Marvel Studios, reportedly, has a map of films planned out all the way through 2028. So far the nine films they’ve released have amassed $5.9 billion in worldwide ticket sales, the latest of which, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, recently broke the April box office opening weekend record and managed to make over $300 million worldwide in just ten days. Suffice to say, the Marvel machine looks strong… for now.
Next they are introducing the Guardians of the Galaxy later this year, followed by The Avengers: Age of Ultron and then Ant-Man, which means two of their next three films will introduce new superheroes into their ever-growing cinematic universe. Fans will likely swarm the box office and Marvel is clearly showing no signs of slowing down. What I am beginning to wonder is whether or not a possible superhero saturation of the cinematic market will hurt Marvel’s films, even if they continue to churn out movies equal in quality to their predecessors?
I wonder because the first reviews of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 from a UK screening have rolled in and one critic hated it, Variety calls it redundant but seems to like the character chemistry and The Hollywood Reporter appears to think it will do better with teens than a more mature crowd.
Then Slashfilm found a heap of tweets from mostly people I’ve never heard of with comments ranging from “The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is better than The Amazing Spider-Man” [via] and “The Amazing Spider-Man 2 truly “Amazing”. Will do for Spidey what Skyfall did for Bond” [via]. Uh, okay.
Next in the Spidey universe is The Amazing Spider-Man 3 and The Amazing Spider-Man 4 along with Venom (directed by Alex Kurtzman) and The Sinister Six (directed by Drew Goddard), but if this first batch of reviews is any sign of how Spider-Man 2 is being received how long will audiences stick around for more?
On top of that you have Fox and the X-Men films, which will have X-Men: Days of Future Past this year and X-Men: Apocalypse already planned for 2016 and then you get into whatever Warner Bros. has planned for DC Comics’ “Justice League” which will apparently take a big step with the “Untitled Superman-Batman Project” in 2016.
Clearly, we’re looking at a saturation of superhero films and I’m pretty sure more will pop up between now and 2018 when Spider-Man 4 is planned to hit theaters. I also think it’s safe to assume not all of them will be huge successes, which brings me to wonder what will the failures not only do to their respective franchises, but to the overall superhero genre on a whole?
For example, look at the horror genre, it can only sustain torture porn and found footage films for so long to the point only franchises such as Paranormal Activity can keep the found footage features alive and torture porn has all but disappeared. Even then, the Paranormal films have taken a hit at the box office.
Are Marvel films to the superhero genre what the Paranormal Activity films are to the found footage horror genre? Will the proven success of Marvel and what seems like a tested and proven formula for making these movies allow them to rise over the glut of superhero films on the horizon and allow them to withstand any possible audience fatigue? Basically, has Marvel become relatively bulletproof?
As much as I may badmouth Marvel’s films, I at least respect some of the decisions they’ve made so far, such as hiring Edgar Wright for Ant-Man and James Gunn for Guardians of the Galaxy, and clearly bringing Joss Whedon into the mix was one of the smartest decisions they could have made. They also seem to be have not only rightly determined which characters to roll-out and when, but they continue to at least offer up new characters rather than the same ones over and over again. On top of that, they’ve enjoyed a little luck.
Marvel seriously lucked out with the hiring of Robert Downey Jr. for Iron Man as the film was just as well received for Downey’s portrayal of Tony Stark as it was for its content. Christopher Nolan‘s The Dark Knight trilogy enjoyed similar appreciation for its cast, but I look around and you have the tired Hugh Jackman playing Wolverine for the 1,000th time and people seem to have something of a “take it, or leave it” attitude when it comes to Andrew Garfield as Spider-Man and the villains in the Spidey franchise seem to have been forced into the story more than anything else. Then you have the fan club for Ben Affleck as Batman and I’m not exactly seeing a rash of Henry Cavill supporters out there for his work as Superman. Not to mention, these are all the same heroes we’ve seen before.
Marvel is the only one introducing new characters, though kudos to Batman vs. Superman for bringing in Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman and I guess the prospect of a super villain movie in Sinister Six is a change, so we’ll see if those decisions serve as a game changers for these other studios.
Truth is, it seems to me Marvel has beat everyone to the punch and they’ve done it largely with a wink and a smile, leaving most everyone else shrugging, unsure of what to do in an industry that thrives on “copy, rinse, repeat”. Problem is, in this case, everyone else may be too far behind the eight ball to actually get ahead… or even catch up.
If I were to answer the question in my own headline, I’d say yes, Marvel seems to have created something that can withstand whatever happens around them. The superhero genre on a whole may begin to dip a little, but as long as Marvel can continue to find new ways to bring new heroes into this cinematic universe I see no reason why audiences would tire of the process. Other studios, however, are going to be scraping by for a while and will most likely never be able to catch up.
