Academy Award winner Jodie Foster is sharing her thoughts on the recent boom of superhero media. In a recent interview with Elle, called the influx of superhero movies “a phase that’s lasted a little too long,” arguing that she hopes the industry will leave room for different kinds of movies to be made. That being said, she did cite a few examples that emotionally connected with her, including the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Iron Man and Black Panther.
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“It’s a phase. It’s a phase that’s lasted a little too long for me, but it’s a phase, and I’ve seen so many different phases,” Foster explained. “Hopefully people will be sick of it soon. The good ones — like Iron Man, Black Panther, The Matrix — I marvel at those movies, and I’m swept up in the entertainment of it, but that’s not why I became an actor. And those movies don’t change my life. Hopefully there’ll be room for everything else.”
What Has Jodie Foster Said About Superhero Movies?
This is the second time that Foster has made headlines for her comments on the superhero boom, arguing in a 2017 interview that she would only join that sphere if it was a project with a “really complex psychology.” Otherwise, she argued that the landscape of superhero adaptations is ruining the viewing habits of general audiences, even if they don’t know it yet.
“Going to the movies has become like a theme park,” Foster explained at the time. “Studios making bad content in order to appeal to the masses and shareholders is like fracking — you get the best return right now but you wreck the earth. It’s ruining the viewing habits of the American population and then ultimately the rest of the world. I don’t want to make $200 million movies about superheroes.”
Is There Superhero Fatigue?
In recent years, and especially in 2023, there has been a lot of talk about whether or not the superhero landscape has reached its glut, especially as the quality of franchises like the MCU and the DC Extended Universe has begun to vary wildly. Even James Gunn, who is currently co-leading the newly-minted DC Studios, has argued that there are “too many” superhero movies without a meaningful emotional center.
“I think there is such a thing as superhero fatigue,” Gunn shared with Rolling Stone. “I think it doesn’t have anything to do with superheroes. It has to do with the kind of stories that get to be told, and if you lose your eye on the ball, which is character. We love Superman. We love Batman. We love Iron Man. Because they’re these incredible characters that we have in our hearts. And if it becomes just a bunch of nonsense onscreen, it gets really boring. But I get fatigued by most spectacle films, by the grind of not having an emotionally grounded story. It doesn’t have anything to do with whether they’re superhero movies or not. If you don’t have a story at the base of it, just watching things bash each other, no matter how clever those bashing moments are, no matter how clever the designs and the VFX are, it just gets fatiguing, and I think that’s very, very real.”
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