Why is nothing new happening in film?
You’ve noticed. Sequel after sequel, unmemorable plots, films you don’t care about discussing the next day.
Yeah, it didn’t use to be like this.
Filmgoers in the 20th century had a bonanza of new genres or styles of film. Every decade birthed two or more. Film started in the 1910s with a big dose of Charlie Chaplin. Sound entered the picture in the ’20s, and the films got bigger. The 1930s exploded with Gangster Films, Spectacle Films, Musicals, and Slapstick Comedy. In the 1940s came Power Women Films, Film Noir, and Italian Neorealism. The 1950s birthed the Teenager Films (“teenagers” didn’t really exist until that), Alien Scare Films, and Biblical Films. All of these genres were brand new to audiences at the time. Exciting stuff.
The 1960s blew the roof off film with a slew of new directors. The French New Wave (and all the rest of Europe) brought Godard, Antonioni, Tarkovsky, and Fellini. And the start of Hollywood Maverick Films followed, with directors like Coppola, Lucas, and Friedkin. That Maverick filmmaking continued into the 1970s, where we saw the birth of the Blockbuster Film. (Yes, at one point it was a new concept.)
The 1980s birthed The Sequel as a genre of its own, as well as Buddy Cop Films, Big Glossy Comedies, and more Blockbusters. In the 1990s, we again got something new in film: Indie Film.
Starting with 2000, though, this continuous birthing of new film genres and styles stopped. You could still find a good film or two, but there was no new movement or genre, really. And you deserved one.
We should have had one in the 2000s. It was a fresh decade, century, and millennium all in one. The decade’s first half gave us more strong Indies from directors like David Lynch and Darren Aronofsky, and more blockbusters and their sequels. But, right when one would expect some new genre or style in film, Tech entered the picture in the form of “user-generated” online video and social media.
Filmgoers were understandably distracted by these two new tech engagements, which began pulling them away from filmgoing and shot fear through the hearts of studio executives. They didn’t want to suffer the same fate as the music industry just a few years before, so they went into fear mode. They were already dealing with DVD rentals and sales — major Studio revenue — taking a dive, thanks to Netflix’s online video hosting. They doubled down on what they felt was “safe”: more sequels and more films based on established IP (comic books, old TV series, nostalgia games and toys). No new film genre in that decade.
In the 2010’s, we got even further away from any new film genre or style. The top-20 box-office films consisted of 15 sequels, four new comic-book films, and one remake.
Not only had Indie film production waned, but original mid-range-budget films ($20-50m rom-coms, comedies, and dramas) were rare. There was a gap. So, while the studios went headlong into their “safe” films and endless sequels, tech companies (now streamers) filled in that Indie and mid-range budget film gap. This was great — at first. Many filmmakers celebrated what looked like a revival of those films the studios had abandoned. And thanks to the streamers, new films (and series) from Spike Lee, Cary Joji Fukunaga, and David Fincher emerged.
However, streamers have the DNA of tech companies, not film studios, and their hunger for “user scaling” overwhelms everything else. They needed to expand into other countries fast and also make sure their current subscribers didn’t quit. The result was not films and series, but “content” — just stuff for their websites. For foreign countries, they had to have content you could understand without knowing the language: action, horror, thrillers. To keep current subscribers, they needed stuff that you could have on in the background, a “second screen” to keep you company while you scrolled through your Instagram and answered emails on the “primary screen” of your phone or laptop. Some excellent films were still being done, but they were outliers. Basically, instead of getting a new film genre or style that would thrill us in the 2010s, we got the Content Conveyor Belt.
So far, the 2020s seem the same: no new film style or genre. There are 13 sequels in the top 20 box office films. Not great. The streamers, meantime, are making more and more “specious films” — films that look as if they have value (big stars, big marketing campaigns) but actually don’t. And now, as if on cue, there’s generative artificial intelligence (GAI), which allows Studio and streamer executives to cut labor overhead. If you can “generate content” without dealing with and paying filmmakers, actors, locations, and crew, your quarterly profit margins will really shine.
Because using GAI can eliminate most of the people who make a film, it will cause the structure of the film business to collapse. However (a big however), great filmmakers are not going to stop making films. It’s what they do; they can’t help themselves. A new film business is growing, one that is real and raw and human. When the audience becomes sick of the GAI content that is about to kill their culture altogether, these fresh new films will be waiting for them on the other side.
The Birth of the New is coming. And you deserve it.
