Was 2024 Good or Bad for the State of Film?

Chances are, you watched at least one major release in the theater last year. Chances are even better that you watched dozens of new releases from the comfort of your own home. Is that good? It’s certainly not bad that people are watching movies, but thanks to the fracturing of the film industry it’s hard to tell what to care about and if anything actually matters.

The most zeitgeist piercing films of 2024 were in your face, take no prisoners flicks that, love them or hate them, tried something new. Or at the very least tried something. Films like The Substance, The Brutalist, and Anora were extra-long attempts to make the audience capital F FEEL something in the theater. Meant to be watched on a screen as big as possible, these movies were technically successful (The Substance and Anora made money, The Brutalist just brought home multiple pieces of hardware from the Golden Globes), but aside from creating discourse among film students young and old did they move the needle in a way that regular people care about?

The biggest monetary successes from 2024 - Inside Out 2, Deadpool & Wolverine, Dune: Part 2 - were all designed for maximum carnage at the box office. After raking in billions of dollars for their corporate overlords there’s still hand wringing about whether or not the film industry is dying.

From our vantage point, the film industry is going to stick around. People love watching movies, people love making movies, and apparently people are watching them at home. The big question is if we’ll ever get see a resurgence of the mid-budget film. We’re guessing not. But for now we can all watch Juror #2 from the comfort of our couch.