In 2016, I took a piece of paper with a poll that asked “Team Iron Man” or “Team Captain America” out to the elementary school playground to tally opinions before the release of “Captain America: Civil War.”
In 2025, I feel guilty for not even wanting to see “Captain America: Brave New World” in theaters.
So what happened? My symptoms include exhaustion of the same plots and villains, not feeling sick at missing a new superhero movie’s premiere in theaters and a lack of heart palpitations when I read the cast list of the next Marvel film.
The diagnosis - superhero fatigue
“Superhero fatigue” can be described as audiences’ exhaustion with the overwhelming amount of subpar superhero content being pumped out of Hollywood. The result? No one wants to catch up with the last superhero movie from three years ago, two different TV shows and the easter egg hidden in the teasers released at ComicCon to understand the new releases.
We just want to watch movies and enjoy them as we did, instead of being so overloaded by content that we lose interest.
The superhero fatigue phenomenon can be traced back to when “Avengers: Endgame” was released in 2019, marking the end of the first phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The movie that concluded a successful decade for Marvel and Disney had the companies starved.
Instead of putting effort and patience into their filmmaking, the MCU focuses on pumping out content.
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, there have been 12 shows added to Disney+ to expand the MCU outside of the silver screen.
Shows such as “WandaVision” made some noise at the beginning of the universe expansion, catching the attention of fan theorists all over social media. But after their first season, the show’s popularity diminished.
During this time, Marvel and Disney also confirmed that five original Netflix Marvel shows — “Daredevil,” “Jessica Jones,” and more — would become a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and film timeline.
This was a fatal flaw, as many fans felt the need to ‘catch up’ on several older shows to understand new cameos and characters in the MCU, while simultaneously losing track of the original storylines.
“If [superhero movies] [become] just a bunch of nonsense onscreen, it gets really boring… If you don’t have a story at the base of it…no matter how clever the designs and the VFX are, it just gets fatiguing,” Marvel director James Gunn said in an interview with Rolling Stone.
Finding the cure
The cure for “superhero fatigue” is taking the time to create good superhero movies, and some are already in the making.
Since the release of “The Batman” in 2022 starring Robert Pattinson and the critically acclaimed show “The Penguin,” DC fans have been excited for what a new era of the iconic superhero can bring. “The Batman II” is said to start filming at the end of this year.
Many upcoming releases in 2025 are superhero films and there are quite a few that are gaining traction by retired and current fans alike.
Much like how Bruce Wayne made his re-debut recently, Clark Kent will be making his return to the big screen in July of this year, with Gunn directing the newest version of “Superman.”
The trailer for “Fantastic Four: First Steps” was recently released with the four familiar characters in a retro-futuristic 1960s set piece, reigniting my passion for spandex and quippy humor.
When I first watched the trailer for Gunn’s “Superman,” I was excited. My heart started to swell along with the electric guitar rendition of John Williams’ classic Superman theme while Clark Kent (David Corenswet) tripped over his own shoes in the Daily Planet.
The hope I have for the future of Superhero films is slim, but it seems that there are directors and creators out there who understand the current public opinion on superhero films and are trying to shift back to creating good stories.
This article was edited by Alia Messina, Marina Zaczkiewicz and Abigail Turner. Copy editing done by Luna Jinks, Emma Brown, Ella Rousseau and Ariana Kavoossi.
