No, it’s mostly drop in quality.
Let me use marvel as the best example, regardless of the fact that there are many others. The marvel movies used to be something you needed to see. But of the shows and movies recently, there have been some true garbage offerings to the modern viewer: Black widow, Falcon and winter, Ms marvel, Secret invasion, Wakanda Forever, Eternals, (for some, not me) she hulk, Hawkeye… pretty much everything but Shang chi and Wandavision, have been absolute garbage. True dreck trash that had no business flying the marvel banner, and it wasn’t fatigue, regardless of what many like to say, instead they were just poorly made garbage. The writing and production on these things are barely mediocre at absolute best. Other examples are WW84, the flash, and pretty much all DC titles ever since The Dark knight (short of The Batman and Joker). All of these things are such garbage that it truly is an embarrassment to the entire genre, and makes me think more and more that the cancellation of Batgirl was actually a good thing. The only good DC in the recent times besides what I held is Aquaman (not an Original WW fan, so idk what to tell ya). None of these are fatigue, they are very clearly poorly produced products that are just pushed out for the money of it all, and not the actual art that could be made, or the adherence to the original story that could be maintained. If another phenomenal hero title comes out, then I’m there day one to see it. But if they keep offering failures at story telling, then what’s the point?
I’m sure that most of society feel like they’re feeling some fatigue of some kind, but it’s bad story fatigue whether they know it or not. The studios need to find better and more compelling stories to tell, or the public will truly convince itself that it is actual superhero fatigue and the stories will depart for decades until a nostalgia wave hits. Hopefully the studios realize this, and start putting out quality content, otherwise, those of us who are true fans, will be doomed to the same crap from the early 00’s that we had before. Yes some of it was good, but really think back to the heyday of the marvel flicks, right after the first avengers when the Thanos anticipation was truly palpable, and it seemed like marvel could do no wrong. Then think about stinkers like Dark World or Ultron, and consider how they were capable of recovering from that. Long story short, it’s the writing and production, not fatigue.
I think it has to do with how corporate and formulaic content as become.
There are fewer risks being taken, studios take what they know and refuse to learn something new.
This means that the content they produce is very generic and safe.
The rise of PG-13 killed a lot of interesting projects.
Add to that an ever evolving media market by creators, they might not be able to compete on scale yet, but it is comming.
Documentaries and video essays are really great now on youtube, I mean we have hbomberguy, wendover productions, Peter Dibble, Calum, Side Note, Barely Sociable, Map Men, Mustard, Paper Will, Retro Bytes, TheEpicNate315 and Tom Scott, just to name a few, that are producing brilliant content that in many cases is more interesting than generic post apocalyptic show 537 that just started on Netflix this week.
There are fewer risks being taken, studios take what they know and refuse to learn something new.
I used to LOVE Kdrama. Watched it exclusively for more than 10 years, mostly because it was so different than anything I could see in western media. Then it took off and Netflix got involved in production, and now it’s just the same crap just with an all-Asian cast. Kdrama is a prime example of what you’re talking about. They had a great opportunity to figure out why it was popular and learn from it. But they just can’t.
Don’t get me wrong, it was always “bad” in lots of ways, but often in ways that were easy to overlook. Because underneath the cheap production values, repetitive tropes, and outlandish framing devices, there were engaging stories about people relating to each other. (Especially around toxic masculinity. Western TV has refused to touch that since Luke raped Laura and they fell in love and got married. I wonder if we’d have as much problem with incels if we could have more realistic portrayals of what men and women put up with from each other just to get through the day. --But I digress.) They had a story arc with a definite end. Now it’s all just serial-killer murder mysteries and Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman set in Joseon.
What. Western media touches toxic masculinity regularly. Barbie and The Last Of US, One of the most successful movies and One of the most successful shows of this past year had major sub-themes about toxic masculinity.
I can’t speak to The Last of Us, but Barbie only discussed toxic masculinity at a high level, systemically, not on a personal, one-on-one level. Not in a “Her boyfriend just raped her. Does that mean he loves her or not?” sort of way. We’re all socially adept enough to sit back and say, “Of course not,” from the outside. But it’s never that easy or clear-cut from inside a relationship. THAT’s what western media won’t touch. There’s a post on the front page about a politician apologizing for joking about spiking his wife’s drink with a date-rape drug. What does that kind of relationship look like? Where is something like that explored in western media? If you can name some I’d be glad to hear it, and interested in watching.
It feels like there are two types of productions since Covid… $200m+ epic productions, or Netflix style lazy cookie cut crap. I hope one day we go full circle and resurrect some forgotten genres that just don’t get funded anymore
With the whole superhero stuff it’s also a consequence of their own success. Back in the day there weren’t many super hero movies, so we watched them even though they were campy and mediocre (batnipples come to mind).
Then they had some real bangers mixed in with trash and the whole thing took off. The Dark Knight trilogy for example and the first Iron man movie, just to name some. People have then come to expect that level of quality, while most of what they put out is mediocre and a lot of it is total trash.
Instead of working on quality they worked on quantity, riding the wave as hard as they could. But people only give it so much chances, there need to be some good movies to keep on coming back. Instead the quality declined and went back to mediocre/trash levels, but since people remember the good ones it’s not acceptable anymore.
