Is nostalgia the biggest existential threat to cinema?
There are many reasons why cinema continues to struggle, but the solutions aren’t going to prevent themselves any faster if the people tasked with trying to drag the industry out of its current slump are happy to keep mining nostalgia at the expense of originality.
That’s not to say the art form is doomed by any stretch, but the trickle-down economics of the business means that even small-scale independent productions are in some way reliant on the income generated by mega-budget blockbusters to keep greasing the wheels of the ecosystem.
Martin Scorsese might point to superheroes as being prime suspects in the death of cinema, and while there are plenty who’d agree, there are many more players involved. The increasing expense of visiting the multiplex with any sort of regularity is one, as is the increase and ease of streaming, not to mention the shortened windows between theatrical and digital, ensuring that almost nothing is a must-see any more.
One hand has always fed the other in cinema, with originality inspiring more originality at all ends of the budgetary scale. However, when repetition and trips down memory lane are becoming so prevalent that they’re coming perilously close to reaching saturation point, it’s not impossible to imagine a world where features based on completely original ideas that are completely untethered to anything else become outliers in a landscape of homogenised familiarity.
Ticket sales aren’t only continuing to lag behind pre-pandemic figures but also compared to last year. Less people are willing to fork out for a trip to the theatre to see the latest release. If that pattern continues, then studios have shown the easiest way to try and give the box office a shot in the arm is by dipping into the past and dusting off a recognisable property to see if shoving a spoonful of Memberberries down the audience’s throat will do the trick.
Looking at 2024’s top-earning releases so far, it makes for damning reading. Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two is comfortably leading the pack, but regardless of how incredible it may be, at the end of the day, it’s still the sequel to and remake of a literary adaptation. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is the sequel to a trilogy of reboots that followed a remake and a six-film series, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is the sequel to a legacy sequel that disregarded a reboot, and Bad Boys: Ride or Die is the latest chapter in a franchise that began in 1995.
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is the fifth instalment in a shared universe built around two characters who made their screen debuts in 1933 and 1954, respectively. The Garfield Movie is the third outing for the titular feline in less than 20 years. Kung Fu Panda 4‘s numerical suffix speaks for itself, and that’s only the ones that didn’t flop.
The Fall Guy was based on a 1980s TV series and proved that a known director and big stars still can’t be relied upon to open an expensive adventure, while Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga took the prequel route in the hopes of emulating Fury Road and failed miserably on the commercial front.
Three of the year’s remaining releases that are about as nailed-on to succeed only further illustrate how a combination of nostalgia and familiarity is having a detrimental effect on cinema at large. There are plenty of enticing-sounding originals on the calendar, but it’s hard to predict which of them—if any—will break out of the pack on a scale even infinitesimally comparable to the Barbenheimer phenomenon.
Despicable Me 4 is the sixth chapter in its chosen saga, and Joker: Folie à Deux is the sequel to a billion-dollar hit that doubles as its title character’s sixth appearance, being played by four different actors since 2008. Deadpool & Wolverine isn’t just the third film for Ryan Reynolds’ hero, but the tenth for Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, and 34th in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
These are dark and desperate times, with originality now the exception rather than the rule. Eventually, the law of diminishing returns will set in on a potentially catastrophic scale, and then it’s crunch time. The real question, though, is whether dwindling returns and franchise fatigue will inspire the bigwigs to greenlight more enticing fare that viewers have never seen before or if it’ll cause the panic button to be hit again and lead to a round trip all the way back to remake, reboot, and sequel city.
