Superheroes Are Just a Distraction (and They're Failing)

Superhero fatigue is real. I grew up watching Marvel movies, following the universe from the first Thor film in 2011 until Avengers : Endgame in 2019. Despite my love for the franchise and the seemingly exponential growth of Marvel content since Dinsey+ started making shows of it, though, I can count the new Marvel media I’ve watched since 2019 on one hand. There are many theories as to why superhero movies have gone from box office gold to box office bombs, and there’s truth to many of them, but here’s what I think : superheroes were never anything more than a distraction, one which isn’t working anymore.

To fully understand what I mean, we have to look at how the world felt in 2008 when the first Iron Man film came out - and yes, I’m going to focus on Marvel here, because I’m of the opinion that DC films are little more than faux-edgy trash. Fight me about it. Back to my point, 2008 was a time of hope. Not every country was having a good time, obviously, but given the United States’ position as a global power, seeing an idiot like George Bush get replaced by a young progressive like Barack Obama made it feel like maybe, just maybe, things might start getting better. While I can’t speak for everyone, the famous Obama “hope” poster proves I’m not the only one to feel this way.

This was the perfect context for geek media to make its debut. Thanks to the political shakeup, it felt like underdogs might finally get the chance to be centre-stage… and they did. Superhero films and geek culture in general started taking off (I remember wearing fake glasses to seem nerdier at the time). It really was a wonderful time, one where you could go and watch a film in theatres once or twice a year, emerging feeling like you were the hope for the world, like you could take on the world’s problems and come out victorious just like the on-screen heroes.

Unfortunately, though, that was not the case. The reality is, that while these films served to make us feel powerful and hopeful for a moment, that feeling always wore off sooner or later, leaving us to face reality once again - and each time, it seemed to get worse and worse. When we look at the world now, what do we see? The war in Ukraine. Inflation and a failing economy. The conflict between Israel and Palestine. Fascism and police brutality. Global warming. There’s a constant sense that the world is ending. The writing for superhero films hasn’t always been great, but at least we could fill in the gaps with our naive hope back in the day. Now, though, since the pandemic and with everything else that’s going on, who has hope to spare anymore?

I can't claim that this was an intentional plan to pacify the masses, of course. I’ll leave that up to the conspiracy theorists among us. No matter if it was some evil scheme or not, though, it just isn’t working anymore. When the original shine wore off, at least we were still invested enough in the original cast of characters to keep following their stories. Now that the world feels more hopeless and fan favourite characters have mostly been retired and replaced, the repetitiveness of the stories and characters is only more obvious than ever. It’s ironic, even, because the painfully formulaic stories only serve to highlight a real-world problem now : the soul-sucking meaninglessness that capitalism is so good at generating.

I'm not saying that this is the only issue facing the superhero genre, but it's definitely part of it. If we wanted to enjoy superhero films again, we would need to be hopeful enough to feel inspired by their stories. But then again, is that kind of inspiration actually helpful to us? Watching superhero movies is like posting support for a cause on Instagram : useless. They fulfil our need to feel empowered without us doing anything and make it seem like the world is just without any real-life changes to unjust systems. It's a good feeling that takes no effort on our part, as easy as sitting down and pretending the world is better for a few hours. Maybe we forgot what it meant to make the world a better place as we rotted on our couches for all these long years. Maybe we trained ourselves to run to escapist fantasies rather than face big problems that made us feel helpless. But now maybe, just maybe, our superhero fatigue will give us a chance to get back up and try to create a world where we don’t need superhero fantasies to make us feel better anymore.