Off My Mind: Are Audiences Finally Sick of Superhero Movies?

When it comes to Hollywood, we're constantly seeing trends in the types of movies produced. A formula is discovered and we end up with a bunch of similar movies at the same time. It might fall under the idea of "if it ain't broken, don't fix it." If a disaster movie is successful, we tend to get a handful of different ones. When Star Wars was unleashed upon us, we saw an influx of space opera movies and TV shows. There were even two movies based on Christopher Columbus released within two of each other.

The idea of adapting comic books and superheroes isn't a new one. Superman's live action debut occurred years before Christopher Reeve was even born. In terms of big budget superhero movies, we had the occasional Superman movies along with other heroes in tights. In the last ten years we've seen an increase with characters such as Spider-Man, Batman, the X-Men, Hulk, Daredevil, Ghost Rider and Fantastic Four get big screen adaptations along with the current and upcoming Iron Man, Thor, Green Lantern and Captain America movies.

Each movie has been a success but they haven't been huge box office successes. With plenty of other comic book characters getting ready to make the leap to movie theaters, will there come a point when the average movie goer has had enough movies based on superheroes?

So far this year, we've seen Thor, X-Men: First Class and Green Lantern. Thor had moderate success with a U.S. opening weekend of $65.7 million. X-Men: First Class had a similar weekend opening compared to the original X-Men but you need to consider that X-Men opened in 2000. Green Lantern's opening weekend is not considered a success with its $53.1 million opening compared to its $200 million budget (plus promotion costs).

Captain America: The First Avenger is set to open on July 22. Many have asked how come Paramount (and Marvel Studios) didn't release the movie during the Fourth of July weekend. The easy answer is Paramount had already committed to releasing Transformers: Dark of the Moon during the coveted summer blockbuster date and if you look at the box office, it was a wise choice. Transformers raked in $97.8 million over the extended weekend.. As much as people are looking forward to Captain America, there's just no way it will come close to earning that much.

Another recent concern is the fact that movie studios are not making plans to have a big presence at this year's San Diego Comic-Con. Lately it has become the place to premiere new footage and for actors to address the fans. Marvel Studios won't have a panel for Captain America since it opens during Comic-Con weekend (although a midnight premiere is said to be happening somewhere nearby). The Avengers won't have a panel but insiders are claiming there will be some presence through viral marketing and possible actor signings at Marvel's booth. DC/Warner Bros. won't have anything ready for either The Dark Knight Rises or Superman: Man of Steel since both movies are set for next year. Sony's The Amazing Spider-Man will have a panel but it's not clear whether any footage will be shown.

Is Hollywood's lack of committing and appearing at Comic-Con a sign that they aren't willing to back the superhero movies as much as they did before? There are still other movies in the works such as a new Wolverine, Ghost Rider and Daredevil movie but surprisingly there aren't any big comic book movies coming to theaters later this year.

There are plenty of other comic book properties ripe for Hollywood but when will the general public get tired of them? With all the vampire movies and television shows, most people can't stand the idea of them these days. Is that the same fate superheroes could face or is there simply too much variation in each that comic book movies won't become stale. Other movies such as Iron Man 3 and Thor 2 have been announced but what about all the other characters out there waiting?

Comic book readers will always cheer for and watch superhero movies but we all know that there are less comic book readers compared to the overall movie viewing audience. How soon will it be until non-comic book reading movie goers will get tired of superhero movies? Studios will either have to step up and ensure they are putting out quality movies as the superhero/comic book gimmick won't carry films for much longer. Superhero movies won't go away but we might be seeing less of them if they can't maintain a certain level of quality.

Not yet--after next summer, maybe.

Most of the comic movies that are made have been awful.

As you said, I think they won't go out of fashion in so long as they can maintain quality. However, I think it's becoming harder and harder to turn a profit on comic book movies, not so much from ticket sales as from merchandising. As you said, " Transformers raked in $97.8 million over the extended weekend.. As much as people are looking forward to Captain America, there's just no way it will come close to earning that much." The main difference, however, is that Transformer cost a fortune to make and they will not be seeing the difference covered by ticket sales alone while Captain America just might. However, Transformers will continue to push a successful toy-line alongside the launch of their movie and they will gain huge profits through cross-promotional deals because it's a soulless, money-making machine with no artistic integrity. The last cross-promotional deal I saw for a comic book movie was between Subway and Green Lantern, and as anybody who has read "Slam Dunk" knows, that was incredibly lame. And although a bunch of kids might want to buy Kilowog action figures after seeing the movie, nobody really wants to buy Ryan Reynolds. It's a well-known fact that action figures resembling actors just don't sell well. The Green Lantern line of toys won't pick up until Bruce Timm's new Green Lantern animated series starts up. The same can be said for Thor and Captain America. Also, super hero films are oversaturating the market. Right now, we have X-Men: First Class, Thor, and Green Lantern (all second-rate comic stories) competing against one another when in the past Iron Man's greatest competition was Captain Jack Sparrow. So, to me, the question isn't so much, "Is the public tired of super hero movies" as much as, "Are super hero movies still able to turn the profit?" Because, really, when was the last time Hollywood valued fan feedback over profit. 

Thor ended up making $450 million which is around 4 times it's budget how is that not successful?

Who predicted this? Millar? I could be wrong...

Mabye, I think they can reboot franchises only so many times like X-men,Spiderman, etc.

Transformers raked in $97.8 million over the extended weekend 

I think comics have and always will be a source for movies and tv, but maybe there will be a period of not much superhero stuff and then a period of more once again.
Although, I remember showing my portfolio to a tv pitch guy one time and he said superhero cartoons and shows are on their way out.  That was about five years or so till now, and superhero stuff are sort of now just fading from television.  When I was in college, just starting out I remember reading an article asking if Disney was going completely computer animated, and that it would depend on the next three films, and by the next year or year and a half they had pretty much turned completely CG.  So it might be the same for several movie theaters, it maybe depend on the next few big superhero projects like Captain America, Avengers, Spider-man.  Maybe it will depend on a few movies for each studio, like each studio looks at how a hand full of their own movies do.
Plus they are putting out more than just superhero movies, maybe we will just see a cut back but not gone completely.
I'm paraphrasing a comic artist who gave a lecture at my school, he said something like
"If the movie turns out bad, at least I have it on paper in my book."
If we end up getting little to no superhero movies at least we have them in comics.
 
Oh, plus as technology progresses so will the movies, we will be able to make better and more convincing movies and studios will want to make money from that. 
 
OK, rambling again.

When will audiences get tired of horror movies? How about chick flicks? Action movies? The answer is never. Each genre has there own fan base, and as long as that fan base is ready to spend some dough at the movies it will never die out. The great thing about comic movies (super-hero is particular) is that it can be interesting to everyone. As long as their are original stories to be told, I don't see the light dimming out anytime soon.

Audiences are getting slightly sick of "comic book movies", but not so much "movies based on comic books". Adaptations have always existed, good ones, bad ones, it doesn't matter. The past decade had a wealth of comic book-based films that were successful. It was nice to see these properties getting the treatment they (mostly) deserved. But now, after that honeymoon period, we have to settle.

Thousands of movies come out based on books but we don't call them "book movies", just like how movies will continue to be based on comic books but we can't keep calling them "comic book movies". This is the dream everyone wanted; comics are now accepted as an equal media format, as ripe to be humiliated and abused by asshole Hollywood producers as anything else.

The movie viewing public is sick of bad movies not super hero movies. Green Lantern caught flak not because it was a super hero movie but because it was a BAD movie. If movies are good people will go and see them super heroes or not. 

With the third Nolan Batman, the zach snyder superman and spider-man's "extreme" highschool adventures (sorry for being flippant but i don't like the sound of that reboot) I don't see comic movies falling out of favour just yet. Thor was a success (though not in Iron man levels I believe) and a bloody good film; First Class didn't interest me on teeny bit and Green Lantern... maybe it just looked too wierd for the masses to engage with.
So long as the third Batman does well I do not foresee the demise of comic movies just yet. If it makes the same amount of cash that (in my opinion) the overlong, dull and rather overrated Dark Knight did, the studios will remain in love with comic movies.

Super hero movies are a meal ticket for most of Hollywood right now, good or bad. I think this train will keep chugging for awhile but curiously, I think the comic book market will get affected far more seriously in a few years, unless some changes are made in some areas, like prices.

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the thing with superhero movies for the longest time was that the technology and budgeting just wouldn't allow for one to become anywhere near the neighborhood of successful. we had them, but other than superman and batman there weren't any that really did any kind of ok. and even those were from different eras and got stale after a while once the sequel bug dug too deep into their flesh. when x-men came out, with a fairly modest budget, decent effects for the time, and some respectable actors, every one then wanted to make a hero movie, it was proven it could be done. but then when some started getting hammered out more frequently, there was always some group disappointed, usually the true blue fans that felt like the characters weren't done justice. then some films began to totally miss the mark entirely. and some tried to make spin-offs, which they still intend to do for some god awful reason, that mucked certain characters up even more. the only ones that seem to please mostly everyone are the nolan-batman films. when iron man came out people took notice that marvel was going to start honoring their characters. maybe people didn't all get thor and i heard a lot of people harp about the bridge (fyi on this subject, complaining about the bridge in asgard is sort of like them shooting a film at your house but bitching about the driveway) but it raked in the money, got good enough reviews, and from a really cynical movie-goer, i can even say it was surprisingly good. for the remark that "Each movie has been a success but they haven't been huge box office successes." then you have to take a look at The Dark Knight which is now ranked as one of the top three highest grossing films of all time. DC has high hopes for rises and the new superman, marvel has got cap coming out and the avengers which is a move no studio has ever tried, and spider-man being rebooted could maybe blow all of us away, who knows right now. wrapping up, yeah, i know comic book movies have started to seem like they come out once a month these days, but it's all about the quality over quantity. DC needs to really focus on how to make their movies more like the batman franchise and less like the green lantern anything because that really ruined a lot of great potential. marvel needs to not go overboard during their sequels like iron man 2 which sucked, ass and dick mind you. i also, and this will never happen but i just have to say it, think they should try and take a look at some characters they think about rebooting or making a film for and ask themselves "hm, is this really something we can stretch out for over 100 minutes and actually make it not painful to watch?

Thor made $440,000,000 and Green Lantern made $240,000,000. seems like a lot of people are going to these films. sure GL may not have done the numbers they wanted, but that has more to do with the crappy looking early trailers and mediocre reviews it received. Thor did seem to get a lot more positive buzz.
 
actually planning to go see Cap, so i hope it ends up being good.

audiences aren't sick of any type of movie if it's done well with some thought behind it :)

That's the theme that seems to get lost in movie translations. So many production studios are lazily trying to market on well known characters and what we're seeing is a raping on everything you read when you grew up so it's more 'distributable' for todays 'micro-attention-span' market.

A LOT of the magic that sucked you in originally does get lost in that dilution but to them they think 100 bad movies is worth one good one and they got a LOT of characters to mess up before there's a 'new coke'.

Then you got the 101st monkey and it creates an effect ;D

audiences aren't sick of any type of movie if it's done well with some thought behind it :)

there not sick of the movies there sick of the 3D that comes with it i don't know about you but i am tired of going to a movie and paying 3 bucks extra for 3D in a movie that dose not need it  and i think the box office shows this

I'm noy sick of it  I say keep em coming. I enjoy all the action I've seen this year

Let's not forget that most of those movies above haven't been released everywhere in the world. (I'll only be able to watch GL, as good or bad as it is, in friggin' OCTOBER!!)
And haven't been released on home entertainment.
 
Nowadays, international revenues and domestic success is a lot part of movie's success.

...Never...

i honestly dont think so
 
its just another genre of movies
 
its like a gangster movie
war movie
u kno what ur gonna get
people might not want to watch it but its just another genre in my opinion
 
(+)

Basically, whether or not people will grow tired of superhero movies can be boiled down to one point. And this point is the story. The better a story you're telling, the less people will tire of it. Don't hide behind the effects and abandon this constant one-upping the previous movie, like Spidey II had to have two villains and Spidey III had to have even more. Screw this. If you pit Spidey against the Green Goblin, that is one good story. Take your time with it. Establish characters, have them do awesome things. Instead of having a subplot of Spidey fighting the Sandman (where, of course, you need time to establish Sandman), have him fight some run off the mill villains. This shows that Spidey is awesome already.
 
CGI and famous faces and nice costumes can only do so much for a story. If your story sucks, then the movie will suck. Simple as that.

I don't think the lack of a big presence by the big comic book films is a lack of commitment on Hollywoods part. As I read in another article I think it's just the studios being smart and saving money Apparently the Dark Knight didn't have a big panel the year it came out.
 
It's like you said G-Man, "Comic book readers will always cheer for and watch superhero movies" so it's kinda pointless for these big movies to waste money with ginormous props and huge cast panels just to (as the article stated) "preach to the choir".

So long as the movies are still good, I'm not tired of them. 

Thor made $440,000,000 and Green Lantern made $240,000,000. seems like a lot of people are going to these films. 

I think non-comic book readers are getting sick of these movies. Although none of my non-comic book reading friends (which actually happens to be all of them, but meh who's counting) friends have outright said anything, they have no intention to see any of the superhero movies that came out this year or coming out later this year.
 
But that could just be New Zealand, from I understand growing up here most people don't get much exposure to comic books...

there not sick of the movies there sick of the 3D that comes with it i don't know about you but i am tired of going to a movie and paying 3 bucks extra for 3D in a movie that dose not need it  and i think the box office shows this

I want them to be for fans and not family movies 

I think audiences are more sick of remakes, reboots and sequels. Comic book movies are at least offering up something we haven't seen before on the big screen. I do think the stories need to become a bit more adventurous than the tired 'hero's journey by numbers' approach films like GL seem to find necessary. Thor suffered from it too.

I don't think people will get sick of comic book movies because in reality they are the new action movies what I think people will get tired of is the quality of the movies. Every superhero movie does not need comedy in it, and if so they don't need it to be over the top humor, Green Lantern wouldn't have been half as bad if they had Ryan Reynolds play more serious,  the Transformers franchise would have been better if they would have had darker tone. I think the movie industry (when it comes to comic books) make the tone light hearted because of the kid demographic but as much killing there was in transformers 3 and the constant dark nature of the new Batman movies people still go drag there kids to go see it. Another thing why superhero movies get a bad wrap is because of critics who basically trained from birth to hate anything superhero.

I will never be tired of super hero movies.

 Superhero movies won't go away but we might be seeing less of them if they can't maintain a certain level of quality.

Every comic book movie ever has been crap. Even the ones that do well in the box office. Crap. 
 
Maybe when this fad is over Hollywood will make an original movie. 
 
And maybe I'll be elected King of all Londinium.

The last superhero film I fully enjoyed was probably Iron Man.  ...but I still watch each of the new releases, so what does it matter?

I'm not sick of them yet. The majority of the release have been quite enjoyable.

If you build it ... they will come.

I don't think the lack of a big presence by the big comic book films is a lack of commitment on Hollywoods part. As I read in another article I think it's just the studios being smart and saving money Apparently the Dark Knight didn't have a big panel the year it came out.   It's like you said G-Man, "Comic book readers will always cheer for and watch superhero movies" so it's kinda pointless for these big movies to waste money with ginormous props and huge cast panels just to (as the article stated) "preach to the choir".

i was raised at the beginning of comic movies. superman was one i LOVED, i was a child and it came on HBO and i always thought it rocked. i saw all of them. batman was the first comic film my parents bought on VHS. i knew x-men was in development when i was 10 and it took them until i was like 18 and i saw it THREE TIMES in one weekend(twice one day and once that saturday). i never missed a midnight showing of a marvel film, and it was good because they were so spaced out! i think hulk and x-men came out in the same year, but they were like 2 months apart.  
 
now i think marvel is so hell bent on making these films, they do not care. having thor come out, then cap, then the avengers, then iron man 3, then spider man, then a new ghost rider film, a possible black panther film, a new wolverine film, x-men first class 2, another captain america, thor, and a possible deadpool film? its kinda overkill. its not really making me want to see them all. heck, DC is killing them with 2 film franchises(batman and superman) and in 3 films, batman has almost made more than any of the marvel films. they need to go back to leaking em out every few years, and not annually. its becoming the "call of duty" of films!

People don't seem sick of rom-coms and they are all literally about the exact same movie...

People aren't sick of these animated kids movies and they are all the same (with the same poster)

As long as it's better quality than Batman & Robin (shudders!) and Catwoman (throwing up!) I'll still watch them and buy them on DVD!  
 
Comic and superhero based movies (and cartoons but that's a different subject) are what have gotten my 5 year old godson into comics. We watch them whenever he comes over and we play with his action figures (okay, a lot of them are mine) trying to reenact his favorite parts. He likes to look at my comics, asking questions about the characters he doesn't know. Once he's old enough, he'll be buying his own for sure.