It’s a tale as old as time (2008) Iron man
film movie experience made super hero films kind of mainstream or whatever.
People watched them before that, and they were alright, but the momentum of
pumping them out became more of a thing at that point. This is the standard
opener of a trope that had become tired and worn out, a thing that people are
getting more and more sick off.
Superhero-fatigue fatigue. People are getting
increasingly tired of commentary about superhero fatigue and these online
articles are being pumped out at ever faster rate, so that new hot takes don’t
feel fresh or as interesting because of their sheer volume and repetitiveness, not
to mention repetitive. Every time a super hero film comes out, which is more
frequent than the tubes at peak times, it is accompanied by a super hero
fatigue commentary. With outlets commenting on whether this is the straw that
will break the camel's back in what has become a jenga of mixed metaphors, and
forced similes like trying to cut a dead whale open with a spork.
I don’t chase trends, I preempt them in order
to maximize my clicks and revenue. I’m already tired of superhero-fatigue
fatigue and have grown disillusioned with my own review despite it still going
fairly strong with a few ups and downs as is to be expected from any medium. I
think this will be the end of the genre of metacommentary, any second now,
purely because speculation and citing other think pieces is easier than saying
something new, and saying nothing simply isn’t an option.
The above paragraph isn’t even insightful, it
just explains a business that everyone already understands, but in such a
snarky way as to count as a take. The genre of superhero-fatigue fatigue-fatigue
is as tired and trite as the thing it’s attempting to comment on, mostly
because of the media ecosystem it exists in is one in the same. It’s made of
the same fundamental incentives, a form of memetic parasitism, unable to
actually kill its host but slowly sucking on its vitality. Like how a poorly tacked
on simile, can, or quite often will, ruin the pacing of a paragraph and make it
harder for the reader to remember what you even on about and re-read the dam
thing.
The first known depiction of the oroborus is
in the 14th century bce or bc for those that don’t feel the extra letter
actually does anything to separate the system from its ecclesiastical origin, (like
the rest of post enlightenment thought.) found in the tomb of king tutankhamen,
aka king tut for those that were often chided by him. In this version its about
the union of gods of life and death and the ascendency of aten or whatever and
enough exposition. It would make a really cool film, with lots of big budget
SFX and a totally forgettable sound track, and then some other schmucks will do
an adaption of the mahabharata which will lack any understanding of the SOURCE
MATERIAL… I’m not even synthesizing here. This is just a one:one graft.
Google news dates the first article about
superhero fatigue to 2013. I’m not going to go more in depth because I am
intellectually lazy. The next is in 2015, and there's a few every year with a
marked absence during covid times (wonder why?). It really kicked off big in
late 2022 and has only intensified with each new release since. With 5/7ths of
the articles listed coming from this period (there are 7 pages of results for
the term, and late 2022 onwards is page 5 to 1, that’s why i used that number,
i am very, yes!)
A fair number of the articles talk about how a
given film overcomes the fatigue, Like The Ol’Superman of freddy Nietzsche triumphing
over his own nihilism (would not make for a good adaptation unless they cast Leonardo
decaprica sun as fred and he rocked the full brush tash.) that might just be
the winning combination to overcome superhero fatigue!
Thing that is popular continues to be popular
is perhaps the driest take imaginable, so you need a supposed adversary to
generate a story: One with all the same powers as the hero but set on making their
life harder. It’s reasonable to assume a genre will have its day and eventually
move on, I’m sure no one thought cowboy films would last forever, but was there
a continual commentary of how each film overcame cowboy fatigue? I am genuinely
asking this, I have not looked it up, but my guess is no?
To foresee and preempt the downfall of this narrative
is to replicate its structure, to comment on how the superhero fatigue genre
continues in spite of its evident tiredness is to become it entirely. It’s an
ouroboros, that smacks of the reddit comment section and no amount of self-awareness
can excuse it. This article is a waste of your time and mine! Tune it out like
white noise and get on with your lives. Who cares about the streams of articles
that deserve to be written by chat bots, go read Candide: that sounds
pretentious but it’s just a lot of toilet humor and gags, it’s not a hard read
either: it’s easier to consume than this and is more fun too.
