The death of superhero movies is coming, promises Steven Spielberg

Though he warned they'll return one day

(Marvel)

Steven Spielberg is maintaining that comic book superhero movies will run their course, likening them to the fad for Westerns.

Asked if he stood by his previous comments that too many blockbusters were being made, he told AP: “I still feel that way. We were around when the Western died and there will be a time when the superhero movie goes the way of the Western.

"It doesn't mean there won't be another occasion where the Western comes back and the superhero movie someday returns. Of course, right now the superhero movie is alive and thriving. I'm only saying that these cycles have a finite time in popular culture.

"There will come a day when the mythological stories are supplanted by some other genre that possibly some young filmmaker is just thinking about discovering for all of us."

(Marvel)

Superhero movies are inescapable in cinemas lately, and at least 25 more will be made in the next five years.

Birdman director Alejandro G. Iñárritu also criticised them recently, telling Deadline: “I think there’s nothing wrong with being fixated on superheroes when you are 7 years old, but I think there’s a disease in not growing up.

“I sometimes enjoy them because they are basic and simple and go well with popcorn. The problem is that sometimes they purport to be profound, based on some Greek mythological kind of thing. And they are honestly very right wing. I always see them as killing people because they do not believe in what you believe, or they are not being who you want them to be. I hate that, and don’t respond to those characters.

“They have been poison, this cultural genocide, because the audience is so overexposed to plot and explosions and shit that doesn’t mean nothing about the experience of being human.”

@christophhooton