MASSIVE SUPERHERO FATIGUE (MSF): A GLOBAL PANDEMIC By Geoff Jackson

Ant-man 3 better be good. It’s gotta be good because I believe we’re all starting to experience a pandemic of MSF — Massive Superhero Fatigue. And it’s a real thing.

I’ve probably sat through 50-some superhero movies during my lifetime — truly enjoying many along the way (Hello, Joss Whedon’s 2012 Avengers! Whazzup first Guardians of the Galaxy?) — but I’m now thinking of tapping out entirely for the foreseeable future. Like you, “I’ve been there and done that.”

I feel blessed Hollywood spent the past 25+ years giving me directly what I wanted — aiming millions of dollars and countless creative hours my way as a key demographic to exploit and fulfill: nerdy white dude now in his 50s reliving childhood stories and character arcs he’d read about in comic books starting way back in the late 1970s. The X-Men, The Avengers, The Defenders — all now come to life on big and small screens everywhere as live action adaptations — many of them quite successful and some really well done. Even deep-dive, back bench, D-list characters I thought only I really cared about have all made it into live action immortality — Ghost Rider, Moon Knight, Rocket Raccoon and his ridiculous talking tree sidekick, Groot, a CGI character who only repeats the same three words — all are now sources of millions of dollars in entertainment revenue. All have come “alive” and are enshrined in Film and TV history.

Per a recent interview with Variety magazine, Marvel Top Dog, Kevin Feige, doesn’t think audiences will ever tire of seeing superhero movies (https://variety.com/2023/film/news/marvel-kevin-feige-superhero-fatigue-1235499609/#!).

But I think he’s wrong.

I sat through (IMHO) the mind-numbingly terrible Dr. Strange 2. I subjected my family to unwatchable episodes of Marvel’s Loki on Disney+. And I counted the minutes until Black Adam came to its interminable end in a near-empty movie theater, instead thinking about emptying my laundry baskets and wondering when I could get home to my two pent-up pets.

It’s time things either get better or Hollywood finds new products to give us.

How many Shazams and Aquamans do we need to sit through? (Both are coming to movie theaters later this year…) How many multiverses must we be subjected to explore within the DCU and MCU concurrently? How many cancelled Doom Patrols and regurgitated Swamp Things do we need to transcend? As exhorted by Susan Powter — that crazed fitness woman with the crewcut blond hair in 1980’s informercials — can’t we STOP THE INSANITY!???!

I feel a bit like Mickey Mouse in the 1940s Sorcerer’s Apprentice; having enchanted a few old brooms to delight us and make life easier — the first wave of 1970s and 80s DC superhero movies, like 1978’s Superman and 1989’s Batman — we got overwhelmed starting in the early 2000s simply expecting too much. Every successful movie splintered into a few more pieces, each begetting more clones, each destroying us by forcefeeding us more of the same pablum, all on autopilot, all never really set to end or have a final purpose.

Who will be the Wizard to save us? When does he arrive?

I offer a couple observations to address the issue:

First, less is more. Marvel and DC should give us fewer, but better products. Skip the pointless sequels and cherry-pick adaptations from the best comic book stories. The Watchmen movie and X-Men: Days of Future Past are great examples of translating beloved stories into successful adaptions. Both also (again, IMHO) improved on the source material, taking risky liberties to make the stories better and work better on the big screen. But for every Watchmen movie, there’s an HBO Watchmen series going on too long … and for every X-Men: Days of Future Past, there’s an X-Men: Dark Phoenix (a great comic book story that was done terribly on the big screen). I think comic book movies are a microcosm of what’s happening with streaming subscription services in general; all these paid platforms require content — endless new content(!)— but not all of it’s particularly good. Invest in better quality.

Second, Marvel and DC should take a page out of the best sci fi playbook and tackle complex social and environmental issues through its medium. James Gunn of DC recently said, “You can’t be telling the same ‘good guy, bad guy, giant thing in the sky, good guys win story again . . . You need to tell stories that are more morally complex. You need to tell stories that don’t just pretend to be different genres, but actually are different genres.” (https://variety.com/2023/film/news/dc-james-gunn-peter-safran-creative-vision-screenwriting-1235507276/). Here’s where I think he’s onto something — where more filmmakers can be creative, and more diversity can be showcased, ultimately enriching our perspectives and compassion for one another. Moon Knight was decent in that it brought the issue of mental health to the fore, and a rebooted Superman with an African-American lead would probably do well to showcase black perspectives and inspire hope for great acceptance and social progress.

If the content’s virtually endless in comic book lore, and the streaming services will endlessly be mining it, it should be the best it can be, tightened-up to stay new and fresh and with some overall purpose in mind. Them’s my thoughts.