Did you know that Insert Foot appeared in “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania?”

A strange thing happened recently when I asked my 14-year-old daughter – whom we’ll call “Lucy” (because that’s her name) – if she wanted to see the latest Marvel movie, “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.”

She punched me in the face.

Well … she might as well have. Lucy made a weird face and said she didn’t really care about the new Marvel movie and suggested I find something better to do. Which was a great point, so I started watching apocalyptic mushroom zombie shows.

But let’s back up. I think, tragically, it was the day I’ve dreaded for years: Marvel finally jumped the superhero shark at my house. Which is sad because it’s been our thing since Lucy was old enough to have pockets deep enough to sneak candy into a theater.

The realization actually arrived about 20 minutes into “The Eternals” a couple years ago, when I started trying to think up excuses why a movie with Salma Hayek clearly still looking like Salma Hayek was so boring.

And Marvel, for all the arguments over whether it makes real films, was never boring. Marvel spent a carefully crafted decade leading up to a very gratifying payout in 2019’s “Avengers: End Game.”

It was a masterful run and, in hindsight, Marvel probably did its job too well. Because, like a certain space saga that changed film and ignited imaginations all over the planet, it’s nearly impossible to get back to the top of that mountain.

Where do you go after watching the universe get half-destroyed and bringing everyone back five years later? Apparently, you either try to tell the whole history of Earth in one sitting, like in “The Eternals,” or you go into multiple dimensions, which just gives fans a headache.

It hasn’t been all bad since Tony Stark snapped grumbling purple eco-terrorist Thanos out of existence. After Chadwick’s Boseman’s death, Bay Area writer/director Ryan Coogler performed a near miracle with “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” last year. The “Spider-Man” movies were OK (even if they had to drag old actors back as a gimmick). But, overall, the once mighty Marvel has seemingly otherwise lost the ability to surprise us with new characters about whom we care while the older ones just get … old.

The TV shows were mostly underwhelming (“Moon Knight” was frustrating in its waste of so many good actors). The last “Doctor Strange” movie was like a nightmarish math class that wouldn’t end.

“Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” felt perfunctory. Even the once fresh and funny approach of Taika Waititi in “Avengers” lead-in “Thor Ragnarok” became the little kid you laughed at once and then wouldn’t shut up in the over-the-top “Thor: Love and Thunder,” aka “Is that really Christian Bale?”

“Black Widow” was good but retread back before the last Avengers movie, before the studio panicked and made a multiverse more confusing than California weather.

Notice this doesn’t include “Morbius,” which was a Marvel character done by Columbia in “association” with Marvel. Which means Marvel knew it was a pile of steaming bat filth, but hedged in case the public was fooled into thinking it wasn’t worse than “Howard the Duck.”

It really was kind of inevitable. Peter Jackson’s “The Hobbit” trilogy was forgettable after the magic of the “Lord of the Rings” movies. The jury is still out on the “Game of Thrones” prequel show, though that seems like wishful thinking. They’re still trying to recapture the terrifying magic of the first two “Alien” movies by confusing building tension and horror with boredom.

Then of course there’s “Star Wars.” While Marvel crushed our post-“Avengers” expectations by jamming everything into a “multiverse” (Look ma, no consequences! Just go back in time!) Disney damaged “Star Wars” by turning the galaxy’s greatest hero, Luke Skywalker, into a jaded, grumpy hologram refusing to leave Space Ireland to save the universe in person.

Then J.J. Abrams really freaked out and brought back a 400-year-old space raisin of an emperor with a fleet of 34 billion star destroyers (constructed in complete secrecy because who would notice 34 billion star destroyers floating around).

Stop ruining everything, Disney.

But “Star Wars” was on the downslide before Lucy was even born. Marvel was our thing from the ground up; we watched all the movies three or 400 times, and discussed meanings, who could beat up who, and what was coming next. We’d buy advance tickets in and go opening nights and get too much butter on our popcorn and get nauseous, but not care because the Avengers were crushing nazis and space goblins while wearing capes and bedazzled space fashion.

Perhaps Marvel should stop trying to jam every Hollywood star into one of its movies with plots requiring fans to understand advanced physics and just tell simple stories about human heroes we want to be like. It used to be a lot easier to just be entertained for a couple hours.

Follow music critic Tony Hicks at Twitter.com/TonyBaloney1967.