Hollywood and those around it keep talking about the death of the superhero movie. Yet the genre keeps showing up to its own funeral with billions in its pocket.
Look at this year. Spider-Man: Brand New Day crossed $2 billion at the box office, and 2026 as a whole is on pace to become the biggest box office year since 2019. Meanwhile, Supergirl bombed. Same genre, same year, opposite results. If audiences were truly sick of superheroes, Spider-Man wouldn’t have stood a chance.
Granted, it is Spider-Man, after all, a box office powerhouse alongside the likes of Batman and Superman. So, I’m not entirely buying into the idea of “superhero fatigue.” I think people are tired of bad films in an already crowded genre, and audiences now have a low tolerance for mediocrity.
The Free Pass Is Gone
For years, a superhero logo worked like a charm. A film based on a superhero could practically count on being box office gold, even if critics didn’t like it. Batman v. Superman and Suicide Squad, both released in 2016, are prime examples. Both brought in significant revenue for their respective studios.
Studios learned the wrong lesson. If a logo and an established brand can sell tickets, why put much effort into the quality of the film?
Eventually, audiences caught on. They realized they were being taken advantage of and began turning away from movies that felt as though they were made on an assembly line rather than with thought and care. Audiences are now holding superhero films to the same standards as every other movie.
Just last year, Superman performed better than expected at the box office, while Fantastic Four struggled, despite still bringing in a respectable amount. That isn’t to say one film is bad and the other isn’t. Both are great, actually. However, their contrasting performances show that the market is oversaturated and not every film can succeed, even when studios are putting out quality projects.
Homework Doesn’t Help
There is another factor to consider: Some of these films require audiences to do a lot of homework beforehand, most notably those in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).
And for good reason. You don’t become an entertainment juggernaut without building an expansive universe over more than a decade. However, with years of movies, streaming series and half-baked postcredit scenes, keeping up can become a chore. It can also make lower-quality projects stand out even more.
Under the new leadership of DC Studios, James Gunn and Peter Safran have made it their mission to build an expanding universe with projects that can stand on their own without requiring prior knowledge. At the same time, those projects can easily connect to other stories within the franchise. Audiences get the best of both worlds. I think it’s an approach that not only Marvel Studios can adopt but other franchises as well.
If audiences want to determine whether a movie is worth the price of admission, they can ask themselves a few questions: Does the trailer showcase a compelling story or just spectacle? Do the reviews and word-of-mouth support the hype? Can I walk into the theater without knowing anything beforehand?
If you can’t tell what a movie is about or who it’s intended for, perhaps the people making it don’t know either. That can be a deciding factor for audiences.
What Happens Next?
The next big test is already a month away. Avengers: Doomsday is right around the corner, and this massive crossover could either support this theory or poke holes in it.
I’ll be watching the movie regardless, as a fan of the genre, but let’s see what the public decides. Will the fan service and clap-and-cheer moments be enough to make this the biggest movie of all time, or can years of buildup deliver another quality payoff like the one we experienced in the summer of 2019?
Bio: Jorge De Santiago is a final-year journalism and public relations student at California State University, Northridge. He currently works in public relations and hopes to pursue a career as a unit publicist. In his free time, he enjoys movies, television, music and gaming.