If we had to try to read the tea leaves about the schadenfreude Supergirl has been met with, however, then the mere fact there’s so much anecdotal online pleasure in Supergirl’s disastrous launch suggests the climate in general for superhero movies has drastically changed… to the point where we very well could be heading back to a pre-Avengers, turn of the 21st century era where the only capes and cowls that succeed are the multigenerational brands most children, parents, and even grandparents recognize and have a shared fondness for: Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, and let me also underline Wonder Woman.
Indeed, despite all the troglodytes with blood in their mouth, baying at another woman-led superhero movie failing at the box office, there was a time not so long ago when the Gal Gadot-fronted Wonder Woman of 2017 opened beyond expectations with $103 million (about $141 million today). That movie went on to more than quadruple its debut in its domestic run—an extreme rarity in the modern world, especially in the superhero genre.
Admittedly, this was a different time, as perhaps demonstrated by the fact that two years later the Brie Larson-led Captain Marvel did even better when it opened to $153 million and grossed $1 billion worldwide. An argument could be made that Supergirl is a structurally and emotionally sounder movie than the heavily reedited and reshot Captain Marvel, but in the glow of Marvel Studios at the height of its popularity, and between Avengers endgame epics, that film largely got a pass much like how Ant-Man movies or Thor: The Dark World ended up with “fresh” Rotten Tomatoes scores and healthy box office runs. But that is my point. The audience perception of the genre has changed a lot in the past nine years, which is demonstrable when comparing the high interest in Captain Marvel versus its sequel The Marvels. That 2023 movie opened with an eye-watering 70 percent drop compared to Captain Marvel‘s domestic debut. In other words: before word of mouth could come predominantly into play, many audiences that turned up in 2019 decided to give the sequel a skip four years later.
I’m sure the incel community would blame it on cooties, but that hardly washes when one also considers the underperformances of Black Adam, Shazam! Fury of the Gods, Kraven the Hunter, and Captain America: Brave New World over the last five years. The first Momoa Aquaman also crossed $1 billion in 2018 and got (almost preposterously) an “A-” CinemaScore. The sequel of the bro-rific movie still opened to $28 million five years later. Meanwhile even some of the recent “successes” are relatively muted, with Marvel’s last attempt at a quirky team-up film following C-level heroes you mostly never heard of (unless you watch all the Disney+ shows), Thunderbolts*, grossing just $382 million just last summer, less than half of what the first Guardians of the Galaxy did more than a decade earlier.
The idea that superhero movies are still the safest bet in Hollywood, and that capes and cowls are king, is increasingly becoming an antiquated relic of the 2010s when Marvel’s First Family in the Fantastic Four: First Steps wasn’t able to crack $600 million worldwide last summer despite being a solid film, and even the widely well-received Superman just barely cracking that ceiling.
There is a small but vocal segment of fandom that seems eager to see the DC Universe be rebooted again after only two entries in the Gunn era. What I’m not sure is clear to those fans yet, but might be vivid this Monday in Hollywood, is that the days of shared interconnected universes where every character is a lucrative franchise are probably over. If this DCU goes down, there probably won’t be anything similar for a long, long time. If ever. Whether the culprit is oversaturation due to an excess of streaming shows and movies in the 2020s, said quality of many of those movies and most of those shows, generational turnover where Gen Z doesn’t want to like the same things their parents and grandparents do, or some combination of all of the above is almost moot.
