Lately at Morning Consult, there’s a growing number of people who’re disinterested in superhero movies and if I’m not mistaken there was somebody who found the Marvel movies increasingly convoluted. If this is true, this may be the reason why and speaking from personal experience with Marvel comics, it can be really hard to keep track of one’s favourite character. Mine is Tigra and it can be real hard to keep track of her, especially if she appears in multiple magazines but doesn’t have her own for long.
To the point where it’s this easy to give up on her, considering how vast and deep Marvel gets. I think if the comics are any indication, while things may be changing for the better, there came a tendency to pander a lot to a rarefied audience that Marvel (and DC) ended up going after those people. To the point where the stories themselves became convoluted and characters become harder to keep track of. Small wonder why Marvel TPBs don’t outsell Garfield TPBs.
I think what would further people’s distaste of superheroes would be a scandal where a superhero actor’s caught dead doping, though there will be some defensive fans who’ll cling onto a brand with declining popularity. If it were to pass, the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s future lies not so much with the casual moviegoers (and readers) but rather the diehard, loyal fans. As I said before, DC and Marvel would be cult brands by then if that ever happens.
It’s the same thing that happened to the source material, well until recently that is, where the stories have grown incomprehensible to those who are casual readers. Both DC and Marvel don’t entirely lack casual readers, I’m a casual reader of comics myself. But when it comes to fan pandering, that’s something they ended up specialising in for decades but to the detriment of everybody else and now they’re trying to undo it with certain imprints.
I remember an article stating that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is also becoming harder to keep up with, while that maybe one’s opinion and I haven’t seen much of the MCU yet but I do think it’s telling that when it comes to finding one’s favourite character, it can be hard to keep up especially if they don’t have their own series. To make matters worse, some may only gravitate to certain magazines and stories. When I was into DC, I was into a few things.
These are Black Canary, Doom Patrol and Shade the Changing Man. That’s what I can recall from that period in my life. As for Marvel, the only things I’m into are X-Men and Tigra, though I might be misremembering things. But immersing yourself in a lot of other things within these worlds can be too much for others to keep up with, which’s why superhero fatigue’s a thing.
Not everybody’s going to be a lifelong Marvel or DC fan, their interests change over time. This has happened to me before, not to mention if you watch a lot of superhero stuff growing up you’ll be familiar with the conventions which can get tiring. While there are people who give up on DC and Marvel for less that politically correct reasons, there are those who drop out of them because they find it tiring or too convoluted to follow.
Not to mention if familiarity breeds contempt, well for some people, that would be because I think a good number of people would’ve already seen superheroes before. Since the DCAU and Marvel cartoon programmes aired in recent memory, if you add in Teen Titans and Batman: The Brave and the Bold a good number of people would’ve grown up with those. It wouldn’t change much if you add reruns, which again speaks to how familiar they are with those characters and stories.
It may not be true for all of them, there’s one Arrow viewer who admitted she’s not familiar with Barbara Gordon even though she watched a Batman cartoon before. (Perhaps she forgot.) But if you spent your childhood watching Superman, Batman, Teen Titans and Spider-Man, there’s a good chance of being this familiar with superheroes. You wouldn’t name all the characters, but knowing enough to have expectations of them.
If the idiom proves true, this could be the superhero movie’s undoing. If because many people would’ve already seen that character before, so much so that it’s wiser to move onto something newer and more exciting. Or at least something novel enough to better take advantage of such a trend. Steven Spielberg said that superheroes are this generation’s Westerns, Westerns being films about cowboys and the wild west to those who aren’t familiar with it.
It was a popular film genre before and Westerns are still being made to some extent, but if superheroes are going the way of the Western it would take factors like scandals, disinterest and inaccessibility to bring the genre down. A combination of these three would really ruin superheroes for everybody else, which should and would alert production companies like Disney and Warner Bros to find a way to keep up with the times. Especially if these three would hit some of their brands real badly.
Perhaps in the aftermath of the superhero genre’s fall from grace, something new will take its place. It could be video game adaptations, given that might be the next IP mine as superhero comics might prove to be tiresome in a deja vu way. It could be nonsuperhero comics, given it’s surprising to learn that Men in Black’s adapted from a comic book and is a successful film franchise. Ghost World’s also based on a comic book and should be seen as Scarlett Johanssen’s first comic book movie.
There’s no shortage of Peanuts and Garfield movies, there’s a movie based on the autobiographical comic called Persepolis. While superheroes will stop being a lucrative genre IP, Hollywood will mine other comics IP for inspiration. It could be Nimona, it could be Love and Rockets, it could even be Elfquest. Admittedly, save for Nimona, the other two aren’t that popular and recognisable to many other people.
Love and Rockets inspired a better known band of the same name, likewise Karate Kid’s the name of an actual DC superhero that the Karate Kid producers had to ask permission to use it (and said movie’s better known than this character). People easily forget that the comics inspirations existed before, perhaps not helped by that the comics themselves aren’t so well-known.
So adapting a better known comics IP like Peanuts is a safer bet, so this may complicate the dilemma of the superhero movie. While something as obscure as Guardians of the Galaxy now enjoy a higher profile thanks to film,. Marvel’s prior adaptations of other brands like X-Men and Fantastic Four paved the way. To prove this point, Fantastic Four’s where Chris Evans played his first Marvel character as Human Torch.
Something like Love and Rockets would be a riskier bet to adapt, if at all, whereas something like The Sandman covertly benefits from prior DC adaptations. Admittedly, with Men in Black and Ghost World filmmakers are perfectly capable of adapting obscure comics for the big screen and with the former it’s become a popular franchise. But when a substantial number of comics adapted for television and film are already popular, it’s usually more practical and easier this way.
But with superheroes probably waning in popularity, I think film studios will still mine popular IP though the genre or trend that becomes popular will be decided in the future.
fynm 