Even though Marvel Studios is currently having success on the small screen X Men ’97 Light fans every week on Disney+, it’s not undiplomatic to say at this point that its star did it something faded when it comes to its big-screen tentpole releases. Is it the output itself that lacks a strong, cohesive thread compared to the Infinity Saga? Is it just there? so much of it now, between film and television, that just understanding one story to the next feels like homework? Is it the specter of “superhero fatigue” becoming a reality?
No, say Joe and Anthony Russo. It’s these kids with their attention spans, damn it.
“There’s a big generational difference in the way you consume media,” Joe Russo said recently GamesRadar about Marvel’s waning control over the pop culture giant it once had with the release of Avengers: Endgame. “There is a generation that is used to making an appointment and going to the theater on a certain date to see something, but they are aging. Meanwhile, the new generation says, “I want it now, I want to process it now,” and then moves on to the next thing to process while doing two other things at the same time. You know, it’s a very different moment than ever before. And that’s why I think everyone, including Marvel, is experiencing the same thing, this transition. And I think that’s probably what’s at play more than anything else.”
“I think that the two-hour format, the structure that underlies a film, is now over a century old and everything is constantly changing,” Russo continued. “So something happens again and this form repeats itself. But it’s hard to reinvent that form, and I think this next generation is looking for ways to tell their own stories that serve their own kind of collective ADHD.”
“The question of superhero fatigue existed long before the work we did,” Anthony Russo added, rejecting the idea that there was a fatigue for superhero fiction. “So it’s kind of a perennial complaint, just like we used to quote when we first started working with superheroes. People used to complain about Westerns the same way, but that went on for decades and decades and decades. They have been reinvented over time and taken to new levels.”
At least that last part is true — people have been talking about the death of the superhero boom for almost as long as the superhero boom has been, well, booming. But it’s absolutely crazy to suggest that Marvel’s recent box office and critical reviews have anything to do with a young generation of media consumers being out of their mind confused by Tiktok and the same. One of the biggest shows on Disney+ right now is X Men ’97, a superhero story that leverages decades of comic book hooks and characters to tell a story about Marvel’s mutants that honors both decades of animation and decades of comics beyond that. It doesn’t work because it’s a weekly half-hour animated show, even though Joe Russo wants to blame it on “collective ADHD.” It works because It is a really well made TV show.
There are Soap opera dramathere are excellent, occasionally frightening actionthere is a hug from them Generations of stories and heroes and villains in the source material. People never tire of it because the X-Men wear spandex and have superpowers. They tune in every week because it delivers consistently good results. Apparently a bold concept for some!
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