In 2014, a superhero movie starring an unknown alien tree and a raccoon earned $774 million, becoming the year’s third-biggest hit. In 2021, Spider-Man: No Way Home led the box office, and 2022 saw four superhero movies make it into the year’s top 10. Sharp week-to-week drops at the box office show that while die-hard fans still turn up on opening weekend, much of the broader audience has drifted away. After the pandemic, things shifted, and now neither Asia nor Russia have been adding much to the box office. In 2013, Steven Spielberg warned that when superhero films began to fail, a cycle would end and that there would be a paradigm shift.