Steven Spielberg cautioned in 2013, that there was going to be a blockbuster “implosion,” that a half-dozen mega-budget movies would crater, and threaten the entire industry. A couple years later, he also warned that the superhero movie genre was a passing fad.
“We were around when the Western died and there will be a time when the superhero movie goes the way of the Western. It doesn’t mean there won’t be another occasion where the Western comes back and the superhero movie someday returns. Of course, right now the superhero movie is alive and thriving. I’m only saying that these cycles have a finite time in popular culture,” the director said in 2015. “There will come a day when the mythological stories are supplanted by some other genre that possibly some young filmmaker is just thinking about discovering for all of us.”
Well, Spielberg’s predictions certainly feel a long way off from being realized. Studios are still throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at movies, and the superhero genre is continuing to thrive. Certainly, Marvel‘s Kevin Feige isn’t breaking a sweat and as always, he says that as long as the movies are good and compelling, the superhero genre will be just fine.
“For years, predating the history of Marvel Studios itself, people asked me about superhero fatigue and if it was a fad or a phase. I say, if they’re all different, if they’re all special, nobody will get tired of these things before we at Marvel Studios will, since we live and breathe these things 24 hours a day,” he told Vulture. “You make films like ‘Thor: Ragnarok,’ like [‘Spider-Man:] Homecoming,’ like ‘Guardians of the Galaxy,’ certainly like [‘Black] Panther,’ and the upcoming ‘Infinity War‘ to keep it interesting and change it up. And we will continue to do that.”
With “Black Panther” tracking for a massive, $150 million opening weekend, I think it’s safe to say that Kevin Feige is onto something….