Superhero movie fatigue is real. It’s a real thing. It’s something that those of us who are huge fans of the genre were in denial about for ages. And it’s something that seemed like might never happen, based on how strong Marvel’s box office was going for many, many years. But all good things must come to an end, and nothing lasts forever. Here’s what went down and what the lessons are to be learned from the whole thing…
Marvel started in 2008 and produced excellent content consistently all the way through Avengers Endgame in 2019. For over a decade, then, it seemed like they could to no wrong. Their getting Robert Downey Jr to play Iron Man was striking a gold mine. He didn’t just embody Tony Stark, a billionaire with attitude, but he brought the humor and made it always feel natural. He found comedic chops that he never really showed before in his acting career, (at least not as strong as this,) and his casting as Stark was the perfect melding of actor and role (even better than Hugh Jackman as Wolverine.) Every movie which featured Downey Jr as Iron Man was at minimum worthwhile, and for the most part, generally pretty good.
So what happened? To put it simply, Tony Stark was killed off. No more Downey Jr. And that was just the start. Then the movies stopped being smart. They stopped doing what was so great about the series to begin with… the Easter Egg connections. They stopped connecting one movie to the next, and instead began only putting a tag at the end (post credits scene,) that led to the next movie in that specific series, as opposed to the next Marvel movie, regardless of the character. For example, instead of Doctor Strange 2 leading to the next Marvel film, Thor: Love and Thunder, Doctor Strange 2 only featured a post credits scene that would possibly become relevant in Doctor Strange 3. And that movie might not come out until close to a decade from now. So the urgency was lost. The connectivity of the universe was lost. And Marvel did that to themselves. (By the way, I say “would possibly become relevant,” because the post credits scene in the first Doctor Strange which featured Baron Mordo’s turn never actually went anywhere, and had no follow up at all.)
So now you had no Downey Jr., terrible post credits scenes, no connection between movies, and a clear indication that Marvel was losing the audience’s trust. Bring in the Disney Plus shows to put the nail in the coffin. Talk about reading a situation wrong. Disney over-saturated the market with its new shows, and then started pumping them out one after the next, despite the content not being very good. And this led to disaster.
But throughout all of this, and especially now that it appears we are coming to the end of this period of ultra-powerful ultra-successful superhero movies, it’s important to look back at the best in the genre, the most influential in the genre, and how we got as far as we did with these films.
THE BEST SUPERHERO MOVIES OF ALL TIME
1) Iron Man
2) Batman Begins
3) Captain America: The Winter Soldier
4) Avengers: Infinity War
5) The Dark Knight
6) Spider Man: No Way Home
7) X2: X-Men United
8) The Avengers
9) Batman
10) X-Men: First Class
11) The Batman
12) Captain America: Civil War
13) X-Men
14) Avengers: Endgame
15) Spider Man: Homecoming
16) Guardians of the Galaxy
17) The Amazing Spider Man
18) Thor: Ragnorak
19) X-Men Days of Future Past
20) Blade 2