Are tales of your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man ‘fatigue-proof’?
Movie franchises face the risk of fatiguing audiences with oversaturated sequels and unoriginal ideas. Experts explain why Spider-Man seems to defy the odds.
Even before it swung back onto the big screen, the latest story about Spider-Man was set to recoup the money that Sony Pictures spent on it – and then some.
“Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” which opened Thursday, was expected to rake in $470 million at the global box office, more than double what the studio spent to make the film. The figure was reportedly set to be Sony’s second-best global opening, behind the previous film in the series, 2021’s “Spider-Man: No Way Home.”
The early popularity of this standalone film, the fourth in the franchise starring Tom Holland as the title hero, comes at a time when fans of some franchises — including others within the Marvel Cinematic Universe that Spider-Man belongs to — are experiencing what some have called “franchise fatigue.” It’s a feeling that refers to the lack of excitement that can come when once-favorite stories have too many sequels and not enough originality.
But this fatigue doesn’t seem to be sticking to the friendly neighborhood superhero. The character spans generations, introduced to audiences over the years in comic books and Sunday morning cartoons well before the live-action blockbusters, said Tim Ouillette, teaching professor in the communications studies department at Northeastern.
Spider-Man and his wide-ranging brand recognition are also bigger than the movies, Ouillette said. The character’s likeness is plastered on lunchboxes, popular as Halloween costumes and is a theme park staple with a long-running ride at Universal Studios in Orlando. In a sense, he has become “a brand we can trust.”
“There’s a whole assortment. It’s not just the movie that people are buying. This is a worldwide corporate event,” Ouillette said. “You can go anywhere in the world. You can go to Russia. You can go to Australia. You can go to Europe. Everybody knows Spider-Man.”
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That level of intellectual property is a major motivator for why a movie studio would invest $225 million in this sequel, Ouillette said.
While many other characters have similar reach, Northeastern experts also say a perfect storm of factors, from Spider-Man story to the actors who play them, contribute to the enduring success of this seemingly irreplicable franchise.
The character of Peter Parker and his alter ego Spider-Man, and Holland’s version in particular, speak to audiences who want to see this regular person who happens to have superhuman abilities navigate youth, vulnerability and coming-of-age angst, said Steve Granelli, teaching professor in the communication studies department at Northeastern.
“He’s a remarkably one-of-one character that is not really replicable, and they’ve been able to translate a lot of that to the films over time,” Granelli said.
It’s also the range of stories that appeals to audiences, Granelli added. This character’s stories can be “very small stakes in small scale” that take audiences into Parker’s story on the streets of New York, or they can be brought to a cosmic scale with Spider-Man fighting aliens in space, like he did in the multi-hero epic “Avengers: Infinity War.”
Experts added that this franchise also has a lower barrier to entry. You don’t need to watch six movies and three TV series to prepare, Granelli said.
But these days, a franchise doesn’t mean automatic success.
“That’s the open secret. While everyone might say, ‘They did it with Spider-Man, why can’t we do it?’ I think everyone knows [that it’s] because it’s Spider-Man,” he said. “We can’t just do this with the Blue Beetle and then make three movies and everything’s going to be great and we have our own franchise.”
Movie studios used to rely on the risky blockbuster model, said Koen Pauwels, Distinguished Professor of marketing at Northeastern. That involved expensive films aimed at mass commercial success that didn’t necessarily need to rely on sequels.
“Over time, studios have become much more conservative and much more risk-averse and have been producing way more movies they think are a shoo-in because of the big franchise. And it hasn’t always turned out to be so popular with the public,” Pauwels said.
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There is evidence that sequels can have billion-dollar box-office success. In 2019, “Avengers: Endgame,” the sequel to “Avengers: Infinity War” from the previous year, grossed $2.79 billion, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” in 2015, which came 10 years after “Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith,” grossed $2 billion. Even the third Holland Spider-Man movie, 2021’s “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” grossed $1.91 billion.
But some more recent output from franchises, like the plethora of TV and movie spinoffs from the Star Wars galaxy (“The Mandalorian” series and the recent “The Mandalorian and Grogu” movie) and Amazon MGM Studios’ high-dollar bet on its “The Rings of Power” TV series based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings,” have been testing audiences’ willingness to keep up, Pauwels said.
“Cinephiles have been lamenting that over time, the power of the franchise has placed a bigger and bigger role over ‘How good is the movie itself?’ ‘How good is the plot?’ ‘How engaging is it?’” Pauwels said.
Other aspects that play a part in a movie’s success include timing, like in the summer when people have time to go to the movies. There’s also the presence of an all-star cast. Zendaya, who plays love interest Michelle Jones Watson, or MJ, is married to Holland. The two also appear in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, which was released earlier in July.
Separately and together, the duo gives off this sense of “immediacy,” which adds to the movie’s durability, Granelli said. It’s a term in communication studies that refers to this sense of closeness without knowing a person.
This isn’t to say the Spider-Man franchise will remain fatigue-proof.
“It’s a delicate balance,” Granelli said. “There are some characters that we’ve fallen in love with over a long period of time that we want to see in different situations where we want to see them continue. But then also there’s just some fatigue as to just how much we need to stay on top of to be able to enjoy those stories.”
