Beginning with X-Men in 2000 and Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man in 2002, the superhero movie has over the last couple of decades grown to become Hollywood’s obsession. In recent years, as mid-budget movies disappeared and original blockbusters became ever rarer, studios have begun to bet the house on their extended comic book universes. All the while, commentators and some major film-makers (including, most famously,
Martin Scorsese) have bemoaned the cultural dominance of superhero franchises at the expense of most everything else. As Marvel plans its next phases into
2026 and beyond, it could almost seem as though the superhero’s on-screen golden age will never end. As James Gunn himself
admits, however, no genre remains popular forever.
The musical, the epic, the romcom – all have enjoyed their day in the sun as reliable box-office draws. Once upon a time, the western ruled. For years, western movies and TV shows were churned out with such regularity it might have seemed like the stream of cowboy content would never dry up. As the fanbase grew older, the genre simply evolved. The spaghetti western replaced the traditional “white hat” with the antihero and then, beginning with films like Sam Peckinpah’s bloodbath oater The Wild Bunch, the western entered its revisionist phase, a period of reflection which birthed some of the finest ever examples of the cowboy picture. Then the genre exhausted itself and petered out.
With The Suicide Squad, as well as TV shows like Watchmen and The Boys, it would seem the superhero genre is now in its own revisionist phase. The number of superhero projects aimed expressly at adults is growing – The Suicide Squad’s Peacemaker, for one, has his own R-rated TV spinoff coming to HBO Max next year – though it’s too early to tell if this will come at the expense of family-friendly comic book projects. (
Some commentators are already wondering whether Black Widow’s disappointing box office indicates waning interest in Marvel’s cleaner, more conventional brand of superhero story, but it’s easy to be sceptical given the
myriad factors that might have led to that film’s under-performance.)
