Superhero Film Fatigue?

This is going to be a bit of an opinion piece/observation so bear with me.  After watching Avengers: Age of Ultron, I began to wonder why I wasn’t so enamored with the movie.  Aside from the issues I mentioned in my review of the film, I guess the whole big superhero mash-up stuff is beginning to wear on me.  I may be beginning to get burned out on the superhero genre.  This is coming from an avowed fan of the genre.  I don’t necessarily blame Marvel for this, but they have a pretty big stake in how I’m feeling about big blockbuster action movies.  Over the past 15 years, we’ve seen a huge number of blockbuster-type movies like Transformers, X-Men, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and Star Trek.  Don’t get wrong, I’m a huge fan of those franchises, but I’ve been noticed how much bigger this kinds of movies have been getting in the past decade.  They’re enormous, literally costing hundreds of millions of dollars to make.  Sometimes, that amount of money doesn’t pay off and the film flops.  I think with the size of these budgets, the film-makers are putting a lot of it into visual effects, explosions and action, but not enough into the actual writing and story-lines.  Take Transformers: Age of Extinction for example: That movie is enormous in scale, but all the money the Michael Bay was allowed to handle was put into the visual effects and action sequences.  It wasn’t boring, but it was exhausting.  I’m starting to see a trend with these big movies, where there is so much action and so much activity on the screen, I’m starting to wonder if people will get literally get tired of seeing all that.  I’m certainly at that point, and I blame Joss Whedon and Marvel for hammering home that point with Age of Ultron.  The movie is so packed with action, that it leaves little room for almost anything else.  That does not make a good movie.  I think seeing a new Marvel film every year is getting really old.  Look at the amount of superhero movies that have been released since 2000: 45.  Let me repeat that: 45.  That includes both Marvel and DC Comics.  Marvel has DC beat, claiming 35 of those movies.  Marvel has seen the release of THREE movies per year with the exception of a year or two.  THREE per YEAR.  I’ve seen them all.  DC Comics and Warner Bros. have a LOT of catching up to do.

Age of Ultron has seen a lot of mixed reviews since its release, and it’s not surprising.  The issues that movie had when it was in production are nuts.  Joss Whedon and Marvel were butting heads over what was going to in and what wasn’t.  Ultimately, Marvel won out, but I think both sides are to blame for how the movie turned out in the end.  I loved the first movie, it was amazing.  Nobody had done anything like that before, with some of the biggest superheroes together on the big screen at the same time.  Now while the title of the post says Superhero Fatigue, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the other blockbusters.  This new century has already seen some of the biggest movies in history.  See, the comic book movie genre is just one many genres that have seen big movies.  The ones that make the most money and are the most popular happen to be action movies.  Directors like Michael Bay, James Cameron, Joss Whedon, Sam Raimi and several others have seen various amounts of success from their movies.  The problem is that their movies are generally close to two and a half to three hours long.  That’s a long time to be sitting in a theater.  To be honest, I don’t mind doing that as long as the movie has more to offer than a flash in a pan.  Look, I love a mindless action film as much as the next guy, but it has to about an hour and a half.  Two or three hours of mindless action?  It gets tedious if it doesn’t leave room for you to breathe between set-pieces.  I understand that Marvel and DC want to put people in theaters to watch their movies and have a successful showing.  However, some of the best movies I’ve seen this decade are much, much smaller in terms of budget and scale.  Movies like 12 Years a SlaveDjango Unchained, The Raid, Lincoln and even the likes of Ong-Bak are light-years beyond anything that Marvel can throw at me, and some of those aren’t even action movies.  I guess I’ve reached a point where I prefer things NOT blowing up every two minutes.  I’m not going to abandon those kinds of movies, but I am going to seriously cut back on them.  I don’t see a lot of movies in theaters these days, and I would prefer to see something that’s actually worth the money and time I’m throwing at it.  If it seems like I’m whining, I might be.  But it’s just something I needed to get off my chest.  Who knows, by this time next week I might feel differently.  It’s just something I’ve noticed in myself and several other people that I’ve talked to.  I think I just need to step away from superhero movies for a while so I can catch my breath.  So, is it superhero film fatigue that I’m suffering from?  I guess it’s a possibility.  I define superhero film fatigue as getting excessively tired of superhero movies.  I think that should be an official medical diagnosis.  The cure?  Watch. Something. Else.  Now, I’m going to try and take my own advice.  I may fail miserably, so wish me luck.  My fingers are crossed.

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