Despite the fresh start Superman gave to James Gunn’s DCU, Supergirl is currently tanking at the box office. With a paltry $38 million domestic opening, critics and audiences alike are rightfully blaming its uneven script, underbaked villain, and the utterly perplexing needle-drop at the climax. Unfortunately, some are also pointing fingers at the amorphous concept of “superhero fatigue,” the idea that people are simply tired of movies featuring spandex-clad crimefighters.
Except, there is no such thing as superhero fatigue. The whole idea of superhero fatigue is just an audience-blaming scapegoat used to explain away the poor performance of bad movies, and the post-pandemic history of superhero movies proves it.
The most basic definition of superhero fatigue is a general sense that, after so many superhero movies from 2000 until today, people are just tired of them in general. While there was some rumblings of “superhero fatigue” before the pandemic, according to Google Trends, a tool which tracks a phrase’s popularity in online search, the idea doesn’t really take hold until after the pandemic, particularly in 2022.
In 2022, the five big superhero movies were Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, The Batman, Thor: Love and Thunder, and Black Adam. Three of those movies — Multiverse of Madness, Love and Thunder, and Black Adam — received poor to middling reviews and were widely considered to suffer from superhero fatigue. Meanwhile, Wakanda Forever and The Batman were viewed as “the answer to superhero fatigue.” But Multiverse of Madness made more money than the other four and, despite struggling critically, it did better than the first Doctor Strange, even if you adjust for inflation.
In other words, at least for 2022, the criteria for which movies are victims of superhero fatigue and which ones aren’t is seemingly random. If anything, it’s more of a reflection of critical response than box office success, but superhero fatigue is supposed to account for the general public’s tiring of superheroes, not critics.
In 2023, the big superhero movies were Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, and The Marvels. All of these (except for Across the Spider-Verse) were accused of suffering from superhero fatigue. This is despite the fact that Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 made more money than Across the Spider-Verse and that Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 did pretty much exactly the same as Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. Adjusted for inflation, it did a little bit worse, but not by so much that it makes any sense to accuse it of falling victim to superhero fatigue.
The Marvels is a special case, which I’ll get back to in a minute, but Quantumania and Lost Kingdom are widely regarded as bad movies, which explains their underperformance. Once again, the label of superhero fatigue is primarily thrown at movies that are bad in an effort to blame the audience for their poor performance, whereas the real culprit is the quality of the films. As others, including James Gunn, have said before, it’s not superhero fatigue, it’s bad movie fatigue.
The Marvels is a bit different. It wasn’t quite as panned by critics as Quantumania and Lost Kingdom, but there were other things going against this movie. For one, while I don’t think superhero fatigue is a thing, the culture wars definitely are, and the misogynistic hatred thrown at Brie Larson undeniably affected the size of the audience. This likely also affected Supergirl, to a degree, with the utterly disgusting discourse around Milly Alcock’s looks.
Besides that, The Marvels suffered because two of the three leads were from Marvel TV shows, which gave the impression that the movie required “homework” to understand. The truth is, after Avengers: Endgame, Marvel ramped up its operations to put content on Disney Plus as part of a larger corporate strategy. Even Kevin Feige admits this took the studio’s attention away from the movies, leading to a “quantity over quality” approach with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Suddenly, Marvel’s batting average for making good movies went from about a 90 percent success rate down to about 50/50. That may have led to a degree of caution that people have when going to see Marvel movies now, but that caution doesn’t equal overall superhero fatigue.
Let’s compare Marvel to the competition. Throughout the 2010s, DC had a 50/50 batting average with various flops and successes. The same is true of Sony’s superhero movies during that time (though its batting average is even worse than DC’s). Nobody blamed superhero fatigue at the time. We all just understood that audiences weren’t willing to shell out mediocre movies.
The problem isn’t superhero fatigue. The problem is that Marvel, which has dominated the superhero film marketplace, has become less reliable. If superhero fatigue does exist, it’s not so much superhero fatigue as it is a new degree of caution when it comes to Marvel movies, as the name “Marvel” doesn’t represent the same seal of approval it used to.
It’s also worth pointing out that so-called superhero fatigue would not explain a more general downturn in theater attendance since the pandemic, which changed the movie-viewing habits for many people. From 2009 until 2019, Hollywood made over $10 billion at the box office each year, but this hasn’t happened since the pandemic. This may be changing. Just a few days ago, CNBC reported that 2026 may be Hollywood’s first $10 billion year since 2019.
The best case study in favor of superhero fatigue actually existing comes with the two biggest superhero movies of 2025, Superman ($618 million) and The Fantastic Four: First Steps ($521 million). Both enjoyed good reviews, but their respective hauls, even if they were more than half a billion each, fell short of the heyday of the late 2010s. Again, “superhero fatigue” was assigned to them without taking into account the significant baggage that both brands carry. Superman is still affected by a decade of often-bad DC movies, and First Steps was a bit of a hard sell given both the flopping of the last two Fantastic Four franchises and Marvel’s current quality control issues.
If general superhero fatigue really were a thing, it wouldn’t just be affecting bad movies or movies with significant baggage. It would affect all superhero movies regardless of quality. You wouldn’t have exceptions like Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, The Batman and especially 2024’s Deadpool & Wolverine, which pulled in $1.3 billion. Spider-Man: Brand New Day is currently expected to bring in more than $200 million on its opening weekend, which is huge and completely contrary to the idea that people just aren’t that into superheroes anymore. Studios just need to make good superhero movies and people will come in droves, just like they did in the 2010s. And if Hollywood makes another bad movie, it needs to stop blaming poor performance on superhero fatigue, which is just another way of them blaming the audience for missteps and miscalculations by studio executives.
