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Question of the Day (QOTD) is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a film/TV-related question that we put to you, the reader. The comments section below is like the feedback box at work; except, in this example, we actually read what you write and care about what you have to say.
According to a survey recently conducted by Morning Consult, superhero movies are on the decline. In the infographic seen above, both Marvel fans and adults overall who enjoy superhero movies have declined by 5% each. Now that’s not a whole lot, but it could signal that superhero movies are going the way of the Western.
Marvel Studios has seen some notable box office disappointments lately since Avengers: Endgame and Spider-Man: Far From Home closed out The Infinity Saga. Aside from Spider-Man: No Way Home, which could be treated as an epic Endgame-level film in and of itself, all of Marvel’s Phase 4 films have drastically underperformed. Thor: Love and Thunder is sitting at $600 million worldwide and is unlikely to surpass the box office of 2017’s Thor: Ragnarok while Black Widow and Eternals could be considered box office bombs and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness looks like it will fail to cross $1 billion. I’m going to count Shang-Chi as a win since it managed to debut with a $75 million opening weekend and leg out to over $400 million worldwide during the COVID-19 pandemic. For a film based on a character most audiences aren’t familiar with, it still performed quite well.
If superhero movies are in decline, it’s bad news for Warner Bros., which just announced a 10-year plan for DC content. Sucks to suck, Zaslav.
But anyway, the question I ask today is: do you think superhero movies are on the decline? Are audiences growing tired of Marvel and DC films?
This is a tough one, but I’m going to answer yes. Personally, the last few MCU films haven’t done much for me. I actually enjoyed Shang-Chi and Eternals the most because at least they felt like they were trying something new. Thor: Love and Thunder was painfully unfunny (seriously, someone needed to rein Waititi in with the jokes) and Doctor Strange 2 was a bit of a letdown considering it was hyping up the multiverse and then only focused on like two Earths. Honestly, I’m much more interested in the Marvel Disney+ series which I have quite enjoyed. I’m also not too hot on how Marvel isn’t planning on doing a New Avengers film before heading into the next big crossover event. I’d like to see Shang-Chi, She-Hulk, Captain Marvel, Sam Wilson/Captain America, etc. interact and go through some growing pains as a team before seeing them and one hundred other characters thrown together to fit a millions Kangs and stop the end of the multiverse.
As for DC, I still haven’t seen The Batman and I’m really only going to watch Black Adam for the JSA (and Brosnan as Doctor Fate). I’m open to more DCEU content but only because I feel like we haven’t seen much from them.
So what about you, screenagers? Do you think superhero movies are on the way out? Which genre do you think will make a sneaky comeback and become all the rage for the next 15 years?
I’ll see you in the trenches.
