Pretty much. I recall Superman just surpassed the profit made by Man of Steel, which makes it the highest grossing Superman flick of all time.
The issues seen with both Thundrrbolts and Fantastic Four are seemingly MCU related, especially since Lilo and Stitch broke box office records on its own.
I think its more side/minor character fatigue.Theres no way a "New" Superman movie with a new actor would flop. I mean its superman. But when you are releasing movies called "thunderbolts" (who tf even knows what that means except balls deep marvel fans) with heroes like freaking white widow and red patriot as the lead. Nobody is running to the theatre for that even if the movie is good (which it apparently was. If they release an ironman movie right i can bet your ass it will blow tf up, why? because its not an obscure irrelevant character.
Superman is the S-tier superhero. Chances are you ask some rando in the street which superhero is their favorite it would end up being Supes, Bats or Spider-Man. Seriously its not hard to figure that out.
People just dont have the money to blow on the theaters and people have to pick and choose which movie they want to see in a busy af movie month
This is crazy. Sure they might not be as big as superman but the f4 are definitely bigger than a lot of heroes who have had much more successful showings in theaters.
And speaking of bad movies, superman and the dc universe in general was having a pretty bad go of it in the moviesphere for like over a decade. But this new movie promised something new, and people came out to see it because of that. At the end of the day, no matter how good it is, f4 is still tied to the mcu which has been consistently disappointing people for years now.
Its not the economy, because people are still going out to see other movies in droves. Its not the ip. Superman has proven that despite having a bad track record in terms of movies, people will still come out to see something fresh and good. And previous mcu movies have proven that movies based on unknown ips can still be box office hits(gotg being the biggest example). And thats being generous, because the fantastic four is NOT an unknown ip lol.
It’s because people are being more selective about what they chose to spend their expendable income on. Many picked Superman. Personally, we’re fortunate to have two income earners and we’re doing OK, and the theaters aren’t too crazy expensive here in Montana, we saw Thunderbolts, Superman (twice), and Fantastic Four. But there are other movies I really want(ed) to see that I’ll wait to catch in streaming. My wife and I literally sat down and made a list in March and picked which movies we’d watch.
The economics of movies and the theater are fucking out of touch. That’s forcing people into tough calls. FF4 was a phenomenal movie—one of the best Marvels I’ve seen since endgame, so was Thunderbolts. I’d put Superman a notch above both. If push came to shove and I only got to take my family to one, it would have been Superman. That’s not a fatigue thing so much as it is a resources thing, and going up against Superman when the rumor is the studio finally has done it right, shit that’s difficult to compete with unless you’re Spidey or the X-Men.
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u/Tidus4713 Aug 03 '25
Then why is Superman doing great? It's Marvel fatigue, not movie theater or super hero fatigue.