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  1. #1
    Astonishing Member mathew101281's Avatar
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    Default Have we reached peak superhero?

    On a cultural level part of me feels we are about to see a slight decline in the prevalence of the genre. Superheroes will still be around but I feel their reign as the primary driver of pop culture might be coming to an end.

    Then again popular genres of the past (Western movies and gangster flicks) didn’t just end. They were replaced by something. And I really don’t see anything out their right now with the potential to replace superheroes as mass popular fiction.

  2. #2
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    I don't see this happening in US comics. When DC and Marvel put out comics with other genres, they don't do well as superhero comics. I know Image and Indies publish non superhero hero comics that fans like but do they sell as well as superhero comics?

  3. #3
    Invincible Member Kirby101's Avatar
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    In comics or movies?
    There came a time when the Old Gods died! The Brave died with the Cunning! The Noble perished locked in battle with unleashed Evil! It was the last day for them! An ancient era was passing in fiery holocaust!

  4. #4
    Astonishing Member Zelena's Avatar
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    Already superheroes are less heroic than in the past, I see a decrease in quality and enthusiasm… They are morphing into something darker, with less ideal and moral.

    It’s the writers who believe less in superheroes… but, after all, in this era of crises, who can still believe that an individual can make things better while holding the moral high ground?
    “Strength is the lot of but a few privileged men; but austere perseverance, harsh and continuous, may be employed by the smallest of us and rarely fails of its purpose, for its silent power grows irresistibly greater with time.” Goethe

  5. #5
    Astonishing Member mathew101281's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kirby101 View Post
    In comics or movies?
    movies, I'm talking about movies.

  6. #6
    Invincible Member Kirby101's Avatar
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    I think they probably peaked with Endgame. They will continue, and as long as they make a billion dollars they will be made, but I see a trailing off.
    Replaced by...who knows?
    There came a time when the Old Gods died! The Brave died with the Cunning! The Noble perished locked in battle with unleashed Evil! It was the last day for them! An ancient era was passing in fiery holocaust!

  7. #7
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    Judging from how I feel, and I'm a long time comic book fan, yes. I have no desire to see any of the superhero movies I'm aware of in the pipeline. It's just so much overexposure, I've seen so many, and by now, I've seen all the minor variations in how they're able to make these movies. I'm just...bored with them, and am more than ready to see things like new, good Westerns, suspense movies, and smaller scale actions movies, or those weird things the 80s and early 90s seemed to kick out, those largely one-off things, (okay, a few, like Back to the Future, Robocop, and Stargate lived on long after, as did John Rambo and Rocky after their first, offbeat and totally unlike the rest of their series entrants, but other things didn't. The point being, more original movies, and less reboots, reimaginings, or whatever they like to call it. And especially less comic book movies.

    A few years' break would be nice, and then only resume making them when they can come up with a new take on the comic book movie.

  8. #8
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    People have been saying this for the past eight years. If superheroes go the way of the western, it won't be any time soon.

  9. #9
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    I guess it depends on how broadly you define superhero. Yeah, I could see adaptations of The Big Two slowing down, or becoming less prominent, but I could see the tropes and effects spreading out to a variety of other genres.

  10. #10
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    The superhero genre in the movies was an irregular thing until the MCU.

    Before the MCU, superheroes were solo movies, and they followed a small set of characters in a single setting, and the idea of sequels was to tell that individual's story. So it was a small controlled demolition before. So the question of "Have we reached peaked superhero" is inseparable from "Have we reached peaked MCU"?

    One thing is clear, I don't think old-fashioned Pre-MCU type movies (like the Nolan films, the Burton films, the Raimi Spider-Man movies) will work the way they used to anymore. You can't just do a deep dive and have a superhero and a supervillain face off across a whole movie...audiences want stuff to tie in more, stuff to count. The failure of the Green Lantern movie with Ryan Reynolds happened because it was done like a Richard Donner Superman movie and so on. And that won't work anymore. The most successful Post-MCU superhero movies both commercially and critically are R-Rated stuff like Logan, Deadpool, Joker as well as Into the Spider-Verse.

    So that suggests that the superhero genre can survive so long as it keeps mutating and changing and creating novelty. The reason people liked the MCU was that it produced novelties, stuff people never saw in a mainstream movie (irrespective of how it's made aesthetically). A whole movie with a talking racoon as a main character, seeing a movie about Norse Myth as superhero stories. The MCU in turn inspired other film-makers to create novelties by themselves.

    Now how long can the MCU last? Well James Bond has lasted, The Simpsons have lasted. So that might be the model that Kevin Feige wants to aim for. But who knows what the future might hold. Eventually the MCU will run out of novelties, will run out of new characters and iconic stories from the comics to generate...then they might have to start creating stuff directly on the screen and that might create rights issues and so on, and that could cause problems.

  11. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    The superhero genre in the movies was an irregular thing until the MCU.

    Before the MCU, superheroes were solo movies, and they followed a small set of characters in a single setting, and the idea of sequels was to tell that individual's story. So it was a small controlled demolition before. So the question of "Have we reached peaked superhero" is inseparable from "Have we reached peaked MCU"?

    One thing is clear, I don't think old-fashioned Pre-MCU type movies (like the Nolan films, the Burton films, the Raimi Spider-Man movies) will work the way they used to anymore. You can't just do a deep dive and have a superhero and a supervillain face off across a whole movie...audiences want stuff to tie in more, stuff to count. The failure of the Green Lantern movie with Ryan Reynolds happened because it was done like a Richard Donner Superman movie and so on. And that won't work anymore. The most successful Post-MCU superhero movies both commercially and critically are R-Rated stuff like Logan, Deadpool, Joker as well as Into the Spider-Verse.

    So that suggests that the superhero genre can survive so long as it keeps mutating and changing and creating novelty. The reason people liked the MCU was that it produced novelties, stuff people never saw in a mainstream movie (irrespective of how it's made aesthetically). A whole movie with a talking racoon as a main character, seeing a movie about Norse Myth as superhero stories. The MCU in turn inspired other film-makers to create novelties by themselves.

    Now how long can the MCU last? Well James Bond has lasted, The Simpsons have lasted. So that might be the model that Kevin Feige wants to aim for. But who knows what the future might hold. Eventually the MCU will run out of novelties, will run out of new characters and iconic stories from the comics to generate...then they might have to start creating stuff directly on the screen and that might create rights issues and so on, and that could cause problems.
    That's not the reason the Green Lantern movie failed. People cited weak acting, terrible CGI, an unlikable protagonist and a wasted premise as reason for their disatisfaction. If anything, we can see that self-contained superhero movies can work with Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Shazam and Brightburn (for examples outside of the Big 2). Audiences may like shared universes but that doesn't mean they don't like self-contained stuff either. I wouldn't even say the GL movie was done like a Richard Donner film given it was clearly setting up a sequel as well as a potential shared universe (that's why Amanda Waller is present).

  12. #12
    Invincible Member Kirby101's Avatar
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    Green Lantern failed because it sucked. Shazam was only tangentially linked to the DCU, yet was successful. I think another studio will not be able to mimic Marvel's feat of a connected universe over that many films. People will continue to go to good comic book movies, but I could see their dominance declining. They are very expensive to make, so the returns have to be big. A few failures will stifle more movies.
    There came a time when the Old Gods died! The Brave died with the Cunning! The Noble perished locked in battle with unleashed Evil! It was the last day for them! An ancient era was passing in fiery holocaust!

  13. #13
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    The Hellboy movies show that superhero flicks don't need to tie into a shared universe of other superhero flicks. But sooner or later in every genre, a sameness sets in, and people look for something else. Maybe the whole concept of the summer blockbuster film will fade and Hollywood will go back to producing medium-budget films that make respectable, not not huge, profits. Those films will go largely to streaming, and fewer spectacles designed for the large screen will be the result.

  14. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by mathew101281 View Post
    movies, I'm talking about movies.
    I think we've hit a point where it cannot help but decline because of the absolute peak it has it. As Kirby said, Endgame was the culmination of a 20+ movie buildup. It's hard to imagine everything else won't be "So, this is what happens after the big culmination". Then again, it depends on what they do with mutants. That is kind of an ace.

    Also, though I've made it clear I love many of the DC movies, it was Marvel that took it to this peak.

    I know there will be those who point at Marvel and say, "See. I told you it wouldn't last".

    Old joke:

    There was a baseball team that won five games in a row.

    Naysayer: "It won't last".

    They win ten games, twenty, fifty, a hundred in a row. Finally, on the 117th game, they lose.

    Naysayer: "See, I told you it wouldn't last. They're losers".
    Power with Girl is better.

  15. #15
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    Quote Originally Posted by Agent Z View Post
    That's not the reason the Green Lantern movie failed. People cited weak acting, terrible CGI, an unlikable protagonist and a wasted premise as reason for their disatisfaction.
    There are movies which have some or all of that and succeed commercially, so it's not a sufficient reason why a toy commercial for kids didn't sell.

    If anything, we can see that self-contained superhero movies can work with Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Shazam and Brightburn (for examples outside of the Big 2).
    As I said, you need to work by generating novelties. Wonder Woman had a female superhero, Aquaman was a character people knew of but never saw on screen. Shazam was "Big" as a superhero movie. Brightburn is a horror film.

    Audiences may like shared universes but that doesn't mean they don't like self-contained stuff either.
    They like novelties in other respect.

    Quote Originally Posted by Kirby101 View Post
    People will continue to go to good comic book movies, but I could see their dominance declining. They are very expensive to make, so the returns have to be big. A few failures will stifle more movies.
    The problem is that generally speaking there are only a few superheroes but there are far more production companies, producers, actors, corporations.

    By "few superheroes" I mean characters with a built-up history and association with period and longevity. DC and Marvel have them and they are owned by WB and Disney (with Sony holding on to Spider-Man for dear life). Stardust is a superhero too but he doesn't have any rich history.

    The Western as a genre lasted for some 70 years and it had peaks and valleys -- it was popular in the silent era then died out in the '30s until coming back in the late 1930s and then continued in its popularity into the early '60s with the '60s and '70s being the last time the Western genre was a mainstream genre. The Western survived because it managed to find novelties and new hooks and ideas. The superhero genre will some day run out of novelties it might not happen in the coming decade but eventually you are gonna dry the well up.

    James Bond and The Simpsons for instance owe their longevity to the fact that they don't rely on novelty, rather familiarity. They are founded on timeless characters and archetypes, which in the case of Bond is tied to a bag of tricks associated with Englishness, that thanks to colonialism has a global familiarity.

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