Is the superhero movie dead? That’s the question that ran through my head after watching Justice League.

Audiences are being hit by a tsunami of blockbuster superhero films and generic comedies every year, making me worry that filmmakers are starting to lose their integrity.

Every year we see people get “hyped” for the next big cinematic event. And that’s it, the audience and greedy Hollywood executives are holding back the movie industry.

Studios have figured out that people are willing to pay for the same thing over and over again. Even though a lot of people, including me, love superhero movies, audiences are starting to notice that they’re becoming the same thing.

In the name of nostalgia we keep seeing a bunch of reboots, sequels, and “new” projects that are thinly veiled rip-offs or spin-offs of tried and true hits from the past. Blame the king CEO and the round table of producers for the mess we are in when it comes to tragic failures such as Justice League, which join a long list of disappointments like Batman v Superman, Independence Day Resurgence, and most modern horror films.

Justice League was plagued with problems since the beginning, like introducing half the team, setting up sequels, and trying to make their trinity likable. But before we can talk about the movie itself, we have to see what happened behind the scenes.

Director Zack Snyder had this vision that failed in his previous films, and with a tragic event in his life that made him leave this film.

Warner Bros. thought this to be the perfect opportunity to copy their competitor Marvel Studios. They next hired Joss Whedon to take over as the new director, who just so happened to have also directed the Marvel smash hit The Avengers. Unfortunately, these two directors have completely different directing styles.

Synder is an action and visual storyteller while Whedon has more humorous character interactions and typically follows a linear type of storytelling. These two styles clashed and it was apparent.

Bringing up The Avengers is important because Justice League is basically the same movie. An alien with an army comes to Earth in search of a box or boxes to give to his boss, and then open a portal to destroy Earth. While in this event, a man dressed all in black unites a team to stop this big threat. Along the way the movie sets up future sequels.

The film’s score composer Danny Elfman based Justice League’s music on that from previous films like Superman (1978) and Batman (1989), but in a darker tone. Everything about this movie exemplifies the problems with modern Hollywood movies.

Critics didn’t like the film, but the mainstream audience did. As I watched the film, people would clap or cheer once a character got on screen and said a funny line. The audience just ate it up, and wanted more. And I know that pleasing the mainstream is how Hollywood bigwigs make money, but they’re also the same people holding us back.

It’s not that all reboots are inherently bad. Blade Runner 2049, which was a reboot from the original 1982 movie, is a perfect example of what can be done if producers and directors approach a film as a piece of art instead of a product. It completely changed the way I look at sequels.

It had an original story, well developed characters, a beautiful score that embodies the emotion of the film, and yet the movie didn’t make that much money. Unfortunately, audiences tend to prefer to shell out money to buy tickets for movies with recognizable characters and thus we see studios pumping out half-baked superhero movies every year, ruining what could have been so much better.

Pursuit of the almighty dollar is persuading producers to make the same films. But I have hope things will change, and I think it will. Justice League isn’t making that much money domestically. This isn’t just apparent in superhero films, but in modern films. People are starting to want new creative films. We need to show Hollywood what we want with our wallets, not our words. I don’t want to sound mean or pretentious, I just want change.