Superhero movies actually have some interesting deeper topics in them. Otherwise I think a lot of the interest in games, anime and what you listed is arrested development.

>>16962016
Cope for feeling powerless in the real world.

>>16962064
>interesting deeper topics in them

Like what? All I see is just capeshit and nonsense.

>>16962016
Culture is evolutionary beneficial, all intelligent animals have culture that's used to separate in groups from asocial outgroups that then allows the ingroup to succeed.

>>16962016
The movies make you happy because the good guy defeats the bad guy. The movies are also easy to consume. You wish to chase this high even more, so you start to consume all capeshit. The pleasure of an easy story where the good guy wins turns into the pleasure of having encyclopedic knowledge of a franchise.
For pokemon, it's about an alternate world where you're a kid going on grand adventures and all your challenges are fun and mystical compared to real life where you have school/work/taxes/politics/health problems.

depends how you define "obsessed", but we are social creatures so the embodiment of ideals that we attach meaning to being told in a narrative can have a large effect on us. There's a transcendent quality to it that functions in a similar way to religion. Superheroes are basically a more entertaining version of the characters you read in religious texts

>>16962236
So I guess there isn't an evolutionary purpose. Not everything needs on. Manchildren are subjected to media from an early stage in life, to them it's just normal. Media and entertainment are too recent in human history to be embedded into our genes.

>>16962016
There is no evolutionary purpose behind mass marketed consumer products. There is a cultural purpose which is to make as much money as possible and gain a devoted fanbase.