Quality, not quantity, rules the superhero game

In 2025, the big studios are rolling up their sleeves to tackle a disease plaguing the box office – superhero fatigue.

- John Lui

Following the underwhelming reception of 2024 movies like Kraven The Hunter, Joker: Folie A Deux and Madam Web, as well as 2023's The Marvels, studios hope to arrest the slide by diversifying storytelling styles, favouring quality over quantity and digging deeper into characters' psyches.

One of the first films to put a more complex spin on a familiar hero comes from Marvel Studios.

Coming on Feb 13 is Captain America: Brave New World, marking American actor Anthony Mackie's first movie outing as the titular hero.

If the new Superman marks a return to the traditional format, the new Sam Wilson/Captain America marks a modernisation.

From 2011 to 2019, American actor Chris Evans played Steve Rogers/Captain America as a refugee from the past, a man who believed in the absolutes of right and wrong and in the supremacy of the founding principles of the United States.

As the new Captain America, Wilson is more willing to see other points of view because, unlike Rogers, he is a product of the modern age.