It’s Time For Superhero Movies To Take A Nice, Long Break — For Their Own Good
As someone who took 20 pages of notes on a documentary about the history of the Hot Gates before “300” came out — before I wrote about entertainment for a living — I don’t mind researching a film. I love that stuff, but in the case of “300,” I didn’t need to do that. I did it because I wanted to, not because it was required to watch the film. Nowadays, it’s almost impossible to understand what’s going on in these superhero stories if you don’t already have a pretty good knowledge of the MCU or the DCU.
I’ve been a fan of this stuff for most of my life, and even as someone who can tell you a lot about obscure characters, I still have to give myself a refresher course for every entry. People like my parents, who don’t have a deep knowledge of this stuff, have already given up. I used to be able to explain some things to them before a film, but it’s too much now. I’d have to give a college-level class on it, and they have, you know, lives to live.
It’s a tough line to walk for the studios. You have your hardcore fans who want you to go deep, but you’ve also got the general audience who is just tired of being forced to do schoolwork to enjoy a two-hour film. You can see it with titles like “Thor: Love and Thunder” (which I genuinely enjoyed despite its flaws) and “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” which didn’t exactly storm the box office.
