For the last few years franchise movies like star wars, marvel, etc. made money regardless of quality. However now it seems like audiences are being choosier when it comes to these kinds of tentpole releases. I’ve seen some people online say that the movie/theater industry is losing people in general but I don’t think that’s the case.
Super Mario and spiderverse made a lot of money. And Oppenheimer, Barbie, and Dune seem to be tracking well. I think the problem is that people are getting sick of the same old stuff and need more than just a brand name to go to the theater. What do you you think?
Agreed. Early-mid 2010s were hollywood’s golden ticket for franchises. Another hunger games? A marvel movie? Star Wars? Hobbit? Just keep churning them out and we’ll go see them.
Now we (at least me and the people I talk to) are over the big franchises. For example, I love the infinity marvel movies, yes they’re repetative and predictable but they were fun, and I started watching them with Iron Man. It was a ton of fun seeking out easter eggs and predicting where it’d go. But it’s over, they finished it, and IMO they finished it well.
Now… well, another one comes out, super, I’ll see it when I get around to it. I’m definitely not going to go to the theater and I’m not going to buy a copy, so sometime on a streaming service probably.
I do hope we see a renaissance in individual films. I’ve been catching up on my backlog and there are so many good ones, I hope that Hollywood sees that not everything needs to be a (4 part) trilogy.
(but then there’s Dune…)
Well it turns out, if you give a shit and hire people that are passionate about the product they make, you make a good movie. And people like to watch good movies. That’s why dune worked. Because it was expertly done.
I had the same reaction with Marvel. I would watch almost every single movie the week it came out. They did extremely well with their Infinity Saga and capped it with an incredible conclusion. Infinity War/Endgame is a master stroke to what could’ve been an absolute disaster. Now that it’s over, the only MCU movies I’ve watched in theaters (let alone the first week) were No Way Home, Wakanda Forever, and GOTG3. The others I watched eventually at home (if at all).
Marvel is mostly fatigue with some laziness. It’s not that I don’t actually dislike any of it. I just don’t have the energy and desire to keep up all the time. A franchise shouldn’t be like a product. They’re trying to get more and more mindshare by putting out more and more in a shorter time. It’s clear it’s losing some quality in the writing (though even the “bad” ones still have redeeming qualities in my opinion, like I’m still glad I saw the Eternals, but it clearly is also flawed) due to not having the cohesiveness in story any longer. Look at the big hit video games that are trilogies. Horizon Zero Dawn and Forbidden West had like 5 years between them (though a DLC was released a year after ZD). Sure it’s a different medium, but it still shows that sometimes you need to ensure you put the work in and the effort, plus leave the audience wanting for a bit. Having something new all the time just makes it less interesting to begin with.
@echoplex21 After Endgame, the only Marvel movie that interested me was GotG3. Now that I’ve seen it I’m done.
EDIT: Removed unnecessary user tags