I’m one of those uncultured swine that loves a good superhero movie. Like most on the Western part of the globe (and even many in the East) I was traipsing off to the theater anytime a Marvel movie came out. Once Endgame came out, I wasn’t sure how they were going to keep it going, but I can remember thinking that I hope they do because I’d love to see where the Marvel universe goes from here. My friends and I would speculate about who would be the new lead (my guess was Doctor Strange) and what kinds of enemies they would face.

Meanwhile, DC was limping to the barn so I didn’t really expect much out of them.

It was then that Marvel released dud after dud with a few bangers in between. Spider-Man: No Way Home and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 were examples of how good superhero movies could be. Even DC rolled out The Suicide Squad which I thought was a better-than-average DC film.

(READ: ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3’ Review: The Last Marvel Movie)

But attendance at superhero movies has been in an unmistakable decline. Even Disney+ has lost millions of subscribers despite Disney rolling out superhero show after superhero show. The blame is placed on what people are calling “superhero fatigue.” It’s a phrase that’s come up from more than a few parties, from the studios to the critics.

Recently, Nerdrotic released an excellent video titled “Hollywood PANICS! The Flash FLOPS as Superhero Fatigue Sets In,” which I recommend everyone watch as it goes into detail about how people are just done with the genre.

To be sure, I think “superhero fatigue” is real but I think it’s a symptom of a much larger disease.

The disease, in my opinion, is actually an abuse of the audience. People are tired of wanting to show up to see their favorite superhero in action or just a solid adventure with fantastical characters and getting either a sub-par CGI-fest or a preachy vanity project. The issue has become so pervasive throughout the genre that even when a good movie hits the theaters like Guardians 3, people just shrug it off.

The same thing happened to Star Wars, arguably one of the most popular and successful franchises in human history. After Kathleen Kennedy used the brand as a delivery system for ideologically-based storytelling, people stopped showing up to Star Wars films, causing Solo: A Star Wars Story to fail at the box office. The reaction from studios and the access media was “It’s just Star Wars fatigue,” but it was a brand that people truly went out of their way to consume for ages. Whether it was a book, a comic, a video game, a television show, or a movie, if the brand so much as sneezed, people rolled up with their hankies to take part in it.

But Disney/Lucasfilm under Kennedy’s direction taught people to steer clear of the franchise, so they did, and they did so to great outcry. They wanted more Star Wars, but they didn’t want this. To be sure, if tomorrow Disney announced that they’d sold Lucasfilm to an incredibly talented studio that really does care about the brand, I’d be one of the first to line up at the theater to see it. I’m not tired of Star Wars, I’m tired of Disney’s Star Wars.

The same thing can be said of Disney’s Marvel creations. I was at the theater watching Gunn’s last Guardians entry as soon as I could get there because I knew Gunn’s Guardians was a movie filled with talented people who truly cared about the characters and stories. I’ve skipped almost every other Disney/Marvel film in theaters. I’m not tired of superheroes, I’m tired of talentless hacks making films that suck while using characters I would otherwise like as a draw.

(READ: ‘Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness’ Is the Biggest Sign Marvel’s Golden Age Is Over)

In a perfect world, Disney would realize that they’ve used and abused the brands so badly that, at this point, there’s no return available for them, so they can do what Marvel did long ago and chop up the rights, sell the various characters to different studios, and let others take a crack at creating something great with the pieces like Disney/Marvel did long ago.

I don’t want superhero movies to go away, I just want them to be worth watching. I want to show up to a theater and be entertained, not have my dollar and goodwill abused in the name of some ideologue’s personal vendetta against this group or that group. These aren’t superheroes, they’re political positions wearing superhero masks.

Bring back superheroes. They’ve been gone for too long.

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