Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller Opened Up About “Superhero Fatigue” in a Rolling Stone interview released days after her superhero film scored the eighth-best opening weekend ever for an animated film at the box office.
“Superhero fatigue” is a term that’s been around for a long time a sparking debate recently and refers to the audience’s feelings about the loudness of superhero movies. The Oscar-winning filmmaking duo opened up about their “secret” about dodging the concept.
“I don’t think it’s superhero fatigue, I think it’s ‘a movie that feels like a movie I’ve seen a dozen times’ tiredness,” Miller said. “If you use the same story structure, style, tone and mood as the previous films and series, it doesn’t matter what genre it is. It will be boring for people.”
Lord added that even in a movie, audiences can’t be “provided with Easter eggs and revelations.”
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“Or even those big, crazy multiverse missions. They only care about the relationship between Rocket Raccoon and Groot. And that’s why this story is so ingrained in parents and children. And Miles and his family,” Lord said, referring to lead character Miles Morales in her latest Spider-Man movie.
Across the Spider-Verse, a sequel to the 2019 Academy Award-winning Best Animated Feature, has not strayed far from its predecessor in terms of critic reviews with the status “certified fresh”. on Rotten Tomatoes.
The film grossed $120.5 million in its opening weekend, marking the second-largest opening weekend of the year. Polygon reported.
The duo’s comments come after James Gunn, co-chairman and co-CEO of DC Studios along with Peter Safran, acknowledged the possibility of superhero fatigue in an April interview with Rolling Stone.
“I don’t think it has anything to do with superheroes. It has to do with the type of stories being told and losing sight of the ball, which is the character. We love Superman. We love Batman. We love Iron Man. Because it’s those incredible characters that we hold in our hearts,” Gunn explained. “And when it’s just a bunch of nonsense on screen, it gets really boring.”
He added that he tires of “most spectacle films” and the “stress” of a story that isn’t based on emotion.
“It has nothing to do with whether or not these are superhero movies,” Gunn said.
“When you don’t have an underlying storyline, just watching things bash each other, no matter how clever those bash moments are, no matter how clever the designs and the visual effects are, it just gets tiring, and I think it is a lot , very real.”
