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Hey guys, I’ve been looking around for a good forum for all things movie to post on and I came across this one. I was surprised at how active people here are and so I thought I’d try to post something here. It's my first time posting anything on any sort of forum so please go easy on me.
Since this is my first post I put a lot of thought into what it should be about. I considered doing a review on a movie but then I saw something recently that I felt like I just had to talk about.
As some of you might already know, on the 27th of March, Marvel did a 5 hour stream to reveal PART of the cast for the next Avengers movie Avengers Doomsday. Like many, after seeing the cast list I was initially also very excited, I grew up watching the Xmen movies from the 2000s so it's obvious to see why Sir Patrick Stewert and Sir Ian Mckellen alone would be enough to get me excited for this movie, but for us to also get James Marsden Cyclops, Rebecca Romijn Mystique, and Alan cumming NightCrawler as well just to name a few, is insane.
The cast list is already ridiculous and without even knowing the rest of the cast, its safe to say that Avengers Doomsday will easily become one of the most expensive movies ever. With a star studded cast like that, its enough to get even non-marvel-fans at the very least intrigued by the movie. Though initially excited, the more I thought about it, the more it made me concerned about the future of Hollywood.
Ever since Marel found their success with their big avenger cross over movies and the MCU as a whole, people have been trying to recreate their formula of success. Almost every movie nowadays has a budget of 200+ million, where just having 1 big name actor/actress is no longer enough to sell seats. We are spoilt with the likes of the Marvel movies, the DCU movies, and even movies like oppenheimer.
Now I’m aware that big cast movies isn’t something new, we’ve been having this type of movies, like The Hangover, The Expendables, or even as far back as movies like Ocean’s 11, Italian Job, Jurassic Park. But where back then it would be a treat to get a movie like that once in a while, I feel like these days thats what people expect but not what people want.
Megalopolis was a movie that came out in 2024, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, it sees Julius Caesar and Franklyn Cicero clash in an alternate 21st Centry New York version of New Rome. The movie's cast had Adam Driver as Julius Caesar and Giancarlo Esposito as Cicero, as well as Aubrey Plaza. Nathalie Emmanuel, Shaia Labeouf, Jon Voight, Jason Schwartzman, Dustin Hoofman and Laurence Fishburne just to name a few. The point is this movie had a lot of talent, when I heard about the movie I was genuinely excited. However, the movie was a box office flop, grossing only 14.3 million worldwide against their budget of 120 million. Similarly, Anora, an indie film that walked out of the oscars with 5 academy awards cost only 6 million to make and grossed a staggering 65 million with no real A list actor/actress headlining their movie.
Films like Anora shows that people don’t really care about the cast or who is in it, it certainly helps having big name actors but what really sells seats at the cinema is a quality original screenplay. I’m sick of movies now a days all end up feeling like the same movie because studios just keeps hiring the same people and pumping out formulaic movies with similar stories. At the recent cinema con, 21 movies were reveal to be released in 2026, out of the 21, only 3, as far as I know, were original IPs, all the rest were either cash grab sequels of previous franchises like shrek 5, moana 3, ice age 6, or toy story 5, existing ips that are now getting made into movies like street fighter, and masters of the universe, or big IP cinematic universe movies like Avengers doomsday, clay face from DC or Fast x.
Now I’m certainly not hating on any of these movies, as a matter of fact, I’ll probably watch most of them. But with streaming platforms being so prevalent now, people are already having less and less of a reason to go to the cinemas, at least for me, I recently found myself missing the feeling wanting to go to the cinemas to watch something instead of just waiting for it to be on netflix, or disney plus or whatever. There’s almost no point of going to the cinemas anymore when you know for certain that in a few months you can stream it.
I understand why studios keep pumping out movies that just sells nostalgia, or movies that makes use of certain IP’s existing fan base, like a new DC or Marvel movie, its easy and for them it’s all about meeting KPIs and making money, I get it. But it just seems like capitalism is ruining the film industry, surprise surprise. I want to see more original movies like The Lighthouse, Tenet, Isle of Dogs, Mickey 17, Conclave etc, even megalopolis which I hated, movies that regardless if it ends up being good or not, at least makes me interested and excited about going to watch it in the cinemas, and not just excited because I want to see characters I like on screen interacting like a marvel movie but genuinely excited to watch a movie because the trailer looks good and I want to see what happens and how it ends.
Since this is my first post I put a lot of thought into what it should be about. I considered doing a review on a movie but then I saw something recently that I felt like I just had to talk about.
As some of you might already know, on the 27th of March, Marvel did a 5 hour stream to reveal PART of the cast for the next Avengers movie Avengers Doomsday. Like many, after seeing the cast list I was initially also very excited, I grew up watching the Xmen movies from the 2000s so it's obvious to see why Sir Patrick Stewert and Sir Ian Mckellen alone would be enough to get me excited for this movie, but for us to also get James Marsden Cyclops, Rebecca Romijn Mystique, and Alan cumming NightCrawler as well just to name a few, is insane.
The cast list is already ridiculous and without even knowing the rest of the cast, its safe to say that Avengers Doomsday will easily become one of the most expensive movies ever. With a star studded cast like that, its enough to get even non-marvel-fans at the very least intrigued by the movie. Though initially excited, the more I thought about it, the more it made me concerned about the future of Hollywood.
Ever since Marel found their success with their big avenger cross over movies and the MCU as a whole, people have been trying to recreate their formula of success. Almost every movie nowadays has a budget of 200+ million, where just having 1 big name actor/actress is no longer enough to sell seats. We are spoilt with the likes of the Marvel movies, the DCU movies, and even movies like oppenheimer.
Now I’m aware that big cast movies isn’t something new, we’ve been having this type of movies, like The Hangover, The Expendables, or even as far back as movies like Ocean’s 11, Italian Job, Jurassic Park. But where back then it would be a treat to get a movie like that once in a while, I feel like these days thats what people expect but not what people want.
Megalopolis was a movie that came out in 2024, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, it sees Julius Caesar and Franklyn Cicero clash in an alternate 21st Centry New York version of New Rome. The movie's cast had Adam Driver as Julius Caesar and Giancarlo Esposito as Cicero, as well as Aubrey Plaza. Nathalie Emmanuel, Shaia Labeouf, Jon Voight, Jason Schwartzman, Dustin Hoofman and Laurence Fishburne just to name a few. The point is this movie had a lot of talent, when I heard about the movie I was genuinely excited. However, the movie was a box office flop, grossing only 14.3 million worldwide against their budget of 120 million. Similarly, Anora, an indie film that walked out of the oscars with 5 academy awards cost only 6 million to make and grossed a staggering 65 million with no real A list actor/actress headlining their movie.
Films like Anora shows that people don’t really care about the cast or who is in it, it certainly helps having big name actors but what really sells seats at the cinema is a quality original screenplay. I’m sick of movies now a days all end up feeling like the same movie because studios just keeps hiring the same people and pumping out formulaic movies with similar stories. At the recent cinema con, 21 movies were reveal to be released in 2026, out of the 21, only 3, as far as I know, were original IPs, all the rest were either cash grab sequels of previous franchises like shrek 5, moana 3, ice age 6, or toy story 5, existing ips that are now getting made into movies like street fighter, and masters of the universe, or big IP cinematic universe movies like Avengers doomsday, clay face from DC or Fast x.
Now I’m certainly not hating on any of these movies, as a matter of fact, I’ll probably watch most of them. But with streaming platforms being so prevalent now, people are already having less and less of a reason to go to the cinemas, at least for me, I recently found myself missing the feeling wanting to go to the cinemas to watch something instead of just waiting for it to be on netflix, or disney plus or whatever. There’s almost no point of going to the cinemas anymore when you know for certain that in a few months you can stream it.
I understand why studios keep pumping out movies that just sells nostalgia, or movies that makes use of certain IP’s existing fan base, like a new DC or Marvel movie, its easy and for them it’s all about meeting KPIs and making money, I get it. But it just seems like capitalism is ruining the film industry, surprise surprise. I want to see more original movies like The Lighthouse, Tenet, Isle of Dogs, Mickey 17, Conclave etc, even megalopolis which I hated, movies that regardless if it ends up being good or not, at least makes me interested and excited about going to watch it in the cinemas, and not just excited because I want to see characters I like on screen interacting like a marvel movie but genuinely excited to watch a movie because the trailer looks good and I want to see what happens and how it ends.
