James Gunn Explains Why Superhero Fatigue Exists: “If It Becomes Just A Bunch Of Nonsense Onscreen, It Gets Really Boring”
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 director and the newly appointed co-CEO of DC Studios James Gunn recently explained why superhero fatigue exists, but also why it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with superheroes.
Speaking with Rolling Stone about the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 film Gunn was seemingly asked about the recent box office failures of Shazam! Fury of the Gods and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and whether “superhero fatigue” played into it.
He told the outlet, “I think there is such a thing as superhero fatigue.” However, he then asserted, “I think it doesn’t have anything to do with superheroes.”
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Gunn then explained, “It has to do with the kind of stories that get to be told, and if you lose your eye on the ball, which is character.”
“We love Superman. We love Batman. We love Iron Man. Because they’re these incredible characters that we have in our hearts. And if it becomes just a bunch of nonsense onscreen, it gets really boring,” he elaborated.
He continued, “But I get fatigued by most spectacle films, by the grind of not having an emotionally grounded story. It doesn’t have anything to do with whether they’re superhero movies or not.”
Gunn then asserted, “If you don’t have a story at the base of it, just watching things bash each other, no matter how clever those bashing moments are, no matter how clever the designs and the VFX are, it just gets fatiguing, and I think that’s very, very real.”
To this point, Gunn noted that he believes Marvel films doing well at the box office helps DC films and vice versa.
He explained, “To be frank, I think the better Marvel movies do, it’s better for DC, and the better DC movies do, it’s better for Marvel. When people see bad movies, they don’t want to spend more money on seeing more movies.”
“So you want good movies to happen, especially since we’re making two or three movies a year at DC,” he elaborated. “So every movie that Marvel has is sort of an advertising for comic-book films, and vice versa. And you don’t want to scare off people from going to the theater.”
“And if we’re both making good movies, that’s the best of all situations, which keeps the ball bouncing back and forth. At that point, we can talk about rivalries, and it’d be fun,” he opined.
However, he also revealed that he believes Marvel has put themselves in a tough position following Avengers: Endgame. Gunn shared his opinion, “I really want Marvel to keep making good movies. I think it’s really hard in the wake of the Blip. There’s this worldwide, universe-wide event that happened. And in truth, everybody would be stark raving mad at this point.”
“So it’s hard to write stories in the wake of that. Which is why the Guardians movies have been easier, because they’re set outside of that a little bit,” he said.
Gunn’s comments on superhero fatigue are accurate. It’s not about moviegoers getting sick of the superhero genre, it’s more about the quality of the films produced within the superhero genre have recently been lackluster.
Nielsen revealed that Prime Video’s The Boys was the 11th most streamed original series of 2022. Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy was not far behind clocking in at 13th on Nielsen’s charts. Clearly, there is still an audience for superhero programming.
At the box office, Spider-Man: No Way Home was the top grossing film of 2021 raking in $572.9 million domestically and selling over 55 million tickets. Not only was it the top grossing film of 2021, but it was the 9th highest grossing film of 2022 raking in another $241.1 million and selling another 23 million tickets domestically.
As for Gunn’s comments about Marvel and DC’s success aiding each other at the box office. This too rings true. If Marvel Studios puts out a bunch of terrible films in the superhero genre, audiences might not be as willing to go see another superhero film even if it isn’t from Marvel Studios given what has now turned into a pattern of poor superhero films.
The expectation for audiences is poor quality, and they will find something else to do with their time and money.
As for Gunn claiming the Blip somehow creates problems for storytellers, this is just a ludicrous claim. It’s not hard to imagine a group of people wanting to exploit the chaos that would ensue with so many people being returned to life five years after being snuffed out of existence.
There are so many stories that could come out of that chaos. It’s not hard to imagine a group of people setting up a team of superheroes to bring some order out of this chaos only to find out later they were doing it for their own nefarious ends. Can someone say Thunderbolts?
Another idea could be a group of individuals who survived the Blip setting up a kind of cult of Thanos and wanting to exterminate everyone who was returned believing they had defied their fate. It’s not hard to imagine a group like the Friends of Humanity being adapted into this cult. You could even introduce characters like Nimrod into a storyline like this. Instead of hunting mutants, he hunts people who were Blipped.
You could even tell smaller scale stories involving cartels and other criminal entities kidnapping and smuggling people who returned to life from the Blip. I could see any number of heroes such as Hawkeye, Captain America, Luke Cage, Punisher, Daredevil working to free the individuals kidnapped and systematically take down the criminal organizations.
There could even be some in-universe political intrigue where the criminal organizations are being manipulated by government entities maybe out of Latveri, or it could be a galactic organization wanting to smuggle humans off-world to be used in slave camps.
You could even have someone like the High Evolutionary involved in this human trafficking trade as fodder for his various experiments.
Needless, to say there are plenty of storytelling opportunities post-Blip Marvel Studios could explore.
Instead, they produced shows like She-Hulk: Attorney at Law and Loki and movies like Thor: Love and Thunder and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
What do you make of James Gunn’s comments?