It has been said for years since the COVID-19 pandemic, but it finally appears to have become true: Superhero movies, as presently constructed, are dead.
Marvel has struggled since Avengers: Endgame wrapped up its decadelong narrative told over multiple films in a satisfying bow in 2019. Since then, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been cluttered with shows and movies that range from forgettable — do you remember Eternals? — to terrible, such as the fourth installment in the Thor franchise, with exceptions few and far between.
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The Fantastic Four: First Steps was supposed to reignite the MCU. The costumes and the set design looked good, and even social media commentators who had grown sick of the MCU’s lazy and politicized content gave it good reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an 86% critic score and a 91% audience score. By all accounts, it is a good film.
But it isn’t a successful one. On a reported budget of $200 million, the film needs around $500 million to break even for Disney. It is projected to finish between $500 million and $510 million globally, meaning it would barely break even at the box office, assuming that the budget isn’t higher than reported, thanks to the all-too-expensive reshoots that plague the superhero film genre these days. The film’s fourth weekend was worse than the fourth weekend for Thunderbolts*, the MCU entry directly before it, which was similarly well-received by the previously hostile online commentariat. Thunderbolts* finished as the second-worst performing MCU movie ever.
The new Superman movie has had better luck, raking in close to $600 million on a reported $225 million budget. The attempt to reboot DC’s cinematic universe is not likely to be a box office bust the way rival Marvel’s latest entry is, but that doesn’t make it a resounding success either. Superman’s near-$600 million global box office is still lower than the 2013 Superman film Man of Steel, which brought in $670 million. The 2013 iteration of Superman made $70 million more before you even factor in inflation.
Like Thunderbolts* — yes, the asterisk is included — and Fantastic Four before it, Superman earned good reviews. Like those two, it mattered fairly little. Superman, the big launch of the revamped DC movieverse, can’t outperform a less-well-received version of itself from 12 years ago. After turning out mediocrities for years, the MCU doesn’t have another film on the docket after its Fantastic Four bomb until next summer.
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Superhero fatigue is real, but so is bad content fatigue. Both Marvel and DC have lost the faith of the general audience after the firehose of slop they have drowned them in over the last several years. DC’s duds and Marvel’s lazy Disney+ shows about superheroes no one cares for have ruined the idea that entries in either cinematic universe are appointment viewing anymore.
The big-budget, CGI-fest superhero film, complete with costly reshoots trying to scrap terrible scripts, is dead. That style of film has needed to become leaner and cleaner for years, and the studios may just be too late to keep the genre alive.