Superheroes are having a bumpy ride. Marvel, which gave the world Spider-Man and Captain America, is reeling from a string of disappointing film releases such as 2023’s The Marvels and 2025’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps. This has forced owners Disney to completely rethink their Marvel strategy just before the new Spider-Man and Avengers films hit cinemas later this year.
DC Comics, the creators of Batman and Superman, are vying to relaunch their own cinematic franchise, but leaving much to be desired if audience opinion is anything to go by. This places a big question mark over the success of the forthcoming Supergirl film.
And Sony, which still owns the rights to Marvel’s Spider-Man (it can get a bit confusing), is also rebooting its cinematic offerings following a long string of box office disappointments.
All of this creates the perception of “superhero fatigue”, with complaints of “same plots, same villains”. Consumers seem tired of superhero content and want to move on after a 20-year-strong romance.
Yet the superhero genre is known for its incredible survival skills. After all, DC is 92 years old now, and Marvel is not far behind at 87. So, is superhero fatigue really a thing?
What’s really going on
First, let’s look at the evidence. While Marvel’s cinematic offerings are underperforming, its video games are hugely successful. For instance, Marvel’s Spider-Man trilogy for PlayStation (2018-23) was released to critical acclaim and sold tens of millions of copies.
And Marvel Rivals, an online game based on Marvel’s large roster of comic book characters, attained 40 million players within two months of its release in late 2024. This means that superheroes are still much loved by the same people who are now disengaging with the superhero films.
In a different realm, Penguin shocked the world in 2022 when it released select Marvel comics as part of its prestigious Classics collection, making Marvel a part of the global literary canon alongside Jane Austen and Leo Tolstoy.
The series reprints the origin stories of select Marvel characters and, according to Penguin, “serves as a testament to Marvel’s transformative impact”. This adds broad cultural legitimacy to superhero entertainment and attracts new audiences.
Lastly, while the traditional comic book publishing model may be waning these days, the longer formats are experiencing a major resurgence. For instance, the market for graphic novels recently reached an unprecedented US$1.57 billion (£1.16 billion).
The resonance factor
The major shift started after 2019, when Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame became the highest-grossing film of all time. This means that global audiences are now “accustomed” to long-format superhero entertainment and want to see more (or at least the same amount) of it.
So it is safe to say that superhero fatigue is not “a thing”. Indeed, consumers might be simply (over)reacting to a long stretch of bad releases that failed to inspire to the same extent as Marvel did in its halcyon days of 2008-19.
At the same time, my ongoing research on superhero franchises highlights another factor that Marvel and DC should account for: resonance.
It is commonly assumed that superheroes are popular because of the light and even cheap entertainment they provide. Revered filmmaker Martin Scorsese famously dismissed superhero films for not being cinema in the New York Times, likening them to theme parks.
However, my interviews with dozens of Marvel and DC fans reveal a totally different picture: audiences revel in the punchy sociocultural commentary that superhero archetypes can deliver.
For my study participants, the first leg of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (2008-19) offered salient commentary on some of the biggest issues that society is contending with today.
For example, 2018’s Black Panther was revolutionary in bringing the issues of racism and post-colonialism to the summer blockbuster genre. And the Iron Man trilogy (2008-13) dealt with global terrorism just as ISIS Islamic State was becoming a familiar dreaded name. It is this current lack of social and cultural commentary that participants reported as the reason behind Marvel and DC’s recent troubles.
This view is consistent with the entire history of superhero entertainment. The original “superhero boom” of the 1930s offered much-needed hope amid the Great Depression, the decade-long economic downturn that began with the Wall Street crash of 1929.
Marvel’s meteoric rise in the 1960s and the 1970s is frequently associated with the countercultural, “hippie” overtones that it was subtly spilling amid the Vietnam war and the general political instability of that era. And most recently, the whole superhero concept experienced a renaissance just after the events of 9/11.
This chimes with the successes of other, more niche superhero franchises like The Boys on Amazon Prime, which recently aired its last episode.
A dark, dystopian and subversive take on the superhero archetype, The Boys offers a timely and much-needed perspective on the major political shifts towards populism and nationalism, exploring issues of accountability of those in power, continuing the tradition that Marvel and DC started almost a century ago.
Superhero archetypes need to resonate with audiences to stay relevant. And while DC and Marvel are currently failing at this, their niche competitors do so with more success.
In other words, superheroes are here to stay. It is just a question of whether Marvel and DC, the two biggest names in superhero entertainment, can find ways to reinvent characters that resonate with the world – as they have done so successfully in the past.
