Todd McFarlane Shares Thoughts on Superhero Movie Fatigue and It All Comes Down To Quality of The Film

There’s been a lot of talk regarding superhero fatigue over the years, and it seems like right now, audiences and fans are feeling a little burnt out. For me, the only reason that I’m not as excited about superhero movies these days is because the quality of the films has dropped. The writing, the story, and the special effects for most of the movies aren’t up to par with what they used to be.

During an interview with Gizmodo, Spawn creator Todd McFarlane was asked his opinion on the matter, so he shared his thoughts, and in the end, he doesn’t think there is superhero fatigue. He explains:

“I think there’s a couple of things. The quality of any film, any genre [is important]. People say ‘I can’t sell a Western movie.’ Of course, you can. You can’t sell a bad Western movie. And then your marketing. If you put it in a bad time up against 10 other movies people want to go see, it’s going to get buried, right? So you’ve got that. And then just sort of gauging whether people are in the mood for that genre more than another one. Sometimes rom-coms become sort of the flavor of the month for a while or whatever else.

“But I put superhero movies in the same category as action movies. They’re just action movies and action movies have been around forever, right? Van Damme. Schwarzenegger. Stallone. Seagal. This is just an extension of it. So, yes, at some point, if some of those action movies got cheesy and they went to the well too often, we’d move on. But then all of a sudden, you know, The Matrix comes along or some other new one and we go, ‘Oh my God, there it is.’ So somebody is going to figure it out. I mean, again, I don’t think [there’s superhero fatigue]. It’s like saying that there’s been too many baseball games played and we have baseball fatigue. No. Just give me a good team that I can root for and make it worth my money and I’ll come.”

I can see and understand what he’s saying, but superhero films are a subgenre of the action genre, and right now, that genre is definitely in a funk! Hopefully, like The Matrix, a movie comes around to break it out of that funk.

In the meantime, Mcfarlane has been trying to get his own comic book movie off the ground with Spawn, which is being produced and developed at Blumhouse. He’s had a rough go with that, but producer Jason Blum believes that one day it’ll get made.

What are your thoughts on what McFarlane had to say here?