James Gunn Understands Your Superhero Fatigue: 'People Have Gotten Lazy'

Superhero fatigue.

It's okay, I'll give you a second to dry heave. In the realm of superhero fandom, there is, perhaps, no expression that inspires bigger eye rolls lately. "Superhero fatigue" is the idea that now that superheroism is the most popular movie genre — and especially since it has been for over 20 years — audiences might be getting a little bored with it, leading to lower box office grosses and, potentially, in the most extreme hypothetical scenarios, the downfall of the genre altogether.

Genres rising and falling in popularity is nothing new. They rarely go away altogether but there are a lot of genres that used to light up the box office and get produced in droves, but which are currently produced with less frequency and less success. Westerns, slashers, gangsters ... heck, dramas about middle-aged people re-examining their lives used to be box office bonanzas in the 1970s and 1980s. But nothing lasts forever, and even enduring genres have a tendency to work in cycles, losing some steam for a while before eventually picking it back up again.

Still, "superhero fatigue" rankles us because you know what? A lot of us like superhero movies and we don't want them to go away. And one of those people is James Gunn, the director of films like "The Suicide Squad" and the "Guardians of the Galaxy" trilogy, and the new co-head of DC Universe superhero films at Warner Bros.

But in a recent interview, Gunn made some excellent points about why "superhero fatigue" feels real, and why the finger is being pointed in the wrong place. He argues that audiences aren't getting fatigued with superhero movies, at least not the good ones. It's the storytelling that's running out of steam.

In a recent appearance on the podcast "Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum", the former "Smallville" star — who worked with James Gunn multiple times in the past — asked the filmmaker point blank: "Do you think that there are too many superhero shows and movies?"

Gunn practically yelled his answer, "YES!", but although he's quick to reassure Rosenbaum's audience that they're "not going to overextend ourselves at DC" and they're "going to be very careful with the product that we put out and making sure everything is as good as it can possibly be," he does explain that there's a problem.

"I think that what's happened is, people have gotten really lazy with their superhero stories. And they have gotten to the place where, 'Oh, it's a superhero, let's make a movie about it.' And they make, 'Oh, let's make a sequel, because the first one did pretty well,'" Gunn argued. "And they aren't thinking about, 'Why is this story special? What makes this story stand apart from other stories? What is the story at the heart of it all? Why is this character important? What makes this story different that it fills a need for people in theaters to go see? Or on television?'"

Gunn went on to repeat: "People have gotten a little lazy," arguing that too often in superhero films, "I don't care about the characters." 

"And they've gotten too generic," Gunn said. "There's this sort of middle of the road type of genre tone that so many superhero movies have, as opposed to having very different genres." He added that he enjoys a variety of superhero stories, including "serious" films, "comedic" films, and even "murder [mysteries] but they're with superheroes."

"I like to see these different types of stories," Gunn said, "as opposed to seeing the same story told over and over again."

What Gunn is describing is not exhaustion, it's tedium. He didn't specify which films he was critiquing — understandably so, since the majority of superhero films are made by either the studio that just released one of his films, or the studio he now runs — but it doesn't take an investigative genius to see what he's describing in 2023.

Audiences are perfectly eager to flock to superhero movies made with passion and purpose, like "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse" or Gunn's own "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3," but many superhero films are tanking. "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania," "Shazam: Fury of the Gods," and "The Flash" weren't able to sell themselves to increasingly discriminating audiences, who may very well love superhero movies but have now seen enough of them that standards are higher than used to be. Simply being "a superhero movie" isn't a selling point anymore. Audiences want really good superhero movies that bring something new to the formula, and studios aren't necessarily offering that level of quality with every release.

"People are fatigued with repetition," Gunn argued, but he doesn't say only one genre is to blame, adding, "And I don't think it's really just superhero movies. I think you're seeing it happening now. It's spectacle films in general." 

"There's a lot of spectacle films made and they've gotten really generic, and they've gotten boring, and they aren't about characters and there's no emotion to them. And there should be emotion in things no matter what! Like, that should always be there, some type of emotion. I'm not saying it can't be really light, I'm not saying it can't be really heavy. I'm saying there should be some sort of emotion."

We'll see if Gunn can right this ship when the films he produces for DC — like "Superman Legacy" — get released in the coming years.