For the last few years, I have been predicting that change has been on the horizon for Hollywood, due to the marshalling of a range of factors – AI, streaming wars, lean economic times, social upheaval, ever reducing box office returns and a lack of new ideas – but the sweeping change I keep hinting at has not come. I finished my summary of film in 2023 saying that 2024 looks likely to be similar to 2023 and that prediction turned out to be largely accurate. Certainly, there is nothing on the horizon that heralds a sea change in cinema.
My year in the cinema began poorly, with seeing the embarrassingly mediocre Next Goal Wins on New Year’s Day. Taika Waititi’s charm didn’t light up the screen this time, and even a strong performance from Michael Fassbender couldn’t save this film. Later in the year, a series of high-profile films at the BFI London Film Festival received bad reviews, from a new Elton John documentary to Amy Adams’s Nightbitch, further adding a feeling of cinema malaise.
One crucial difference in 2024 was fewer superhero blockbusters. This added to the feeling of the year being a cinematic non-event. Marvel were on a break, following lacklustre box office in 2023. Their only release, Deadpool and Wolverine, was a big commercial success and managed to take the postmodern humour of Deadpool to new heights; with Ryan Renyolds delivering a looney tunes-esque comedic performance, perfectly offset by Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine as straight man. It was very funny, but this is the end of the road for this zany, meta style of humour and to make more of these films would result in rapidly diminishing returns.
Many villain film failures
DC are currently having a reset as James Gunn takes the helm. They did release Joker: Folie a Deux this year, which turned heads by being a musical but ended up being dull and tedious, focusing the plot on an irrelevant court case that lacked drama. Even a reliably great performance from Joaquin Phoenix couldn’t save this film from being the worst movie I sat through this year.
Next year, DC will return with their new James Gunn branded lineup of films. We shall see if this prompts a revival for the house of Batman or if they will continue to flounder. Gunn’s epic vision and focus on character emotion is what DC needs to make fun films and their stable of iconic superheroes relatable to audiences. However, if the tone veers too close to Marvel’s signature sense of humour, Gunn risks alienating DC fans while producing a poor imitation of what cinema audiences are already growing tired of.
Sony’s Spider-Man villain-based franchise continued to crash and burn, with the widely mocked Madame Web being both a huge critical and commercial flop and Kraven The Hunter making little impact at the box office or in the discourse. Venom: The Last Dance did deliver a fun and poignant farewell to the silly duo of Tom Hardy and Tom Hardy’s black goo-based alter ego, but it was less fun than the previous instalment.
Other franchise blockbusters underwhelmed. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga was spectacular to watch, with George Miller’s practical effects wowing audiences and great performances from Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth, but it failed to live up to the expectations set by the previous film in the franchise.
Despite blockbuster disappointments this year, there were a lot of artistic successes. Particularly in unexpected corners. For instance, this year’s Oscar nominations was one of the strongest slates in recent years, with sublime films including Oppenheimer, Anatomy of a Fall, The Holdovers, Past Lives, Poor Things and Zone of Interest getting best picture nominations. The latter both being one of the most darkly disturbing and creatively original films I have ever sat through.
All the above best picture nominees and others, such as American Fiction, Barbie and The Killers of Flower Moon, had creative flair, were thoroughly engaging and had something important to say. The only disappointing best picture nominee was Maestro, whose only flaw was being a little dull. Oppenheimer thoroughly deserved its sweep of the awards, and it was good to see the Academy recognise Christopher Nolan’s excellent directing.
Many strong performances this year
It was not just at the Oscars that we saw unusual and interesting films succeeding. Challengers was fun, tense, expertly crafted and a genuinely sexy film, bucking (pun intended) the recent trend for sexless blockbusters. With an amazing lead performance, Zendaya further confirmed her position as one of the great cinematic talents of today. Conclave was a tense adaption of the Richard Harris novel, and The Iron Claw told the sad and powerful story of the Von Erich family with great performances from Zac Efron, Jeremy Allen White and Harris Dickinson.
Gladiator II was a surprising success, despite being a nostalgia heavy cash in on the smash hit original. It lacked the first film’s career making performances from Russell Crowe and Joaquin Phoenix, which meant that this film didn’t shine as bright as the original, but the charisma of Denzel Washington and Ridley Scott’s hallmark action directing elevated it from being a cash-in sequel that no one loved.
The Boy and the Heron was a beautiful and moving film about grief from Hayao Miyazaki, with a high-profile voice cast – including Mark Hamil, Florence Pugh and Dave Bautista – all doing excellent work, while Blitz bent Steve McQueen’s signature weird style towards a tale of race in Britain during the Second World War that boasted excellent performances from Saoirse Ronan, Stephen Graham and Paul Weller.
This year also served up a range of excellent low profile and independent films. Most notably, I Saw The TV Glow, a dark, introspective horror film about gender identity and abuse that used 90s nostalgia effectively to tell a deeply strange and utterly devastating story. This was the surprise indie hit of the year, and everyone should track it down because it’s a real showcase of how you don’t need huge stars with massive budgets to make a devastatingly powerful film.
Following on from the box office and Oscar success of Poor Things, Yorgos Lanthimos released a second film this year. Kinds of Kindness returned his off kilter look at the world to a setting that is more recognizably our world but with a slight twist, to tell a dark triptych of dramas that was hard hitting, funny and deeply unsettling.
Speaking of films with a striking visual style, Dev Patel showed that he is as talented behind the camera as he is in front of it with his dark revenge action-adventure Monkey Man, which had a clear message about corruption and religious persecution in India. This is Patel’s calling card as both a director and an action star, and he sets out a strong stall with a blistering physical performance and creative flair as a director.
The highs and low of sci-fi
Elsewhere, Love Lies Bleeding was a captivating, otherworldly riff on an 80s pulp thriller and had great performances from Kristen Stewart and Katy O Brian, while Rebel Ridge brought Jeremy Saulnier’s slick directing to a politically tinged friendly-neighbourhood-sociopath film. Both were very entertaining, unusual American indie films that made subtle commentary on society.
It was a mixed year for non-superhero sci-fi films. Dune: Part 2 was stunning and found the power and political relevance in Frank Herbert’s famously hard to adapt novel, blending it well with Denis Villeneuve’s epic directorial eye, brilliant effects, stunning production design, gripping music and excellent performances from Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Florence Pugh and Rebecca Ferguson. Alien: Romulus managed to deliver a decent instalment in the franchise, no small miracle based on recent additions, and is certainly the best Alien film since Alien 3.
Unfortunately, elsewhere the sci-fi genre underperformed. Spaceman was ponderous and slow, without having much to say, and Code 8: Part 2 was so generic and dull that it would be the worst film of the year if it wasn’t so pedestrian that it ended up being completely inoffensive and forgettable.
The horror genre also had a good year. The Substance captured everyone’s attention by being a gory, intense and disturbing satire on beauty standards with an outstanding performance from Demi Moore. In other unexpectedly outstanding horror performances, Hugh Grant delivered an excellent turn as a scarily angry atheist in Heretic. Matt Smith and Morfydd Clark served up a creepy slice of rural horror in Starve Acre, and the always reliable Hunter Schafer, Dan Stevens and Jessica Henwick were entertaining in the Alpine horror thriller Cuckoo.
In British cinema, the most unlikely hit in a year of unlikely hits was Kneecap, which followed the true story of a group of Irish language hip-hop artists, who played themselves and was made partly in the Irish language. Alice Lowe returned to starring and directing with Timestalker, which was a deeply silly, funny and moving time travel romance that brought British charm to an unusual premise. Meanwhile Saoirse Ronan continued to deliver excellent performances with the powerfully moving The Outrun.
Looking to the future
Despite this being a year filled with unexpected surprises, from Irish language hip-hop musical biopics to bizarre horror films, this doesn’t look like the beginning of a huge change in cinema. There are always interesting independent gems, but just because in 2024 films like The Iron Claw and Alien: Romulus were above average doesn’t automatically mean this will be repeated next year. We may just face a year of standard blockbusters, adaptations and franchise films, many of which are middling.
Talk of the demise of the superhero blockbuster may also be overstated. If Superman and Fantastic Four are well made, then audiences will flock to them and they will be successful, thus displacing all this talk of the end of the reign of superheroes. If they are bad and they underperform it will be because audiences don’t want to see bad films. Not necessarily that they don’t want well-made superhero films in the future.
Next year will open with Robert Eggers’s vampire film Nosferatu, and Florence Pugh and Andew Garfield’s We Live In Time, followed quickly by A Real Pain, which was well received at the 2024 London Film Festival. Then we will be into the Oscar season, with films like Angelina Jolie’s performance vehicle Maria.
2025 promises a range of high-profile blockbusters including Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, 28 Years Later, Jurassic World Rebirth and Superman, the first of the James Gunn DC films, as well as a full range of Marvel films including Captain America: Brave New World, Thunderbolts* and a new Fantastic Four film.
There’s also The Gorge, Ballerina, from the John Wick franchise, a new Paul Thomas Anderson film and a film about Minecraft, alongside new instalments in the Avatar and Bridget Jones series. None of this looks like a revolution but hopefully there will be some surprisingly good films, like there were in 2024.
