It's not really super hero movies that's doing it. It's the whole franchising as a concept that the MCU pulled off with such unprecedented success.
Studios are slightly more interested in your film if you can sell it as a profitable franchise with sequels and spin offs rather than a well told stand alone cinematic story.
I want more superhero musical episodes like the one they did with Flash and Supergirl. Or the the Agent Carter one. My only complaint about that was they didn't do enough singing. Maybe they could do one with Batwoman and Supergirl.
For those who hate musicals did any of you ever watch any of the TV show Crazy Ex Girlfriend which featured anywhere from 2-5 musical numbers a week? Many were often spoofs of other songs - they turned the saddest song in Les Miserables into a song about a woman using a vibrator because her husband couldn't get her off. Overall it was a great show that despite its musical numbers was one of the most realistic portrayals of mental illness I've ever seen on film. The music though, some of them were truly great and funny.
I like watching some old musicals, like Singin' in the Rain, Meet Me in St. Louis. But I really don't think there's been a good musical since...since, I guess My Fair Lady (and even that's on the weaker side). In older musicals, you had actual broadway performers acting and dancing for real, with many of them as choreographers. Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire were choreographers who created those dances and moves. In Singin' in the Rain, that's Gene Kelly for real actually dancing and singing in the rain. That entire dance was something he created for the camera.
Whereas modern musicals usually cast actors in roles that require them to sing and dance, and it's not the same. It has no liveliness to it because the performers have no training to express themselves in song and dance, in rhythm and beat. It's just actors who are miming or imitating rather than expressing something transcendent.
As for a superhero musical. The Fred Astaire musical THE BAND WAGON, had a finale, called Girl Hunt, which did Film Noir as a musical, and boy does it work. The classic archetypes of Private Eye and Femme Fatale are conveyed wordlessly. SO a superhero musical has to work in the same fashion, distill archetypes and moments in song and dance.
This number inspired Michael Jackson's Moonwalker phase...
Nobody should ever plan a Master of the Universe movie ever again. The movie will fail, its unfilmable. Its just not possible to find a good He-Man, and they will try to make him a young guy and fail miserably. So much potential, but....no. It cannot do justice.
Watchmen the series was the best show in 2019.
Just curious because Crazy Ex Girlfriends number were often comedy and parodies. Someone earlier said they didn't mind South Park or Book of Mormons numbers because they were spoofs. Crazy Ex Girlfriend was the same. Like this song. Its a spoof of Disney princess songs and musically could have come right out of Snow White but has lyrics like "my vibrator breaking when I need it most" and a woman out jogging who gets poop cramps, period cramps, and her undies smell like a sewer rat. Also in reality no one in this show ever actually breaks out in song. Its all in the main characters head as when she gets stressed she retreats into her mind and imagines she lives in a musical.
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is for people (like me) who don't like musicals but were often forced to watch them. A lot of their spoofs on musicals were spot on about what I hated about those shows in particular.
That said, the show still randomly broke out into song at times, which is something people who don't like musicals don't like.
Righteous Gemstones was the best thing on tv this last year. And danny McBride is brilliant. Lol deal with it.
LOVED watchmen too
The rise of streaming and the freedom it allows for creators compared to working for the old TV networks back in the day, coupled with advancements in home entertainment technology, have done far more to hurt cinema than superhero movies. If anything said movies are keeping cinema alive.