Hunger Games and Wonka hits that outgrossed the majority of superhero movies released this year.
So what of the future?
2024 is barren in Superhero movies. There are technically five comic book movies coming out. However, three of those are from the Sonyverse; Madame Web, Kraven the Hunter, and Venom 3. Two of those seem to be guaranteed bombs and I don't think anyone expects Venom 3 to hit the same numbers as the first Venom. The only two major comic book movies to come out in 2024 are Deadpool 3 and Joker Folie à Deux.
Deadpool 3 is going to be heavily connected to the MCU. With all the plot leaks available, it's looking to be a multiverse cameo fest. This seems exactly the wrong time to be doing this type of film. Cameo porn, as coined by James Gunn, is not a guaranteed money maker as The Flash made it evident earlier this year. Mix that in with the fact that Deadpool 2 was released now almost six years ago, when the market was friendlier to superhero movies, and how heavily connected it is to a Disney+ show, I don't believe this is going to right the MCU ship the way Disney is hoping.
Joker Folie à Deux, however, should benefit from not being a typical comic book film the way something like Deadpool 3 is going to be. And the first Joker has had a long shelf life in the minds of audiences. It should be able to rise above the fatigue of the genre to interest audiences in it.
Still, I wouldn't be surprised if we end up with another top 3 without superhero films. Audiences could potentially gravitate towards other blockbusters like The Garfield Movie, Beetlejuice 2, and Dune: Part Two, or some other variation of films, to make those the three highest-grossing films of the year.
As we look even further beyond, we have Captain America 4 (which was originally set to release in 2024 but got delayed due to them doing massive reshoots), Fantastic Four, Thunderbolts, and Blade for the MCU in 2025. I doubt most of these are even gonna come out in 2025 since some of them don't even have completed scripts! From here on out I think the MCU is just too messy to predict. I suppose if something like Thunderbolts is good (which is being rewritten and directed by the duo that did Beef) that could help them start rebuilding their reputation. I'm not sure if there is gonna be any immediate fix available to jump-start the box office for this universe again though. I think it's gonna take some time. And I don't see the Avengers films currently planned to be massive money-makers either. I think it's time for Disney to reconsider their continuity, start over, and move on. They got too big too fast, and it's over.
Luckily for WB, well maybe not so lucky, the DCEU was already a disaster. So they got a headstart on rebooting and starting fresh with Superman: Legacy in 2025 (they should have rebooted after Justice League but Aquaman making a billion gave them false confidence that they could right the ship). Given Gunn's track record, this should be good. It should be well-reviewed, and it should get a strong audience reception. I think it can easily gross the same amount as The Batman given how much it has going for it. There has not been a good Superman movie since the 80s, I think it's about time a Superman movie breaks out with a 21st-century audience.
Also in 2025; The Batman Part II. Much like Joker, The Batman has kept a long shelf life. It resonated with the primary target audience for superhero films, that being white guys 25-35. It's dark and mature in a way that the audience wants these movies to be. People still talk about it and I don't see its relevancy dying down in another year. I think WB struck gold with The Batman, the way they did with Joker, and I think The Batman Part II could be another billion-dollar hit for WB.
It is weird to talk about a genre this way when it was dominant for most of my life. Writing a post-mortem for Superhero movies was not something I expected to do at the beginning of the year. It felt like something that was always going to be culturally dominant. But trends change and Hollywood is in an interesting place right now.
Live by the formula, die by the formula. Marvel films have been very same-y since before Ultron, aside from a few standouts (Guardians 1 and 3, Thor: Ragnarok, etc). We've just reached a saturation point where the Infinity War hype is done and isn't carrying the mediocrity anymore.
These films aren't made because a director has a vision they want to realize; they're made because a committee of suits have a roadmap of projects that need to be made, and people under them crank out something that ticks the boxes in the requirements list. And the current roadmap is bland homogeneity, distilled down from what the executives think the "hit formula" is.
Spiderverse was big because it's something completely different. It has a fresh style, a new angle on a classic story, and most importantly...it understands what Spider-Man is about: the character has always been a deconstruction of what it means to be a hero, and what the moral implication of having "great power" means. i.e. not that caution is merited, but that there's a moral imperative to use those abilities for the greater good, even at personal cost. Disney has put Spider-Man in several films now and never been able to do that concept justice.
I quasi disagree with this. They aren't living by the formula anymore, and that's why they're dying. They had good writing, good character development, avoided tropes and cliche's that normally fill time in the script, and basically were doing B quality work in D quality genre.
Then post endgame the quality has gone off a cliff. The actor strike and majors don't help, but it sure seems to be them just cashing in on the name rather than trying to really make things work. For every gem they still put out (loki, wandavision, moon knight) that feels properly paced and like someone cared about it, you get something that's either mediocre (ms marvel was ok, but they had the opposite problem where they nailed the chemistry and really just fell flat on showing off how badass she's supposed to be), or back at D quality (quantumania has like 10 good moments and otherwise is rolling in the dumb tropes that things like tranformers would do).
So yes, I agree that at this point they've just decided "the formula is X" when it's actually Y, but I think you can easily prove that the earlier marvel movies/shows had much much higher quality writing outside of the occasional dud (iron man 2). I tried watching secret war and it just felt like a complete mess of rushing out a plot that they planned forever ago but didn't delay when things got rough. There's a pretty good video out there showing how it's just a wreck of storytelling, and also almost a character assassination of Fury.
With a healthy dose of skepticism, I actually have more hope than you for Deadpool 3. Maybe it’s my faith in Ryan Reynolds or my love for Marvel’s mutants, but I think there’s a decent chance it could get a good multiverse plot without reducing itself to “cameo porn”. I’m hoping it being the first R-rated MCU film and the only MCU film releasing next year will give it the creative breathing room it needs to succeed.
I think Deadpool could do well too because of the way Ryan Reynolds is off the screen. He is brilliant at projecting a sort of self-deprecating approachability/likeability with just an edge of being a smug asshole. He does this as Deadpool, but he also does it as Ryan Reynolds (at least, his public persona) in a way that I think makes him brilliant at marketing because every appearance is practically a Deadpool mini teaser.
Wait.. does Deadpool sell cell service, also?
From Wikipedia:
So I don't think he sells it, but his regeneration is definitely a cell service.
P.S. @mr-death, I read your comment over and over and whether there is a pun or a serious comment, I am missing it, so I default to coming back with a pun of my own.
Ryan Reynolds is the public face of Mint Mobile, a virtual phone network that Reynolds partially owns. It is a cell service that buys up space from dedicated cell companies' networks and puts their subscribers on that network at a lower priority than the cell companies' own subscribers.
Reynolds always appears in his usual Reynolds persona in advertisements for Mint Mobile. Always. So yeah, Deadpool sells cell service by the sea shore.
Ah, that explains it. I try to structure my life so that I don't see ads, so I've only spend things like the movie promos and his talk show appearances. Thanks for the clarification.
I mean, if Dune part 2 is half as good as part one I'll probably just try to see that in theaters 3x rather than watch anything else.
The nostalgia mines are gonna be tapped out soon. There's still some places where good remakes are welcome (see: Dune, TMNT), but I'm betting that the trend of trying to cash in on 80's/90's nostalgia is going to start hitting walls. The people with the most free time now are huffing secondhand-nostalgia at best.
Or they will just move on to the early 00s nostalgia. The next generation is soon coming of age as well.
They can try, but that's when they started opening the nostalgia mines. Hell, a lot of the stuff that's worthwhile being nostalgic about in the 00's never stopped being sold.
It's a snake that's eating itself.
Road Trip is gonna get a remake, you'll see!
Zenon reboot when?
Wouldn't be surprised if Disney tried to reboot most of the Disney Channel offerings.
There's almost definitely gonna be a big screen High School Musical reboot at some point in the next decade.
I'd love to know what the demographic data says for this, because I'm the same. Dune is the only movie I've cared about in at least a decade, I never go to theaters, and I'm already planning my trips to the faraway fancy theaters to see Dune II multiple times in IMAX Dolby whatever. Did they know they were making these movies for me, or is it a happy accident?
I don’t think genre or theme fatigue is a real thing, at least nowhere near as significant as people think. The issue is quality vs quantity. The movies that are bombing are uninspired and boring. Make good movies and people will go see them.
I think genre fatigue can be a very real thing, just one that kind of fizzles out at the macro level. I know my interest in fluff action flicks fizzles after watching a handful for a bit.
Much like eating nothing but tacos for dinner for a month. It might take a week or 3, but eventually you won't want to eat a taco for a few years.
There are almost an infinite amount of variations you could do with a taco. I could eat tacos for months and still have enough variety to not get burned out at all.
Superhero or comic book movies can span multiple other genres or themes. Sci-fi, fantasy, crime, etc… it’s easy.
I've been down that road before, to save money. That limits your options tremendously and certinly speeds up the process of getting burnt out.
Which incidentally is why most superhero movies feel very samey.
They feel samey because it’s uninspired paint by numbers focus group nonsense. There is no real creative vision or good storytelling.
on a micro level yes. I can even see series fatigue happening on a macro level. But macro genre fatige, I'm not as sure. I suppose when your standards are billion dollar box offices after a global pandemic as ticket prices double/triple and streaming services get releases sooner: yeah, there is a huge dip.
But I see that more of an issue in not reading the market (in multiple lenses) than this meaning "people are tired of genre X". Five Guys is a decent burger but not "$12 for a plain burger" decent. I may still buy it every now and then despite that, but it will definitely cut down on how often I eat there.
I see the MCU the same way; a cut above fast food, but ultimately enjoyed cheaply. But the world's gotten very expensive as of late.
Five Guys went downhill so hard. It used to be well worth that $12. At least in contrast to the McD's garbage burger that costs like $7.
I largely agree with the points made, but disagree with this point. Disagree-ish? I don’t think reconsidering their continuity will help at all, I think the lighting of the proverbial wick was that they rolled out tv shows and more movies after Avengers: Endgame with missing a single beat. There was no break, it was relentless and there was no “breathing room” to give Endgame space. We went straight into 3 tv series, most of which were inconsistent garbage, Loki was the exception, but they even managed to whiff that big-bad too. Add to that the fact that a lot of the marvel content had some pretty obvious subtexts about “sustaining the status quo” (which this video does a fantastic job of talking about: https://youtu.be/LpitmEnaYeU ) which become pretty grating after a while, endless teasers for more crossovers - which just tease more - and you have the perfect storm for audience exhaustion.
I was never that into seeing movies at release, so maybe my feelings are not widely shared, but I just don't see many movies that look interesting enough to bother seeing them in theaters. Few of them stand out, especially the ones with big visuals that would merit a big-screen viewing. The comic-book movies seem completely fungible. Ones Thst seemed unique, like Barbie and Oppenheimer, still didn't seem to be worth the big screen. I figure I'll eventually stream them when I have nothing better to do. Although even then, there are so many good TV series that I will often choose a few episodes of something over a movie.
If I see a movie in the theater at all, it is because my wife and I are planning for a date night, and something good-ish happens to be showing. So it has more to do with the luck of the timing that the draw of any particular movie.
Exceptions to this in the recent past were Dune, which I paid $200 (surprisingly little, actually) for a private showing during the pandemic. But I am a huge Dune fan and the build-up (and actual delivery) were amazing. Hoping for a two-part double feature when the second part is released.
When I was young and went pretty regularly, the movies cost ~5€ to watch in cinema.
The price is now 8-15€, which makes me take a closer look at what I am watching. The movies just didn’t interest me at all. They all seemed mediocre or boring and not worth my money and time.
The last movies I watched in a movie theater since 2018:
Bumblebee: a few friends went and it promised a new outlook on a sexist franchise, which I grew up with.
The French Dispatch: unusual stylistic filming
Dune: a well received movie of a book I really liked.
The creator: well received and it promised magnificent stylistic elements (long takes, slower pace, ...).
Barbie: very well received, with a focus on feminism
Wonka: not my usual type of movie, but since it was a christmas event with friends and family, I didn’t mind it
Also watched Ridley Scott's Napoleon and yeah... it was the usual male gaze fare. I ended up just looking at other things, most of those things I was looking at disrespectfully. It was a boring movie and I realised that, yeah... not a lot of good movies. So I'm a lot more strict with what films I see now.
Latest one I did see, though, was Poor Things. It's the latest film for Yorgos Lanthimos, of The Lobster and The Favourite fame. I found it was worth it as I went to a theatre that exclusively caters to independent films. So I'm just happy to have watched the film and supported that theatre.
Can't wait for Dune: Part Two though.
The benefits of being an old man lol. I was a writer in a comic book studio in the 90s, which was a real golden age for Marvel/DC, etc. We did Spider-Man and Wonderman and Conan and a whole bunch of other monthly comics and we spoke constantly about how stupid the executives were in both comics and Hollywood that they couldn’t seem to take advantage of the natural fit between the two.
Now that the tentpole strategy has run its course, this seems a natural end to the reign of the superheroes. Remember when everything was a pirate movie? There is nothing permanent about the Marvel universe in film.
That said, maybe now they can dispense with the tentpole idea and return to the more natural structure for comics: the anthology. There are already a number of tv shows in the comic book world. But many of them try to tie themselves to the tentpoles. Maybe we can get a deeper, more detailed treatment of these classics instead of the quick sketch cameo fests that have dominated.
You know, your dedication and acuity toward the film industry is laudable. Most people are concerned with criticism or analysis, which is fine, but someone like you, who is really concerned and talented in regard to the financial and corporate aspects as well, is not as easy to come by. I don't say this kind of thing all the time, so you should take it as a strong compliment. Have you considered having your own blog, website, or YouTube channel? Or maybe contributing to an existing project?
I did consider it but I don’t have the patience for that. I rather just post on here and Reddit all my thoughts.
I understand. I sometimes think about having a blog as well, but just thinking about it triggers my anxiety. Hey, have a great 2024! ;)
I haven't seen it, but something that stuck out to me in all the Aquaman 2 promotional material was just how bad all the visual effects were, especially in underwater scenes. And I don't think this was a case of them just using unfinished VFX shots in trailers, that is common practice. The key problem for me is more fundamental, and that is the fact that none of the actors ever actually looked like they were underwater. They all move around more or less like they would in atmosphere with some floaty flourishes, with the heavy lifting being done by some filters and CGI additions to try and sell the illusion. The results aren't much more convincing than the brief sub-aquatic scenes from Phantom Menace.
Now, I could forgive this for a few scenes in a movie set largely on land, but not only is this Aquaman, this is the second Aquaman movie. Surely they would have figured this stuff out by now?
This is sadly just the way of CGI now. They are more than capable to make something that looks amazing but it is more expensive, so studios are settling for “good enough” in many cases.
I don't even think it's that much more expensive, I think they just need to hire directors who are better at planning visual effects shots and working within their constraints.
Jurassic Park looks so good in part because the vfx shots were meticulously planned before the shoot. There was no plan to "fix it in post", Steven Spielberg worked closely with the visual effects team, and he understood what they could and couldn't realistically pull off with the technology of the time. This is all stuff that should be happening during pre-production.
Fixing in post was always a joke, just one that computers have enabled actually doing.
There are rare examples of it working out, even before computers. The original Star Wars is easily the most famous example. Though in this case it wasn't the visual effects figured out in post, it was just about everything else.
And I'm sure all that would signifigantly increase the budget of the movie, in both time and money. Aquman as is already cost $200m and Jurassic park at the time, adjusted for inflation was $150m.
The tech hasn't kept up with the demand of the audience and the cost of labor (which for VFX is already way too low).
Reading this thread, I'm realizing what I love in the comics space is arcs that work as standalone graphic novels. The Batman really scratched that itch for me, maybe because it felt like it was paced akin to something like The Long Halloween - I want more of those kinds of projects that don't feel serial and nail the characters.
You might find this analysis of the death of the superhero genre interesting, with a nice helping of cold hard data to explain precisely why 'woke=broke' from behavioral science. Cuts through most of the pandering bullshit that clouds all of the discussions about hollywood's missteps in recent years. I can sum it up for you simply - no one, male or female, likes a mean spirited unintelligent girl boss, while everyone, male and female, loves a strong, sexy, compassionate woman on the screen. That's the science, and everything else is bullshit.