essay about blockbuster movies

Essays About Movies: 7 Examples and 5 Writing Prompts

Check out our guide with essays about movies for budding videographers and artistic students. Learn from our helpful list of examples and prompts.

Watching movies is a part of almost everyone’s life. They entertain us, teach us lessons, and even help us socialize by giving us topics to talk about with others. As long as movies have been produced, everyone has patronized them.  Essays about movies  are a great way to learn all about the meaning behind the picture.

Cinema is an art form in itself. The lighting, camera work, and acting in the most widely acclaimed movies are worthy of praise. Furthermore, a movie can be used to send a message, often discussing issues in contemporary society. Movies are entertaining, but more importantly, they are works of art. If you’re interested in this topic, check out our round-up of screenwriters on Instagram .

5 Helpful Essay Examples 

1. the positive effects of movies on human behaviour by ajay rathod, 2. horror movies by emanuel briggs, 3. casablanca – the greatest hollywood movie ever (author unknown).

• 4.  Dune Review: An Old Story Reshaped For The New 2021 Audience by Oren Cohen

5. Blockbuster movies create booms for tourism — and headaches for locals by Shubhangi Goel

• 6. Moonage Daydream: “Who Is He? What Is He?” by Jonathan Romney
• 7. La Bamba: American Dreaming, Chicano Style by Yolanda Machado

1. My Favorite Movie

2. movies genres, 3. special effects in movies, 4. what do you look for in a movie, 5. the evolution of movies.

“​​Films encourage us to take action. Our favourite characters, superheroes, teach us life lessons. They give us ideas and inspiration to do everything for the better instead of just sitting around, waiting for things to go their way. Films about famous personalities are the perfect way to affect social behaviour positively. Films are a source of knowledge. They can help learn what’s in the trend, find out more about ancient times, or fill out some knowledge gaps.”

In this movie essay, Rathod gives readers three ways watching movies can positively affect us. Movie writers, producers, and directors use their platform to teach viewers life skills, the importance of education, and the contrast between good and evil. Watching movies can also help us improve critical thinking, according to Briggs. Not only do movies entertain us, but they also have many educational benefits. You might also be interested in these  essays about consumerism .

“Many people involving children and adults can effect with their sleeping disturbance and anxiety. Myths, non-realistic, fairy tales could respond differently with being in the real world. Horror movies bring a lot of excitement and entertainment among you and your family. Horror movies can cause physical behavior changes in a person by watching the films. The results of watching horror movies shows that is has really effect people whether you’re an adult, teens, and most likely happens during your childhood.”

In his essay, Briggs acknowledges why people enjoy horror movies so much but warns of their adverse effects on viewers. Most commonly, they cause viewers nightmares, which may cause anxiety and sleep disorders. He focuses on the films’ effects on children, whose more sensitive, less developed brains may respond with worse symptoms, including major trauma. The films can affect all people negatively, but children are the most affected.

“This was the message of Casablanca in late 1942. It was the ideal opportunity for America to utilize its muscles and enter the battle. America was to end up the hesitant gatekeeper of the entire world. The characters of Casablanca, similar to the youthful Americans of the 1960s who stick headed the challenge development, are ‘genuine Americans’ lost in a hostile region, battling to open up another reality.”

In this essay, the author discusses the 1942 film  Casablanca , which is said to be the greatest movie ever made, and explains why it has gotten this reputation. To an extent, the film’s storyline, acting, and even relatability (it was set during World War II) allowed it to shine from its release until the present. It invokes feelings of bravery, passion, and nostalgia, which is why many love the movie. You can also check out these  books about adaption . 

4.   Dune Review: An Old Story Reshaped For The New 2021 Audience by Oren Cohen

“Lady Jessica is a powerful woman in the original book, yet her interactions with Paul diminish her as he thinks of her as slow of thought. Something we don’t like to see in 2021 — and for a good reason. Every book is a product of its time, and every great storyteller knows how to adapt an old story to a new audience. I believe Villeneuve received a lot of hate from diehard Dune fans for making these changes, but I fully support him.”

Like the previous essay, Cohen reviews a film, in this case, Denis Villeneuve’s  Dune , released in 2021. He praises the film, writing about its accurate portrayal of the epic’s vast, dramatic scale, music, and, interestingly, its ability to portray the characters in a way more palatable to contemporary audiences while staying somewhat faithful to the author’s original vision. Cohen enjoyed the movie thoroughly, saying that the movie did the book justice. 

“Those travelers added around 630 million New Zealand dollars ($437 million) to the country’s economy in 2019 alone, the tourism authority told CNBC. A survey by the tourism board, however, showed that almost one in five Kiwis are worried that the country attracts too many tourists. Overcrowding at tourist spots, lack of infrastructure, road congestion and environmental damage are creating tension between locals and visitors, according to a 2019 report by Tourism New Zealand.”

The locations where successful movies are filmed often become tourist destinations for fans of those movies. Goel writes about how “film tourism” affects the residents of popular filming locations. The environment is sometimes damaged, and the locals are caught off guard. Though this is not always the case, film tourism is detrimental to the residents and ecosystem of these locations. You can also check out these  essays about The Great Gatsby .

6. Moonage Daydream:  “Who Is He? What Is He?” by Jonathan Romney

“Right from the start, Brett Morgen’s  Moonage Daydream  (2022) catches us off guard. It begins with an epigraph musing on Friedrich Nietzsche’s proclamation that “God is dead,” then takes us into deep space and onto the surface of the moon. It then unleashes an image storm of rockets, robots, and star-gazers, and rapid-fire fragments of early silent cinema, 1920s science fiction, fifties cartoons, and sixties and seventies newsreel footage, before lingering on a close-up of glittery varnish on fingernails.” 

Moonage Daydream  is a feature film containing never-before-seen footage of David Bowie. In this essay, Romney delves into the process behind creating the movie and how the footage was captured. It also looks at the director’s approach to creating a structured and cohesive film, which took over two years to plan. This essay looks at how Bowie’s essence was captured and preserved in this movie while displaying the intricacies of his mind.

7. La Bamba:  American Dreaming, Chicano Style by Yolanda Machado

“A traumatic memory, awash in hazy neutral tones, arising as a nightmare. Santo & Johnny’s mournful “Sleep Walk” playing. A sudden death, foreshadowing the passing of a star far too young. The opening sequence of Luis Valdez’s  La Bamba  (1987) feels like it could be from another film—what follows is largely a celebration of life and music.”

La Bamba  is a well-known movie about a teenage Mexican migrant who became a rock ‘n’ roll star. His rise to fame is filled with difficult social dynamics, and the star tragically dies in a plane crash at a young age. In this essay, Machado looks at how the tragic death of the star is presented to the viewer, foreshadowing the passing of the young star before flashing back to the beginning of the star’s career. Machado analyses the storyline and directing style, commenting on the detailed depiction of the young star’s life. It’s an in-depth essay that covers everything from plot to writing style to direction.

5 Prompts for Essays About Movies

Simple and straightforward, write about your favorite movie. Explain its premise, characters, and plot, and elaborate on some of the driving messages and themes behind the film. You should also explain why you enjoy the movie so much: what impact does it have on you? Finally, answer this question in your own words for an engaging piece of writing.

From horror to romance, movies can fall into many categories. Choose one of the main genres in cinema and discuss the characteristics of movies under that category. Explain prevalent themes, symbols, and motifs, and give examples of movies belonging to your chosen genre. For example, horror movies often have underlying themes such as mental health issues, trauma, and relationships falling apart. 

Without a doubt, special effects in movies have improved drastically. Both practical and computer-generated effects produce outstanding, detailed effects to depict situations most would consider unfathomable, such as the vast space battles of the  Star Wars  movies. Write about the development of special effects over the years, citing evidence to support your writing. Be sure to detail key highlights in the history of special effects. 

Movies are always made to be appreciated by viewers, but whether or not they enjoy them varies, depending on their preferences. In your essay, write about what you look for in a “good” movie in terms of plot, characters, dialogue, or anything else. You need not go too in-depth but explain your answers adequately. In your opinion, you can use your favorite movie as an example by writing about the key characteristics that make it a great movie.

From the silent black-and-white movies of the early 1900s to the vivid, high-definition movies of today, times have changed concerning movies. Write about how the film industry has improved over time. If this topic seems too broad, feel free to focus on one aspect, such as cinematography, themes, or acting.

For help with your essays, check out our round-up of the  best essay checkers .

If you’re looking for more ideas, check out our  essays about music topic guide !

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• Essay on Women

Good Example Of Essay On Blockbuster Films

Type of paper: Essay

Topic: Women , Cinema , Family , Film , Characters , Parents , Mother , Health

Published: 05/23/2023

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The premise of Titanic is, of course, the sinking of the ship. It also involves Rose and Jack falling in love while on the ship.

Jack Dawson and Rose Dewitt Bukater are the main characters

The film has several women in it, including Rose, her mother, and the Unsinkable Molly Brown. The women do mainly talk to the male characters, but do have scenes with one another. Molly talks to Rose’s mother about general ship gossip. Rose’s mother speaks to Rose about their debts. Rose’s character is meant to represent the invisible lives women lead. Breaking away to be with Jack is meant to signify rejecting this life. In this way, women are represented, but otherwise they are invisible. This specifically is important to my health and the health of other women because it is a character that shows women do not have to be invisible.

The Grand Budapest Hotel

The plot is about a hotel proprietor taking in a refugee, making him an exceptional lobby boy, and eventually leaving him his fortune. The main characters are Zero and M. Gustave . The film has several women in it as secondary characters. Agatha and Madame D. are the only female characters with lines.

The two women only speak to male characters .

They talk to male characters about everything from romance to stolen art. Madame D. gets murdered. Agatha, though brave, is an object of affection. Women are invisible. The film does little for my own or women’s health. It is a poor representation of what women can do in the world, or in difficult situations.

Lost in Translation

Two individuals in Tokyo find friendship in an unlikely place The main characters are Charlotte and Bob Harris The film has two women in it. Two women have a scene together once, wherein Charlotte meets her husband’s old acquaintance and the two exchange basic greetings while her husband does most of the talking. After the friend departs, Charlotte laughs at her intelligence.

Nothing is discussed beyond introductions.

Women are represented and visible in this film in the way that Charlotte struggles to find a connection with somebody, as well as someone to listen to her. It feels this happens often. While women are not represented in abundance in the film, it is good to see a woman openly attempt to find meaning in her life, as well as a connection without it relying only on sexuality or romance.

An American student and an English student meet and fall in love in California. When she violates her student Visa, she is barred entrance into America. The two navigate their relationship long distance.

Jacob and Anna are the main characters.

The film has at least two women in it. The film centers on Anna and Jacob’s conversations. Anna’s mother asks several times if she’s happy in a general way, and asks about work. Anna also has after work meetings with her female boss, involving discussions about Anna’s professional progression, leading to a promotion. I think women are represented relatively well in the film. Anna is strong and while she loves Jacob, she carries on professionally and even romantically in England when the two begin to wonder if they will ever be together again. She does not begin to cry every time they fight, and she is often the one to reach out first, initiating their relationship with a long letter. She defies many stereotypes real women do not adhere to. Her character is good for my health and the health of all women because it shows a real woman. Anna is committed to her job and excels at it. She is romantic, but realistic about love. However, when she and Jacob are able to be together, she returns to him and attempts to rebuild things, likely because she knows if it doesn’t work out she can start again. E.T. An alien gets left behind on earth and is found by a sick boy who wants to help him get home. Elliot and E.T. are the main characters

The film does have at least two women, if you count Drew Barrymore, who was four at the time.

Barrymore and her onscreen mother do talk to one another. It is never about romance, and often about washing up for dinner, asking where her brothers have been, etc. . Elliot’s mother gives a good representation of a single mother. We find out Elliot’s father has fled the family and his mother works to keep them all afloat. She is clearly almost losing her mind, but loves her children dearly. It is likely there were no other adult women in the film for Elliot’s mother to speak with because she didn’t have that kind of time raising three children and working full time. It is a true representation of the situation many women find themselves in today, and while she may have looked invisible, a closer analysis reveals she is the strong backbone of the family. Her quiet presence in the film is good for my health, as well as the health of women everywhere.

Cameron, J. (Director). (1997). Titanic [Motion Picture]. Cameron, W. (Director). (2014). The Grand Budapest Hotel [Motion Picture]. Coppola, S. (Director). (2003). Lost in Translation [Motion Picture]. Doremus, D. (Director). (2011). Like Crazy [Motion Picture]. Speilberg, S. (Director). (1982). E.T. [Motion Picture].

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The 100 greatest blockbusters of the 21st century

As chosen by YOU.

We've all seen 100 Greatest Movies lists. Many of us have a revolving Top Ten wandering around the backs of our minds most of the time. But we're not here to debate cinematic innovation or auteur theory, nor are we here to celebrate the pure bums-on-seats arithmetic of highest-grossing-movies lists (which have their place too, of course).

We're here to champion the movies that get us out of the house on Saturday nights, that come imbued with the smell of popcorn and the taste of pick'n'mix. Movies that make audiences whoop and cheer. Hollywood movies, fun movies, exciting movies, BIG movies. It's hard to define a blockbuster – they fall somewhere in a shifting Venn diagram of action, entertainment, spectacle and money – but we all know when we've seen one.

We gave Digital Spy readers a longlist of 150 candidates released after 2000, and invited you to vote for as many as you liked that you felt deserved to rise to the top.

Enough of the trailers, let's get to the main feature...

100 Sin City

Frank Miller's starkly black-and-white (or should that be noir and white?) comic didn't seem an obvious candidate for a movie adaptation, but Robert Rodriguez used green-screen technology to perfectly capture its sharp definition and clean angles, smartly juggling its interwoven tales of dark deeds on dark streets, where men are men and women are, frankly, objectified beyond belief.

99 Watchmen

They said it couldn't be done. How could anyone ever successfully bring Alan Moore's classic comic to life on screen? Whether you enjoyed the Watchmen film or preferred HBO's more recent series , director Zack Snyder must be lauded for tackling such an ambitious project, pushing the boundaries of what superhero cinema was capable of back in 2009.

98 Man of Steel

Man of Steel graced us all with Henry Cavill, the man whose jaw could cut through anything, as the titular Superman. In this 2013 reboot, Clark Kent is forced to confront his alien heritage and the magnitude of his existence on Earth, when malevolent members of his race arrive with a catastrophic agenda.

97 Thor: The Dark World

While the MCU was still finding its feet, Alan Taylor had the difficult job of following Kenneth Branagh's weighty, Shakespeare-flavoured Thor with a story that introduced the Aether (later recognised as the Reality Stone) into the cinematic cosmos. Christopher Eccleston may not have enjoyed his time on the movie playing Malekith the Dark Elf, but you can't deny his glowering presence adds a menace that many movie supervillains have notably lacked.

96 Birds of Prey

Though Suicide Squad gifted us with Margot Robbie's take on Harley Quinn, it cast a long shadow on the future of her character. Luckily, we got Birds of Prey – a neon-blood-soaked, funny, violent, anti-hero caper. The male gaze is happily obliterated in a technicolour firework display, but not at the expense of a raucously good time.

95 The Bourne Supremacy

The second Bourne movie feels a little overlooked these days, but at the time it revolutionised action movies. Paul Greengrass, fresh off the gritty, realistic drama Omagh , brought an urgency and handheld vitality to the genre, grounding Jason Bourne 100% in the real world. And that climactic car chase through Moscow is an absolute classic of its kind, viscerally thrilling and a new benchmark for the stunt sequences that came after.

94 Furious 7

Perhaps the most emotional of the franchise, Furious 7 was Paul Walker's last appearance in the series after his death in 2013. The movie follows a similar plot to, well, every other Fast & Furious film, except that it had the unexpected and certainly unwanted emotional core of having to bid farewell to one of its stars.

93 Fast Five

Fast 5 marks the moment when the franchise moved away from its tried-and-true plot of street racing and towards the action/heist/suspense stories. It was a move that paid off. It's also the first appearance of Dwayne Johnson as Luke Hobbs, a character who would eventually get his own spin-off with Jason Statham and Idris Elba.

92 Transformers

Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox starred in this actually enjoyable film adaptation of the popular toy line and animated series. Though the objectification of Fox was a bit icky, the movie had heart – plus Peter Cullen as Optimus Prime. The remaining sequels would never reach the same level as the 2007 original (excepting Bumblebee ), so we remember this one fondly.

Such a refreshing change to see Tom Hardy's actual face (not pictured). Playing Eddie Brock (and at least some part of his motion-capture/ CGI symbiote parasite) evidently appealed to some deep desire to do slapstick. Although the film is a violent action superhero spin-off, it's also a comedy, and Hardy throws himself into the role with gusto. Then throws himself on to the ceiling.

90 Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

One of the most expensive films ever made ($300m, and only beaten by the next Pirates movie and a trio of Avengers ), the third Pirates of the Caribbean outing was the one where it all went a bit surreal. Not that Dead Man's Chest 's squid-faced buccaneer wasn't surreal, but At World's End began with a ship carried over the dunes of the afterlife by an army of crabs, and crewed by a dozen identical Jack Sparrows. Barmy and delicious.

89 District 9

A timeless allegory, District 9 is a 'found footage'-style movie that follows the despicable conditions in which aliens are forced to live in on Earth. But soon they gain an ally through the government agent who is responsible for their relocation. It is, at its core, a story of bigotry and power and is necessary watching now as ever.

88 Star Trek Into Darkness

"I'm not playing Khan," insisted Benedict Cumberbatch of his Star Trek villain, even though everyone knew he was playing Khan. Buffed up and gravelly, he led the crew of the rebooted Enterprise a merry dance through a tale of treason and revenge, lending an operatic note not seen before to the venerable sci-fi franchise.

87 Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol

In the fourth instalment in the series, the IMF is wrongly accused of bombing the Kremlin. Ethan and his team race against time to find the real culprits and clear the reputation of their organisation. It garnered a 94% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes , and was lauded for its action sequences and fast-paced thrills, not least that bum-squeaking exterior ascent of the Burj Khalifa.

86 The Day After Tomorrow

A prophecy of doom that still chills (pardon the pun) to this day: we're still living in the "tomorrow" period, but the day after is on its way – when climate change shifts the Atlantic currents and potentially buries the entire northern hemisphere under fifty feet of snow. Thank goodness for father and son Dennis Quaid and Jake Gyllenhaal finding their way back to each other and giving all the frozen spectacle a warm heart.

85 The Bourne Ultimatum

The Bourne Identity gave secret-agent thrillers a whole new tone, Supremacy rewrote the style rulebook – then Ultimatum took it to another level. If director Paul Greengrass and star Matt Damon were experimenting on Supremacy , by Ultimatum they'd hit their stride, delivering jittery thrills, street-level action and a constant, nail-biting sense of paranoia and dread. You could cut the tension in here with a rolled-up magazine, a spork, a shoe – whatever's surprisingly lethal and easily to hand, tbh.

As Golden Globes hosts Tina Fey and Amy Poehler put it: "The story of how George Clooney would rather float away into space and die than spend one more minute with a woman his own age." But Gravity deserved its many plaudits. As well as breaking technical ground with its 360-degree, immersive 3D set-up, it's a stunning depiction of the agoraphobia-inducing beauty of space and a first-rate thriller.

83 Jumanji: The Next Level

If you thought it was funny seeing Dwayne Johnson channel the personality of a nerdy teenage boy, just wait till you see him playing Danny DeVito. Brilliantly repeating the pleasures of the first rebooted film ( Welcome to the Jungle ) while shaking everything up completely, The Next Level sees Jack Black now playing Ser'Darius Blain's Fridge and a ponderous Kevin Hart as Danny Glover, with delightful additions in Awkwafina and the aforementioned DeVito.

82 Iron Man 2

Though it will always come second to Iron Man (sorry, we couldn't help ourselves) the 2010 follow-up is a solid movie with well-choreographed action and, of course, everyone's favourite bionic man back in action. It also gifted us with Don Cheadle as Rhodey (replacing Terrence Howard), who has gone on to become a fan favourite.

81 The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

They said turning a slim book for children into a trilogy of epic movies would make them bloated and a bit pompous and... well, they were a little right. But the Hobbit trilogy is genuinely epic in scale, and no more so than in the climactic finale, as the dwarves, elves, Laketown people, orcs and – um... the other orcs? – clash in a war for Erebor and dominion over Middle-earth.

Did Spartans have that many abs? Don't worry about it. And Scottish accents? Don't. Worry. About. It. Isn't there quite problematic West vs East, and anti-Iranian sentiments in there? Well, yeah, actually. If you can somehow separate Zack Snyder's stab-'em-up from its historical setting, problematic overtones and utter daftness, then there's a brutally-thrilling action movie under there.

79 Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe

It's long. Not the movie – at 150 minutes, it's practically spritely – but the title. It's a title that means business . The franchise, however, never quite got up a head of steam, running out of puff after Voyage of the Dawn Treader (though Netflix has since picked up the baton), but this opener has bags of charm and a superb villain in the form of Tilda Swinton's White Witch.

Perhaps the best part of the 24th Bond movie in the franchise was the addition of Christoph Waltz as Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Dave Bautista also joined the cast, as well as Lea Seydoux. The movie was well-received, lauded in particular for its inventive and complex storytelling and <that> opening tracking shot through Mexico City's Day of the Dead parade. Let's be honest though, we just love Daniel Craig as Bond.

77 Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation

AKA The One Where Tom Cruise Hangs Off The Side Of A Plane For Realsies. Ethan and the gang, disavowed as usual, are in pursuit of the anti-IMF in a sequence of preposterously big set pieces: the dive into the swirling watery sinkhole of data-storage doom, the opera-house gantry fight, the Marrakech motorbike chase. It also introduced franchise regular Rebecca Ferguson to the series and was the first to be directed by now-permanent fixture Christopher McQuarrie. We have no idea what the plot was, but does it matter?

76 Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

Though it received mixed reviews, we can't ignore Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest . It was the highest-grossing film of 2006, the third highest-grossing film of the 2000s, and perhaps most importantly it made the most money out of any in the series. The most impressive feat of the film is undeniably its special effects, best seen in the sprawling, tentacular beard of Bill Nighy's supernatural sea-lord Davy Jones.

Another long-awaited success for WB's superhero adaptations, Aquaman had the right balance of heart, humour, and of course, washboard abs... Uh, we mean action! In particular, director James Wan's massive underwater battle in the final act has been lauded by critics. It was undeniably a win for the studio and fans can't wait for more.

74 Edge of Tomorrow

Groundhog Day has a lot to answer for, and all of it good. Edge of Tomorrow takes the 'live, die, repeat' premise to its extreme (even using it as an alternative title for the home ents release), and sees Tom Cruise's weaselly army PR guy learn to be brave when he inherits the power of time-flipping reincarnation from war hero Emily Blunt.

The last act was clearly made up on the fly but no matter: it's an exciting, funny and clever bit of sci-fi from start to finish, and notable as serial scene-stealer Bill Paxton's last high-profile role.

73 Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker

It's safe to say that the final chapter in the Skywalker saga was divisive amongst fans. The Rise of Skywalker will forever be an important part of the canon, and fans will always hold dear to them the last time they saw General Leia in the Star Wars universe (and of course the lovable, even cuter than BB8 addition of D-O).

72 The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Riding high on Sherlock 's mega-success, Benny Cumbo gave his Smaug everything he had in his vocal arsenal – hauteur, viciousness, rage, pride: the result is a CGI beast that absolutely dominates the movie, as is only fitting given the title. Bilbo and his morally ambivalent dwarf friends have reached their destination, but all that awaits them is horror, paranoia and a terrifying rain of fire...

71 Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

It's no easy trick following up one of the biggest movie franchises ever, but Fantastic Beasts managed to find its own furry, fantastical niche in the Potterverse. Not afraid to lean into dark magic where it should, the whole thing is held together by the affable charms of Eddie Redmayne, whose Newt Scamander is part-The Doctor and part-Professor Brian Cox. Accio, franchise!

70 The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

If The Hunger Games struck sparks of class-cruelty and generational conflict, Catching Fire , appropriately enough, threw petrol on it. Newly-minted megastar Jennifer Lawrence's Katniss survived her encounter with the fatal tournament, so what now? Now the Capitol rubs her nose in her victory, forcing her to return in a bigger, more terrifying battle to the death.

69 Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

In a movie of two halves, JA Bayona both destroyed and revived the Jurassic franchise – the island is no more, annihilated in a volcanic eruption the likes of which we hadn't seen since Gollum fell in the lava, then, following a fantastically atmospheric stalk-and-chase through the spooky mansion by new monstrosity the Indoraptor, the dinosaurs are released into the world. Where that leaves us will be seen in the forthcoming Jurassic World: Dominion .

68 Iron Man 3

The Mandarin, a shadowy, Bin Laden-like figure lurking in the background of international acts of terrorism would seem to be a worthy foe for Tony Stark. But Tony is suffering from PTSD and the Mandarin is not who he seems. (A last-minute rewrite stripped Rebecca Hall of a potentially great villain reveal, alas.) Still, there's always Trevor Slattery. They say his King Lear was the toast of Croydon.

67 Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Some would say that a Dawn comes before a Rise, but not in the Apes franchise. In Rise... , benign scientist James Franco created super-smart chimpanzee Caesar only to see the world fall apart when a pandemic wipes out most of humanity. In Dawn , we really get down to monkey business, and post-apocalyptic forest-living has never looked so wet, nor so cold. Caesar's people are chafing for revenge against the humans, while they in turn can't let their warmongering ways go. Can Caesar keep the peace? (Hint: no.)

66 X-Men: First Class

Matthew Vaughn's X-Men: First Class gave us the recast, James Bond-esque mutant mash-up prequel that we didn't know we wanted, all while sidestepping that messy timeline (for a little while), adding a pre-Oscar megawatt Jennifer Lawrence and perfectly recasting the unrecastable Xavier and Magneto. Also, Hugh Jackman's Wolverine steals the film with one, very sweary, line.

65 Kill Bill Vol 2

Kill Bill Vol 2 was the rare occasion where a sequel was not only a good follow-up, but also a well-received movie in its own right. Quentin Tarantino's sequel sees Uma Thurman reprise her role as the murderous Bride who finally gets her revenge, but not without suffering herself. It's a beautiful, if supremely gory, film. Ah, Tarantino.

64 Mission: Impossible – Fallout

By the sixth outing, most franchises are suffering from major fatigue, but Fallout gave M:I a massive shot in the arm. Once again it's a series of set pieces strung together by the search for a macguffin (plutonium cores, manipulated by Solomon Lane), but what set pieces – BASE-jumping into Paris, a foot race across the rooftops of London, a motorbike gun-battle and that mind-blowing helicopter fight in the Himalayas (actually Norway's distinctive Preikestolen).

63 The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

The first of three in the Hobbit series, An Unexpected Journey introduces us to a young Bilbo Baggins, played by Martin Freeman. It is undeniably the best of the trilogy, and though it received mixed reviews from critics, it surely ushered in a new generation of fans of Tolkien's work. For that, we are grateful.

62 The Bourne Identity

The director of '90s hip-kid touchstones Swingers and Go isn't the obvious choice to kickstart a potential action franchise, but Doug Liman gave The Bourne Identity everything that James Bond had abandoned: plausible motives, believable skills and, crucially, he put him on the outside of the military-espionage machine, an ordinary guy on the run, fighting the same corporate-governmental powers that ruin all our lives. Plus that scene where Matt Damon cuts Franka Potente's hair... Phew. *Fans self, blushes*

by David Opie, Deputy TV Editor

Being a comic book fan in the '90s was rough. This was back when superheroes were still seen as geeky, long before Marvel had taken over multiplexes worldwide. No-one outside of comic book shops had even heard of Iron Man. But they had heard of the X-Men, thanks in large part to a phenomenal animated series which dominated the Saturday mornings of an entire generation.

Blade had tested the waters a couple of years earlier, but in 2000, it was the first live-action X-Men film which truly paved the way for superhero domination at the box office. Fox played it safe, outfitting the team with black leather costumes instead of their usual colourful spandex. Still, it was such a rush to finally see so many of my favourite characters duke it out on the big screen. I no longer had to imagine what it was like to see Cyclops shoot his optic beam or Storm conjure lightning from the sky.

While the first X-Men film had its flaws, it's still surprising to look back and see how much it got right. David Hayter's script didn't shy away from the oppression mutants face, reflecting the experiences of many marginalised groups in authentic comic book fashion. The complicated relationship Professor Xavier shares with Magneto wisely grounded the film too, thanks in large part to pitch-perfect performances from Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen.

And don't forget that Hugh Jackman inhabited the role of Wolverine body and soul, forging an extraordinary legacy that made it impossible to ever imagine anyone else in the role.

60 Django Unchained

A white director (and predominantly white top-billed cast) rendering a stylised, almost comic-book take on the evils of slavery is problematic to say the least. But there's no denying Django Unchained offers a powerful fantasy of historical revenge against the plantation owners, pimps and traffickers who abuse the superheroically resilient and resourceful Django (Jamie Foxx, never better).

59 Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi

Initially labelled the most divisive Star Wars film (a mantle now contested by Episode IX ), The Last Jedi is a moving and wonderful exposition on the contemporary saga characters we know and love. Rian Johnson's exquisite storytelling and carefully plotted developments gave a much-needed freshness to the series and depth to its characters.

58 X2: X-Men United

Writing interesting supervillains isn't easy, as Marvel and DC have both learned to their cost in recent years. They should have paid more attention to X-Men 2 : Ian McKellen's Magneto flips back and forth between enemy and ally, never relinquishing the values that drive him – don't trust humans . Brian Cox's vile Stryker makes war on the mutants, and it's up to Professor X and Magneto to put their differences aside in the battle to save their kind.

57 Inglourious Basterds

Inglourious Basterds is one of Tarantino's better revisionist history films, in which a Jewish girl gets her revenge by setting Nazis (Hitler included) on fire in a locked cinema. It can also be viewed as an indictment of the viewer's giddiness in seeing others suffer (schadenfreude to the extreme). Whatever your take, it's a cathartic whirlwind of violence and emotion.

56 Interstellar

A movie that's looking more and more like a prophecy, Interstellar tells the story of a group of scientists searching for a new planet now that Earth has become inhabitable. It is one of many films in which Christopher Nolan explores themes around humanity, science, relationships, and time, set to extraordinary visuals (that wave!) and an intense Hans Zimmer score.

55 Spider-Man 2

The most emotionally satisfying of Tobey Maguire's outings in the red and blue spandex sees him struggling against his own subconscious desire to give up the job. His relationship with MJ is in pieces, his friendship with Harry Osborn is very much flipped on its head, and tragic scientist Doc Ock is running amok. How's he going to fix all this, while also keeping his identity secret? He isn't, that's how.

54 Spider-Man

by Laurence Mozafari, Editor

After growing up on a diet of Fox's '90s Spider-Man cartoon series, finally seeing the wall-crawler come to life in the cinema as a 12-year-old was perfection. It had serious, tear-jerking, emotional weight, as Peter lost Uncle Ben, and turned down a relationship with MJ to protect her. Then even greater tweaks – yep, organic webbing makes waaay more sense than Peter inventing it, don't @ me – and casting that actually reflected the comics. Just forget Tobey Maguire is a 27-year-old at high-school, OK?

JK Simmons was so ideal as J Jonah Jameson that Marvel and Sony found a way to bring him back, James Franco was hateable as the smarmy Harry Osborn, and Kirsten Dunst is the perfect girl-next-door, Mary Jane Watson, although she did need saving a bit too much.

I'd never seen Willem Dafoe before, and his real-life goblinesque expressions were perfect for his deranged turn as The Green Goblin. Years later, he'd refuse to talk to me about Spider-Man during an interview when the inevitable reboot came along, but I'll let that slide.

From Peter's hilarious first costume, to the upside-down kiss, and first-person web-swinging, the movie captured Spidey better than I could have ever imagined. And don't even get me started on that phenomenal – yet very of-its-time – soundtrack, Aerosmith covering the classic '60s Spidey cartoon theme, while 'Hero' by Nickelback's Chad Kroeger still makes my Spidey senses tingle.

53 Deadpool 2

Deadpool 2 managed to catch lightning in a bottle again, sort of. The movie has the same meta-jokes and crass humour without feeling too much like a rip-off of its predecessor. Most of this is down to Ryan Reynolds' delivery, and the addition of a fuller cast to balance him out. Plus it has the best mid-credits scene ever.

52 Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith

Each Star Wars movie brings something new and distinctive to the franchise, and in Revenge of the Sith , it's RIVERS OF LAVA. The volcanic planet of Mustafar sees Obi-Wan and Anakin finally face off in the climactic battle we'd been promised since Alec Guinness first mentioned a great pilot called Anakin Skywalker, and we weren't disappointed. The prequels may not have lived up to the originals, but now and again they really hit the spot.

51 Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle

Jumanji , a kids book adaptation that was as much an exercise in early CGI as anything, wasn't an obvious choice for a shot of Dwayne Johnson-flavoured adrenaline, but his presence in the reboot was perfectly judged: his massively underrated comedic skills effortlessly balance those of Jack Black, Kevin Hart and Karen Gillan, each playing against type as goofy teens stuck in improbable videogame bodies.

50 The Martian

When you're watching Ridley Scott's The Martian , nothing else in the world matters. The fate of astronaut Mark Watney, played by Matt Damon, is your one and only concern as he battles to conquer life on Mars and make it back home. It's a story of survival, of never giving up. And boy, do we all need some of that right now.

49 Captain Marvel

Captain Marvel was a long time coming and an undeniably positive addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Whether you liked it or not, it was long overdue to have a woman at the centre of a superhero film, and Brie Larson did an exceptional job with the role. The '90s soundtrack and two-eyed Nick Fury made for a fun watch.

48 Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

The Basilisk in the second Harry Potter movie is the coolest of all the threats faced by the boy who lived, simultaneously provoking fear and fascination as it snakes through Hogwarts' pipes. We're also introduced to Tom Riddle for the first time and another piece of Voldemort's backstory falls into place, imploring you to jump straight into the next film (toilet breaks be damned!).

47 X-Men: Days of Future Past

Combining all the strengths of the original X-Men movies with the best of the new generation, Days of Future Past sees Wolverine on the brink of destruction by unbeatable robots, sent back into his 1970s body to warn the new crew of their impending doom. Once again, Xavier and Magneto battle for the soul of mutantkind in a spectacular, apocalyptic showdown.

46 Star Trek

Star Trek has been a lot of things. Progressive. Powerful. Painfully complicated to understand. But it's never quite been 'cool', well, until JJ Abrams' 2009 mainstream movie reboot. Sexy Spock, cool Kirk, and even a cameo from the legendary Leonard Nimoy. It boldly went very mainstream and phasers were set to 'stun'.

We didn't think any war film would be able to top the lasting impact of Saving Private Ryan 's harrowing opening scene, but then Dunkirk came along to blow it out of the water. The film is 106 minutes of visceral trepidation and stress, but the way in which it draws you into the jeopardy using three interwoven timelines (approximately a week, a day and an hour respectively) is no mean feat.

44 Avengers: Age of Ultron

Avengers: Age of Ultron was the second team-up film and 11th in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Though it has since been eclipsed by Endgame , at its time Age of Ultron was a film of great heart. It received mixed reviews, but like most Marvel fare, the fans' response was very positive. It is both a spectacle and a good story.

43 John Wick

On paper, John Wick shouldn't work. The plot consists of a former assassin going on a bloody rampage to avenge his dog (and car), and yet it's stretched out across three instalments with another on the way. But let's face it, you don't go for the storylines. The magnetism of Keanu Reeves is not to be underestimated, and John Wick 's extreme violence is even more impressive when you consider that he does a lot of his own stunts.

42 The Hunger Games

Jennifer Lawrence may have already had an Oscar nomination for Winter's Bone by the time The Hunger Games came out, but it's the movie that cemented her stardom. YA fiction has a tendency toward melodrama and unearned emotion, but Hunger Games ' grounding in a real-feeling world of poverty and neglect pushes sentimentality to one side and wears its righteous political rage on its sleeve.

41 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

AKA The One Where *SPOILER* dies. In a way, the entire instalment is built around its climax, which needed to happen exactly as it did so that the multiple pay-offs of The Deathly Hallows could work. That it also stands alone as a mature, atmospheric thriller is its greatest achievement. Harry is tasked with accessing the reluctant Professor Slughorn's secret memories while an unknown assailant repeatedly attempts to kill him. But who? And why?

40 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

The book is the longest and – many would claim – most in need of editing of the entire series. Yet writer Michael Goldenberg worked wonders to boil it down to its essence, and the result is a genuinely action-packed instalment, which sees Harry uncover the prophecy that Voldemort seeks and which explains their relationship, plus a final showdown that finally lets Ralph Fiennes cut loose as the vile, reptilian sorcerer.

39 Mad Max: Fury Road

by Gabriella Geisinger, Deputy Movies Editor

Mad Max: Fury Road is a film that starts with a bang and refuses to slow down. What could have been a testosterone-fuelled bloodbath was a film of great heart and important messages.

Perhaps the most impressive feat in George Miller's long-delayed reimagining of the wasteland was the stunts. Its larger-than-life cars (car seems too simple a word for them) set against the vast expanse of the Namibian desert made for a viewing experience that was hellishly divine. This alone would have been enough to make the film good. But what makes it great is its story and the cast that brought that story to life.

It's a critique of many topical issues: environmental destruction, patriarchal mania and religious zealotry amongst others, yes, but these critiques are all happy, perhaps accidental, consequences of the story itself. A story of redemption.

Then there's Charlize Theron, whose steely demeanour and ability to disappear into any role lends Furiosa a seething, relatable, palpable anger twinned with a deep well of grief and love. Tom Hardy, another chameleon, grunts his way through the film and somehow manages to be endearing, loveable, and totally terrifying.

Buoyed by Angharad, Capable, Toast, Dag, and Cheedo – each with a unique skill set and personality, not merely Immortan Joe's wives – and a manic Nicholas Hoult as Nux, this apocalyptic adventure is more than just a big-car romp. It is a deeply-felt and powerful movie with messages rife for the taking... if you care to hear them.

Logan is Hugh Jackman's Wolverine swan song, and the shift he puts in for the final instalment in the trilogy is well and truly deserving of a Hollywood pay cheque. The raw emotion on display is palpable and, on occasion, breathtaking. And not just from Jackman: Dafne Keen plays a young mutant who he has sworn to protect, and their relationship is a thing of beauty.

37 Spider-Man: Far from Home

Far from Home had the daunting task of being the direct follow-up after the devastating Avengers: Endgame , and it took that in its stride. It both honoured the legacy of the MCU film while also creating a stand-out sequel in its own right. Tom Holland was endearing and earnest as Peter Parker and Zendaya continued to shine as MJ.

36 Kill Bill Vol 1

By Abby Robinson, TV Writer

The day I first laid eyes on Uma Thurman in Kill Bill was the day my first girl crush was born.

I wasn't 18 years old when I pressed play (as I legally should have been here in the UK). Far from it, actually. But I wasn't afraid, I was mesmerised. The yellow PVC catsuit certainly helped, as did her mastery of a samurai sword. But it was The Bride / Black Mamba's hound-like tenacity, iron will, and never-say-die attitude which I fell in love with as an impressionable teenager. They were traits I could apply in my own world, and even if I didn't have the means to secure a piece of ancient Japanese weaponry, it was the next best thing.

There is one word, above any other, that adequately captured the woman who stood before me as I sat on my living room floor with a bowl of Butterkist toffee popcorn balanced on my legs: iconic.

And who doesn't want to be that?

Like Tarantino's earlier films, Kill Bill: Volume 1 is a violent affair. Blood and guts cartwheel and fizz before your eyes. Metal sings as it makes contact with flesh and bone. But the thwacking and cracking is a caricature, lifted straight from the pages of a comic book. It's so far removed from real-world barbarity that any fear or repulsion that you might have had going into this instantly dissolves, leaving you to drink in the spectacle.

35 Spider-Man: Homecoming

Homecoming gave us our first feature-length look at Tom Holland as Peter Parker and he quickly won everyone's hearts. The movie is more authentic (if you can use that word about superheroes) to the teen experience. With Zendaya and Marisa Tomei as MJ and Aunt May respectively, Homecoming proved to be a boon to Sony and the MCU.

34 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

You've got the proud sons of Durmstrang, the lovely ladies of Beauxbatons Academy, you've got Merpeople, dragons and Death Eaters (oh my). You've got the very welcome presence of Brendan Gleeson as Mad-Eye Moody, David Tennant in his pre- Doctor Who role of Barty Crouch Jr, and Robert Pattinson as tragic Cedric Diggory. And you've got that absolute punch in the stomach when Harry returns from his duel with Voldemort, school trumpets joyfully parping, only for the world to see that something has gone horribly, horribly wrong...

33 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt 1

Perhaps the most divisive of the series, Deathly Hallows Part 1 makes a big tonal gear change after its high-speed opening to slow everything right down as Harry, Ron and Hermione hide out in the woods. While the pace frustrated many viewers – just get on with finding the horcruxes already! – we'd argue that it's the necessary deep breath before the explosive finale. You couldn't have the scale and splendour of Part 2 without the relative peace and quiet that came before. Also Dobby. WAAAAAAAHHHHHH!

32 Kingsman: The Secret Service

After the Bourne series, it didn't seem like there was anywhere for secret agents to go. Bond had the cool, cold-blooded glamour, Jason Bourne had down-and-dirty realism. Kingsman took a new direction with a tone all of its own, occasionally surreal, often funny, always hyper and with the levels turned up to 11. Taron Egerton – arriving as a fully-formed star – rubbed up brilliantly against a maximum-camp Colin Firth in an ultra-violent hybrid of debonair '60s style and '00s excess.

31 Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2

When you've got an ensemble this strong you don't strictly need a good story, but they came up with one anyway – Star-Lord meets his father, the celestial living planet Ego, and is torn between his apparent destiny among the Gods and life with his douchebag buddies. Drax gets all the best lines ("HAHA! I have FAMOUSLY huge turds!") but it's the surprisingly emotional climax involving Yondu, aka the Cool Mary Poppins, that gets us every time.

30 Wonder Woman

by Laura Jane Turner, TV Editor

You know those kinds of memories where you can picture your surroundings and re-experience exactly how you felt in that moment? That's what comes to me when I reminisce about first seeing Wonder Woman kicking ass on the big screen.

After years of being a fan of comic book flicks, this marked the very first time that I'd seen a strong, empowered woman leading the charge in her very own movie (let's never again mention 2004's Catwoman , deal?).

Shedding the hyper-sexualised WW of the past, Diana was given armour and a nuanced character arc that drew parallels to coming up against the patriarchy. She was not, despite that unnecessary romance with Steve, a tool for the male gaze, but instead a resilient warrior that would push forward no matter the obstacle.

The superhero genre still has a way to go when it comes to representation across the board, but this was a moment in time not to be overlooked – and the impact it had on this (not so super) woman still resonates.

Since then we've had Captain Marvel , Birds of Prey and – a little less conventionally – the girls of Amazon's The Boys , but it was Diana that crossed cityscapes and oceans to get us there.

29 Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

This is where the magic began. The books you lost yourself in as a kid brought to life before your very eyes, and every inch as spectacular. Harry, Hogwarts and Hedwig, as real as you and yours. If you don't get goosebumps when you hear John Williams' dazzling score, we're afraid there's nothing more we can do for you.

28 Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens

The Force Awakens was a long (long)-awaited return to the galaxy far, far away. Though some criticised it for its similarity to A New Hope , repeating those beats only further proved that every generation faces similar evils. Rey, Poe, and Finn were instantly beloved, and this will likely be remembered as the best film in the contemporary saga.

"Dances with Smurfs" chuckled one critic on seeing the tale of a colonial invader going native among ecologically-sound forest-dwellers. Well, who's laughing now? James Cameron's accountant, that's who. Avatar has made $2.8 billion and counting, its success granting its creator a blank cheque to craft four planned sequels. The Na'vi will rise again...

26 Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl

Disney making a movie based on a ride was just bonkers enough to work. As much as it may pain some to say, Johnny Depp's performance as Captain Jack was inspired, and the simplicity but high-stakes story was instantly enthralling. It gave us great one-liners and is the kind of film you can watch over and over.

25 Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

by Ali Griffiths, Social Editor

The Prisoner of Azkaban stands head and shoulders above the other Harry Potter movies for one reason: Alfonso Cuarón. Although Chris Columbus did an admirable job capturing the candlelit magic of Hogwarts, artfully exploring creaking corridors and stone-walled dungeons, the esoteric weirdness of Azkaban, with its timey-wimey premise and darker glimpse into the wider wizarding world, required a different approach.

And so Cuarón tackles his Harry Potter film like a true auteur, with highly stylised cinematography and direction, full of tilting angles and dramatic close-ups in dingy settings. Not only do these techniques suggest a more mature film, they succeed in bringing the more unhinged elements of the story to life.

Beyond the filmmaking, Prisoner of Azkaban is simply a brilliant time-travel story. It skilfully avoids the genre's biggest paradoxes by playing out the actions of future-Harry-and-Hermione as they happen in the present (ie, we watch Hermione get hit in the head by a rock from two angles) and gives the audience plenty of a-ha moments as it neatly ties up different plot threads.

Bringing this all together are great performances from actors like David Thewlis, whose deeply warm (but tortured) portrayal of Professor Lupin never fails to make us sad, and a handful of brilliant creature designs and special effects. We challenge anyone not to cheer when the gang free Buckbeak.

24 Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Free from all that 'Episode' baggage, Rogue One was able to chart its own thrilling course through the galaxy far, far away. Even though we know what's coming, the heart and hope that run through the film make the Battle of Scarif sacrifices as stirring as anything in the Star Wars universe. And that final scene? Vader's never been more terrifying.

23 Jurassic World

The original Jurassic Park broke new ground with its CGI dinosaurs, but by the time of the reboot, anyone with a laptop could add realistic mega-reptiles to their action movie. Jurassic World revisits everything that was great about our first encounter with the T Rex and co, while adding new beasts, new jeopardy and Chris Pratt.

22 The Dark Knight Rises

How do you top The Dark Knight , itself a high-water mark in superhero movies? Christopher Nolan threw it all into the mix – Anne Hathaway as a cat burglar in a jumpsuit (who some might be tempted to call Catwoman), Tom Hardy, masked up and unrecognisable – just how he likes it – and old Inception buddies Joseph Gordon Levitt and Marion Cotillard round out the crew. Gotham is a city under siege by its own criminal elements, and to save it Batman must sacrifice himself.

21 Gladiator

Gladiator boasted impressive battle scenes and the now-iconic line: "Are you not entertained?" Both lead actors were nominated for Oscars (the film was up for a whopping 119 awards in total, worldwide). It was responsible for an increased interest in Roman and classical history, dubbed the "Gladiator Effect". That's power. Though there are plenty of anachronisms and historical inaccuracies, there's much more to love.

by Christian Tobin

"Is this really happening?" It’s a question I've asked myself quite a lot during 2020, and no film in recent years has captured the horror, paranoia and dark comedy of our times better than Joker .

Joaquin Phoenix is magnificent, gliding from sympathetic outcast Arthur Fleck to something altogether more menacing. It's a performance of incredible physicality, all sinewy limbs and explosive rage. Oh, and dance sequences. Terrifying, mesmerising dance sequences.

Director Todd Phillips – fully deserving of his Oscar nomination – presents us with a Gotham that's ready to tear itself apart at any second. And without Bruce Wayne's alter ego to redress the balance, both the city and the film soon spiral into total chaos. Mr J wouldn't want it any other way.

Upon its release, it laughed all the way to the bank and became the most profitable comic book movie *ever* – if you can even call it a 'comic book movie'. By the end, I was longing for the outlandish escapism of a Nolan Batman .

But that's the point. We're all used to the Clown Prince of Crime, the iconic jester grinning his way from one larger-than-life set piece to another, but Joker places Phoenix's monster squarely among us as the product of an unkind society that would rather laugh and point than understand and learn.

And that's if the whole thing isn't just one giant, unsettling delusion. Whichever way you view it, the punchline still works. Is this really happening? Who the hell knows, but we can't look away – and that's life.

19 Batman Begins

Before Christopher Nolan, Batman was camp. Even Tim Burton's cartoonish take on the World's Greatest Detective was as much a hoot as it was an action adventure. But Batman Begins changed the rules completely: Christian Bale bulked up and committed totally to the role of a billionaire risk addict, forever pursuing unachievable vengeance for his parents' death in a (relatively) real Gotham City.

18 Casino Royale

The first Daniel Craig 007 outing was also the first post- Bourne Bond, and it benefited from both those elements. Craig's Bond was intense, physical and believably dark, fitting perfectly into the established 007 trappings of exotic locales, amazing action set pieces (that parkour chase...) and femmes fatales . A newly vital approach to action and a constantly moving camera allowed Casino Royale to catapult Bond into the 21st century.

17 Inception

BWOOOOOOOONG . The only thing more synonymous with Christopher Nolan's high-concept dreams-within-dreams heist movie – other than its mysterious spinning-token climax – is the fog-horn trailer trend it spawned. This was peak noughties Nolan, fresh off the back of The Dark Knight with his cast of all-star favourites. It's so seminal we're still talking about it now .

16 Iron Man

Marvel Studios wasn't having the best of times. It'd sold off the rights to its big-ticket characters Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four and the X-Men, and Hulk wasn't going anywhere good. So Iron Man was the last roll of the dice – and it really was a gamble. Casting the former wild man Robert Downey Jr in a starring role? Playing a character only comics geeks cared about? Worked, though, didn't it? Iron Man was the dawn of the MCU and heralded a new era in Hollywood. It's Marvel's world now, we just live in it.

15 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt 2

by Chris Longridge

Bringing 10 years of one singular storyline to a satisfying, cataclysmic end is an achievement not even the MCU can claim (more than one story, innit – fight me). But that's what the Harry Potter team managed. I got into the books when Chamber of Secrets was published – despite being far too old for that kind of nonsense – and followed the series avidly long before Warner Bros converted an abandoned airfield in Hertfordshire into its own magical laboratory.

When the movies arrived, I was thrilled with how well they'd captured the books' unique tone of wonder tempered by sadness and wisdom, and as it went on, each film more confident and mature than the last, I welcomed every Christmas release, knowing for certain that the franchise was in safe hands. There was just no way these movies were going to be bad.

And so it turned out – they somehow even turned Order of the Phoenix (a weighty challenge even for diehard fans) into a thrill ride. So when the final chapter arrived, even though I already knew exactly what was going to happen, it didn't matter: Deathly Hallows Part 2 is a skilful distillation of what makes the entire Harry Potter series great: the deceptively adult themes of betrayal, sacrifice, fear and greed woven into a spectacular battle for Hogwarts, and by extension, Harry's soul. (And Snape's! Don't forget Snape's!)

As much an examination of moral courage and corruption as it is about magic, you're not watching Harry fight Voldemort in the climactic final duel: you're watching your childhood ideals do battle with the failures and resentments of your adult life. Thank God he wins, eh?

14 Deadpool

You have to hand it to Ryan Reynolds: Deadpool got kicked around the floor in Hollywood for years before RR finally got it made, and when he did, it was with full creative control. The result is a foul-mouthed, cynical and extremely funny origin story for the fourth-wall-breaking anti-superhero, with very welcome X-Men cameos and endless snarky gags.

13 Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Should Winter Soldier be at the top of this list? Quite possibly, even just for that lift scene alone. At the very least, Captain America's second solo venture is the first truly great Marvel film. The Russo brothers made their MCU debut here, throwing our Star-Spangled Avenger into the kind of '70s-style conspiracy thriller Francis Coppola himself might have been proud to make.

12 Captain America: Civil War

Perhaps the smartest of all the Marvel movies, Captain America: Civil War is both action-packed yet sophisticated (at least within its oeuvre). It's the closest to a character study we're likely to get in the MCU, and gave us more to love of our favourite heroes. Plus, it set up elements that would be carried through to Endgame .

The Best Bond film ever? It's certainly the best of the century, and it ticks off every box director Sam Mendes demanded of it: nostalgic references to 007s past in the shape of the Aston Martin and Q, Union flags, ridonkulous, stylish action sequences including hand-to-hand silhouette combat atop a skyscraper and a siege finale that literally brings it all home.

10 Thor: Ragnarok

Sure, Guardians of the Galaxy certainly paved the way for this one, and Chris Hemsworth was obviously very tired of po-faced Thor, especially after the gloomy gloomfest that was Thor: The Dark World . So enter Taika Waititi – at the time, a cult kooky Kiwi comedy creator, best known for Hunt for the Wilderpeople and What We Do in the Shadows. After crafting some super Team Thor and Darryl skits for the internetz, Marvel took the ingenious gamble of giving him the Thor threequel (Thorquel?).

He boldly reinvented the franchise as an '80s throwback sci-fi comedy space opera, even bolder was the choice to shear the Thunder God's illustrious golden mane. Jeff Goldblum was almost as weird as in real life as the bizarre bohemian baddie, Grandmaster. Thor and Loki have slick brotherly banter ("get help"), while we get Planet Hulk -lite, with Mark Ruffalo's gladiatorial green giant. Plus there's the eye-gouging twist they managed to hide from the trailers, and Taika even voices the film's funniest character, Korg. We wouldn't have 'Dude Thor' in Endgame , or frankly, the upcoming Thor: Love and Thunder without the genius Ragnarok r e boot rejuvenating the franchise .

9 Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

Long before Game of Thrones and the golden age of television readjusted all of our expectations, Two Towers indulged us in a battle scene of monumentally epic proportions. Forty minutes of Orc-on-Elf (et al) action might seem like a lot on paper, but seeing it for the first time on the silver screen was a real sight to behold. And yes, we definitely tried to recreate Legolas’ shield surfing with our parents' saucepan lids (*don''t try this at home).

The middle part of a trilogy – particularly one with such complex and layered storytelling – always had to contend with the danger of serving as more of a 'set-up' for the final instalment, and yet Two Towers managed to stand tall as a satisfying blockbuster movie in its own right.

8 Guardians of the Galaxy

The MCU can be divided into two eras – before Guardians and after. The early films were a little stolid, afraid to take chances (their very existence was gamble enough), and Iron Man was very much the template for tone: action first, plot second, quips third, and all through the Thor and Captain America series, Marvel always seemed to be keeping a jealous eye on DC's dour, super-heavyweight approach to the genre.

Guardians of the Galaxy is another beast entirely, an explosion in a fireworks shop: bright colours, loud noises, huge characters, extreme silliness, fantastic music and a non-stop commitment to fun. It was just like the comics, in other words. James Gunn's world obviously inspired Taika Waititi's Thor Ragnarok , and there's plenty more to come.

The bickering family that is the Guardians of the Galaxy are the MCU in miniature, strong personalities striking sparks off each other and generating endless, proliferating stories. And with the entire cosmos as their playground, where couldn't we go next with Rocket, Groot, Drax, Gamora and Peter?

7 Black Panther

It's been said often enough (not least in this publication) how Black Panther was more than just a superhero movie – it opened doors in Hollywood that prejudice, cynicism and inertia had held shut for decades. And how it opened them: the all-Black, Black-written, Black-directed, Black-styled, African-set adventure kicked right in the nads those executives who said "people don't want to see Black movies" (because apparently Black people aren't people).

Great storytelling is great storytelling, and Black Panther proved that that's all audiences need. That and new, fresh, diverse stories. There's a place for white guys called Chris in the movie world, of course there is, but there's a place too for Black guys called Chad (RIP), and for Black women called Letitia and Danai and Lupita and Angela. It's just the beginning: the horizon just got wider, the cultural pool got deeper, and we're all the richer for it. Wakanda Forever!

6 Avengers Assemble

Avengers Assemble , or simply The Avengers as it's known outside the UK, is the 2012 team-up movie that was the dawn of a new era of superhero movies. Avengers Assemble may have been a bigger-than-before blockbuster, but what made it work was how it centred the story on the superheroes' humanity, rather than their powers alone.

Avengers Assemble pits the heroes against each other, challenging their very beliefs. Captain America believes superheroes should remain free to defend humanity without government interference. Iron Man supports oversight, leaving Black Widow and Hawkeye in the middle.

But the plot never overshadows the action, which varies from hand-to-hand skirmishes to giant set pieces and the destruction of New York City. The tone is balanced between humour and heart. Iron Man's acerbic wit combined with the quickfire banter between the superheroes makes for a fun watch, even as the world's fate hangs in the balance.

And let us not forget how Mark Ruffalo made the character of the Hulk, aka Bruce Banner, into one of the most beloved, sensitive men to grace the MCU. The film boasts well-rounded characters and a comicbook-y plot, winning over die-hard and casual Marvel fans alike.

5 Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

"When Mr Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton."

JRR Tolkien's words created a new world in the minds of a generation, and Peter Jackson lifted them straight from the page and onto our cinema screens – introducing Middle-earth to an even wider new audience.

The traditional tale of good versus evil was told through one naive and unassuming Hobbit by the name of Frodo Baggins, with the burden to defeat the Dark Lord Sauron placed squarely on his shoulders. Part one of what would become an epic trilogy slowly introduced his eight companions, made up of man, elf and dwarf, who would make up the Fellowship of the Ring.

Before Harry Potter or even Marvel came along to redefine the box-office franchise, Lord of the Rings became a cinema experience that left people counting down to the release of the next movie – and to learn of the fate of their favourite characters.

4 Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

"You bow to no-one." If that single line of dialogue, coupled with the sight of an entire city kneeling before a band of four (very small) Hobbits, doesn't bring on the waterworks, your heart is darker than Sauron's.

"I am no man!" Again, your body had better be covered in goose-pimples right now. In one of the best moments in cinematic history (fact), Éowyn had finally broken free of expectation, and her traditional 'place' as a noblewoman, to take out the Witch-King – something that men had long tried and failed to do.

Return of the King was filled to the brim with iconic one-liners and cathartic moments such as these, bringing the epic big-screen adaptation of this much-loved trilogy to a fitting and emotional end.

3 Avengers: Infinity War

The only downside to Avengers: Infinity War was the niggling feeling we all had that our favourite heroes, dusted into non-existence by Thanos, weren't really gone forever (and that if you hadn't seen any other Marvel movie, you'd be lost). But that aside, Infinity War was a breathtaking piece of cinema in which we saw our favourite heroes pushed to the very brink and, for the first time ever, fail.

Showing our heroes as fallible, and then letting us wait and stew in their failure for a year, was a brilliant move from Marvel. With the direction of the Russo brothers, and a sharper-than-a-knife script from Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, Infinity War is the kind of superhero movie that can only be topped by its direct sequel ( Endgame ).

It also boasts an appearance by Black Panther and the Wakandan army, a moment so gratifying on screen that cheers erupted in cinemas. Of course, they were swiftly followed by tears. The film proved what fans knew all along, that these characters mean more to viewers than just pieces of pop-culture entertainment.

Infinity War may have been mildly eclipsed by Endgame , but fans still return to it time and time again.

2 The Dark Knight

Do we even need to tell you why this one is good? Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight isn't just a perfect blockbuster, or superhero movie, it's almost the perfect movie, albeit very long. It takes cues from the heart-pounding intensity of Heat in bringing the crime-riddled story of Gotham to life, as well as seminal comics like The Killing Joke (like just about every Batman project).

It has the staple Nolan megastar names supporting – "Some men just wanna watch the world burn" – Harvey Dent's Two Face downfall, and of course, the immaculate performance of Heath Ledger as the maniacal Joker. It's stunning to think his casting was considered a risk back then. Sadly, his tragic death close to the film's launch tainted the already dark film with an even darker notoriety. But his performance is perfect, earning him a posthumous Best Supporting Actor Oscar, and setting the bar intergalactically high for all Jokers to follow.

1 Avengers: Endgame

Here it is. The biggest film not just of the century, but all time. And when we say big, we don't just mean box office (though it's got the world record on that front). Endgame is a monumental achievement – the culmination of more than 20 movies, woven together to build towards a battle for the entire universe . With its predecessor Infinity War having set the pieces in place – our heroes at their lowest point, everything lost – Endgame put the bruised and broken Avengers back in play, fulfilling the promise of Doctor Strange's one-in-14-million prediction.

Combining the mechanics of a heist movie with time-travel, superpowers and aliens into an emotionally pleasing, coherent story is amazing just by itself, but doing it so smoothly and so spectacularly boggles the logistical mind.

When the galaxy's finest – Wakandans, Guardians, Asgardians, Mystics, Ravagers, Ant-, Spider-, Iron Man and more – storm the final field of battle, it's a moment that genuinely qualifies for the term 'epic'. Kids say loads of things are epic – new trainers are epic, smelly pencils are epic, Fortnite is epic. But Endgame really is epic. It's epic . EPIC!

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Avengers: Endgame

“Avengers: Endgame” is the culmination of a decade of blockbuster filmmaking, the result of years of work from thousands of people. It is designed to be the most blockbuster of all the blockbusters, a movie with a dozen subplots colliding, and familiar faces from over 20 other movies. It’s really like nothing that Hollywood has produced before, existing not just to acknowledge or exploit the fans of this series, but to reward their love, patience, and undying adoration. The blunt thing you probably want to know most: It’s hard to see serious MCU fans walking away from this disappointed. It checks all the boxes, even ticking off a few ones that fans won’t expect to be on the list. It’s a satisfying end to a chapter of blockbuster history that will be hard to top for pure spectacle. In terms of sheer entertainment value, it’s on the higher end of the MCU, a film that elevates its most iconic heroes to the legendary status they deserve and provides a few legitimate thrills along the way.

Don’t worry: I will stay very spoiler-free. The main joy of this film is in how its incredibly complex narrative unfolds, and you can go elsewhere if you want that ruined. The disappointing “ Avengers: Infinity War ” ended with Thanos finally getting all of the six Infinity Stones he so desperately sought, and then using them to wipe out half of existence, including beloved heroes like Black Panther, Star-Lord, and Spider-Man. “Avengers: Endgame” picks up a few weeks after “The Snap,” as the remaining heroes try to pick up the pieces and figure out if there’s a way to reverse Thanos’ destruction.

Immediately, “ Endgame ” is a more focused piece than “Infinity War” by virtue of having a tighter, smaller cast. (Thanks, Thanos.) It’s a more patient, focused film, even as its plot draws in elements of a dozen other movies. Whereas “ Infinity ” often felt bloated, “Endgame” allows some of the more iconic characters in the history of the MCU a chance to be, well, heroic. No longer mere pawns in a Thanos-driven plot, Iron Man, Captain America, Black Widow, Hulk, and Thor break free of the crowd, ably assisted by Hawkeye and Ant-Man. In a sense, this is the new Avengers, and the tighter group of superheroes reminded me of the charm of Joss Whedon ’s first “Avengers” movie, one in which strong personalities were allowed to bounce off each other instead of just feeling like they were strapped into a rollercoaster headed in the same direction. It also allows space for some of the best acting work in the franchise, particularly from Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr., who one realizes while watching this have turned Captain America and Iron Man into something larger than life for a generation. The most satisfying aspect of “Endgame” is in how much it provides the MCU’s two most popular heroes the story arc they deserve instead of just drowning them in a sea of cameos by lesser characters from other movies. In the way it canonizes them, it becomes an ode to the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe.

What works best about Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely ’s script for “Endgame” is that one feels, for arguably the first time, a sense of looking back instead of merely trying to set the table for something to come. This film incorporates elements of what fans know and love about the MCU, recalling character beats, origins, and the plots of movies like “ Iron Man ,” “ Guardians of the Galaxy ,” and “ Captain America: The First Avenger .” Call it cheap fan service, but one of my biggest issues with these films, especially “Infinity War,” has been a sense that they’re merely commercials for movies yet to be made. “Endgame” doesn’t have that. Sure, the MCU will go on, but this movie has a finality and depth given to it by MCU history that the others have lacked.      

Of course, it needs to work as just a movie too. The middle hour is as purely enjoyable as the MCU has ever been, but there are times when I wished I could sense a human touch below the incredibly-polished, carefully-planned surface of “Avengers: Endgame.” In the long build-up first hour, I longed for one of the pregnant pauses about the seriousness of the situation to lead to something that felt spontaneous or an acting decision that didn’t feel like it had been run through a committee. Every single aspect of “Endgame” has been foreshadowed for years by other films and finely tuned by the hundreds of people it takes to make a movie like this one. The result is a film that often feels more like a product than a piece of art. Roger Ebert once famously wrote that “video games can never be art,” but he may have been surprised to see art becoming more like a video game, something remarkably programmed and determined, lacking anything that really challenges the viewer.

However, people aren’t lining up at dawn for “Avengers: Endgame” to challenge them. It’s really about rewarding commitment, fandom, and expectations. Whatever its flaws, “Endgame” does all of that, and with a sincere admiration for the fans who have made this universe a true cultural phenomenon. The stakes are high and the conclusions actually feel resonant. It’s an epic cultural event, the kind of thing that transcends traditional film criticism to become a shared experience with fans around the world. The biggest question I had coming out was how they could possibly top it ten years from now. 

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

• Chris Hemsworth as Thor Odinson
• Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow
• Jeremy Renner as Clint Barton / Ronin / Hawkeye
• Zoe Saldana as Gamora
• Chris Evans as Steve Rogers / Captain America
• Paul Rudd as Scott Lang / Ant-Man
• Stan Lee as Stan Lee
• Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark / Iron Man
• Josh Brolin as Thanos
• Bradley Cooper as Rocket Racoon (voice)
• Don Cheadle as James "Rhody" Rhodes / War Machine
• Karen Gillan as Nebula
• Gwyneth Paltrow as Virginia "Pepper" Potts / Rescue
• Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner / The Hulk
• Brie Larson as Carol Danvers / Captain Marvel
• Alan Silvestri
• Anthony Russo
• Christopher Markus
• Stephen McFeely
• Jim Starlin
• Jeffrey Ford
• Matthew Schmidt

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• Trent Opaloch

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The Rise, Fall, and Unlikely Rebirth of the Hollywood Blockbuster

What is a blockbuster in 2023?

Once upon a time, the summer blockbuster season was limited to just that — the summer. But over the past decade, it seems like blockbuster season has expanded to fill the entire year.

Marvel Studios, the most reliable blockbuster machine of the modern era, used to only release movies between May and August. Then, in 2018, Black Panther dropped in February, once a dead zone for major releases, and quickly became the biggest movie of the year. Now, rarely does a month pass without a mega-budget, VFX-filled franchise installment.

And that is, essentially, our modern definition of a blockbuster: big, loud, full of CGI, and (most importantly) familiar . These days, it often feels less like a blockbuster is something we’re genuinely excited for and more like something we’re culturally obligated to see. It’s safe, it’s predictable, and all those visual effects will look better on the big screen than on our TV.

But how did we get here? And is there any hope for a different kind of blockbuster movie? To answer those questions, we have to go back to the director who started it all: Steven Spielberg.

An Abridged History of the Blockbuster Movie

Jaws is credited as being the first modern blockbuster.

It’s common knowledge that, in the summer of 1975, Steven Spielberg’s Jaws created the modern blockbuster. But at the time of its release, there had already been plenty of action epics (like Ben-Hur ) and jaw-dropping spectacles (like 2001: A Space Odyssey ). What was different about Jaws was the way it was released. Back then, Hollywood movies would open in one city and then slowly roll out across the country over a period of months. Jaws took a different approach. Accompanied by a marketing blitz on television, it opened across the country on the same day.

Jaws would remain the No. 1 movie in America for the entire summer of 1975, playing in theaters for months and making nearly 30 times its budget. Hollywood quickly shifted to prioritize high-concept, spectacle-driven films that could open big and play to a wide audience. Instead of a movie taking up to a year to make a profit, now, you could have a hit within days of release. As Roger Ebert put it , the impact of movies like Jaws and Star Wars was “inspiring executives to go for the home run instead of the base hit.”

Half a century later, it seems obvious Jaws and Star Wars would become the biggest hits of their time, but when they arrived, they were not the familiar properties they are now. Star Wars was once “an original movie,” that thing Hollywood now fears. And the blockbusters that came in their wake were nothing like what we expect from our big-budget tentpoles today.

They were R-rated horror movies like The Amityville Horror , The Omen , or Alien ; supernatural romantic dramas like Ghost ; and comedies featuring Saturday Night Live alumni like Ghostbusters or Beverly Hills Cop . Even E.T. is an unlikely candidate for one of the biggest blockbusters of all time: an emotional coming-of-age movie set in the suburbs (that, yes, happens to have an alien).

As much as producers tried to refine the formula for blockbuster-sized hits (to varying degrees of success), it was never an exact science. Often, when studios attempted to replicate the success of one movie, like Disney’s Star Wars knockoff The Black Hole , they would underperform. None of the three Jaws sequels came close to the success of the original.

When it came to blockbusters, the hook was seeing something new — a new kind of story, a new twist on a familiar concept, and often, as this was in the Industrial Light & Magic-driven days of breakthrough visual effects, new awe-inspiring sights. Superman , one of the biggest hits of the late ’70s, sold itself on the tagline “You’ll believe a man can fly.”

Tim Burton’s Batman provided the blueprint for our current blockbuster era — for better or for worse.

In the 25 years that followed Jaws , the biggest blockbusters of each year were rarely sequels (Star Wars installments were the notable exceptions). Most years, the movies that audiences gravitated toward the most, the ones that stuck around in theaters for months thanks to constant repeat viewings, were new original films. But in the early 21st century, that started to change.

You could argue that our current era begins with 1989’s Batman (a familiar property originally aimed at children with huge franchise potential, a massive budget, and a movie star in the lead role). Since 2004, the top movie of every single year has been part of an established franchise (the sole exception being the first Avatar in 2009). As silly as it sounds, it’s easy to get nostalgic for the not-too-distant time of 1996, when the big movies of the year were Twister and Independence Day .

The box office strategy for blockbusters in the 21st century is to open to a massive first weekend, then drop off steeply, and be gone from theaters after a month or so. Financial success is more a demonstration of successful marketing than genuine audience passion.

Early blockbusters made their money over a longer period of time, becoming hits because of real enthusiasm and word of mouth keeping them alive for months. These days, it’s hard to tell whether blockbusters are really popular or if we’re just so bombarded by marketing hype that we show up that first week out of obligation and then promptly forget about them. Disney’s 2019 remake of The Lion King made over $1.6 billion, a staggering amount of money — but have you ever heard a single person say they love that movie? Or that they’ve watched it again at home?

Maybe the best gauge for determining real popularity is what’s known as a movie’s “multiplier” (how much of its money was made after its opening weekend). Finding this requires a bit of math. You divide the movie’s total box office by its opening weekend box office. A higher multiplier means more people saw the movie after opening weekend, either returning for repeat viewings or seeing it later based on positive word of mouth. Terminator 2 (1991) had a $31 million opening weekend and went on to gross $201 million domestically, earning it a multiplier of 6.5. Men in Black (1997) has a multiplier of 4.9.

Most hit blockbusters from the past 20 years have a multiplier around 2 or 3. Last year’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness had a multiplier of 2.2. Avengers: Endgame , for a time the highest-grossing movie of all time, had a multiplier of 2.4.

Can the Blockbuster Be Saved?

With the one-two punch of Top Gun: Maverick and Avatar: The Way of Water , the blockbuster showed signs of life again.

In the past year, there have been some signs that the original breed of blockbuster might still be alive. Two 2022 releases, Top Gun: Maverick and Avatar: The Way of Water , each have a multiplier above 5, the highest of nearly any blockbuster in the 21st century (beaten only by the original Avatar ).

Both Top Gun and Avatar generated a lot of talk about how “refreshingly old-fashioned” they were, but I think that really just means they prioritized the things the best blockbusters of the earlier era delivered. Each film sold itself largely on awe-inspiring spectacle, promising to show the audience something new, either with astonishing aerial photography and stuntwork or an immersive, detailed alien world. While both were sequels, they didn’t feel like episodes in a long-running TV series. Neither film bothered with a post-credits scene teasing the next installment, a practice that has become standard for blockbusters. Even if we know there’s an Avatar 3 coming in a few years, The Way of Water offered a fully satisfying, transporting experience, that people went back to see again and again over a period of months.

While some might knock these movies for being “hokey” or “cliched” (although both did receive Best Picture nominations at this year’s Oscars), they feel like the kind of blockbuster we haven’t seen in a long time. Ones where the emotional rush you get watching them comes not from recognizing a cameo of a character from another film, but from good, old-fashioned, exciting storytelling with real stakes. And while Hollywood spent the last two decades training audiences to flock to the safe and familiar, to the brands they can recycle forever, the success of these movies shows they still have an appetite for the classic blockbuster experience. Next step: Get people to show up for this in a movie that’s not a sequel.

This article was originally published on June 29, 2023

• Superheroes
• Science Fiction

Why Hit Movies Are Called Blockbusters

A t the Academy Awards on Sunday, Hollywood will learn which of 2019’s movies will walk away with Oscars. Among the Best Picture nominees is the World War I epic 1917 , which was also a hit with ticket-buyers. That fact is somewhat appropriate, as the word blockbuster has wartime origins — though not from the First World War, but the Second.

The word first appeared in the pages of TIME in a Nov. 29, 1942, article on the Allied bombing of key industrial targets in fascist Italy; the bombs used for such missions were called blockbusters because of their ability to destroy an entire city block. As the term continued to appear in the context of media reports on Allied aerial bombings, it entered the American lexicon as a metaphor for something shocking an explosive and shocking.

That transition too can be seen in the pages of TIME. The magazine began to use blockbuster to describe surprising news, from Supreme Court rulings to noteworthy football plays. In the May 9, 1943, issue, TIME used the word to describe a movie, not for its box-office take but for its content: the film adaptation of former Ambassador Joseph E. Davies’ best-selling Mission to Moscow was “audacious in the extreme” such that critics called it “as explosive as a blockbuster.”

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But it wasn’t long after that the word started to refer specifically to movies that were commercially successful.

For a piece in the anthology The Return of the Epic Film: Genre, Aesthetics and History in the 21st Century, film historian Sheldon Hall dug up some of the earliest uses of the word blockbuster to describe movies. A Dec. 22, 1950, British Daily Mirror article predicted that Cecil B. DeMille’s Samson and Delilah (1949) would be a “box office blockbuster” when it opened in the U.K.; a review in the Nov. 14, 1951, issue of Variety called the movie Quo Vadis (1951) “a blockbuster” that was “right up there with The Birth of a Nation and Gone With the Wind for box office performance.” When the film opened in Italy in March 1953, TIME reported that it cost more than $6,500,000 to make (more than $60 million today) and was the third biggest-grossing film in movie history, boasting a take of $10.5 million ( about $100 million today ).

Variety also dubbed 1953 “a year of box-office blockbusters” because 135 releases grossed $1 million or more, and 1958 was similarly dubbed “the year of the blockbusters for the picture business,” including The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957).

Hall posits that it took a few years after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for writers to feel comfortable using a bomb-based metaphor in such a lighthearted way, but it soon became clear that the entertainment meaning of blockbuster would win out over the military one. The word “was ultimately rendered safe not only by the fact of its obsolescence as a military weapon, but also by its very pervasiveness as an expression during the postwar period,” writes Hall. “Continual use detached the word from its linguistic origins and ensured that it came to be associated primarily with popular entertainment in general and with the big-budget, high-impact Hollywood hit in particular.”

In the decades that followed, that association only increased.

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Eventually, the idea of a blockbuster movie became associated with summer action flicks, especially after Steven Spielberg’s shark attack thriller Jaws, released June 20, 1975. When Star Wars came out two years later, it cemented the summer blockbuster genre, and its power has endured. (Today, 2015’s Star Wars: Episode VII—The Force Awakens remains the highest-grossing film in North America ever .)

Before then, movie theaters saw low-turnout in the summer months, when people preferred to be outside than indoors. The release of Jaws was timed to come out well into summer to intentionally spook beachgoers. Blockbusters soon became known for their power to generate lines going around the block . The growth of the video-rental chain Blockbuster Video shortly in the mid-1980s is proof of the popular use of the term in the movie industry.

As the renowned film critic Roger Ebert wrote for TIME 1998: “Spielberg changed the course of modern Hollywood history. Jaws was a hit of vast proportions, inspiring executives to go for the home run instead of the base hit. And it came out in the summer, a season the major studios had generally ceded to cheaper exploitation films. Within a few years, the Jaws model would inspire an industry in which budgets ran wild because the rewards seemed limitless, in which summer action pictures dominated the industry and in which the hottest young directors wanted to make the Great American Blockbuster.”

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Write to Olivia B. Waxman at [email protected]

A Look Back At Why Blockbuster Really Failed And Why It Didn't Have To

In 2000, Reed Hastings , the founder of a fledgling company called Netflix, flew to Dallas to propose a partnership to Blockbuster CEO John Antioco and his team.  The idea was that Netflix would run Blockbuster’s brand online and Antioco’s firm would promote Netflix in its stores.  Hastings got laughed out of the room.

We all know what happened next.  Blockbuster went bankrupt in 2010 and Netflix is now a $28 billion dollar company, about ten times what Blockbuster was worth.  Today, Hastings is widely hailed as a genius and Antioco is considered a fool. Yet that is far too facile an explanation.

Antioco was, in fact, a very competent executive—many considered him a retail genius—with a long history of success.  Yet for all his operational acumen, he failed to see that networks of unseen connections would bring about his downfall.  Over the past 15 years, scientists have learned much about how these networks function and how his fate could have been avoided.

A Social Epidemi c

When Hastings flew to Dallas and proposed his deal in 2000, Blockbuster sat atop the video rental industry.  With thousands of retail locations, millions of customers, massive marketing budgets and efficient operations, it dominated the competition.  So it’s not surprising that Antioco and his team balked at simply handing over the brand they had worked hard to build.

Yet Blockbuster’s model had a weakness that wasn’t clear at the time.  It earned an enormous amount of money by charging its customers late fees, which had become an important part of Blockbuster’s revenue model.  The ugly truth—and the company’s achilles heel—was that the company’s profits were highly dependent on penalizing its patrons.

At the same time, Netflix had certain advantages.  By eschewing retail locations, it lowered costs and could afford to offer its customers far greater variety.  Instead of charging to rent videos, it offered subscriptions, which made annoying late fees unnecessary.  Customers could watch a video for as long as they wanted or return it and get a new one.

Netflix proved to be a very disruptive innovation , because Blockbuster would have to alter its business model—and damage its profitability—in order to compete with the startup.  Despite being a small, niche service at the time, it had the potential to upend Blockbuster’s well oiled machine.

The Threshold Model

While Netflix’s model clearly had some compelling aspects, it also had some obvious disadvantages.  Without retail locations, it was hard for people to find it.  Moreover, because its customers received their videos by mail, the service was somewhat slow and cumbersome.  People couldn’t just pick up a movie for the night on their way home.

Still, customers loved the service and told their friends.  Some were reluctant at first, they actually liked being able to browse movies at the store and pick one up at a moments notice, but others jumped right in.  And as more of their friends raved about Netflix, the laggards tried it too, fell in love with it and convinced people they knew to give it a shot.

Network scientists call this the threshold model of collective behavior .  For any given idea, there are going to be people with varying levels of resistance.  As those who are more willing begin to adopt the new concept, the more resistant ones become more likely to join in.  Under the right conditions, a viral cascade can ensue.

The best way to understand thresholds is to look at the diffusion of ideas model formulated by Everett Rogers in the 1960’s.

While ideas usually take hold in small niches of innovators, they can often spread to early adopters, who are only slightly more resistant to join in.  Once they’re on board, those in the early majority begin to feel comfortable giving it a try.  As each threshold is past, the next group becomes more likely to adopt the new idea.  That’s how disruption happens .

Unfortunately, this effect is devilishly hard to quantify.   Duncan Watts , a pioneer in network theory, is quick to point out that social dynamics tend to be idiosyncratic and it’s not always clear exactly where thresholds exist.  Still, you can use conventional marketing analysis to evaluate whether an idea is spreading to new groups or just growing within a niche.

It is not clear whether Antioco’s team did such an analysis or not, but by 2004—six years before the company went bankrupt—he sensed that Netflix had become a significant threat and sought to change his firm’s policies.  Yet how he went about doing that sealed his, and ultimately Blockbuster’s, fate.

A Different Network Altogether

Once John Antioco became convinced that Netflix, and to a lesser extent Redbox , was a threat, he used his authority as CEO—as well as the credibility he had earned by nearly doubling Blockbuster’s revenues during his tenure—to discontinue the late fees that annoyed customers and invest heavily into a digital platform to ensure the brand’s future.

Antioco’s article in Harvard Business Review describes what happened next.  While he convinced the board to back his plan, one of his lieutenants, Jim Keyes , led a rear guard action.  He pointed out that the costs of Antioco’s changes — about $200 million to drop late fees and another $200 million to launch Blockbuster Online—were damaging profitability.

Eventually, an activist investor, Carl Icahn , began to question Antioco’s leadership.  Antioco lost the board’s confidence and was fired over a compensation dispute in 2005.  Keyes was named CEO and immediately reversed Antioco’s changes in order to increase profitability.  Blockbuster went bankrupt five years later.

Icahn would later write:

Keyes felt the company couldn’t afford to keep losing so much money, so we pulled the plug. To this day I don’t know what would have happened if we’d avoided the big blowup over Antioco’s bonus and he’d continued growing Total Access. Things might have turned out differently.

So the inability to understand the networks that would determine his fate struck John Antioco twice.  First, he failed to realize how quickly a niche idea could snowball into a viral cascade.  Second, he failed to construct a network that could carry his ideas of change throughout his own organization.

Strategy In A Networked World

For all the excitement surrounding online social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, we really haven’t scratched the surface on the networks we encounter in real life: The networks of consumers that make up our brands and industries as well as the organizational networks that determine how things get done—or don’t get done—in our enterprises.

And it’s imperative that we start thinking about them more seriously.  We need to stop acting as if there is a recipe for business—like a cake or a casserole—and start thinking in terms of how factors are connected .  The structure of those unseen connections, their context and how they relate to our objectives increasingly makes the difference between success and failure.

Unfortunately, there are no definitive answers.  As Duncan Watts told me, “You have to test and learn as you’re going along, but if you understand how networks work and are willing to invest resources into researching the ones that affect your business, you can significantly improve decision making.”

Watts points to recent research done at Facebook as an example how a well designed study can reveal much about how influence spreads through networks.  He also notes that that digital trails left by emails and electronic calendars can be very useful for mapping organizational networks.  Fortunately, we have far more tools today than Antioco did then.

The irony is that Blockbuster failed because its leadership had built a well-oiled operational machine.  It was a very tight network that could execute with extreme efficiency, but poorly suited to let in new information.  Antioco’s fatal flaw wasn’t one of intelligence or capability, but a failure to understand the networks that would determine his fate.

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• Published: 10 March 2023

Identifying gender bias in blockbuster movies through the lens of machine learning

• Muhammad Junaid Haris 1   na1 ,
• Aanchal Upreti 1   na1 ,
• Melih Kurtaran 1 ,
• Filip Ginter 2 ,
• Sebastien Lafond 1 &
• Sepinoud Azimi 1  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  10 , Article number:  94 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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• Cultural and media studies
• Science, technology and society

The problem of gender bias is highly prevalent and well known. In this paper, we have analysed the portrayal of gender roles in English movies, a medium that effectively influences society in shaping people’s beliefs and opinions. First, we gathered scripts of films from different genres and derived sentiments and emotions using natural language processing techniques. Afterwards, we converted the scripts into embeddings, i.e., a way of representing text in the form of vectors. With a thorough investigation, we found specific patterns in male and female characters’ personality traits in movies that align with societal stereotypes. Furthermore, we used mathematical and machine learning techniques and found some biases wherein men are shown to be more dominant and envious than women, whereas women have more joyful roles in movies. In our work, we introduce, to the best of our knowledge, a novel technique to convert dialogues into an array of emotions by combining it with Plutchik’s wheel of emotions. Our study aims to encourage reflections on gender equality in the domain of film and facilitate other researchers in analysing movies automatically instead of using manual approaches.

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Introduction.

As the movie industry is one of the influential branches of the media reaching billions of viewers worldwide, they play a great role in shaping the beliefs and opinions of people (Sparks, 2015 ). Since blockbuster films are those that make money by giving the audience what they want, like, or expect, thus the portrayal of gender roles in blockbuster movies has a direct influence on viewers, possibly reinforcing or contributing to societal gender stereotypes (Ward and Grower, 2020 ). Thus, in our work, we aim to study and analyse gender bias based on emotions expressed by male and female characters in movies using different Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques. For this purpose, we chose around thirty blockbuster English movies from IMDb (IMDb, 2019 ) and performed a comparative analysis of the characters. The study is mainly based on the statistical distribution of male and female characters over a certain period and the sentiment and emotions expressed in their dialogues. Through our work, we are trying to present an approach to understanding and promoting studies on the highly prevalent issue of gender inequality in movies. Furthermore, our analysis allows us to help address the global problem of gender inequality and bring positive social change using NLP.

Related works

Several studies have emerged in the past two decades that attempt to assess the gender gap between men and women in various fields (Lariviére et al., 2013 ; Lauzen, 2019 ; Wagner et al., 2015 ).

Many studies have utilised the Bechdel Test (Bechdel, 1986 ) to evaluate gender bias in movies. Kagan et al. (Kagan et al., 2020 ) in their studies presented 15,540 movie social networks where their findings showed a gender gap in almost all genres of the film industry. However, they also found that all aspects of women’s roles in movies show a trend of improvement over the years with a constant rise in the centrality of female characters and the number of movies that pass the Bechdel test.

Xu et al. (Xu et al., 2019 ) in their analysis of 7226 books, 6087 film synopsis, and 1109 film scripts, identified the constructed emotional dependence of female characters on male characters, also called the Cinderella complex, where women depend on men for a happy and fulfilling life. They used the word embedding techniques with word vectors trained on the Google News dataset to construct a happiness vector for automatically calculating the happiness score for every word in the document. The happiness vector contains words such as success, succeed, luck, fortune, happy, glad, joy, and smile for positive and failure, fail, unfortunate, unhappy, sad, sorrow, and tear for negative sentiment. Their analysis of female and male characters showed that female’s word vector is oriented toward romance, whereas men’s toward adventure. Their studies showed how such narratives embed stereotypical gender roles into moral tales and institutionalise gender inequality through these cultural products.

Similarly, Yu et al. (Yu et al., 2017 ) analysed the emotion represented in Korean thriller movie scripts. The authors performed manual emotion annotation on movie scenes based on eight emotion types defined by Plutchik (Plutchik, 1988 ). Further, they used the Python-based NLTK VADERSentiment tool to analyse the sentiment of the same script and compared the results obtained with manual tagging. Their result showed that the emotions of anger and fear were most matched, whereas the emotion of surprise, anticipation, and disgust had a lower matching score.

Anikina (Anikina, 2017 ) in her work performed manual annotation on movie dialogues based on Plutchik’s emotion wheel. The author used machine learning classifiers (fastText, OpenNLP and SVM) to train on different datasets and implemented rule-based NRC emotion lexicon classifiers to detect the emotions. The study compared the results obtained from NRC Lexicon with manually annotated data to find the accuracy. The study highlighted how the unavailability of annotated resources on movie script domain affected the training process as the data from different domains had to be used and also discussed the limitations of used classifiers in performing multi-label emotion classification.

Similarly, the Bechdel test mostly focuses on assessing the fairness of female representation by three rules, which fails even for female oriented movies (Coyle, 2018 ; Florio, 2019 ; Waletzko, 2015 ) and also does not address stereotypes. In this study, we address the limitations of the Bechdel test by expanding our work to examine the stereotypes by employing both sentiment analysis and the analysis of the embedded emotions. Moreover, in previous studies, stereotypes are generally only analysed using word embedding techniques by creating word vectors. In our work, we are not only relying on the word vectors but also analysing the sentiment and emotions embedded with those words for better representation of our results and hence expanding the work beyond just the positive-negative affect dimension. Further, we present a novel approach to converting dialogues into an array of emotions by combining it with Plutchik’s wheel of emotions.

In this section, we present the workflow of our approaches, as presented in Fig. 1 . A brief description of the three modules is as follows. More detailed information on each module is provided in sections ‘Data processing module, Emotion recognition module, Analysis module’, respectively.

(1) data processing module, (2) emotion detection module, and (3) analysis module.

Data processing module

In this module, we convert the scripts of movies from PDF into a machine-readable format. Movie scripts are first converted from PDF into HTML using online tools. Then we process the HTML and separate scenarios and dialogues of each character.

Emotion recognition module

This module looks at every character’s prevalent positive and negative sentiments using Stanza (Qi et al., 2020 ), a Python natural language analysis package. Next, we run NRCLex (Mohammad and Turney, 2013 )—a rule-based model for emotion detection trained on 27,000 manually annotated common words and phrases. From this step, we get the “emotion scores" for eight primary emotions: fear, anger, trust, surprise, sadness, disgust, joy, and anticipation. Finally, with the help of Plutchik’s wheel of emotions, which describes how emotions are related, we compute 24 secondary emotions. In this module, we convert sentences into embeddings. An embedding is a learned numerical representation of sentences in the form of a vector, where similar sentences will have a similar representation.

Analysis module

In the last module, we perform empirical analysis, statistical methods such as Mann–Whitney U -test, and machine learning techniques, namely clustering and classification, to determine if gender bias exists in the collection of scenarios. The way we determine if bias exists is explained in each section, For example, after running the Mann–Whitney U -test, if we get different U -scores for female and male populations with a significant P -value, we could be certain that they are written differently. Our approach is modular, and modules are loosely coupled and highly cohesive.

In this section, we present the first module of this study, i.e., the data processing module. This module includes data collection and data processing steps.

Data collection

To ensure the global reach of the movies and their impact on society, we opted only for the top-rated movies of all time listed on IMDB. We downloaded scripts of 34 movies from different genres, namely romance, fantasy, fiction, drama, and action, spread over the years ranging from 1972 to 2021. We considered several parameters while choosing the scripts: the accessibility of the scripts, the compatibility of the script’s format with our data processing module, and overall how popular the movie was. Initially, we started with a list of the top 1000 popular movies of all time on IMDB and grouped them into five chunks. We then randomly selected ten movies from each chunk. In the case of series such as Harry Potter, all of the movies were kept. Afterwards, we dropped the movies whose script was not freely available, or the quality of the available manuscript was not suitable to be processed by our module. The final dataset was capped at 34. The year distribution of the movies is presented in Fig. 2 . In total, we collected 26,279 dialogues and 457 characters, out of which 118 are female characters, and 339 are male.

Bar graph showing the distribution of the selected movies based on their published year.

Data processing

Movie scripts are technical documents created by screenwriters and serve as an essential reference for filmmakers. Blocks of text divided into scene headers, scene descriptions, speakers, and utterances are parts of a standard movie script. The critical point is the different indentations used for every block. The typical format of scripts is shown in Fig. 3 .

The way movie scripts are typically composed.

We converted these scripts into a processed set of scenarios and dialogues where individual characters’ information is extracted and exploited using the information about indentation. We would refer to them as character dictionaries for the rest of this paper. We first converted PDF files into HTML format and used BeautifulSoup (Richardson, 2007 )—a Python library for pulling data out of HTML—and regex to create character dictionaries. In the HTML files, the style attribute of every element has a property named ‘left’ and ‘top’, which indicates the value of the starting pixel from the left, i.e., indentation and dialogue sequence, respectively. We have stored the processed version of scripts in JSON format, i.e., attribute-value pairs, where the attribute is the name of the character and the value is the list of dialogues.

In the next step, we created a database from the character dictionaries by further processing the data. Screenwriters sometimes add extra text to the character’s name, such as (V.O.), (O.S.), etc., suggesting a voice-over or off-screen dialogue. First, we processed such terms and deleted this extra information because it is irrelevant to our study. Then, we tagged each character with their respective genders.

Furthermore, we added the movie’s name and the year it was released into the database for visualisation and analysis purposes. Finally, we dropped the characters with less than five dialogues since they did not contribute to our results in a meaningful way. Performing all these steps, we generated a final database, which was also manually validated to ensure its correctness.

In this section, we present the second module of this study, i.e., the emotion recognition module. This module includes finding sentiments and emotions for each character.

Sentiment analysis

We first used the Stanza package (Qi et al., 2020 ) to find the sentiment of every dialogue. Stanza is a Python natural language analysis package that supports sentiment analysis on raw text from diverse sources as input. It produces annotations without having to annotate or tokenize the text manually. It is built with a highly accurate CNN classifier pipeline trained on 112 datasets, enabling efficient training and evaluation of annotated data. The reason for using Stanza is that it is built on top of the PyTorch library (Paszke et al., 2019 ), which gives a high-speed performance on GPU-enabled machines and has better accuracy than other under-optimised models. Stanza classified each dialogue as positive, negative, or neutral. However, more than 70% of the conversations organised by Stanza were neutral. Therefore, Stanza did not provide much information about the bias in male or female characters.

These results prompted us to check the validity of the Stanza model, for which we used the trivial approach of manually annotating the data ourselves and then comparing the result with the Stanza model. To reduce the bias, the same data were manually annotated by two different people, and 179 dialogues spoken by Harry in the Harry Potter series were chosen randomly. After comparing the accuracy of the model with human evaluation, we acquire the following accuracy scores shown in Table 1 .

Emotion detection

By looking at the results of Stanza, we came to know that the overall outlook of positivity and negativity was not drastically different. But, generally, the emotions conveyed by humans are much more complex than only positive and negative. Therefore, for deeper analysis, we ran NRCLex on every dialogue. NRCLex takes a string, i.e., dialogue, as input and returns the emotion scores for the primary eight emotions. Those primary emotions can also be grouped into positive and negative, as suggested by Robert Plutchik. The model classifies joy, anticipation, trust, and surprise as positive emotions and anger, fear, sadness, and disgust as negative emotions. Comparison of genders based on positive vs. negative emotions represented in Fig. 4 .

Bar graph showing the distribution of positive and negative emotion scores obtained after sentiment analysis.

By running NRCLex, we converted every dialogue into an embedding of eight dimensions. Each dimension represents one primary emotion, and its value is a floating-point number showing the likelihood of that sentence conveying that emotion. A sentence could be conveying multiple emotions with varying intensities (Ward and Grower, 2020 ). It’s a probability distribution. Therefore, the embedding or vector sums up to one.

Furthermore, we analysed these primary emotions based on Plutchik’s emotion wheel as shown in Fig. 5 . Psychologist Robert Plutchik proposes it through his famous “wheel of emotions” (Mohsin and Beltiukov, 2019 ). The model shows the intensities of different emotions and how they are interconnected. We use this model as a reference to create complex emotions.

Wheel of emotion showing the interconnection between different emotions.

We computed 24 secondary emotions by averaging the scores of two primary emotions, e.g., envy was derived by taking an average score of sadness and anger. Lastly, we augmented this new information with the previous database and converted every dialogue into a vector of dimension 32. Since there are eight primary emotions and 24 secondary emotions based on Plutchik’s wheel of emotion (Mohsin and Beltiukov, 2019 ). The list of emotions are; anger, joy, anticipation, surprise, trust, delight, sadness, disgust, hope, curiosity, despair, confined, envy, cynicism, pride, love, submission, shame, awe, disapproval, remorse, aggression, anxiety, outrage, fear, dominance, guilt, sentimentality, optimism, pessimism, contempt, and morbidness.

In this section, we present the third module of this study, i.e., the analysis module. This module describes major trends in the data and how characters are written.

Clustering is the process of splitting a population or set of data points into many groups so that data points in the same group are more similar than data points in other groups (Thomas, 2022 ). To put it another way, the goal is to separate groups with similar characteristics and assign them to clusters.

In our final database, we averaged the emotion scores of characters based on all of their dialogues. This new database has a size of 457 x 32, where 457 is the total number of characters. In our database, the ratio of male and female characters is roughly 3:1, i.e., for every female character, there are three male characters. The idea behind applying clustering is that if there is no bias in how male and female characters are written, the clusters made should also follow more or less the same ratio as there is in the data.

We use both k -means clustering and hierarchical clustering. First of all, we used the elbow method on the sum of squared distances to find the optimal number of clusters, which turned out to be seven. For Agglomerative clustering, we use euclidean distance and ward’s linkage, a method for hierarchical clustering. The results of clustering are discussed in section ‘Clustering’.

This section discusses the findings of our analysis using Empirical, Machine Learning, and statistical techniques.

Gender distribution over the years

We have compared the ratio of male and female distribution over the years based on the number of their presence and based on the number of their dialogues. Figure 6 shows grouped total number of characters over the last 20 years. During the years 2000–2004, only 15.1% of characters were females however, during 2015–2019, this percentage increased to 43.9%. It is observed that with the evolution of time, gender distribution is getting more or less balanced.

Gender distribution over the years based on the number of dialogues and the number of their presence in movies.

Mann–Whitney U -test

Based on NRCLex, we have extracted the emotions expressed by male and female characters from their dialogues in all the movies. The obtained emotion score was within the range of 0-1. For detailed analysis, we performed the Mann–Whitney U -test—a form of inferential statistic used to see if there is a significant difference between two groups’ means—on all 32 emotions in the two gender groups. We choose the Mann–Whitney U -test because it is non-parametric and robust against non-normality, and our data is not normal. Through this comparison, we found some notable differences in the distribution of some emotions. The analysis showed that male and female characters exhibit most emotions like anger, aggressiveness, despair, envy, outrage, and love very differently from one another. Male characters have higher values for emotions like anger and aggressiveness. On the other hand, female characters have higher values for emotions such as joy. These results are in line with the gender stereotypes in our society. Women are perceived to be more loving and caring, whereas men are supposed to be more aggressive and powerful.

The U1, U2, and P -value scores of some emotions are shown in Table 2 .

Visualising data

Box plots comparison of female vs. male on average emotion scores is shown in Fig. 7 . Female plots are shown in blue colour, and the male plot is shown in red colour. According to our results, it is observed that male characters have higher scores on the emotions such as aggressiveness and dominance, and female characters have higher scores on emotions such as joy.

a Aggressiveness, b Anger, c Anxiety, d Dominance.

We have used the t-SNE dimensionality reduction technique to visualise the characters’ data. It calculates a similarity measure based on the distance between points and maintains the global structure. In other words, it converts some N-dimensional data into k-dimensional data, where k  <  N and x 1 ,  x 2 , …,  x K are the new axes for the data. In the visualisation shown in Fig. 8 , male characters are represented as blue and female characters as red. It is observed that most females are crowded at the centre, whereas the males are clustered sparsely. This uneven distribution shows a pattern in which characters are primarily written in movies. With the exception of two, most female characters exhibit more or less the same emotions, implying they are written in the same way. In contrast, male characters in the film exhibit a range of emotions and have much more diverse personality traits showing a difference in how they are written.

Gender-wise clustering of characters based on their emotions.

Dialogues analysis

In order to analyse the variations in the dialogues spoken by male and female characters, we performed a sentence-level analysis, which involved extracting the most commonly used words by both genders.

We plotted a word cloud of the words spoken by male and female characters. A word cloud is a graphic depiction of a text’s most commonly occurring terms. Each word’s size in a word cloud reflects how frequently it appears in the text. The word cloud will give us insight into the common themes of words the characters use more often. In Fig. 9 , the word clouds, matching nouns used by male and female characters were excluded in order to trace the unique differences between each gender. In this illustration, we notice that the female characters’ dialogues commonly included the nouns: kitchen, fashion, dress, skirt, sweetheart, and madam; meanwhile, the male characters used the nouns: time, business, war, world, man, and home. These results imply that female characters are shown to be more inclined towards their clothes and household chores. This is also in line with other studies on gender roles (Collins, 2011 ). In comparison, male characters are shown as more ambitious and concerned with business and the world. These results correlate with social stereotypes of gender (Yu et al., 2022 ) in our society.

a Female, b Male.

For further analysis to find out if there is an implicit bias between the traits of male and female characters, we have clustered characters together into seven smaller groups. The clusters are formed based on the similarity between characters, and we can safely say that the groups represent the type or nature of the characters in general. Therefore, characters with similar traits will be grouped and of somewhat the same category. The overall ratio of male and female characters in our database is 3:1. And if there were no bias in how the characters are written, the proportion of male and female characters would be similar in the clusters. However, we employed two different techniques to cluster them, and in both of them, there was an uneven ratio of genders in the smaller groups, as shown in Fig. 10 . Some groups even have a balance of around 6:1, which implies high bias in writing those kinds of characters.

a Hierarchical clustering, b Clustering with k -means.

Pop culture plays a significant role in shaping societal perceptions and attitudes towards gender roles. Through various forms of media such as television, film, music, and social media, pop culture presents images and storylines that can reinforce or challenge traditional gender roles. On the other hand, pop culture can also challenge these stereotypes by featuring strong and complex female characters or depicting men in traditionally feminine roles. Pop culture can also influence how individuals understand and perform their own gender, by providing examples of gender expression and behaviours.

In this study, we have analysed gender representation in a collection of movies and how gender distribution changed over time. Compared to previous works, we rely not only on word vectors but create new embeddings by analysing the emotions associated with these words. We looked into how stereotypes are presented via emotions, making the results more intuitive. Furthermore, we highlighted the hidden bias by using clustering and other ML techniques. The result of this study suggests that although over years the women portrayal have greatly improved, underneath the surface, implicit biases exist. Our clustering results indicate that while the male characters enjoy a variety of emotions when they are portrayed, women are clustered together following the same emotional pattern.

This insight is strengthened by our sentiment analysis of the characters. We found that different kinds of positive emotions are associated with different genders. Those emotions reflect the stereotypes that exist in our society. For example, men are shown to be more dominant and envious than women, and women are shown to be more optimistic and joyful.

The result also indicates that the script writers and the movie producers should be aware of these available biases. There should be a conscious effort to question the portrayal of the characters to make sure the individuality of the characters, independent of their gender, is respected.

We believe that the implicit gender biases are not only available in the movie industry but in a plethora of other cultural products. As a future research direction, it would be interesting to investigate other areas, for example music and conceptual art industry.

Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available in the following github repository: https://github.com/melihkurtaran/DIE_Gender_Equality_in_Movies .

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Acknowledgements

The work has been partially supported by the EMJMD master’s programme in Engineering of Data-Intensive Intelligent Software Systems (EDISS—European Union’s Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency grant number 619819).

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These authors contributed equally: Muhammad Junaid Haris, Aanchal Upreti.

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Muhammad Junaid Haris, Aanchal Upreti, Melih Kurtaran, Sebastien Lafond & Sepinoud Azimi

Department of Computing, University of Turku, Turku, 20500, Finland

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Haris, M.J., Upreti, A., Kurtaran, M. et al. Identifying gender bias in blockbuster movies through the lens of machine learning. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 10 , 94 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-023-01576-3

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Digital Innovation and Transformation

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• Assignment: Digital Winners & Losers

Blockbuster: It’s Failure and Lessons to Digital Transformers

Blockbuster, a wildly successful national movie-rental chain, filed for bankruptcy 6 years after achieving $6 billion dollars in revenue. Why did this happen and what lessons can we learn from it?

As a teenager growing up in America in the late 1990s/early 2000s, I was a frequent customer of Blockbuster – the largest movie rental retail chain with a strong brand and stores across the country. Its revenues impressively climbed to around $6 billion dollars in 2004 only to suffer a crashing descent into bankruptcy in 2010. [1] The reasons behind this failure reveal valuable lessons to future digital transformers and business leaders. I will first summarize the original business model in terms of value creation and value capture and then will offer an analysis of its failure with accompanying lessons.

Business Model

Value Creation

Blockbuster movie rental retail stores offered a wide selection of movies, but focused mainly on new releases. It’s 9,000 stores allowed customers to easily walk through aisles of movies advertised with their DVD cases in order to make a selection. [2] It built a strong brand with 100% recognition and attempted to offer a customer-friendly experience with movie popcorn, candy, and snacks also available for purchase. [3]

Pathways to a Just Digital Future

Value Capture

Blockbuster captured value by owning physical copies of movies that could be rented enough times to exceed the cost of purchasing. It cost from $2-$5 typically to rent a film, new releases commanding higher prices than old films. Each time a customer rented a movie, they agreed to a time and day for return. Late fees, which comprised an estimated 70% of profits, were added to a customer’s account if they did not meet the return deadline. [3]

Why it failed?

After synthesizing analyses on its unraveling, I think these things most contributed to the failure:

• They were making a lot of money : While Netflix was just beginning its DVD-by-mail service and later its streaming/online service, Blockbuster was still earning billions of dollars in revenue using its current model. Additionally, the margins and markets for these new offerings did not appear as attractive as its established model. [3] Why even pay attention to these new ideas if the markets are small and the margins slim?
• Changing competitive landscape: Blockbuster was challenged not only by the startup Netflix, but also eventually by powerful technology companies (Apple and Amazon) and cable companies with streaming and video-on-demand services. It struggled to compete against both, especially when it was late to the game (see number 4 below).
• Operating model implications: Pursuing a new business model with either a DVD-by-mail or streaming/online service required the current operating model to change significantly as Blockbuster would need to shift from its brick-and-mortar approach with retail stores to an entirely new way of functioning that was unknown. This only further encouraged Blockbuster to continue focusing on where it was still earning profit.
• Failure to recognize timing: Blockbuster actually responded to all of its perceived competitive threats with similar models, but it was too late. It eventually tried a DVD-by-mail service, rental kiosks similar to Redbox, and put up its own website for online streaming after acquiring a smaller player in the field. [4] While Blockbuster’s CEO from 2007-2011, Jim Keyes, recognized that his organization was behind the curve in DVD-by-mail and kiosk services, he thought that they were not late to the streaming/online service world, and confidently stated that Blockbuster could leverage its strong brand to win:

http://www.nbcnews.com/video/cnbc/35710480#35710480

In this industry, changes occur rapidly, and Blockbuster was left in the dust.

Lessons learned

Blockbuster’s demise offers many lessons. Here are some of the salient ones to me:

• Currently unattractive opportunities can become very attractive opportunities in our changing world.
• Current success is easily distracting and can blur vision when considering new opportunities or threats.
• Transformation can happen very quickly, and if you miss it, it can be very unforgiving.
• Brand strength and/or past successes are not enough to compete against new digital transformers.
• It didn’t have to end this way – Blockbuster had a chance to purchase Netflix for $50 million  [5] and could have identified the streaming/online trend much earlier.

[1]  https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/09/23/blockbuster-files-for-bankruptcy/?_r=0

[2]  http://www.ibtimes.com/sad-end-blockbuster-video-onetime-5-billion-company-being-liquidated-competition-1496962

[3]  http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/clayton-christensens-how-will-you-measure-your-life

[4]  http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/09/business/09movie.html

[5]  http://www.businessinsider.com/blockbuster-ceo-passed-up-chance-to-buy-netflix-for-50-million-2015-7

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https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/4-lessons-from-blockbuster-failure-david-reiss

http://go-digital.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/netflix-vs-blockbuster-revenues.gif

http://mentalfloss.com/article/77285/11-secrets-former-blockbuster-employees

https://qz.com/144372/a-brief-illustrated-history-of-blockbuster-which-is-closing-the-last-of-its-us-stores/

Student comments on Blockbuster: It’s Failure and Lessons to Digital Transformers

Nicely summarized the battle between Blockbuster and Netflix Tyler! I agree to your assessment that in today’s dynamic digital age past success is no guarantee for future successes for established companies. Based on the Blockbuster-Netflix saga and other similar happenings in different industries what do you think can the big players do or adopt as a strategy to keep themselves from becoming irrelevant (since the new digital business model seems unlucrative to them in its infancy)?

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Blockbuster: The rise and fall of the most famous movie rental store

Blockbuster first came to the UK in 1989, offering Brits the chance to browse their latest stock of films on-demand.

• 16:47, 20 Sep 2024

In the UK, we have seen the rise and fall of many popular retailers, from Woolworths to Wilko. But one that brings back all the nostalgic feelings is Blockbuster, a time before streaming services dominated cinemas and DVDs.

Thousands of Brits will remember trawling through shelves looking for the latest Friday night watch.

Blockbuster was an American rental store chain that made it to the UK in 1989, before its initial collapse in 2013.

The chain started as a video rental shop , before stocking video games and DVDs, before eventually offering streaming and video on demand.

But the chain, founded by David Cook in 1985, struggled to compete against the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime and was forced to cease operations.

Here, we take a look back at the history of movie rentals and how DVDs and videos became something of the past.

Rise and fall of movie rentals

Blockbuster began game and DVD trading in selected US stores in 1985, opening its first standalone store in Dallas, Texas, on October 19, with 8,000 VHS and 2,000 Beta tapes.

By 1988,Blockbuster had 800 stores and was the most popular chain in the US.

Blockbuster opened in the UK in 1989, after buying Ritz Video.

There were three major video rental stores in the 1990s: Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, and Movie Gallery - with Blockbuster being the most popular.

In 2000, Netflix co-founders Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph allegedly offered Blockbuster's chairman and CEO, John Antioco, a 49% stake in Netflix for $50 million, but were turned down.

Ironically, Netflix and other streaming channels have been blamed for Blockbuster’s demise

At its peak in 2004, Blockbuster had more than 9,000 stores worldwide employing around 84,300 people.

In 2010 Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy, with Dish Network buying its remaining 1,700 stores in 2011.

In 2013 there were over 500 Blockbuster locations in the UK, but in December all stores ceased operations.

In 2019 there was only one franchised Blockbuster store open, in Bend, Oregon, USA, which is now a popular tourist destination.

In 2023, the Blockbuster website was reactivated with a message that said "We are working on rewinding your movie" fuelling rumours of a comeback. But it was a joke.

Last year the company also joked about reopening in a tweet saying: "New business idea. We're going to come back as a bank and use VHS and DVDs as currency.”

Between 2008 and 2017 the combined value of physical video sales and rentals in the UK fell from £1.7 billion to £0.5 billion.

MORE ON Blockbuster UK Woolworths Limited Netflix

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Blockbuster: The rise and fall of the movie rental store, and what happened to the brand

• Blockbuster grew from a single store in Dallas to a chain of 9,000 locations over two decades.
• But mistakes, such as declining to acquire Netflix when it was just a startup, led the company to go bankrupt and close almost all of its stores. 
• Recent website changes have some speculating about a possible comeback. Here's how Blockbuster went from a retail force to a nostalgic memory.

David Cook opened the first Blockbuster in 1985.

After working in computer software, founder David Cook decided to open his own video-rental store in Dallas , Texas. His company was different from other rental stores because it offered customers a selection of 8,000 VHS tapes with the help of a modern, computerized check-out process, while other, smaller rental stores could only offer a couple hundred movies. 

One year later, Cook expanded Blockbuster by opening three more stores.

At the time, rental stores, like Blockbuster, were the only way people could watch movies that had left theaters without buying the VHS tapes themselves. 

In 1987, three major investors took Blockbuster to the next level.

They invested $18.5 million in Blockbuster, according to Quartz. Later that year, Cook left the company , as the headquarters moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. 

Under new management, the company bought up local video stores and opened new ones under the Blockbuster branding.

In 1988, Blockbuster became the leading video-store chain in the US with 800 stores.

In the '90s, Blockbuster hit a major milestone when it opened its 1,000th store.

In 1992, the company also expanded overseas when it bought out video-rental chain Ritz in the UK. At this time, there were 2,800 Blockbuster stores. 

In 1994, Viacom bought the video-rental company for $8.4 billion.

Five years later, Viacom took Blockbuster public, as the number of stores reached 6,000 globally.

But trouble was on the horizon in 1997, as Blockbuster's future competitor, Netflix, was founded.

Blockbuster was known for charging customers a fee for every day they were late returning a movie rental. In fact, Blockbuster said it made $800 million in late fees , or 16% of its revenue, Quartz reported. This frustrated many customers, including Netflix founder Reed Hastings. 

Hastings said he founded Netflix because he did not want to pay the $40 in fines he'd racked up at Blockbuster. In its early stages, Hastings' company, which had no late fees, would send DVDs straight to your house for a flat monthly rate.

In 2000, Blockbuster made the first mistake that would mark its demise: The company decided not to buy Netflix.

Blockbuster considered buying the popular Netflix service for $50 million , but the company decided to not make the purchase. Netflix went on to become even more popular and more profitable than Blockbuster. 

In 2002, Blockbuster's other big competitor, Redbox, launched.

Redbox's addition to the market reinforced the idea that people wanted quicker rental options with no late fees, so Blockbuster had to make a change. 

Despite the rise of Netflix and Redbox, Blockbuster was at its peak in 2004.

That year, Blockbuster had 9,000 stores globally , Insider reported, and it earned $5.9 billion in revenue .

But the company started making major changes in the early 2000s that would ultimately lead to its downfall.

In 2004, Viacom parted ways with Blockbuster. That same year, the company launched Blockbuster Online, but it was already years behind Netflix.

At the same time, Blockbuster decided to end late fees. It was estimated that it would cost the company $200 million to stop collecting late fees and another $200 million to start the new venture, Blockbuster Online, according to a Harvard Business Review article by former CEO John Antioco.

In the following years, Blockbuster's market value dwindled, hinting at its bleak future.

From 2003 to 2005, the company lost 75% of its market value , Forbes reported.

In 2010, the rental company filed for bankruptcy after Netflix's popularity continued to grow.

In an attempt to wipe out $1 billion of debt, Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy, and the company was delisted from the NYSE.

The following year, Dish Network bought the company out of bankruptcy for $320 million in hopes of keeping 600 stores open. 

However, Dish Network announced in 2013 that it would close the remaining Blockbuster stores.

At the time, there were only 300 Blockbuster stores still in operation, Insider reported.

Today, the Blockbuster franchise has dwindled to just one store. So, where is the last Blockbuster? It's in Bend, Oregon.

At its peak, Blockbuster had 9,000 stores globally and made $5.9 billion, but today the once-famous video rental company has shrunk to a single store in a small town. 

The standalone Blockbuster says it's still in operation because of its loyal customer base, citing the fact that the store has 4,000 accounts and signs up new customers each day . The store also said a large number of tourists visit the store to reminisce about the former rental company. 

In 2020, the lone store opened its doors for overnight guests by partnering with Airbnb . Since then, it's also been the subject of a documentary called " The Last Blockbuster ." 

Netflix, now in the business of making original shows, released a comedy series in 2022 set in a Blockbuster store

More than two decades after Blockbuster said "no" to acquiring the Netflix, you can watch the streaming service's original comedy series about the employees working in the world's last Blockbuster.

Netflix's "Blockbuster" takes place in a fictional version of the chain's only remaining store. The cast, led by Randall Park and Melissa Fumero, fumbles their way through keeping the location open. 

The series hit Netflix last November, but it wasn't a hit with viewers: Just one month later, Variety reported that Netflix canceled the series. 

The Bend store drummed up interest during this year's Super Bowl with a homemade ad it released on social media during the game.

The Bend, Oregon Blockbuster couldn't afford the millions of dollars that a real Super Bowl ad would have cost. Instead, it posted its own homemade spot to Instagram and YouTube during this year's halftime show, the Los Angeles Times reported last month.

It features a cockroach scurrying into the store in a post-apocalyptic world. "We'll still be here," a voice says as the camera focuses on the entrance to the store.

The ad worked, according to the Times: Sales both online and in-store were up sharply in the days after it was posted, store employees said.

A cryptic message on Blockbuster's website has some fans guessing about a new move from the defunct brand

Fans of Blockbuster spotted a recent change to blockbuster.com . Whoever manages the website added "We are working on rewinding your movie" below the company's logo. Insider's review of past versions of the website using the Wayback Machine internet archive suggests that the change was made sometime last summer.

The revision, plus some tweets from the official Blockbuster Twitter account, caused some fans of the brand to speculate that it was planning a comeback, Hot Hardware reported this month. The company did not respond to Insider's request for comment on its website and tweets.

Netflix announces its final red envelope DVDs will be shipped out in September of this year

Netflix is also getting out of the DVD-rental business. It announced it would end its DVD-rental services on September 29, 2023, according to an official Twitter account dedicated to the DVD-side of the business.

• Main content

Ryan Reynolds' Deadpool mocks Marvel movies in exclusive deleted scene

Ryan Reynolds ' lovable masked mercenary takes many, many jabs at fellow Marvel superheroes and movies alike in " Deadpool & Wolverine ." And if you wanted more, well, we've got more.

The summer blockbuster has its digital home release on Oct. 1, and USA TODAY is exclusively debuting the first deleted scene from the movie, featuring Reynolds in all his scarred, zinger-slinging glory as Wade Wilson.

In the very meta comic-book film, Wade has hung up the superhero outfit to focus on being a salesman when he's captured by the Time Variance Authority and given the chance to be an Avengers-level good guy in the Sacred Timeline of the Marvel Cinematic Universe by Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen). The new scene leads up to the big pitch, when Wade and Paradox are getting into an elevator.

Join our Watch Party! Sign up to receive USA TODAY's movie and TV recommendations right in your inbox

"This may come as a shock to a narcissistic, blathering bag of meat like yourself, but your universe is not the only one in existence," Paradox says in smarmy fashion.

"Oh, please. You think I haven’t seen Doctor Ant and the Quantumverse of Madness?" Wade mockingly asks, riffing on the multiverse-centric MCU flicks "Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness" and "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania."

Other bonus features on the digital release and Blu-ray/DVD (out Oct. 22) include deleted scenes starring a pair of supporting characters, TVA agent B-15 (Wunmi Mosaku) and Deadpool's buddy Peter (Rob Delaney), plus a gag reel, commentary by Reynolds and director Shawn Levy, a rundown of all the cool cameos , and a video PSA with Deadpool trying to convince Hugh Jackman to get a live checkup for testicular cancer.

Blockbuster LLC Failure: A Case Study Analysis Case Study

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Introduction

Brief history of blockbuster llc, situational analysis, assumptions and missing information, problem definition and mitigation strategies, gap analysis and recommendations.

A competitiveness approach is a road map for a sector’s long-term sustainability. An industry’s competitiveness can be enhanced through strengthening market segmentation and branding. While firm-level actions may increase specific companies’ performance in the near term, the benefit is probably limited and temporary unless industry-wide obstacles such as a challenging governmental and regulatory climate are remedied (Momaya, 2019).

How a business is structured and utilizes its core competencies to generate distinctive or lower-cost goods or services influences its potential to compete successfully and deliver exceptional value to its consumers while increasing profits (Momaya, 2019). This report aims to analyze some of the factors and issues that might have led to Blockbuster Company losing its competitive edge to other market players like Netflix.

With roughly 8,000 locations, the Blockbuster Company is a market leader in rental movies and video games. The businesses rented movies and video games to consumers for personal use. Blockbuster’s eyesight is to be a one-stop-shop for games and films. Its objective is to continue growing its fundamental rental business while leveraging its company image, massive database, retail locations, and cinema interactions to convey an even wider scope of home entertainment to existing and new viewers.

The corporation has operations in the United States of America, Europe, Latin America, Australia, Canada, Mexico, and Asia. Blockbuster’s headquarters are in Dallas, Texas, and the company employs 58,561 individuals on a full-time, part-time, and occasional basis (Chopra & Veeraiyan, 2017).

The business made $5,287.9 million in income during the fiscal year ending January 2009, down from 4.6% in 2008 (Chopra & Veeraiyan, 2017). Blockbuster blamed the profit reduction mainly on non-cash asset impairments against its goodwill and other long-lived investments. By renting DVDs by mail and downloading, or streamed, purchases.

Initially, Blockbuster generated income by renting movies from stores and charging late fees on leases. Blockbuster started an online movie rental program in August 2004 to offer competition to traditional industry leader Netflix and keep engaged with industry developments (Chopra & Veeraiyan, 2017). The only entity that can genuinely battle with Netflix against other contenders is a sustained strategic advantage in the digital renting marketplace (Tubbs, 2021).

Currently, only Blockbuster and Netflix are fighting for online consumers. The innovation for in-home watching continues to advance, and it has become more affordable to stream videos via the net. Diverse distribution sources provide in-home entertainment.

Porter Five Forces Analysis

Industry competition.

The weaker a corporation’s position is, the greater the number of opponents and the more comparable goods and services they provide. Suppliers and customers will seek out a business’s competitors to offer a decent arrangement or reduced rates (Mishra & Tripathi, 2020).

On the other hand, when aggressive competition is minimal, a business can significantly increase prices and negotiate terms of transactions to increase sales and profits (Mishra & Tripathi, 2020). When fierce competition, it becomes exceedingly challenging for established businesses like Blockbuster LLC to produce maximum yield.

Threat of New Entrants

The power of new competitors in a marketplace also affects Blockbuster’s dominance. The less energy and finances a rival must invest to enter and compete effectively in a firm’s market, the more an incumbent business’s foothold may be considerably undermined (Song et al., 2018).

A sector with extreme entry barriers benefits existing businesses by increasing prices and securing better conditions (Song et al., 2018). Due to the more critical financial requirements for entering the film industry, Blockbuster LLC maintains a healthy market share despite severe competition from Netflix.

Bargaining Power of Suppliers

This characteristic describes the ease with which vendors can increase the cost of materials. The lesser distributors the film industry has, the more reliant Blockbuster will be on a single source (Lee & Yan, 2019). Consequently, the supplier gains leverage and can increase prices of raw materials and pursue other trade advantages.

On the other hand, Blockbuster has a network of partners and low switching prices between competitor producers, it can reduce its supply costs and maximize efficiency.

Bargaining Power of Consumers

Consumer potential to manipulate price reductions or their amount of power determines business success. It is influenced by the number of clients or users a business has, the importance of each buyer, and the expense of acquiring new consumers or markets for the business’s output (Zhu et al., 2017). With a fewer and more robust client base, each individual has more bargaining power to negotiate cheaper rates and better packages (Zhu et al., 2017). When purchasers have a considerable bargaining advantage, they frequently force prices down, restricting Blockbuster’s ability to produce high revenues.

Threat of Substitutes

Substitute commodities are a danger since they can be utilized in place of a firm’s products or services. Businesses that manufacture items and services with no near alternatives will have a greater capacity to raise charges and secure advantageous conditions (Mauboussin & Rappaport, 2021). When close substitutes are accessible, Blockbuster’s customers might opt to purchase Netflix’s goods, eroding the corporation’s influence (Mauboussin & Rappaport, 2021). If the threat of substitutes is significant, Blockbuster LLC must invest consistently in research & development activities or risk losing market share to competitors.

PESTEL Analysis

Political factors.

The US administration abides by all World Trade Organization regulations and guidelines. Reliability in policy formulation and execution fosters a positive work environment at Blockbuster LLC (Chen, 2021). The United States appears to have a stable political structure, allowing Blockbuster to develop projections based on a predictable political climate. Furthermore, the United States has a thriving civil society, and Blockbuster should establish relationships with them and seek opportunities for collaboration (Chen, 2021). Civil society organizations exert influence not just on policymaking but also on developing a societal narrative.

Economic Factors

Increased inflation may compel Blockbuster to maintain constant price increases in line with inflation, resulting in decreased brand recognition and continual cost-cutting efforts. Cost-based pricing may be a poor technique in several circumstances (Murmann, 2017). The faster pace of GDP growth indicates that the economy is expanding in demand (Murmann, 2017). Blockbuster may capitalize on this trend by diversifying its product offering and reaching out to new customers.

Social Factors

Blockbuster LLC should analyze the hierarchy in the environment where it works and how it affects economic demand. For example, the state apparatus in the US economy is gradually shifting toward the older population, which has a higher spending power than the younger age. Additionally, population trends are critical in anticipating an economy’s demand. For instance, as the United States population ages, demand for commodities aimed primarily at this demographic will increase. Blockbuster should analyze population changes while developing new products and incorporate elements that appeal to this audience.

Technological Factors

Countries worldwide are attempting to prepare for the deployment of 5G infrastructure. Blockbuster should determine the extent to which the local consumer base prepared to deploy a 5G connection. One area in which the US lags behind China is digital transactions. Blockbuster should determine which mobile wallet methods are favored in the local economy and build its corporate structure. Uber struggled in China because it entered before the mass adoption of smartphones in the country. Blockbuster should develop a plan that considers cultural attitudes, technology, and Blockbuster’s economic model.

Environmental Factors

Environment regulations compliance organizations play a key role in ensuring that standards are adhered to. However, in developing nations, these institutions frequently stall obtaining bribes. Blockbuster LLC should be conscious that such tactics exist in certain jurisdictions. The money spent on sustainable power should enable Blockbuster to justify its effort as part of its promotional strategy. Finally, Blockbuster should analyze the recycling policies applicable to its projected market and develop measures to comply with them.

Legal Factors

Blockbuster must determine a nation’s data protection legislation and the steps made following them. For example, most EU member states require that EU citizen statistics be stored solely in EU member states. Before entering a foreign market, Blockbuster must determine the applicable corporate laws and how they are distinct from those in its native market. Furthermore, if the court procedure is subject to unfairness, Blockbuster cannot be certain of the conclusions.

When Netflix began in 1997, Blockbuster was the sector’s most significant player. Between 1985 and 1992, the brick-and-mortar leasing network expanded from its headquarters in Dallas, Texas, to over 2,800 outlets worldwide (Hiller, 2017). Viacom acquired Blockbuster two years later for $8.4 billion.

In 2000, Netflix understood that perhaps working alongside Blockbuster would be better than fighting against them (Hiller, 2017). Reed Hastings, co-founder, and CEO of Netflix contacted John Antioco, then-CEO of Blockbuster, with a partnership proposition (Hiller, 2017). The Netflix team would manage Blockbuster’s internet trademark as part of the partnership.

Naturally, that arrangement never transpired, in part because Blockbuster mocked Netflix during their meeting to explore the transaction. In 1999, Groupe Arnault backed Netflix with a $30 million funding investment that aided in establishing the subscriber-based business (Cohan, 2020). By 2006, Blockbuster’s internet services had expanded to more than 2 million subscribers.

In 2008, Netflix announced a partnership with Starz to broadcast around 1,000 Hollywood films and television episodes (Cohan, 2020). Blockbuster was dropped from the New York Stock Exchange and declared bankrupt on July 1, 2010, after suffering over $1 billion in losses (Boland-DeVito, 2018). Thus, this was a big blow to the United States’ movie film producer.

Blockbusters can use exit strategies as they are frequently utilized by entrepreneurs or enterprise investors who wish to exit a failing operation. Exit techniques that Blockbuster could can sought for include being acquired by another business or the company’s initial public offering (Alsafadi et al., 2020). The process of acquisition by another company is usually not long considering that the business is changing management to another firm. After declaring bankruptcy, Dish bought Blockbuster intending to integrate activities by leveraging its architecture and identity.

In the short and medium run, offering Blockbuster’s discounted or free stores, which will increase the value of the firm’s television consumers. The long-run action would be to the corporation in extending its distribution rights. By acquiring Blockbuster, the change in management would affect other parts of the organization such as finance and the overall administration. Because of its reduced market share and bankruptcy, the cost of acquisition of Blockbuster by Dish was $320 million.

However, fierce competition from Netflix and Hulu, both of which have a sizable market share in the business are anticipated. Dish’s Blockbuster Movie Pass will bundle accessibility to films through television, broadcasting, or mail and help in handling the market rivalry with Netflix.

Apart from the takeover, another turnaround plan that Blockbuster could use to avoid bankruptcy is to consolidate its electronic and stored inventory into a central repository. Under the legislation, all retailers will be permitted to function as mini-distribution facilities (Shahri & Sarvestani, 2020). The expertise required for this plan are the firm’s data management system. By having a centralized portal, Blockbuster clients will be able to browse the inventory of their retail stores and select their chosen films online.

The short and medium plan actions for this suggestion include piloting using selected stores to monitor the efficiency of the idea. In the long term, Blockbuster should establish numerous databases to ensure all its information is secure. The cost of implementation is costly to because it requires the creation and maintenance of multiple databases. The estimated cost of setting up various websites is $200 million.

This recommendation will strain the finance department of Blockbuster considering the economic crisis the business is in. The challenges anticipated with this resolution are the acquisition of the costs involved in setting up the plan. Blockbuster can auction some of its assets to raise funds for the implementation of the idea.

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