2022 was the year that superhero movies finally seemed to falter at the box office compared to other genres. In fact, not only did superheroes underperform compared to studio expectations but they were also a lot sparser in their release. While some movies did wow critics and audiences, they were few and far between in the genre.

Thanks to a multitude of reasons there were fewer releases in 2022, especially from DC which could have contributed to the superhero cinema scape of 2022. What went wrong for the superpowered screen stealers this year, and how do they compare to previous years’ releases?

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2022 started strong with the Matt Reeves-directed The Batman starring Robert Pattinson as the titular vigilante. Praised for its neo-noir storytelling and gloomy atmosphere. After multiple delays due to Covid-19 and a budget of around $200 million, the film grossed $700 million at the box office and gained praise from critics and fans alike.

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Bookending 2022 was the release of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. The follow-up to Black Panther is Ryan Cooglers’ love letter to Chadwick Boseman and a powerful meditation on grief as well as a superhero movie. With a budget of $250 million, the film has grossed $832 million at the box office and has been hailed for its handling of Boseman’s passing and translating that grief onto the screen.

The rest of the superhero stories from the year ran the gamut from the middle of the road to laughably bad meme fodder. Films such as Doctor Strange in The Multiverse of Madness and Thor: Love and Thunder were by no means box office failures but they did considerably underperform compared to previous Marvel movies and the studios’ expectations. Thor: Love and Thunder was a particular disappointment for the studio as the fourth installment in the Thor franchise. The film was still one of the top ten highest-grossing of the year but it was still critically panned and labeled the worst entry in the series for the God of Thunder, and maybe Chris Hemsworth's last.

Then there was the spectacular box office bomb that was Morbius. The inaugural big-screen outing of Marvel’s Living Vampire, Dr. Michael Morbius was much hyped, with expectations of a potential full-fledged Marvel horror movie only driving the anticipation. Jared Leto and Matt Smith starred in the much-ridiculed film about a man with a rare non-specific blood disease whose experiments with bats lead him to receive superhuman vampire powers as well as their lust for blood.

A truly terrible script coupled with an extremely tepid performance from Leto led to one of the most derided films that Marvel has ever released. Morbius became peak meme material, which the studio mistook for a cult following after its initial lackluster performance. The movie was re-released in cinemas to a huge failure.

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Then DC finally released Black Adam, a film in development for almost a decade before finally being made. Dwayne Johnson had been attached to the project from the beginning and had been a champion of the character the entire way through the process. Then in 2022, Warner Bros. went through a huge upheaval. A new CEO was elected, and many, many projects were canceled including those that were almost completed. The entire slate of DC movies was shuffled around again and the perpetual controversy surrounding Ezra Miller and The Flash and to top it off Black Adam opened to virtual indifference and poor box office results, almost certainly killing this iteration of the property for the immediate future.

In the end, 2022 was the year of horror at the box office. Films like Barbarian, The Black Phone, Smile, Nope, and X dominated the box office and the conversations. After the pandemic and the collective societal trauma, people were craving more cathartic stories and just deeper narratives on the whole that the perpetual super-cycle has been providing. Couple this need with generally weaker offerings from both DC and Marvel and it was inevitable that the superhero genre would be toppled.

Examining previous cinematic trends, cyclical trends can be seen and it may just be time for the superhero era to take a smaller slice of the limelight. In the early to mid-90s disaster movies like Twister and Volcano were the big business for the box office and gradually fell out of favor to be replaced by the Judd Apatow style of comedies like 40 Year Old Virgin, Anchorman, and Superbad that dominated the early 2000s.

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Of course, some genres have dissipated considerably, Westerns especially have become a dying genre on the big screen. However, it may be time for a revival with the overwhelming popularity of the Yellowstone television series. War films have also seen a huge decline in the last few decades but have been slowly coming back as hybrid films coupled with the horror genre.

It's difficult to predict exactly how box office trends will lean in the next few years. There have been a lot of upheavals behind the scenes in the industry as well as in the world at large that will undoubtedly affect what audiences flock to. Taking into account the fast-tracked rise of streaming services over the last few years and it muddies the waters even further. With many platforms creating their own content like Hulu’s Prey that become critical and audience darlings, it's truly hard to pin down what will be a hit with viewers. Superheroes aren’t going to be leaving our screens anytime soon, but they may have to settle for sharing the spotlight and the box office spoils.

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