On the problem of superhero fatigue and what it reveals about genre exhaustion.

Superhero fatigue is real, but I want to resist the conclusion that the genre was ever capable of more than it delivered. The superhero film was always a genre film, and genre films exhaust audiences when the formula becomes too visible.

What's interesting about the MCU's decline is that it happened at the moment the films became self-referential. The early MCU films — Iron Man, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy — were genre films that happened to be superhero films. They had the energy of films that wanted to entertain you.

The later MCU films are superhero films that are primarily about the MCU. They assume knowledge of a canon. They're in dialogue with previous entries rather than with the audience. The energy is curatorial rather than creative.

The superhero films that have retained interest — Logan, Into the Spider-Verse, The Dark Knight — are all, in different ways, about the limits of the superhero premise. They're critical of their own genre from inside their own genre. That's the only interesting position left for the form.