Superhero Fatigue?

Of all the dreck coming out of Hollywood, superhero films are faring the worst. Has our culture succumbed to superhero fatigue? NO! Superheroes are not fatiguing, bad storytelling is.

It has been a month since the arrival of Captain America: Brave New World in theaters, and yet again the debates over “superhero fatigue” have returned thick and fast. Truthfully, the catcalls about superhero movies have gone on much longer than that, in no small part because – as I mentioned here – the “in-crowd” of “artistes” in Hollywood noticed that Marvel was eating their lunch like a hungry, popular “dumb” jock at a high school cafeteria. Now that the fourth Cap film is failing, quite badly, too, expect more critical sniffs on the subject in the upcoming months.

There are several layers to the critiques being made of superhero films: their ubiquity and rise to prominence over the past decade is one that most people seize on. Some have wailed, “Why are no more artistic or general genre films being made?” while others lament “Where have all the good movies gone?”, following the line from Bonnie Tyler’s classic song.

The answer to the latter question is simple: Hollywood has stopped making good movies. In fact, this was noticed all the way back in 2005, in a piece Brian C. Anderson wrote for City Journal. In a piece I wrote at my own blog, I cited from a now-deceased friend’s discussion of how heroism died in Hollywood, which included questions such as: Remember the Western? Whatever happened to it? Why do we see no Westerns today capable of matching, or at least honoring, great Hollywood hits like The Searchers, The Magnificent Seven, Stagecoach, or Shane?

All of the modern Westerns focus on gritty “realism,” which means they possess none of what made the older Westerns great, and thus they lack a similar enduring presence. One person I know mentioned years ago that he decided to try watching a newer film that was made available to him during an international flight. Bored by that film, my friend decided to go with an old favorite. After getting up to stretch, he noticed that the other passengers also weren’t watching any of the newer movies. Almost everyone he could see was watching John Wayne’s The Searchers.

If you want to appreciate “genre fatigue,” it is important to note that the Western was the dominant genre of the mid-20^th century and was a leading genre in film for decades prior. Yet like superhero movies are now, the Western suffered a serious setback and has largely gone “underground.” Most Westerns made today that are worth anything are done quietly as small productions. Examples range from Open Range to Gunless to Prairie Fever, and these movies are usually sent directly to DVD/streaming. Westerns no longer receive the general fanfare and push from Hollywood unless they are dark, gritty, humorless, and frankly, ugly. The reboot of The Magnificent Seven managed to squeak past this roadblock, but just barely.

Some years ago, author Alan Moore accused superhero films of “eating the culture.” The fact is that superheroes are simply following where the Western first trod – and they are suffering the same fate. As my deceased friend noted, once Westerns had been corrupted, audiences moved on to different genres in order to find entertainment that they could enjoy. Those subsequent genres were also taken over and destroyed, closing off the routes of “Escape” that Professor Tolkien described in his essay “On Fairy-Stories.” Now audiences have nothing to watch but the gruel and drivel that is currently winning Oscars, despite no one showing up to see these films in theaters.

Superhero or BS Fatigue?

Author Declan Finn noted that there is no fatigue with superheroes, only with what he rightly calls BS storytelling. Bovine scat is a well-recognized issue, and it is why people do not go to the movies anymore. Not only are tickets and the amenities prohibitively expensive, the films themselves are simply not worth watching. Just look at the latest Oscar winners. Who has heard of even half of them? Who cares about any of them?

On the other hand, there are those, both in and out of Hollywood, who defend the superhero genre. The genre is, I believe, definitely worth defending – just as Westerns are. Unfortunately, Westerns did not receive that defense in public to a degree that mattered, in large part because the media was complicit in preventing any defense of them. The fact that Hollywood was the only place at the time to make films was also a contributing factor.

In light of the success of Angel Studios and a variety of other small studios, Hollywood’s monopoly is dissolving. The way that Hollywood continues to create box office bombs, odds are that it will sink even faster as time goes on. No one is paying attention to the Oscars. But even worse for Hollywood, no one is paying to see their films.

A lot of Hollywood’s more reliable, non-domestic funds are also drying up; and have been for some time. They will probably not go down without a fight, but the fact remains that they are no longer the powerhouse they once were. Disney is likewise in bad straits and getting into a worse situation now that its live action Snow White has hit theaters, particularly if one judges matters by videos like this. There is no doubt that the entertainment landscape has shifted, and we have yet to see the full flowering or the fruits of that shift.

What About Superheroes?

Marvel came to prominence as a film juggernaut due to its success in streamlining its mainstream comic stories for a theater-going audience. As Declan noted above, the MCU had a plan all the way up to Avengers: Endgame. That was, despite what some might think, THE END of the story. All the subsequent films have been created as the result of Disney/Marvel flogging dead horses to keep the gravy train rolling in – which delineates their utter lack of imagination and the desperation of their greed.

The current crop of failed Disney/Marvel films may also be laid at the feet of those who forced Ike Perlmutter from the helm of Marvel Studios, and then later from Marvel entirely. Ike Perlmutter’s mindset is not only politically opposite Hollywood and Disney’s kingmakers, but he insisted that the box office for superhero films mattered less than the toy sales that came from them. That is where the company makes (or made) most of its money: selling the characters in toy form to eager children (and the young at heart) so that they can make their own stories.

Over the last few years I have personally watched as the toys from the latest Marvel movies failed to sell. There used to be a time when Marvel products, while ubiquitous, would be sold expeditiously. There were always toys that were too expensive to move quickly, but nothing like the piles and piles of toys based on Shang-Chi, The Marvels, or The Eternals that lingered on shelves for many months after these films debuted. The films may have had the desired box office returns, but they were not beloved enough by fans to make the merchandise fly off the shelves. As Perlmutter noted, toys and merchandise are where the “bottom line” for the company rests, and that bottom line has not been met for years.

Captain America: Brave New World’s toys are suffering the same fate. No matter what they claim the film earned at the box office, the costumes and toys based on it have not budged at the local box stores. Customers passed by these displays when I was last there, ignoring the new shields and helmets from the movie. No one seemed to be interested, not even the main target audience: children.

This is not an unfamiliar pattern for Disney. Star Wars merchandise sales for the sequel trilogy’s characters were abysmal, and Rose Tico from The Last Jedi was so poorly received that they stopped making toys for her and including her in other merch. It is not because fans of Star Wars hate the actors and actresses – it is that the stories have a very limited appeal, and most fans, even the die-hards, don’t exactly care for them. They prefer the originals, and the same thing is happening with Marvel.

Conclusion

As with all media claims, the headlines are not the whole story. No one needs to like the superhero genre to realize that if it is as popular as Westerns once were (and still are, if you know where to look or who to follow), then there is something of value in it. The fact that Marvel, Disney, and Hollywood are destroying the superhero genre through bad storytelling and claims of “fatigue” may unfortunately end up eradicating this form of entertainment, the kind that Tolkien called Escapism, from the face of American civilization.

But it is important to remember that American popular culture is what gave us superheroes in the first place. If we want to Make America Great Again, the task will include saving the great entertainment that she has produced: namely, superheroes and Westerns. The world still needs both, as does our country. If we are willing to spend blood and treasure to rescue art created by other cultures and civilizations, then shouldn’t we be equally invested in saving what our own forebears made for us?

Let’s make American fiction – particularly including superheroes and Westerns – great again.

Photo Credit: Rampage