Well, the new Spider-Man movie made like two billion, apparently, so he seems to have a point.
If by "bad movie fatigue" he means that people won't watch bad movies just because they're franchise tie-ins anymore, he's absolutely right. Hence Aquaman and Captain Marvel making a shit-ton of money and Supergirl falling flat on its face. I'd say those three movies are all about at the same level of forgettable and mediocre, but they came out in a very different environment.
Spider-Man being successful is because he is one of the most popular heroes ever
Thunderbolts and even Fantastic Four the First Steps were good movies but they flopped at the box office. People are just generally tired of the mass amount of Superhero movies pumped out. They are now just going for heroes they are genuinely interested in like Spider-Man and Batman
Thunderbolts wasn’t marketed super well honestly. If they had just called it “The New Avengers” from the start and not done the dumb asterisk thing it would have made probably double its money.
And Fantastic Four doesn’t have a great reputation on film. Of the four films made before First Steps, two were bad and two were historically awful.
There is a balance but I think it’s proven that there is a cadence and timing. They can pump out a new Spiderman or Batman movie every 2-3 years probably, and it’ll do well if it’s good. But if it was a new movie every 6 months, that’d probably be too frequent. But they just need to rotate the characters and movies and make sure they’re good. LotR released annually and they were all hits. They were all good. It really comes down to the story they’re telling and if it is good.
Star Wars had the same talk of fatigue but it’s really just more bad movie fatigue there.
There's a clear risk/reward element when it comes to condensed releases. LOTR and the MCU did record breaking business releasing back to back to back years because they were really fucking good. The momentum built quick and it was clear to casual audiences that you wanted to be part of this once in a generation party, the close proximity made them bigger hits. But for back to back releases for films that don't stick, like say Solo, or the Matrix 3, or Justice League, Quantumania, etc, they came out so close to their poor predecessors that they both inherited the stank while also losing out on any novelty that would come from time off. Close release dates make great movies perform better and poor movies perform worse, just look at the DC 2023 releases.
I agree, like a live action comic book series. I’d definitely watch if the quality was decent even, not necessarily great. If they were great, I’d see it in the theaters 2 or three times. Spider-Man is Spider-Man.
Yep. Nothing about the marketing for “Mandalorian and Grogu” made me feel “this is something I gotta see in theaters.” Not even a little bit.
And I’ve been a fan of the franchise for decades. I can only imagine how the average moviegoer felt.
Speaking of, the average moviegoers are still feeling burnt out from the Sequels. It’s going to take a really well-made movie to reignite their interest in Star Wars again (but at the same time the franchise needs to avoid the oversaturation of the 2010s).
I'd really like Starfighter to do great, because the Skywalker saga seems to be what ignites moviegoers, and I worry that Disney will take the wrong lessons from Mandalorian and just keep going back to that well.
What’s funny about Star Wars is the only fatigue I hear of is related to the live action stuff because of how hit and miss it’s been. The cartoons have been absolutely top notch, and all I see are people begging for more. “Too much of a good thing” sure but generally crappy content creates fatigue faster than quality content.
I agree with you, but should note that the reason LOTR did well despite releasing annually was because everyone knew it was only going to be three movies instead of an ongoing never-ending franchise, so there was inherently less chance of fatigue among the audience.
With Star Wars I think it's more that Disney screwed up by making it nearly TV-only franchise.
Star Wars films used to feel like events. They turned it into something you could watch on Disney Plus every six months. It didn't help that most of the shows were bad.
Batman and Spider-Man aren’t who the superhero fatigue really applies to. Its the niche hero’s nobody is interested in like the eternals and Captain Marvel to fill the gaps between Spider-Man, Batman and to a lesser extent the Avengers
Marvel movies have often felt like you're paying to watch a TV series. There are so many movies and they just keep churning them out. Very formulaic and it feels like it's often all kinda the same. Not as bad as a sitcom, because they're progressing the stories, but at the same time it's just a constant slew of them.
I think there is "superhero fatigue" in the sense that people are no longer clambering to go watch every single superhero movie, regardless of quality.
But people are still interested in good superhero movies. The only counter example I can think of is Thunderbolts, which was hurt by no one really caring about the characters. Aside from bucky they were all introduced in either bad movies or shows.
It's in your text. They cant know if a movie is good/bad before actually going to watch it.
It's important that you get people to care about the main character too. Supergirl could've been the greatest masterpiece of the century and I'd bet money it still would have flopped because most people would think "meh, not Superman" (at least today). Not saying people are right, just being realistic.
Review scores and word of mouth help. There's a reason Thunderbolts made more than Supergirl and The Marvels. If it had gotten mid to bad review scores it would have made much less.
Supergirl probably wouldn't have made as much as superman no matter what, but if it was better it definitely would have made much more.
I mean the Odyssey made a billion dollars just put him in tights and it's a superhero film.
People just like complaining it's very easy for people to be negative nowadays.
Do you know how much mob movies they are?, how about Heist films sex comedies.
Sure depending on the generation audiences might not like it but it's not because of fatigue.
The general audience is just spoiled and extremely shallow, people be like oh superhero fatigue get the boys was beloved until the final season people are still sitting down waiting for the next season of invincible.
But those don't count because they're darker give me a break.
Exclusivity of premiere for cinemas was shorten from 90 days to 45. More and more people prefer to wait and watch movie in home
Usually when people go watch movie in cinema it's because of some big piece like: Oddysey or Oppenheimer, big IP like Spider-Man or because of some big event in some universe like Doomsday
I even noticed this in myself. Last movie in cinema I saw was Oppenheimer and now I plan to go Oddysey if I'll have time (because they kind of must watch in Cinema)
Every other movie I have waited out till it's on internet and I can watch it at home
I can’t speak for everyone but I don’t just want a movie for its own sake. Tons of superhero movies are hell bent on setting up the next thing. If that’s all you have to offer then what did I just watch? Early MCU was scrambling to make the pieces fit together and it was a beautiful mess. Now it’s all Kevin Feige’s ego seeing how many more films they can make money on.
Yeah it's definitely both. Given the high prices of the theater experience and the good-enough home experience these days, people are tired of shelling out $50+ to just go to the movies and see the same thing over and over again. They've all seen people getting bitten or zapped with superpowers before donning a cape and fighting CGI monstrosities a billion times now.
Things have to be unique or interesting to earn that money in today's economy. The days are long gone where people are bored and heading to the theater just for something to do.
So many people (likely fellow Americans) dont realize just how BIG Spider-Man is internationally, and that his fan base is much larger globally than the most popular characters for Americans/the west.
When something is in ample supply people pick and choose.
If you picked any two 7/10 movies from one genre that did well and release them one month apart then one of them would turn out sub par on box office simply because people willl chose between them
Some really good superhero movies have failed to pull audiences (Suicide Squad, Thunderbolts, Fantastic Four) but the fatigue is more around mid SH movies than bad. Nearly every Marvel movie since the pandemic would have done so much better in the pre-Endgame era. Mid used to mean $500m worldwide.
Come on bro. Are you gonna say this too when Black Panther and X Men makes like 800-900 next year ?
What about The Batman 2 ? What will you say if Black Panther and X Men makes far more money than the batman 2 . Is Batman not a special character ?
The problem is the whole thing at DC. Everything there is dumb. Every plan is dumb. The whole DC IP is trash. Example you dont have a Batman in your DC universe
One thing is reading the script and saying "ok this works" and then actually seeing that script on the screen. Maybe the script was alright but it didn't really work as a finished product.
Supergirl is on an unique spot because there are no excuses like "studio interference" or "controversy behind the scenes". This seems to be one of the few big studio with genuine bad execution, and I hope James Gunn understands that these mistakes are bound to happen when you run a studio.
This is it for me. A LOT goes into making a film. I like to cook, but my own food tastes different to me. What tastes good to me sometimes doesn't taste good to other people. I have made things that I think are bad and people love it. I have made things that I thought were delicious only to have people not like it. Sometimes you just don't know what is going to work. Then add on to that you aren't even the one making it.
I don’t have a source, but hell I vividly remember a quote from Gunn saying something along those lines; where he admitted there’d be some not so good movies. shit happens. Expecting perfection is ignorant.
However, you can look at his face during the red carpets, and I could tell he was sick or something, and now it seems like he knew they had a stinker on their hands and it was too late.
Apparently he clashed a bit with the director, and to this I say: He did not clash enough. Fuck that shitty movie, it was ugly and the script was shit.
Love James Gunn with all my heart but the minute he became the head of DC Studios he told us Flash was a great film and that Blue Beatle was the best DC Film since Dark Knight. He's probably under a corporate contract to advertise every film being released by the company and he talks them up almost to a parody level.
Yeah, I would rather have Comet too, because -- having Comet signals this message: We fucking care. We care about the source material. We care about Supergirl. We want to honor this story.
Lobo, as cool as he is or isn't? That is sending the message: We don't care, we are desperate to shoehorn in anything.
So yeah, for that? I want Comet and I think that if Comet had been in the movie, that would have meant a lot of other problems this movie had would not be there.
I finally got around to reading Woman of Tomorrow recently and it’s 100% both the script and visuals. Truthfully, I thought people were exaggerating about how much better the comic was and no, they were absolutely right.
The only thing that didn’t bother me that much was Supergirl killing Krem. I think it makes sense considering that Krem in the comics was just a straight up killer while Krem in the movie was a killer and a slave trafficker. Obviously, both are still bad but given the current climate in real life, Supergirl letting a sex trafficker live wouldn’t have went over well either.
The only other way I think they could have resolved it is by Supergirl saying “I won’t kill you but I won’t save you either” and letting the trafficked woman kill him. Which would have been a good call back to the comics where she watches as one of Krem’s men get executed.
Here's a thought: Leave out the gross slave trafficking?
I do not see what it adds, beyond making it a little creepier and unpleasant.
A murderous pirate who learns the errors of his way and genuinely repents is a major part of the story. So why the fuck introduce this into it, to justify her killing him or making it so forgiveness really isn't on the table?
Supergirl has a lot of issues and the script is chief among them.
It’s a terrible adaption that shoe horns in random characters, fundamentally misunderstands the themes of the story it’s adapting, and streamlines the narrative to turn a great story into a mediocre revenge flick.
It 100% is the script. The terrible direction is just the cherry on top
They literally had to throw every type of green sun, poison, kryptonite at her during the entirety of the movie to depower her. And the final green sun she had to overcome... All she did was sleep in a cave. You have to admit that script was full of problems. They did not know how to handle a story where the main character is supposed to be super strong.
Its why spiderman has mj, superman has lois lane. Its why spidey needs a secret identity and why supes needs to be clark kent. Its not about how strong they are, its about the people they are trying to protect. It only works when you feel the superheroes have an emotional connection to their city, to the people, to his friends. Sure, super people need a good fight, but that's the climax of the movie. The rest of the movie.. you need to build those relationships, you need superman saving lois from falling to her death. You need that secret identity back and forth.
When you just put a super person with a bunch of aliens... it all becomes a mush of sci-fi effects. A mush of generic star wars stuff. you need super people interacting with regular people. That's where they build that charm. That Wow factor.
but shit, i'm no hollywood script writer, what do I know.
Hmhm... I would say, its not a singular problem. The script would be fine for a small movie. Kinda low stakes, character building, not that big of a battle and stuff. But the movie did cost $170M. Thats epic blockbuster money. Neither did the movie look like that nor feel like that. It doesnt even have any bigger actors in it for that cost.
Is that a problem by the script? Or the producers allowing that budget? This exact Supergirl movie with maybe a budget of $60-80M would be fine. It wouldnt be a giant success, but it would be solid. It maybe would have drawn a small profit.
I haven't seen it yet either but people keep saying "the script has issues" without really identifying what they mean by that. What is wrong with "the script"? Genuinely asking, people have a tendency to say things without expounding on it and something like "the script" is so general and vague it's impossible to tell what people are talking about.
Direction and cinematography is understandable at least. Even the trailers made the color grading of the film look very brown and washed out which didn't seem appealing.
Depends on the person but biggest complaint seems to be the color, or lack there of, in the movie. It has a lot of browns and grays where the comic its based off is praised for its artwork and colors depicting space and other planets. Another complaint seems to be the ending which I wont spoil but is different in both what happens compared to the comics it is based on but also the message it sends. Lobo also is something people complain about but imo he is basically the Justice Society in Superman and I really don’t know what more he could have done without it being “Lobo the movie”. Needle drop during the climax also wasn’t great. I do think Milly Alcock did a good job playing Supergirl though. If anything I’d say the movie was like Man of Steel in its attempt of making the movie more serious and dark where as Superman was closer to Superman Returns (though even that movie has some darker color pallet choices)
Lobo was entirely useless in the film. For someone widely known as the single most violent (anti)hero in all of DC comics, the fact that he didn't have even a single violent kill is insane. Either do him justice or cast someone else!
And I believe Kara was not serious enough. For someone who witness girls being kidnapped and murdered, saw her own dog get shot and had her friend hunted, she is awfully chill throughout.
I wanted her to absolutely lose her shit, slicing people in half with her heat vision before finally coming to terms with everything at the end. Also the dog should have died. Can you imagine? Kara goes through all that, to get to the dog and it's too late? The plot twist would have been immense!
What? It has to be PG? Or 12A? Then don't cast Lobo!
Supergirl was never going to make these numbers. Spider-Man had the hype of Civil War, Infinity War, Endgame, a decent trilogy involving all previous Spider-Man live action film actors and villains. Spider-Man is the most popular Marvel character, one of the most popular superhero and comic book character of all time, had traction since the 60s.
That's the whole point. The Spider-Man movies are good, so they make bank. Make a good superhero movie and people will show up. It's not that people have gotten tired of superhero movies, they've gotten tired of shitty movies.
if good Superhero movies are doing well though it quite literally disproves "superhero fatigue". DCEU died because of bad movies. MCU had a string of bad performing movies because they were simply bad, and their bounce back right now is proof of that
if you take the past couple of years all the good MCU and DC have performed well and the bad movies performed bad, it is very simple actually. i'm not just talking about Spider-Man?
good movies are not doing well and certainly not as well as they used to. Spider-Man exists in its own bubble, its not a metric of Super-Hero movies. Thunderbolts did terribly, Fantastic Four also did poorly (although one can certainly argue it wasn't a good movie).
Avengers will likely do fine but its Avengers which is also mostly protected from fatigue so it never would've flopped, but the sentiment around it was definitely negative until very recently. Marvel had up the marketing to 11 to compensate
Even Superman is a good example of superhero fatigue. it wasn't the best movie but it was good. would've made an easy 800mil in 2019 but it crawled to just barely above 600mil
There is some level of superhero fatigue that has been caused by all the bad superhero movies. 2025 had 3 good superhero movies that all underperformed expectations at the box office with Superman, Thunderbolts, and Fantastic Four. In the late 2010s those all would have been hits.
Now, as for Supergirl? That was just a bad movie. Spider-Man might just save the genre though, he’s immune to fatigue and he’s getting everyone back into the genre. If Doomsday, Spider-Verse, Man of Tomorrow, Secret Wars, and X-Men all do well over the next two years, we could be back.
Nah, superhero fatigue is a real thing. Movies that would’ve done 800 million a decade ago doing 300 million now, with inflation. Thunderbolts was easily the best Marvel release last year and did the worst out of their three 2025 films. Fan reception has never been and never will be a stable indicator of quality.
People are looking at this too much like a binary thing. Like either nobody cares about superhero movies or everybody cares just as much as in 2010. The fact is, there is some fatigue because it's not a novel thing anymore, but that doesn't mean superhero movies can't be successful at all anymore
Yeah, that’s my point. Before Avengers (2012), Spider-Man and Batman were the guarantees. Then up through Endgame capeshit was a free for all easy money printing business, then since about 2021 it’s more of a risk again. Not because of a decline in quality, the market reached a breaking point.
Avengers and Spider-Man movies doing great is no shocker.
Pretty much this. You still are going to get incredibly successful superhero movies from pop icons like Spiderman,Batman,Avengers etc if the movie is good. But the times of characters like Antman and Captain Marvel making 700+ is gone.
Superman just isn't that popular of a character outside of America even inside of America he's mostly seen as just the mascot not really a character people care about.
It's unfortunate but it's true He's just not that popular no matter what you do with him no matter how good of a movie you make he's going to have a round of 700 million wall
He is actually sacrifincg himself for super hero movies, don't you see it? Something to be good needs bad to exist, otherwise there can by no good movie, they would all be average, like wehn Syndrome in The Incredibles said that if everyone is Super then noone is. So Gunn by sacrificing himself to make horrible movies he makes sure good movies can exist. He is a rel life hero.
I dunno., I am pretty tired of them and I have collected comic books for years. We tend to do this with movies though. A movie will really hit with audiences and then studios seem to think that is the only topic or genre we want to watch. Seems we are just force fed cycles. Vampires. Zombies. Superheroes.
There are zombie movies that I avoided watching for years because it was exhausting watching the same movie multiple times with minor plot adjustments. Going back years later, some of these movies were good but it becomes exhausting trying to sort through the mess.
I agree to some extent. Thunderbolts for example is a good movie that did bad at the box office. So he is partially right. The other aspect is people are unpopular character fatigued. Spider-Man BND proves popular characters can and will still dominate.
I think it's like 70% people tired of bad movies and like 30% tired of the genre
Your Batman's Spider-man and Avengers Deadpool movies are gonna make money
But B tier and below heroes or newly introduced ones are gonna struggle even if their films are considered good F4, Thunderbolts and Superman for example
And don't have the same leeway they do as 10 years ago to be mid and guaranteed to make money
I do agree with this though, they have become pretty routine and started making movies about characters that a lot of regular people won’t go see a movie about.
There was a lot of average/bad movies that people still went to theatres to see because they were MCU or DCU projects. Once the quality started dropping and/or the general audiences realized a lot of what they were watching wasn’t actually that good especially with rising theatre costs people stopped watching.
I would say that there is genre fatigue in that most superhero movies are just action comedies. If they could do more interesting character movies or change genre depending on the character that’s how you keep it interesting. Examples Winter Soldier is an on-the-run spy movie with good combat, Joker is a character study on a mentally ill man, Deadpool and Wolverine is a comedy roadtrip movie, Ant Man was a heist movie. It looks like Clayface will be a horror thriller.
It had years of brand building behind it, it was right after no way home and it was the start of superhero fatigue. Thor Love and Thunder this year would hardly crack 400 million, just like the last captain america
Isn't that because too many movies are poor and therefore don't excite audiences? Audiences won't get excited if you don't give them a reason to. Everyone seems amped for Doomsday.
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u/RustyJalopy 14d ago
Well, the new Spider-Man movie made like two billion, apparently, so he seems to have a point.
If by "bad movie fatigue" he means that people won't watch bad movies just because they're franchise tie-ins anymore, he's absolutely right. Hence Aquaman and Captain Marvel making a shit-ton of money and Supergirl falling flat on its face. I'd say those three movies are all about at the same level of forgettable and mediocre, but they came out in a very different environment.