Superhero Fatigue — It’s Not You, It’s The Storytelling

I don’t like to join in bashing films. It’s not fun for me. I don’t enjoy being cynical about things I love, or want to love. That said, I want to make an observation about “superhero fatigue.”

It’s not that people are tired of superheroes. They’re tired of movies that don’t tell a complete story. And superhero films of late have been incomplete — by design.

This isn’t new. My least favorite Marvel film isn’t the oft-derided Dark World. It’s Iron Man 2, a film that exists only to set up other characters (Captain America, Thor, Black Widow, and Nick Fury). As a result, Tony’s own story was shortchanged. They could have gone for the classic Demon In A Bottle, but there wasn’t room. The result is a car crash of a story. However, most of the films surrounding it told a coherent and complete story, and RDJ is splendidly marvelous in all things, so no one really cared.

Then came the Snyderverse, which tried to speed-run characters to get to Darkseid and the Justice League. We got two complete films — MOS and WW — but the rest are a murky hodgepodge of story beats without heart. Because Snyder really wanted to make an Injustice movie, where Superman breaks bad and Batman is leading the resistance. So he wasn’t interested in the story he was telling. Result — bad movies. Even when he stepped away, all…