Superhero fatigue apparently exists, but the problem may have less to do with superheroes and more about the failure to tell a compelling story. Speaking to Rolling Stone in a new interview regarding his new film, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, which hits U.S. theaters on May 5, 2023, James Gunn touched upon the topic of superhero fatigue, telling the publication that while the problem exists, it’s the lack of an emotionally grounded story, rather than superhero characters, that is mainly to blame. Gunn suggested that today’s superhero films have too much “nonsense,” such as characters just bashing each other.
From a Rolling Article feature:
“I think there is such a thing as superhero fatigue,” Gunn says. “I think it doesn’t have anything to do with superheroes. It has to do with the kind of stories that get to be told, and if you lose your eye on the ball, which is character. We love Superman. We love Batman. We love Iron Man. Because they’re these incredible characters that we have in our hearts. And if it becomes just a bunch of nonsense onscreen, it gets really boring. But I get fatigued by most spectacle films, by the grind of not having an emotionally grounded story. It doesn’t have anything to do with whether they’re superhero movies or not. If you don’t have a story at the base of it, just watching things bash each other, no matter how clever those bashing moments are, no matter how clever the designs and the VFX are, it just gets fatiguing, and I think that’s very, very real.”