Five forgotten movie genres that deserve a comeback
In the modern cinematic landscape, a few genres undeniably rule the roost. The action-adventure blockbuster, the superhero movie, the animated film, and the ever-reliable horror movie are responsible for banking more box office bucks than just about every other genre put together. In fact, these genres are so dominant in cinemas that a handful of previously beloved genres have been consigned almost entirely to streaming and television.
Think about how many new films you watch these days at home on Netflix or video-on-demand that aren’t blockbusters, horror movies, or kids’ flicks. How many of them can you envision seeing on the big screen? I’d be willing to bet the answer is “Not many,” and that’s a sad state of affairs for a movie landscape that used to offer audiences a little bit of everything.
Obviously, there are many reasons why some genres have lessened in cultural importance over the years. Sometimes it’s to do with changing societal attitudes; sometimes it’s about the almighty dollar; and sometimes it’s about genres simply going out of style. But if variety is the spice of life, and Hollywood wants to get people to buy tickets for a multitude of genres again, something has to change.
This list will spotlight five movie genres that have fallen by the wayside over the years, despite being hugely popular at different times. In my book, they all deserve to make a triumphant comeback.
Five movie genres that are due a comeback:
Westerns
In the last 25 years, there have only been two genuine hit westerns at the worldwide box office: the Coen brothers’ True Grit remake in 2010 and Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained in 2012. This isn’t to say that westerns don’t get made, though. After all, Kevin Costner released the first instalment of his four-part opus Horizon: An American Saga in 2024, and there are a healthy number of DTV westerns that arrive on streaming sites and rental platforms every month.
The problem is that so few westerns are hitting cinemas that the high-profile box office disaster of something like Horizon has the potential to sink the genre as a big-screen proposition for another couple of decades. If studios don’t believe people will leave their houses for a western, it will continue to live on in low-budget form in these DTV films, which only hardcore genre fans watch. Either that, or it will be forced to fully embrace its status as a television genre, never to darken the doors of cinemas again.
To be fair, the fact that westerns are currently thriving on television is a good thing for the genre, as shows like Yellowstone, 1883, and American Primeval are keeping it alive for future generations. However, it’s hard not to pine for a return to the West on the most enormous scale possible. Hopefully, a big-budget western epic will come along in the next few years to prove that gunslingers still have a space in the modern cinematic landscape.
Spoofs
The spoof genre was pioneered by comedic visionaries like Mel Brooks, who gave us Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, and Spaceballs, and the Zucker brothers, of The Naked Gun and Airplane fame. Then, in the ’00s, it went through something of a renaissance with the Wayans’ brothers’ Scary Movie series, which started fairly strong but got worse as it went along, and Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer’s Epic Movie, Disaster Movie, and Vampires Suck, which were abominations from the word go.
By the time Friedberg and Seltzer had finished running the genre into the ground, the spoof had begun to look very unfashionable indeed. In a modern cinematic landscape where comedy is largely dead as a big-screen concern, though, could the return of a sharply written, bitingly satirical, yet downright silly spoof be just what the doctor ordered?
The main problem with bringing the spoof back is that the most recent examples of the genre aimed for the lowest of low-hanging fruit and seemingly forgot that brilliant comedic minds are needed to create the best spoofs. In essence, it takes smarts to create something that seems so dumb on the surface. There’s also the issue that modern comedy tends to be balanced out with emotional drama, and audiences may view themselves as “above” the genre. Maybe Liam Neeson’s Naked Gun reboot will change things and usher in a new golden age of spoofs – but I’m not holding my breath.
Swords and sandals epics
Throughout Hollywood history, the swords and sandals epic has gone through ups and downs. It was once one of the biggest genres in the movie business, with films like Spartacus, Jason and the Argonauts, and Ben-Hur giving audiences widescreen drama and spectacle as they watched heroic warriors engage in epic battles and mythical adventures.
Over the years, other genres replaced these epics in terms of visual spectacle, such as the disaster movie, the historical epic, or even the dreaded superhero film. However, occasionally, a swords and sandals movie broke through, such as Gladiator, Zack Snyder’s 300, or the 2010 remake of Clash of the Titans. They haven’t been anywhere near as prevalent as they once were for many years, though, and we reckon they’re primed for a comeback.
In an ideal world, Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II will be the siren song for Hollywood to realise there’s still money in the swords and sandals genre. OK, Scott’s long-awaited sequel was no masterpiece, but it still satisfied the primal urge we all have to watch sharks eat sword-wielding gladiators in a flooded Colosseum, so that’s got to count for something. And hey, something has to fight back against the glut of cape and cowl movies. It might as well be burly warriors in loincloths.
Courtroom dramas
In 2024, one of the purest joys at my local multiplex was watching Clint Eastwood’s Juror #2, a low-key courtroom drama that felt simultaneously old-fashioned and brand-new. You see, the courtroom drama – and the legal thriller as a whole – hasn’t been anywhere near the big screen for many years. In fact, in the 2020s, I can’t think of another courtroom drama that hit cinemas, and the ’10s were slim pickings, with only Mark Ruffalo’s Dark Waters, Robert Downey Jr’s The Judge, and Matthew McConaughey’s The Lincoln Lawyer escaping streaming purgatory.
This is a far cry from the ’80s and ’90s, when courtroom dramas were often the blockbusters of their day. Films like Jagged Edge, A Few Good Men, The Firm, The Client, A Time To Kill, Primal Fear and The Rainmaker raked in money at the box office while giving audiences finely-honed potboiler plots that probably bore very little resemblance to real-life lawyering, but were damn sure entertaining to watch.
Once again, in recent years, the legal thriller has been restricted to television, with the Jake Gyllenhaal AppleTV+ version of Presumed Innocent being a good example. A couple of years ago, Jamie Foxx and Tommy Lee Jones starred in The Burial, a strong example of the genre, yet its fate was to languish on Prime Video. Bottom line: we need to hear “Objection!” and “Sustained!” more on the big screen. Somebody please make that happen.
Romantic comedies
Ah, the rom-com. Once one of the most beloved, bankable genres in movies, in recent years, fans have been living off scraps that turn up with minimal fanfare on streaming services. However, while films like Shotgun Wedding, The Kissing Booth, Happiest Season, and Always Be My Maybe can scratch an itch, they’re not in the same league as those that defined the genre in the ’90s.
Sure, you can watch Meg Ryan and David Duchovny go through the motions in What Happens Later and enjoy it well enough, but it’s a world away from Ryan’s heyday in When Harry Met Sally or Sleepless in Seattle. You can get a slight nostalgic glow from watching Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder struggle through the subpar Destination Wedding, and you can try to pretend that Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon’s You’re Cordially Invited isn’t an abysmal motion picture, but soon reality will set in.
So, how can rom-coms regain their place in the upper echelon of movie genres? Well, first of all, audiences need to vote with their wallets when a rom-com does miraculously make it into cinemas. Anyone but You and Ticket to Paradise both made very healthy amounts in recent years, which is a great start, but maybe the young stars of the former – Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell – need to make another movie or two together to convince the Hollywood suits that there’s truly gold in them rom-com hills.
