‘Guardians’ hope to save the universe from superhero fatigue

Absent a Spider-Man or an “Endgame,” superhero movies don’t necessarily dominate the box office anymore.

COVID obviously disrupted all movies, including the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), where (most) of their 2020 and 2021 movies finished in theaters with a fraction of pre-pandemic grosses.

Last year, the MCU seemingly regained its foothold at the box office, riding the post-New Year’s success of December 2021’s megahit “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” as well as new titles that included “Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness,” “Thor: Love & Thunder” and “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”

Then, in February of this year, “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” cratered in its second weekend after an otherwise solid opening weekend. It has since become one of the MCU’s worst box office performers compared to its outsized budget.

Across town in DC land, well, it’s been much worse for much longer, but their last two movies, “Black Adam” and “Shazam! Fury of the Gods” have been borderline disastrous, with both suffering humungous second weekend drops at the box office after just so-so debuts. A full-on reboot of the DC movie-verse is now in the works, with June’s “The Flash” and December’s “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” operating as pseudo-bridges to the new material.

When fatigue sets in, oversaturation tends to be the culprit. For Marvel, too many titles combined with an unfocused overall narrative has resulted in almost every post “Avengers: Endgame” seem… inessential. It certainly didn’t help that, in an effort to boost subscription numbers for the Disney Plus streaming service, Marvel committed to multiple small-screen miniseries — “WandaVision,” “Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” “Loki,” “Moon Knight,” “Hawkeye,” “She-Hulk,” “What If?” and “Ms. Marvel.” Add in all the MCU movies and it’s no surprise that even the biggest superhero fans battled superhero exhaustion.

Marvel now also faces something the folks over at DC know all too well: Audiences will revolt if you give them too much mediocre content. While “Quantumania” certainly deserved its individual criticism, it also became emblematic of the rudderless direction of the MCU since “Avengers: Endgame.” “Quantumania” featured all the MCU’s post-“Endgame” criticism in one two-hour runtime: Bloated-but-generic adventures, mediocre action, lousy special effects and little in the way of a compelling, interconnected story.

As generic as “Quantumania” feels, Marvel hasn’t exactly been playing it safe. Tasking “Nomadland” director Chloe Zhao with the dense and convoluted world of “Eternals” could’ve been a creative flex on the level of the Best Picture nominated “Black Panther.” But it’d been difficult, if not impossible, for any director to balance out the insane number of previously unseen characters who appear in that less-popular strand of the Marvel Universe.

Another Oscar winner, Taika Waititi, returned to Marvel to make “Thor: Love & Thunder” after fans dug his work with “Thor: Ragnarök.” However, “Love & Thunder” struggled with its own identity and relied too much on retreading the “Ragnarök” formula.

“Wakanda Forever,” meanwhile, had to deal with the devastating loss of its lead, Chadwick Boseman. Director Ryan Coogler gave King T’Challa an emotional sendoff, but the movie worked less when forced to lay the groundwork of future MCU installments that don’t have much to do with the world of Wakanda.

Doesn’t it seem like the perfect time for Marvel to bring out a guaranteed winner? Enter “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” a trilogy capper written and directed by James Gunn (who will next be the creative architect of the next slate of DC movies).

The original “Guardians” in 2014 became a surprise hit, riding great reviews and stellar word of mouth. “Vol. 2” earned more strong reviews and killer box office, and the likes of Star-Lord, Gamora, Rocket Raccoon, Drax and Groot became important cogs in “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Avengers: Endgame.” The Guardians even delivered a fun, even heartwarming Christmas special last year (with a Kevin Bacon appearance to boot), albeit within the safe streaming haven of Disney Plus.

The advance reviews for “Vol. 3” are decent, if not spectacular, with a solid score of 68 on Metacritic as of this writing (also a 78% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes). It will certainly make money, but, given the recent box office failures of other superheroes, it will be interesting to see if it can overcome the signs of fatigue across the genre.

June will bring a likely guaranteed blockbuster in the form of “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” the highly anticipated sequel to the Oscar-winning animated feature from 2018. To put it simply: “Spider-Man” rarely misses. “The Flash,” meanwhile hopes to attract audiences by also offering multiple versions of popular characters, including the return of Michael Keaton’s Batman.

If all these titles somehow underperform, look for studios to take drastic measures… either by drastically reducing the output of expensive superhero movies, or by offering Robert Downey Jr. some absurd amount of money to return as Iron Man.

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Tyler Wilson is a member of the International Press Academy and has been writing about movies for Inland Northwest publications since 2000, including a regular column in The Press since 2006. He can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com.