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There has been a recent phenomenon in the mainstream Hollywood industry. That phenomenon is the movement away from compelling story/narrative-based films towards IP-based flare with maximum CGI, FX, and cameos from actors whose checks don’t match their screen time or level of performance. Recently, I covered the emergence of the dominating superhero genre. I won’t re-hash all the points I made there. This transition from story-centered to scenario layered in has been one in the making for approximately the last decade. Before Christopher Nolan’s 2008 film, The Dark Knight superhero films were relegated to a sub-genre of the action genre only to come into their own light shortly after the release of The Dark Knight and the beginning of the Marvel epic, Iron Man. Like Henry Ford who vitalized the assembly line, these two flicks which would stand on their own in cinema history vitalized the assembly line of lukewarm superhero flare.
These would lead to a long line of the aforementioned attributes which currently drag down the ethereal experience of cinema. Don’t get me wrong, a film can be as outlandish as possible as long as it is rooted in real human- emotion. But we all can admit that marvel films are formulaic and DC tries to bring plausibility to the in-plausible. A conundrum to be sure. These films and others like them go from action-set-piece to action-set-piece with little room for grand revelations in-between. Hollywood is the majority stakeholder in this brand, but it’s international films that are taking on the growing beast of IP. Nothing in the past ten Marvel comes as close as the emotional complexity of Oscar-winner, Parasite.
Small revealing character moments that are delivered through dialogue now go on the silver screen of the television. Fostered-homed to streaming. What will happen if we don’t figure out the formula for thought-provoking cinema and popcorn films? I hope we don’t have to find out soon.