‘Avengers’ Directors Say Marvel’s Recent Problems Aren’t Due to Superhero Fatigue but a ‘Big Generational Divide About How You Consume Media’
Filmmakers Joe and Anthony Russo were responsible for some of Marvel’s biggest box office hits, from “Captain America: Civil War” to “Avengers: Endgame,” but they don’t necessarily believe superhero fatigue is to blame for the studio’s recent struggles. Marvel had a tough 2023 with two flops: “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” and “The Marvels.” Speaking recently to GamesRadar+, the directors said that Marvel’s current issues boil down to the changes in how people absorb media: It’s a Hollywood-wide issue, not just a Marvel one.
“I think it’s a reflection of the current state of everything. It’s difficult right now, it’s an interesting time,” Joe Russo said. “I think we’re in a transitional period and people don’t know quite yet how they’re going to receive stories moving forward, or what kinds of stories they’re going to want.”
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“There’s a big generational divide about how you consume media,” he continued. “There’s a generation that’s used to appointment viewing and going to a theater on a certain date to see something, but it’s aging out. Meanwhile the new generation are ‘I want it now, I want to process it now’, then moving onto the next thing, which they process whilst doing two other things at the same time. You know, it’s a very different moment in time than it’s ever been. And so I think everyone, including Marvel, is experiencing the same thing, this transition. And I think that really is probably what’s at play more than anything else.”
Joe Russo noted that the new generation of moviegoers communicates largely though “memes and headlines with nobody reading past two sentences, so everything’s 100 characters or less – or 10-second videos on social media you swipe through.”
“I think that the two-hour format, the structure that goes into making a movie, it’s over a century old now and everything always transitions,” he added. “So, there is something happening again and that form is repetitive. But it’s hard to reinvent that form and I think this next generation is looking for ways to tell their own stories that service their own sort of collective ADHD.”
Anthony Russo told GamesRadar+ that superhero fatigue has nothing to do with superheroes in particular; it’s just “fatigue in general.”
“The superhero fatigue question was around long before the work we were doing,” Anthony continued. “So, it’s sort of an eternal complaint, like we always used to cite this back in our early days with superhero work. People used to complain about westerns in the same way but they lasted for decades and decades and decades. They were continually reinvented and brought to new heights as they went on.”
As concerns about superhero fatigue continue to be discussed in the comic book movie world, “The Batman” villain Paul Dano recently made headlines for telling The Independent that perhaps it’s a good thing.
“It’s an interesting moment where everybody has to go like, ‘OK – what now?’ Hopefully from that, somebody either breathes new life into [comic book movies], or something else blossoms which is not superheroes,” Dano said. “I’m sure there will still be some good ones yet to come, but I think it’s kind of a welcome moment.”
Joseph Quinn, who is joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Johnny Storm/Human Torch in the upcoming tentpole “The Fantastic Four” recently told Entertainment Weekly that he’s not too concerned about superhero fatigue as he gets ready to make his own superhero debut.
“I think that with the story of the Fantastic Four, it feels like we want to get this right,” Quinn said about superhero fatigue concerns. “There are aspects of it that are very different to other Marvel films. That felt very compelling to me. And again, going back to who’s involved, Matt [Shakman], of course, the director, I think is brilliant, and the cast, and I’ve read it, and the script is brilliant. It’s really brilliant. I’m delighted to have this opportunity.”
Head over to GamesRadar+’s website to read Anthony and Joe Russo’s thoughts on superhero fatigue in their entirety.
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