It was never a thing. It's like saying 'I have horror film fatigue' it's just silly. A great film will land with audiences regardless of genre. We just happened to have two great superhero films land a month apart with this and Guardians of the Galaxy 3.
shareYeah people generally use that complaint with mediocre and/or bad films in a certain genre.
shareIt's still a thing. No one is saying all superhero movies are gonna lose money rather it's more volatile now. Back in 2012-2019 at the peak it was pretty much guaranteed profit. Even movies that made profit (like some of the early DCEU movies) were considered 'flops' because they didn't earn 100s of millions of profit, such was the success of the movies.
COVID and beyond we've seen several Marvel and DC movies outright lose money.
Black Widow flopped (though it was a day-and-date Disney+ release during the pandemic, it gets a bit of a pass here)
Shang-Chi just about broke even.
Eternals was a mega flop.
Ant-Man: Quantumania failed to break even.
Of the first 7 DCEU movies, only Justice League (2017) lost money. Birds of Prey just fell short of breaking even. Wonder Woman 1984 & The Suicide Squad flopped but both were day-and-date HBOMax releases and were released during the pandemic. Since then;
Black Adam failed to break even.
Shazam! Fury of the Gods was a mega flop.
The Flash is a mega flop.
The MCU was a profit machine from 2008-2019. The DCEU was turning steady profits from 2013-2019 too bar one financial flop. Now as you can see they're both having several entries barely breaking even or even losing hundreds of millions.
The superhero peak lasted a bit over a decade. Now it's dropped a level and is more risky business.