Pepper Potts actress Gwyneth Paltrow was a recent guest on the Hot Ones YouTube talk show where she was asked to comment on the recent Academy Awards speech from Cord Jefferson, who won Best Adapted Screenplay for his work on American Fiction.
In his speech, Jefferson pleaded for the industry to make more, smaller-budgeted films instead of reducing output to push out generic blockbusters.
"I understand that this is a risk-averse industry, I get it,” Jefferson stated. “But $200 million movies are also a risk. And it doesn’t always work out, but you take the risk anyway. Instead of making one $200 million movie, try making twenty $10 million movies. Or fifty $4 million movies.”
Asked to comment on his galvanizing speech, Paltrow stated, "I absolutely understand where he’s coming from,. You want to have the best chance of having a strong ROI. People put a lot of money into these things and they want them to be profitable. But I think if I look at the industry as a whole, this big push into superhero movies … you can only make so many good ones that feel truly original, and yet they’re still always trying to reach as many people as possible, which sometimes hinders quality or specificity or real point of view."
Paltrow makes this comment at the 10:25 mark in the video below.
In some ways, Paltrow is right, as there's been a deluge of superhero films since 2008's Iron Man and only a select few have managed to reach those same heights.
Paltrow went on to explain her reasoning, adding, "I grew up doing those [mid-budget] movies and I sometimes lament the fact that I look back at some movies I made in the ’90s and think that just wouldn’t get made now. You get more diversity of art when there is less at stake and people can, sort of, express their true voice and make a film the way they want to make it. And I think those are generally the more resonant ones."
Post Avengers: Endgame, it sure feels as if Hollywood and the industry as a whole, is rapidly approaching superhero fatigue. Marvel's sprint into the steaming wars with Disney+ certainly accelerated the problem.
Recently, Disney CEO Bob Iger addressed MCU fatigue specifically, stating that the company would no longer churn out content for content's sake, "You have to kill things you no longer believe in, and that’s not easy in this business, because either you’ve gotten started, you have some sunk costs, or it’s a relationship with either your employees or with the creative community."