With Deadpool 3 having just finished filming, Marvel has a lot of eyes on them. But what can we expect from them anymore, after flops like The Marvels (2023) and Eternals (2021)? Superhero fatigue is killing the Marvel Cinematic Universe and disengaging long-time viewers.

For those who don’t know, superhero fatigue is a term coined for superhero films that are horrifically boring, and leave people wanting a clean slate. Often, this happens when movie writers try to stretch a character’s story too thin and make them too many things at once. Viewers don’t like this – the oversaturation of media becomes “too much of a commitment.” Attempts at fanservice aren’t exactly servicing fans the way they’re intended to (ie. cameos for the sake of cameos aren’t the a-ha moments they think they are).

Marvel has such a problem with this that Redditors redubbed this phenomenon Marvel fatigue – an obvious prod at their subpar films as of late. The studio has a killer problem with prioritizing quantity over quality, and often it feels like wandering in the dark. Say you don’t watch a poorly-reviewed movie, but you watch the one that comes after… The horror! You’re totally lost! The multiverse is too vast.

It’s true that originality has been put on life support with global expansion. The sheer amount of shows Marvel has been putting out detracts from the novelty that used to exist when the studio would release a new film that expands upon the lore. Having to wait a year or two or even three to know what happens next kept people interested.

CEO of Disney and overseer of all things Marvel, Bob Iger, says the overwhelming amount of content being produced is the reason for the studios’ recent downfall in the box office. Thirteen films, twelve series, and a Disney+ special all released in the past five years dilute the quality of their production, especially in the streaming world.

Warner Bros., the parent company of DC Studios, is also struggling to stay relevant with new material. Justice League (2017) and The Flash (2023) fail to be very interesting or funny, and mostly just leave the viewer wondering, “..What did I just watch?” In Justice League, there’s a scene in which a child is filming Superman on a cellphone, but it’s so obviously filmed on a high-resolution film camera. It just doesn’t look good.

Many of the studios’ animated films have also been…interesting…choices, namely Batman vs. Two-Face (2017). The film’s plot sends you reeling, the voice acting is strange, and the art style is super atypical for DC (and not in a particularly good way). They were attempting to recreate the 1960’s Batman series, bringing back many original voice actors to reprise their roles, but it fell so, so short. It certainly doesn’t deserve 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.

A lot of films from both studios are based on comics, but some of them totally miss the mark. Sometimes they change plot points for no discernible reason, and it doesn’t make much sense. X-Men Dark Phoenix was a really good comic series, but the film failed to replicate that. Sony shoved the plot of three movies into one, so obviously the development suffered. It was very rushed as a result of upcoming deals with Disney, and that’s evident in the quality.

It’s a lot like movies based on novels, which we all know are never as good as the original source material. Except for Batman: Hush (2019). It sticks to the source – a graphic novel by the same name – incredibly well. You don’t have to read the comic to understand, but it’s still intuitive if you go in with that prior knowledge.

Marvel needs to stop making mediocre films. For a long time, they were the movie studio and a huge competitor to DC. Now, casual fans don’t even know the difference between the two. What studio does Superman come from? Spiderman? Who knows! Who cares! Fire your writers, fire your directors, and find some new ones elsewhere.

But… maybe spare Gavin J. Knopp. Nobody wants another Spider-Man: Lotus.

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