There is an obvious irony surrounding superhero fatigue when we remember their defeat by Thanos and his line calmly explaining that their (and humans’) death was inevitable. The metaphor is too perfect to ignore when it comes to the entertainment industry. And it seems that – in the wave of reality is the new fiction – we were experiencing firsthand what was on the screen. It is not?

Let’s see, Hollywood was being “saved” by superhero franchises that were booming at the box office, selling dolls, costumes, books, and comic books, and moving fans to the four corners of the planet. They multiplied and we had a six-phase plan, covering decades. Unbeatable, even with directors and actors more focused on Art complaining.

And then came the blip, or rather, the pandemic. In the snap of a finger, people isolated themselves, suffered, and reinvented themselves. Consumption of studio platforms was stratospheric given the emptiness and impossibility of circulation. The world was definitely one of the heroes. Until, in another apparent snap of a finger, everything changed. We are in the wave of what they call “fatigue” with the topic and fingers are now pointing in all directions: is it inevitable?

Are we tired or do we change?

The numbers don’t lie, heroes aren’t profitable, or rather, not as much as before, and in Hollywood, in general, it’s all or nothing. The reactors who were outside celebrating “the end”, the fans have no time to spend existential evaluation and the creators are trying to understand what happened. Today the discussion – at Variety – brings together the director brothers Joe and Anthony Russo, until yesterday the “heroes” of the golden age, today defenders of the recent past. “We’re in a period of transition and people still don’t know how they’re going to receive stories going forward or what kind of stories they’re going to want,” Joe Russo told the magazine.

And that’s it, the “waves” that dominate consumption always demand the pioneers, generate a lot of return for those who follow, and then remain in the wake of those who entered too late. Superheroes have impacted films for no less than 20 years, delivering artistic quality, innovation, and fun. Yes, I repeat: artistic quality. There are interesting themes, good interpretations, and innovations amid the expected clichés. Who can ignore WandaVision and the first few seasons of Loki?

This “fatigue” is far from what we could call failure. As Forbes even mentions, we are talking about almost two billion dollars when you combine the box office receipts of the two best performances in 2023, with one of almost half a billion precisely with the film that “went wrong”. The only one that everyone admits was bad and bad is The Marvels, but I don’t even like to enter the field because most of what is alleged “against” the film is either xenophobic, homophobic, or misogynistic, when it doesn’t combine the three.

No, as we know there is the meme, Thanos was right, we often prove his theory that we don’t deserve what we have on Earth. Hence our “heroes” took the field to contextualize the moment. Yes, we are transitioning to the new wave, whatever it may be. It is, sorry, inevitable.

Just look back and see how the genres that “succeeded” maintained their hegemony for the studios: the biblical films of the 1950s, the catastrophe cinema of the 1970s, the galactic sci-fi of the 1980s, and at the end of the 1990s, our superheroes. Trilogies were all the rage for a while, now they are “franchises” that kidnap us into a certain universe where we are bombarded with peripheral content. Just choose.

The fact is that both true crime and biographies, which have always pleased, are still at their peak, but they will also eventually be replaced by something, and whether with the help of the algorithm or the induction of numbers, the crystal ball has not yet determined “what come around.” And that’s what Joe Russo comments in the Variety interview.

He and his brother signed Marvel’s biggest box office hits and guarantee that the genre hasn’t gotten tired. What we are witnessing is evolution.

“There’s a big generational divide in how you consume media,” he said. “There is a generation that is used to going to the cinema on a certain date to see something, but that is getting old. Meanwhile, the new generation says, “I want it now,” and then moves on to the next thing, which it processes while doing two other things at the same time. And so I think everyone, including Marvel, is experiencing this transition. And I think that’s probably what’s at stake, more than anything else,” he commented.

Where memes and gifs account for the result

One of the most vexing challenges facing major studios and platforms is the lack of control over how their material will survive once it hits the market. Yes, there is a way to “influence” YouTubers and Tiktokers who are “influencers” to direct what you want, but, effectively, until memes and gifs emerge and gain a

Life on a global social network is not success. And they are spontaneous, the only thing you can pray for is that they will proliferate like Gremlins if they are fed and watered.

If there is one thing that today’s youth challenges previous generations, it is precisely their resistance to everything that is obviously conducted. It’s their control. Ever. And that’s what Joe Russo also comments on: everything is 100 characters or less – or 10-second videos on the social media you browse,” he says. And it’s true: with chronic attention deficit, everything has to be communicated in two sentences or words and be ironic. There is no way to combat binary culture with inaccurate answers.

This impacts the format as well. Filmmakers who focus on Art are unable to deliver films shorter than 2h30, and, in general, have insisted on three hours. Succeeding with this arrogance is not ruled out, even with the argument that if you have quality, people respond. The question is: does it need to be that long or that short?

“I think that the two-hour format, the structure necessary to make a film, is more than a century old and everything always changes. So something is happening again and this form is repetitive. But it’s hard to reinvent that form and I think this next generation is looking for ways to tell their own stories that serve their own kind of collective ADHD,” comments the director.

Of course, the Russo brothers dare not suggest that they have the new formula in hand. Nobody has. Maybe Thanos?