It sure seems as if superhero movies are on the decline, if a little bit. No movies from the MCU’s Phase 4 are in the top-6 for domestic box office grosses for the franchise, with Wakanda Forever coming it at 7th. The other three phases all have at least one movie in the top-6, as even Age of Ultron took in more money then Black Panther 2. Only two MCU entries have finished below 50% on Rotten Tomatoes’ critic scores and both – The Eternals and Ant-Man: Quantumania – are from Phase 4. We are still waiting for things to shake out on DC’s recently released Shazam 2 but the early returns are a dismal box office opening, and that’s the sequel for a movie that is somewhat beloved. Black Adam just bombed 5-6 months ago. The DC Universe itself is resetting after The Flash. Marvel is slowing down its television releases in fear they have saturated the audience and thus turned them off. All this is to say that there are clear signs that a declining appetite for superhero movies is a real thing.
Of course, the movies are still making money. Quantumania is one of the poorest-performing MCU entries ever with a domestic box office less than Shang-Chi, which was released in the summer of 2021, and Thor: The Dark World. Quantumania also had a $200M budget and, using the popular Budget Times Two formula to reach profitability, the movie still ended up in the black. Wakanda Forever made even more. The Batman came out a year ago and grossed three-quarters of a billion dollars. There is clearly still some appetite, so why are the box offices and critics ratings declining?
Starting with the MCU, we have to remember this isn’t a franchise built on popular superheroes. It was years before Spider-Man was introduced, the X-Men still haven’t been, and that indicates that it isn’t the popularity of comic books that drove the success of the movies, or at least isn’t the sole, primary driver. Iron Man was released in 2008 and at that time, movie theatres had a lot of varied but, quite frankly, boring IP at the top. For the calendar year 2007, Spider-Man 3 topped the box office with Transformers, one of the Pirates entries, and one of the Harry Potter entries in the top-5 box office grosses. The movie-going audience was clearly interested in fantasy-type stories and Robert Downey Jr’s performance as Iron Man was as transformational for the movie industry as we have seen in recent memory. Not only was it the beginnings of the MCU, but it pointed to a shift away from family-focused entries like Potter or Pirates, and one that, if not geared towards adults, would at least entertain them.
It is also important to highlight the variance in the stories from that era of superheroes. While the early MCU entries are all about establishing its foundational pillars, the way it goes about them is wildly different: the first Iron Man is about a billionaire playboy philanthropist realizing he’s doing more harm than good; the first Thor is about an unworthy hero who has to prove he is what others think he can be; the first Captain America is about a person with such deeply-held beliefs in truth and justice that they will do whatever they can to help, and will forego their own happiness to do so. The Iron Man and Thor movies are just elaborate family dramas while the first two Captain America movies are an action period piece and a spy thriller, respectively. All of the early films build the threads between the heroes, but the story-telling of their individual rise are all very different.
As the MCU started winding down in the mid-2010s, in anticipation of the Infinity Saga’s conclusion, what stood out was the continued variance. Guardians of the Galaxy was a space drama about found family, Doctor Strange had a story that paralleled that of Thor (even if he was being groomed as Iron Man’s replacement), while Spider-Man: Homecoming was a teen drama. These movies weaved the Infinity Saga through them, but it never felt as if the showdown with Thanos was the impetus for these movies.
None of this is the case anymore. The premise behind Quantumania is what Ant-Man will do to protect his family. The premise behind Wakanda Forever is what Shuri will do to avenge her family, then protect it. The premise behind Spider-Man is what Peter Parker will do to protect his friends/family, and then avenge them. The Eternals was a mess and may not have had a premise. Black Widow is about reuniting with fam… you know what, I think we get the point here. With the possible exception of Multiverse of Madness, all of Phase 4 and the start of Phase 5, at least for the MCU proper, has been largely the same. There isn’t even much variation among the types of movies that they produced. MoM could be described as a horror film, but the rest are just basically action-dramas. There is nothing wrong with a good action-drama, but let’s look at Phase 2, for example. Iron Man 3 is a straight character study of Tony Stark’s dealing with the fallout of the Attack on New York and his family’s past, which leans it hard into the ‘drama’ section. Thor: The Dark World is a bad movie, but at least it has the same Shakesperean DNA of the first Thor movie. The Winter Soldier is a spy thriller, Guardians is a space drama, Age of Ultron is an action team-up, and Ant-Man is a through-and-through surrealist comedy. Six movies, all in the same universe, but with six very different ways of presenting the story.
Compare that to what we discussed about Phase 4 already. MoM is horror-adjacent, Shang-Chi does have excellent martial arts sequences, and Love and Thunder does riff heavily off Ragnarok, so there’s a bit of variation, but they are all largely action-dramas. There is no spy thriller. There is no period piece. There is no character study. There is no action team-up (yet). Perhaps one of the reasons there is some superhero fatigue is that the widest array of stories that could possibly be told are all being told in relatively the same manner. Basing movies/television off comic books gives filmmakers and writers a sandbox as big as there is in the world and they keep building the same sandcastle.
All this doesn’t even get into the TV debacle that Disney got themselves in with their Marvel property. Wandavision was the first MCU television show, and it started its run in January of 2021. She-Hulk is the most recent MCU Disney+ offering and it finished in October of 2022. That 21-month span saw eight different MCU TV shows and a total of 57 episodes between them. Even just averaging 30 minutes an episode is nearly 29 hours of run-time. That span also saw six MCU movies released and that adds nearly 14 hours of run-time to watch. In total, the 21-month span gives us about 42 hours of MCU watching, or two hours a month. The entire Infinity Saga, which spanned 134 months, had a run-time just under 50 hours, or about 25 minutes a month. To stay current on what’s going on in the MCU, the viewer had to raise their MCU intake four-fold every month. For comic-book lovers, that’s no big deal. For casual TV/movie watchers, that is a huge deal.
As for DC, well, they’re just a lame duck right now. With the news that everything will reset after the upcoming The Flash movie, everything else is pointless. It doesn’t matter what kind of movies Black Adam and Shazam 2 are because it’ll all be irrelevant in a few months. That doesn’t mean they didn’t create their own problem.
Aside from a lack of direction, DC just never realized that they were trying to do what the MCU was doing but the MCU was already doing it considerably better. That is why all the early DC movies are largely forgettable while more recent entries like The Suicide Squad, Birds Of Prey, and The Batman (even if it’s not in the main DCEU) did so well. The Suicide Squad was a comedic team-up, Birds of Prey was more of the same but had a good character study of Harley Quinn, and The Batman offered a comic book movie the likes of which we hadn’t seen in several years. Even the earlier Wonder Woman was a period piece. The successful movies DC produced were more than What Will Person X Do To Protect/Avenge Their Family and they never realized that. Hopefully James Gunn will.
That is the hope for DC here. Gunn has shown the ability to make different types of movies, even in his own specific way, between DC and Marvel. He seems to know that DC can’t just try to replicate what the MCU did, or is doing. They need different types of stories that the MCU currently isn’t providing and if DC does that, it wouldn’t be surprising to see them on more even footing five years from now.
Think of all this like a person and their favourite food. Ever see someone that just absolutely loves mac and cheese? They might eat it all the time… for a while. And some will keep eating it regularly their whole lives. Most people, though, get sick of eating the same food all the time, and will just stop eating mac and cheese altogether after enough daily spoonfuls. They don’t stop eating food, they just eat different kinds of food because they can’t stand the taste of mac and cheese anymore. They probably still like it to a degree, and after an extended break, may return to it, but they can only take so much in the moment. This might be the mistake Disney made: a lot of people love the movies, generally speaking, but getting a lot more of the same thing isn’t good. There needs to be some variance if the audience is going to keep eating, and it may be too late for Disney to realize that to save the Secret Wars. It does give the chance for the DCEU to really take a step forward, and they may not get a better one to bring themselves on par with Marvel.
Cliffy's hell-hole 