Cody Knight

The term “superhero fatigue” and the conversation surrounding it has been thrown around by movie goers and fans of the superhero franchises alike due to recent superhero movies, such as “Madame Web” and “The Flash,” underperforming and tanking in the box office once it hit the big screens. According to nbcnews.com, “Sony’s ‘Madame Web’ is one of the biggest flops in comic book movie history.” “The Flash” had similar reviews as screenrant.com reported the film to have lost $200 million upon its box office debut.

In an article titled, “What Really Caused Superhero Fatigue in 2023 and How To Fix it,” Mark Hughs at Forbes.com reported “superhero fatigue seemed to fully and finally arrive in 2023, taking down even the mighty Marvel Cinematic Universe as part of a genre tailspin including no less than five outright flops, one underperformance, and only a couple successes.” 

So what is causing this? Where is this coming from?

A user by the name of Sumon Sen on Quora.com added his two cents on the topic. Sen says, “Superhero fatigue is definitely real and there could be various factors contributing to superhero fatigue- such as oversaturation of superhero content, repetitive storylines, or a lack of innovation. To address this, studios should consider quality over quantity to ensure that each superhero film or series offers a fresh and unique experience for audiences. Pushing out several movies and television series a year is a prime example of abusing the genre.” 

Owen Gleiberman at Variety.com adds to this point. Glieberman reports, “you can feel it in the reviews: the jadedness of critics when it comes to sitting through another warmed-over version of these tropes, that CGI, all that interconnected multiverse busy-ness, with less at stake each time. After being saturated in this stuff for so long, why wouldn’t everyone have superhero fatigue? Every genre gets old.” 

It is hard to deny superhero fatigue when comparing the amount of money the Marvel Cinematic Universe had been making fifteen years ago compared to today. In 2008 when the first Iron Man movie had premiered, it grossed over $585 million according to The Numbers.com. 2024’s “Madame Web” only brought home $97 million dollars in the worldwide box office. 

To counteract those points, in an article titled “Why Superhero Fatigue is a Myth” by Dani Di Placido on Forbes.com, Placido says, “superhero movies are not some strange, childish trend, but the natural evolution of the traditional action film. James Bond, Ethan Hunt, and John McClane are undeniably superhuman, and have become progressively more so with each film in their franchise. The superhero genre did not create the superhuman, but merely formalized the concept, establishing the superhuman as different due to a radioactive accident, alien ancestors, hi-tech accessories, or by obtaining a very particular set of skills through a lifetime of intense training. As long as stories of pure-hearted individuals finding victory through brute force continue to be popular, the superhero genre will never die and the “fatigue” will not settle in.”