If you haven’t noticed, the cinema space is saturated with superhero movies. It feels like every month there’s some new hero in a mask hitting the big screen. Especially this year, with Deadpool, Batman v Superman, Captain America, and X-Men.

But it makes you wonder, what caused this boom of comic movies? Sure there were a few here and there in the beginning, like the first Spider-Man and X-Men movies. But now there’s one around every corner, and from so many different franchises.

Really though, this rise in superhero movies can be traced back to comic book giant Marvel. They were originally going bankrupt back in the late 90s, so they sold many of their properties to movie companies. This is what spawned the original Spider-Man and X-Men trilogies.

Then the most popular Batman movie series debuted in 2005, with Batman Begins. With Marvel’s rival, DC, making headway with these movies, Marvel Studios wanted to get back into the movie space. And this time, they’d be separate from other companies (Fox, Sony, Paramount).

When Marvel regained traction, they tried their own hand at superhero movies with Iron Man. And luckily, this movie became a huge hit. The success from this movie launched the “cinematic universe” model; an interconnected movie continuity amongst different movie/character franchises.

With this success, Marvel started releasing 2-3 movies each year. And with the movies being connected, it was a new and fresh way to look at movies. Since these superhero movies came to such big openings, many other companies came back to the superhero scene.

Fox relaunched their X-Men and Fantastic Four movies, while Sony came back with a rebooted Spider-Man. And the most recent of them was DC with their cinematic universe. All these companies want to capitalize on the current superhero craze, which is flooding the theaters with hero after hero. And even some villains.

From the corporate standpoint, this is really the perfect time to make superhero movies. The quality of special effects and large fan bases let these companies deliver great movies and rake in money. But with that, we get a mass of superhero movies a year to where people might even become tired of them. This year alone will be have 6 superhero movies (the Gambit movie being pushed to a later year).

How do you guys feel about this superhero boom? Is it good or is it too much? Leave a comment below! And for more movie goodness, come back here to Cinemaniacs!