Gen V was renewed because superhero fatigue isn’t a problem at Prime Video
Between The Boys and Invincible, Prime Video’s less is more approach appears to be paying off
Aux News Gen V
Prime Video renewed its Boys spin-off for season two today, bringing another victory to the streaming giant’s superhero efforts. Gen V may not be as rapturously received as its predecessors, The Boys and the animated series Invincible, it is currently the top show on Prime and one of the biggest on streaming. As a result, Marvel is currently eating Prime Video’s lunch.
After launching The Boys in 2019, Prime Video has avoided going full-bore into the genre. There have been three eight-episode seasons of The Boys and one eight-episode season of Invincible, with one special over the summer and a second season coming next month. Meanwhile, Marvel, deep in Phase Flop, released six new series, many featuring A-list characters and stars, with diminishing returns.
This year has easily been Marvel Studio’s worst-performing year on TV, something its parent company acknowledged. Kevin Feige’s superhero universe has slowed since the divisive She-Hulk dropped last year. In June, Marvel released Secret Invasion, a series that took years to set up and stars one of the studio’s most important assets: Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury. It is among the worst, if not the worst, received series in the company’s history. Loki’s second season, which we assumed would help restore some of the luster to the brand’s television arm, has failed to become the culture-dominating conversation starter its initial season proved to be.
Earlier this year, James Gunn told Rolling Stone that he believed superhero fatigue was real but “doesn’t have anything to do with superheroes.” His point is that superheroes lose audiences when the story becomes solely about the multi-pronged universe that constantly needs feeding to fill schedules and release dates, it becomes less about character. Quantity increases to the detriment of quality.
Prime Video has found new ways of creating superhero stories that have less to do with the universe at large and more to do with finding original ways into character. This includes meaningfully changing genres and styles, which provides for trying things like adult animation and satire. The Boys isn’t beholden to a universe of entries, nor is Gen V. To wit, audiences don’t need to spend more than a hundred hours of homework to watch an episode of television designed to give them some respite from the horrors of the world. The pressure to understand everything has become a barrier to entry that some would rather not deal with. Right now, what audiences want isn’t a universe, but a character they can connect with, think about, or disagree with. Maybe that’s more entertaining than slowly watching a universe expand.
Gen V is available to stream now on Prime Video.
13 Comments
What is this hundred hours of homework bullshit? It’s simple shit children can follow. You don’t need to catch every reference, you just go along for the ride. If you’re into it, there’s more to explore. If you’re not, shrug.
imo it’s less about confusion and more about how the increased interconnectivity and pressure to introduce unrelated characters and plots results in movies/shows that aren’t very enjoyable as stand-alone pieces of entertainment.
…Isn’t this a spinoff of another show set in the same universe? But it’s succeeding because people…don’t like universes? And Loki isn’t doing well based on…? And The Boys/Gen V are doing better based on…?Ah, the AV Club. Calling Scorsese irrelevant because of Marvel, then saying Marvel is irrelevant because of Gen V. Anything for a click on a dying website.
And it turns out, by the rules of rock-paper-scissors, Gen V is irrelevant because of Scorsese.
It’s just following what happens with comics. The comics for Invincible and The Boys were reactions to the late 90s-early 00s mainstream comics, just as the shows are reactions to the glut of comics movies and shows of the late 10s. What helps with The Boys is that Kripke is good at toning down some of Ennis’s worst aspects (though the show does need to speed up a bit). Invincible works because Goldberg and Hill seem to genuinely love comics and appeared to have learned lessons with Preacher, as well as Kirkman being involved and not a weirdo like Ennis is.In the end they’re both cynical takes on superherodom that people wanted. Being that, they need to hurry up and stick the landing before sentiment changes again.
While I didn’t love everything about the two seasons of The Boys I saw, I did like how they toned down some of the Ennis~isms.Sometimes he’s great, and sometimes it feels like he’s trying to win a “Write Bad Garth Ennis” contest.
Well, so far I’ve been liking this show more than I did The Boys season 1, if only because not everybody in this show is a complete asshole.
We can keep saying superhero fatigue, but the actual box office doesn’t reflect that. Right now for the domestic box office the following superhero movies are in the Top 10:#3: Across the Spiderverse
#4: Guardians 3
#8: Ant-Man 3Meanwhile, Loki Season 2 is the second most streamed Disney+ premiere in its first 3-days of release. I wouldn’t even blame the DC flops on superhero fatigue so much as DC being a mess. So really this just reinforces the situation people aren’t going to movie theaters in the vast numbers they did pre-Covid. Stuff you can watch in your house is performing better.
I would agree but marvel movies have been terrible lately too
Maybe so, but claiming fatigue when the superhero share of the box office pie is the largest is misleading at best.
It’s difficult to say whether anyone competing with Marvel is dealing with “superhero fatigue” or not, simply because The Mouse Media Machine is backing Marvel. That has an outsized effect on all of their films’ statistics.
Hopefully they recast Andre and fire the incel next season.
“As a result, Marvel is currently eating Prime Video’s lunch.”You mean that Prime Video is eating Marvel’s lunch. In that idiom, the lunch-eater is the one succeeding over their rival, which is what the rest of the article argues Prime Video is doing.Maybe you meant Marvel is eating shit?