My Two-Cents: Movie Mania

We are a society of trends, and we’re more fun because of it. Fandom makes the world go round. When I worked at the Country Club, no one ever wanted to be there on Dirt Worm Sunday Day, or for the Shirley Temple Revolution. One kid asks for either of these, and the entire pool enters a mania. Trends seep into every aspect of life – fashion, language, social media, and movies. I remember when Instagram was an extreme highlight reel, now I see a mix of carefully-planned charcuterie boards filtered into photo dumps. I wonder who invented the photo dump – and if he was ever financially compensated for his influence on instagramal society. He should get a paycheck bonus at the end of every college semester. Semmy 6 Photo Dump! (I am guilty.) Anyways, let’s talk about trends in the face of movies.

Movies are one of the six infinity stones making up pop culture. So it makes sense they would cycle through trends with the rest of their cultural counterparts. In my personal opinion, I think we’re going to start seeing a shift of movies – something that spurred after the pandemic. Now I’m going to completely spitball with anecdotal evidence why, and my high-functioning cineophillia is going to become very evident. 

Before the pandemic, I think we resided in a movie era driven by Superhero fanfiction. Which reined for so long, it seems weird to remember there was a time before Spiderman dominated screen time. But this all started with The Dark Knight – which is the highest-ranking superhero movie on the IMBM top-100. After this, you’ll notice the trend of Marvel taking over as a big blockbuster contributor. One could argue Robert Downey Jr. saved his career with Iron Man. Marvel movies continued to marinate in popularity and eventually revel in cinema culture. This buildup led to Avengers Endgame, Spiderman No Way Home, and even a resurgence of DC productions with Robert Pattinson's batman. But I think that we’re starting to enter a shift – A renovation of a different type of movie is going to take over. It started a bit earlier, with the Elvis Movie – a screenplay that was focused less on action fantasy and more on documentaries of American history and pop culture. The new upcoming Oppenheimer movie is the next biggest hint, along with movies like Air, that document Nike’s upcoming. People are switching from surreal superhero culture to eccentric history-based movies. And though I geeked out over Spider-Man's no way home just as much as the next Marvel nerd, I will be buying tickets to Oppenheimer in July. I’m willing to bet that in the next decade, we will see a Fleetwood Mac based movie, similar to the Elvis Production. Along with a bunch of other pop culture/history-driven productions. Or at least I hope so. Are you getting this Warner Bros?

Kate