It's the last days of 2023 and voices everywhere are predicting the last days of the superhero movie. Even that bastion of the mainstream, the New York Timesis respond to the praises. That's no wonder, with this year's solid string of financial and critical flops dwindling into 2024's ebb lineup of just three “interconnected universe” films, Deadpool 3, Mrs. WebAnd Kraven the Hunter.
But in the final days of 2023, one thing remains clear. People don't get tired of it superheroes – they're just tired of bad superhero movies.
It's not just a phase
Yes, superhero movies and TV shows failed consistently in 2023, as a slew of delayed productions finally hit screens and weren't worth the wait. The flashfirst announced in 2014 and scheduled for 2016, and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdomwho completed filming in January 2022, both suffered from snoring. The miracles is officially the MCU's lowest-grossing film, and doesn't really deserve it, especially in the following year Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. It's entirely possible that you've already forgotten Shazam! Anger of the gods And Secret invasion.
This year, the Expanded Universes ran out of things to do other than gesture to the Expanded Universe: Kang got second billing Antman And LokiWonder Woman saves the day Shazamand the 2013 cast Man of Steel and 1989 Batman in The flash. Warner Bros. ended 2023 with the last film in any way related to Zack Snyder's Justice Leaguewhile Marvel found Jonathan Majors cut from the roster.
These superhero films took audiences for granted. Companies considered the simple existence of an expanded universe and the affection for recognizable characters as a major selling point, when it's always the sauce and not the meat. What failed this year was the interconnected universe. But the superheroes themselves succeeded.
What worked? The rejuvenating Spider-Man: About the Spider-Verse And Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Chaostelevision programs such as Invincible And The boys spinoff Gen Vand the cute, action-romantic cartoon for all ages My adventures with Supermanbidding farewell to 2023 with a fervent following and a season 2 renewal.
What succeeded for the MCU was Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, an arguably heartfelt send-off and undoubtedly the most comic book-worthy ending the MCU has produced to date. Which was successful Loki season 2, which, many flaws aside, delivered what hardcore fans of the character wanted: Tom Hiddleston's puppy dog eyes and their favorite secretly becoming the most important person in the universe.
In 2023, Hollywood wasn't just making superhero movies, it was starting to repeat history – that is, comic book history.
Multi versus the superhero
Image: Jeph Loeb, Tim Sale/DC Comics
Bear with me while I hyperbolize a bit. If you ask comic book superhero fans about the best superhero stories ever told in comics, you'll get a very long list. There will be dozens of stories about Batman and Wolverine – and half a dozen about Superman, Daredevil, Spider-Man, Wonder Woman, the rest of the X-Men, and so on and so forth. There will be two, maaaaaaaaybe three, they're about the multiverse. There won't be one about Kang.
If the superhero movie boom has proven anything, it's that our favorite superhero stories were no less compelling than those in other genres—it was just a stigma (against reading comics) and access (it's harder to read comics than it is to participate in most pop culture media) that kept them from gaining wider exposure. But it's also been proven that superhero movies can fall into the same pitfalls as superhero comics.
Over a decade of continuity homework became a hurdle to entry, and as overall quality succumbed to the demands of quantity, old associations with superhero stories as meaningless explosions and punches have become reality. And it was all tied up around the “multiverse,” one of the trickiest ideas to create universally compelling, enduring stories around — a vast collection of secondary timelines and parallel Earths that are, by their own definition, less meaningful to tell stories in than one central one continuity. .
Massive cosmic battles became regular superhero events, as opposed to the more common run-of-the-mill soap opera adventures of individual heroes. And the superhero comics scene even has a term for when a company spends too much time getting to the big, bombastic, end-of-the-world point, and not enough time letting characters breathe: event fatigue.
2023 was the year of perhaps the best Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie… ever, thanks to the conscious character choice to lean into the “teen” part. It was the year Spider-Verse proved it could make a sequel with the best of them, and almost certainly win another Oscar. It was then the limitless superhero satire of The boys showed that it could also take a franchise if there was something more to say. And when the Marvel Cinematic Universe gracefully bid farewell to two of its biggest unexpected successes in character-driven fashion, audiences had a great time.
If 2023's year of superhero duds proves anything, it's that the superhero concept is a good one. Don't blame the flops on superhero fatigue; this is event fatigue.