I think the real problem is trying to keep a story going too long, and the need to escalate everything constantly serves to ultimately undermine how that progress feels.
The stories tend to be repetitive, end up where a villain gets a new MacGuffin and the hero has to get some new capability to overcome only for the next villan to have an even bigger MacGuffin, rinse and repeat with each time being portrayed as some impossibly large leap over the last. To keep characters going they time jump, they get cloned, they come back from the dead, they cross over from some alternate universe.
Basically, most genres of fiction have a risk of overstaying their welcome if you try to make it go on a long time.
Still feels like an awfully broad brush when you say “most genres of fiction.” Remember that super hero franchises end up having lots of different writers with different skill levels, and they’re mostly made for kids. It’s not an inherent problem with fiction - it doesn’t have to be that way - but with super hero franchises it does often happen.
I think the real problem is trying to keep a story going too long, and the need to escalate everything constantly serves to ultimately undermine how that progress feels.
The stories tend to be repetitive, end up where a villain gets a new MacGuffin and the hero has to get some new capability to overcome only for the next villan to have an even bigger MacGuffin, rinse and repeat with each time being portrayed as some impossibly large leap over the last. To keep characters going they time jump, they get cloned, they come back from the dead, they cross over from some alternate universe.
Basically, most genres of fiction have a risk of overstaying their welcome if you try to make it go on a long time.
Still feels like an awfully broad brush when you say “most genres of fiction.” Remember that super hero franchises end up having lots of different writers with different skill levels, and they’re mostly made for kids. It’s not an inherent problem with fiction - it doesn’t have to be that way - but with super hero franchises it does often happen.
I say it’s generally a problem of long narratives, but some genres like comedy can get a pass since they don’t have to rely on growth and progression.
To the extent a story needs to develop, running a long time is likely to doom something.
Running a few books or a handful of seasons can work, but if a story has to evolve over decades…