Are there too many superhero movies?
And are audiences getting bored?
This article originally appeared onDen of Geek UK.
Minor spoilers forX-Men: ApocalypseandBatman v Superman: Dawn Of Justicelie ahead.
The cash is still rolling in there.
For my money, at least.
Studios certainly hope not.
Over a billion, in some cases.
Rightly so, too.
I think its important here to draw a differential, incidentally, between comic book movies and superhero movies.
Comic books are nowhere near as constrained by genre as theyre sometimes reported as being.
Lets take a sort-of parallel.
For a good while, animated movies were being classed as a genre in their own right.
To some degree, they still are.
Yet in more recent times, animated movies have pushed against such bracketing.
Things had to change to keep audiences interested, and they duly did.
And that, for me, is where superhero movies need to get to.
Also, in a different direction, Matthew Vaughn threw all sorts into the melting pot withKick-Ass.
WithCivil War, the brothers Russo again looked to see what kind of story they could tell.
But they also took in genre turns that they werent necessarily given full credit for.
But then I come back to the same point.
If we continue to regard a superhero movie as a genre in itself, then little will change.
Some films will be good, some bad, some will have something to say, some wont.
Buy some action figures when you get home.
EvenDeadpool, widely credited as subverting superhero movies, followed a pretty familiar template at heart.
But it was still, at heart, a fairly conventional action-comedy.
A very enjoyable one, too.
Maybe a Batman detective story, done in the style of a police procedural?
Or a genuine Spider-Man coming of age tale?
For me, the horror undertones of Scott DerricksonsDoctor Strangesuggest a step in the right direction.
Marvel takes more risks than its sometimes given credit for.
One more thing: I wonder if we need studios now to gamble on cheaper superhero films.
Superhero movie fatigue may be an overhyped problem, but theres certainly something to it.
