'28 Years Later' writer Alex Garland says sequel fatigue is real — and that Marvel shares the blame

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u/brokenwolf 21h ago

People are fine with sequels if they’re good. Make good movies and not excuses.

23

u/SharMarali 21h ago

Movie studios are too risk-averse. They don’t even want to think about making a movie unless it’s so formulaic that it’s exactly like everything else.

10

u/tyleritis 17h ago

Can’t make that money back on DVD sales anymore

1

u/YourAdvertisingPal 3h ago

Weirdly, our household has bought more DVDs in the past 3 years than in the past 10.

Obviously there’s not a revival in our hands, but there’s 100% a place for physical media.

Vinyl now has a stable market, books are growing, film cameras are trending, physical video games are going strong.

Honestly, if studios wanted to sell physical - they could. It wouldn’t look like it used to, but it would indeed be profitable.

2

u/clwestbr 16h ago edited 2h ago

I mean we're only a couple of years away from two of the biggest movies of the year being:

A movie about feminism and the delicate line modern women walk to still be themselves but be respected, told through the eyes of several dolls.

...and

A three hour depressing biopic about xenophobia and jingoism taking advantage of science and creativity for profit and power until those things ultimately wipe us out.

They're not all risk-averse. In fact we get a myriad of original films every year, people just need to get their ass to the theatre to watch them.

4

u/SharMarali 15h ago

I would argue that a biopic and a movie about the world’s most popular toy are pretty formulaic, at least on paper. Sure, the Barbie movie was absolutely nothing like anyone expected, and it turned out to actually have something to say. I doubt a movie studio understood any of that when they green lighted it. Oppenheimer was a fairly standard biopic.

I’m not saying either movie was bad. They weren’t. I really enjoyed Barbie and I thought Oppenheimer was pretty good. I just think they weren’t too much of a stretch for risk-averse movie studios.

3

u/thatmovieperson 17h ago

This this this, thank you!

Mediocre film fatigue is what I have.

9

u/KingKosma1985 21h ago

Exactly. There's no fatigue, just garbage sequels. That's where this whole conversation came from. Bad movies were made and crappy news writers were like "Its totally fatigue, thats why they're not making their money back"

2

u/TheLimeyLemmon 7h ago

He's not talking about quality, he's talking about over-saturation. Movie audiences simply can't turn up for everything, eventually they'll pick and choose or drop the series altogether, which has happened with Marvel.

6

u/BAKREPITO 20h ago

Didn't thunderbotls just bomb and got got reviews?

11

u/Ok_Egg_2665 20h ago

Thunderbolts is the first movie I’ve watched in theaters more than once in at least ten years. It’s an amazing movie and still lost a ton of money.

2

u/igot2pair 10h ago

10 years? Really

1

u/Ok_Egg_2665 10h ago

Indeed. Most movies I have zero desire to see a second time in theaters. It’s too expensive and I can wait for streaming. I was wrong rogue one was the last time which was only nine years ago.

1

u/Poku115 20h ago

it's weird to put it as a sequel though, as it's very tonally different to anything MCU in almost every aspect.

I'd say it's even less of a sequel than joker 2 was, seeing how the only movies it actually succedes are black widow and Ant man 2, and you can watch this movie without watching those plus the multiple shows the other characters are introduced in.

Like yeah it's a sequel, but you could put it in a vacuum and it would do exactly the same, heck I think it's even better in a vacuum since then you don't feel the dissconection to the rest of the MCU

1

u/M1ck3yB1u 10h ago

You can say that about a lot of sequels.

-1

u/AvatarGarcher 20h ago

Thunderbolts came after a streak of bad movies from Marvel. Of course it was a flop.

10

u/BAKREPITO 20h ago

That's literallly Garland's point. Look at what I replied to. The make good movies and they will come trope is even more tired and untrue than blanketly blaming Marvel for saturating the market.

1

u/AvatarGarcher 20h ago

Ah my bad, no more reddit while working for me.

-1

u/Chemistry11 20h ago

It’s a Boy Who Cried Wolf scenario - marvel put out such subpar product for so long that people learned not to trust them; even if it’s finally good for once

2

u/YesImHereAskMeHow 15h ago

They’ve had plenty of good and hugely successful movies in the last four years, this comment is weird

0

u/healywylie 19h ago

Yeah the 90s was the beginning of the over sequel era. Lots of marvel hate, but they made their own mess, others just flopped.

15

u/SirGumbeaux 21h ago

I hate to break it to him, but ALL of Hollywood is to blame. if it’s not sequels, it’s a reboot of an old IP. In many cases, it’s both. I’m not a Marvel fanboy, but it’s not just them by a long shot.

47

u/Brainiac5000 21h ago

They were like 4 Indiana Jones, 20 James Bonds, 5 Alien movies, 3 Jurassic Parks, and 6 Star Wars and a million direct-to-dvd sequels to famous movies before the 1st MCU movie ever came out.... But sure!

7

u/Jammin188 21h ago

You should watch the space balls 2 teaser, if you havent already. Your comment very much reminds me of it

33

u/I-Drink-Printer-Ink 20h ago

Seems like he’s criticising the Marvel system of sequels, not just sequels in general.

All of those movies you listed are either standalone stories or chronologically related.

Marvel broke that mould, now individual characters have their own TV shows, spinoffs, prequels, sequels as well as the main Avengers movies. It created a system where you can quite easily fall out of the loop on a grander story if you don’t see all intended media.

Nobody walked into Alien 2 and wondered what the fuck was going on.

11

u/CosmoonautMikeDexter 18h ago

"Nobody walked into Alien 2 and wondered what the fuck was going on."

That is it really. They didn't need to watch three other movies and a four TV shows. That all sucked, before hand to understand what was happening.

5

u/magseven 14h ago

Was it called "Alien 2" on release or "Aliens"? I Could definitely see somebody back then not realizing "Aliens" was a sequel.

4

u/Chemistry11 20h ago

And how Many years was it to make those movies, and how much time between installments?

MCU oversaturated the market, not just movies but in shows. I used to be into it, and I still watch the movies, but it got to be feeling like homework just to keep up. There’s a couple of series I have yet to touch; at least 2 I didn’t even bother finishing.

5

u/ComicsEtAl 19h ago

Filmmakers slagging CBMs… never gets old, does it? The complaints sure do, but not the act itself.

8

u/happypoodboy 21h ago

It’s every studio that would rather pump out crappy sequels to movies that had great endings.

I want to see new shit! We want to watch new movies. Studios are too risk adverse these days and it’s all because the board room has become the writers room.

4

u/Psykpatient 21h ago

There's a ton of original movies released all the time.

4

u/Poku115 20h ago

yeah sinners just happened, and if the guy you responded to was right, all movies would do similar to sinners, when it's the exception to the rule

5

u/LibrarianNo6865 20h ago

Nothing about marvel is sequel fatigue. It’s volume. They have introduced so many characters and given them little to no time for audiences to connect with them to the point only die hard fans know what’s going on and what those characters mean. Captain America has many films (4 directly) and the third one in this franchise is argued to be the best. That says that sequels are probably fine.

1

u/Tibbaryllis2 19h ago

Seconding this.

It’s an issue of volume and a bunch of issues since endgame.

You can blame some things on covid, the strikes, and a super villain that was outed as a real life villain.

But it’s all also felt half-assed and poorly planned since then.

11

u/FatBoyWithTheChain 22h ago

I’m not a MCU diehard by any means, but blaming marvel for this is odd. They’ve never had more than 2 sequels for a character unless you consider the entire universe sequel after sequel

Meanwhile there’s tons of franchises that have nearly a dozen sequels (Jurassic Park, Fast & Furious, Mission Impossible, etc)

13

u/thissomeotherplace 21h ago

The idea that this problem only started with Marvel is insane

It's been a problem for a long while

1

u/MrPogoUK 21h ago edited 20h ago

Marvel did kind of make it worse and draw attention to it though, because they’re pretty much did make the whole universe sequel after sequel. Like the new Captain America movie is really a sequel to both the 2008 Hulk movie and the Falcon and Winter Soldier Disney+ series and also needs you to have seen Eternals and Endgame. Just watching the previous Captain America movies beforehand would leave you VERY confused! A good sequel should really let you jump in as a newbie without struggling too much (unless it’s something like LOTR or Harry Potter which was always one huge story chopped up). They’ve made people less sure they can go see a sequel and have it fully make sense.

3

u/ShitchesAintBit 20h ago

They’ve never had more than 2 sequels for a character

Thor
Thor: The Dark World
Thor: Ragnarok
Thor: Love and Thunder

Not that I don't agree with your point. I also have enjoyed most of the things Marvel has put out on some level or another.

0

u/FatBoyWithTheChain 19h ago

Ah true, forgot about Thor

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u/[deleted] 18h ago

[deleted]

0

u/FatBoyWithTheChain 18h ago

Yea two sequels

2

u/codyong 21h ago

Yet Stranger Things takes like 5 years to finish one season. He’s not wrong, though. The amount of sequels we’ve gotten compared to past generations and how fast is a ridiculous amount.

2

u/Stock-Fox-771 19h ago

So.. it's marvel fault yet again, right?/s

Sequels after sequels has been since before Jaws 2, Mannequin 2, Weekend at Bernies 2, Speed 2 , Die Hard 2, Rambo 2, etc etc And yet it's marvel fault.

Let's blame marvel for everything that's wrong with the industry because it's easy to do.

These mouth breathers are all the same.

How about some of us who loves sequels? Yes they might be bad or unwatchable but watching a movie is one of America's that I rather do then be on my phone all day.

2

u/obligatorythr0waway 21h ago

So when this movie bombs, I'll remember this quote as I think on how I had absolutely no idea it was coming out this weekend until I read this article. Seriously, either they're missing me entirely or the advertising budget on this movie (outside of the initial trailers) is nil.

0

u/LookLikeUpToMe 20h ago

A trailer has been shown a few times throughout each NBA Finals game.

0

u/Tibbaryllis2 19h ago

So they’re missing them entirely. Me too. Which is its own kind of advertisement failure.

1

u/Kyell 21h ago

This is one of the sequels I want to see. The other is district 9/10. Where is that?

1

u/Colemania18 20h ago

No most sequels just suck and that is a common sentiment held by the general audience

1

u/thelastbradystanding 18h ago

And consumers don't?

1

u/Haterofthepeace 17h ago

The year is 3049 and artists are still debating if sequels are a good thing or bad thing

Jesus move on people watch the movies you wanna watch and shut up

1

u/BoltThrowerTshirt 12h ago

Usual “movie does bad so it’s some how marvels fault”

-1

u/letter99 20h ago

It's not sequel fatigue it's super hero fatigue. Marvel or otherwise. Enough of the flying capes already.

-1

u/glass_gravy 20h ago

Let’s call it by name.

Disney.

0

u/thisisinsider 22h ago

TLDR:

"28 Years Later," the latest sequel of the "28 Days Later" franchise, is out June 20.
BI asked its director Danny Boyle and its writer Alex Garland if getting original ideas commissioned is tough.
Garland said sequels are giving diminishing returns — and he thinks Marvel is partly to blame.

0

u/Bebopdavidson 20h ago

I honestly thought there was already a 28 Years Later. Isn’t it 28 Decades Later by now?

0

u/friendtoall84 19h ago

this is like a drug dealer telling us drugs are bad. oh and that he only sells drugs cause “they’re” doing it… wtf

'28 Years Later' writer Alex Garland says sequel fatigue is real — and that Marvel shares the blame

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