This year has brought an unprecedented success in the form of the movie Oppenheimer. A three-hour historical epic that closely examined the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer and his involvement in the creation of the atomic bomb. Despite the long runtime and focus more on dialogue and conversations, the film was a huge hit. While it was primarily due to the Barbenheimer trend and the fact it was directed by Christopher Nolan, one of the most acclaimed and well-known directors of the last decade, I feel that the success of this movie could be a sign of a potential future option for the film industry.
There is no denying that superhero fare and franchises have lost momentum as the big tentpoles of each year. The types of movies that used to bring in billions have seen multiple projects underperform, leaving studios uneasy about their future schedules, mainly being the same type of films. Not only that, but it seems that the movies that get audience attention are mostly those with a scope big enough to be an impressive experience on the big screen, such as Top Gun: Maverick and Avatar: The Way of Water. With that in mind, I want to bring forward a suggestion: bring back the large-scale epic as the main tentpole film for audiences and studios.
Aside from the blockbuster, Hollywood’s history has been defined by the epic and, more broadly, films with a massive scope and scale. Large opulent sets, stories spanning long periods or capturing a significant event, and the ambition of all those making the film apparent on screen. For many, film is about spectacle, and no other type of movie takes more advantage of it than the epic. From The Ten Commandments to Ben-Hur, to Lawrence of Arabia, to Apocalypse Now, to Saving Private Ryan, many of the biggest films of all time were also ones with grand sweeping scopes and ambition that painstakingly portrayed their subjects in the visuals and runtime. Even as recently as the 2000s, large epic films like Gladiator and Master and Commander were massive hits both at the awards and the box office. This also includes films that were adaptations and sometimes became franchises, such as the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The size and length of these movies made them feel more like huge events between smaller releases, so they were what most people flocked to see on the big screen in huge crowds.
However, in the 2010s, it felt like these films were beginning to be phased out as the big films of each year. Superhero films and general blockbusters, while always having a popular grip in culture since Jaws and Star Wars, burst into a new sort of life with The Avengers at the start of the 2010s. Beforehand, while studios did focus on sequels and recognizable characters, there tended to be an element of craft that they shared with the Epics, albeit on a smaller scale. Directors could often make blockbusters as vast and ambitious as an epic but more driven as popcorn entertainment rather than as a gripping event. With The Avengers, though, the element of the shared universe or utilizing intellectual properties to make franchises under the belief they could be a never-ending cash flow created a new landscape dominated by familiarity over ambition.
Studios rushed to create their own shared universes, reboot familiar properties, and give sequels to any popular movie they had. This also resulted in a streamlining of production. Less control was given to directors and more towards getting films out on a yearly basis since it meant more profit and box office hits yearly. The aspects of directorial craft and distinctive personality seen in many prior blockbusters were now sanded down with reshoots, CGI, and studio mandates. While these elements, like blockbusters, did exist before, the 2010s saw more and more movies fall into these holes, and they became more homogenized as a result. Even with there being films like the Mission Impossible series or the Guardians of the Galaxy films that did feel more directorial driven and practical, they were the exception to the norm and most films opted to play it relatively safe in their execution.
These elements were exacerbated even further with the release of The Force Awakens, the long-anticipated seventh Star Wars movie. With its monumental success at the box office, studios noticed that it mostly focused on nostalgia for the older movies. Thus, more sequels and franchises focused on calling back to older films that were green-lit, such as Ghostbusters: Afterlife and Spiderman: No Way Home. All of this distilled the big movies of each year either into a franchise/cinematic universe installment or a movie prioritizing nostalgia.
At first, the shift was successful, and many of these films would cross the billion-dollar mark yearly. However, after the pandemic and with many films in long-running franchises feeling either more uniform or mediocre than before, audiences have opted to wait for streaming releases or just not see them at all. In 2023 alone, there have been so many blockbuster and franchise films that have underperformed heavily. This wasn’t helped by how costs in the industry have inflated to result in budgets being around 200 million on average with diminishing returns. Combined with how studios have seemingly doubled down with these types of films for their upcoming slate without a drastic change in the production process, there is a concern that the current model for Hollywood is more visibly unsustainable than ever.
However, I believe that Oppenheimer shows the epic’s potential to bring audiences back into theaters. It seems like if someone wants to see something on the big screen these days, it needs to justify the cost of going out. People seem to be unwilling to put down fifteen to twenty bucks for a movie that just offers basic entertainment. They want something that would benefit from being on a larger screen and provide a distinctive, immersive, and gratifying experience worth paying for. Epics or similar large-scale movies do both in terms of the content of the films and the experience provided. While a simple action film is enhanced by watching it on the big screen, a film that focuses on its scale is designed inherently to be seen on the largest screens possible. Making large-scale movies that are advertised as events rather than as the next installment in a series would incentivize more people to go see them in theaters since they would believe the experience would be worth their time. While people may enjoy franchises, they also seem to burn out quicker due to the rapid release schedule as of late, and few of them push the envelope in terms of what is being offered. This is also compounded by streaming being an easier option for many who would rather wait for a franchise film to be available on their pre-existing subscription rather than paying more to go out to theaters.
One of the major issues with superhero films and many franchises is that they have felt more of the same as of late. While they initially were enticing and unique experiences, they became more uniform in what they presented as time went on. Marvel, for example, streamlined its visual style to look more the same with their movies regardless of director. While this helped on the production side of things in terms of workflow and consistency, it made their movies less distinctive. The decline didn’t help these in the quality of the visual effects that were rushed out to meet unreasonable deadlines to get multiple projects out yearly. The lower quality of the production, combined with the rapid development and release of projects further diluting the distinctive qualities that once brought audiences to these movies, has resulted in Marvel losing its grip on culture as of late. With Epics, however, you get directors who bring their specific visions and treat their work as an art and craft. That’s not to say that superhero or franchise films can’t have that same dedication. But for epics, that’s the main selling point. Films like Avatar put so much time into the presentation because that’s what the audience came to see: something that makes them feel immersed in a different world rather than watching poorly implemented CGI effects fly across the screen.
I do have to stress that while I feel the epic could be a solution, it’s not the end-all-be-all. The history of epics also has large flops such as Cleopatra and Heavens Gate that collapsed under their ambition, whether it was a studio desperately trying to get people back to the movies or directors too enwraped in their ambitions. And, of course, it is a fact that not every movie is going to entice a wide audience. They are a coin toss, but then again, so were most movies that spawned franchises. Even Iron Man and the idea of the MCU in general was a huge risk. Unfortunately, that element of risk has mostly evaporated from studio and franchise films. In turn, though, I guess that’s also why I feel the epic is a better option than continually pushing out franchise and superhero movies. They feel distinctive and are the kind of movies made for the theater. While there is a risk, people may be more willing to give a chance to something new and distinctive rather than the same old leftovers of other movies they love. Heck, that’s why studios leaned into their recent model, to make movies that guaranteed success from familiarity and nostalgia without potential risk, which has only led to people wanting something different, and that’s what the studio should give to get them back.
I feel like the current landscape of film-watching is changing. People seem to have become more selective with their movie choices as of late, and the trends of the prior decade have fizzled out a bit. It’s not that films that follow past trends aren’t successful, but that there are too many of them, and it’s created a bloated and unsustainable market. With the epic, I feel that we could bring back the feeling of movies being these attention-grabbing events. Films like Titanic and Avatar captured the cultural mitosis when they came out, and I feel that studios need to tap into the creative environments that made films like these in order to get audiences back. Instead of churning out films to create a franchise or making sequels to something recognizable, make something that connects with people through its presentation and qualities. I know that it’s not going to be a simple thing to implement, but like I said before, risk is an inherent factor in the history of film. Making movies that last and create an impact isn’t done through a formula but by allowing creators to tap into the essential reasons why we love movies. Given some of the recent success stories, we might be headed down this road as we speak.
