Superhero films are pretty interesting to me. I grew up knowing about characters like Iron Man before most of my peers :P, and used to wonder about an Avengers film, knew about Batman V Superman for years, etc. So by this point, maybe I’ve got too much of what I could ask for?
Elaborating on that, I’m not too worried about how many superhero films it seems there are as since the beginning Hollywood’s always relied on profit and that’ll never change, so it’s luck that superheroes are a golden exploitative opportunity at this point. They’ve even existed since the 1930s as serials (Superman was gold then), so at least post-1978’s Superman, you can’t say it’s alien to imagine the economic potential for superhero films.
But all this exploitative potential culminated with 2012’s The Avengers, where Marvel really showed off its serial storytelling and since then you can feel these kind of films are enjoying a golden cycle.
Alas, musicals enjoyed a 1930s renaissance before “pulling back”. So did historical epics in the 1950s, disaster films in the 1970s, and so on. Therefore my prediction’s that as Warner Bros are having to cut back on their superhero slate, and Disney’s pretty certain to acquire Fox and along with that, the X-Men and Fantastic Four, these movies will still enjoy their time in the sun. But the sun will set and it’s more likely e.g MCU films will continue coming out (especially as they’ve got more and more confident), but not unlike Bond films kept coming out even after spy films had enjoyed their 1960s moment.
There you have it then. These are my thoughts, let me know what you think and if it’s all made any sense!
Mad About Movies 