Superhero movies have been around for a long time, but the Modern Era of Superhero Supremacy really began with Iron Man in 2008, the movie that birthed the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Sure, there were hits before that, like 2000’s X-Men. But there were also flops like 2003’s Daredevil, and in general, there were far fewer superhero movies coming out every year.
Could we ever go back to that era, or will this bumper crop of superhero films continue to feed us forever? Speaking on The Movie Business Podcast, Marvel Studios CEO Kevin Feige sounded optimistic.
“I’ve been at Marvel Studios for over 22 years, and most of us here at Marvel Studios have been around a decade or longer together,” he said. “From probably my second year at Marvel, people were asking, ‘Well, how long is this going to last? Is this fad of comic book movies going to end?’ I didn’t really understand the question. Because to me, it was akin to saying after Gone With the Wind, ‘Well, how many more movies can be made off of novels? Do you think the audience will sour on movies being adapted from books?’ You would never ask that because there’s an inherent understanding among most people that a book can be anything. A novel can have any type of story whatsoever. So it all depends on what story you’re translating. Non-comic readers don’t understand that it’s the same thing in comics.”
"There’s 80 years of the most interesting, emotional, groundbreaking stories that have been told in the Marvel comics, and it is our great privilege to be able to take what we have and adapt them. Another way to do that is adapting them into different genres, and what types of movies we want to make."
Will the superhero movie boom last forever?
More than any other one person, Kevin Feige is the guy most credited with bringing about our current superhero boom. Making Marvel movies is his job, so I’m not surprised he’s optimistic about their future.
At the same time, I see some chinks in the armor. For one, the most recent crop of Marvel movies — e.g. Eternals, Thor: Love and Thunder, and so on — haven’t been as universally successful as some of the earlier movies, both critically and financially. There are multiple reasons for that — this latest crop wasn’t released in China, for example, while older movies were — but it could be enough to give an executive like Feige pause.
Also, I don’t know if I buy his comparison of movies based on Marvel comics to movies based on novels in general. Even if there’s a lot of variety within the Marvel universe, it still usually comes down to good guys in costumes fighting bad guys in costumes. There isn’t as much variety there as there is within, say, the whole of literature, and I can see interest waning over time. There was a period when westerns dominated Hollywood. Then it was musicals. Both of those booms are long gone, even if we still get films in those genres every now and then. The same could happen to superheroes.
But probably not for a while. There’s lots of gas left in the tank, but audiences will move on to something new eventually.
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