The year 2023 was full of a lot of stinkers and smash hits in the movie theater. Some were known by all and others hidden away. How do they stack up against each other? Which should you watch?

Major blockbusters came out this year like Barbie or Oppenheimer and others that tried to live up to the same like The Flash, which bombed at the box office. But do the numbers really reflect the quality of the movies?

“It doesn’t reflect the quality as much as it reflects the marketing / reach of the marketing,” said senior David Collin. “Like Spiderverse (Spider-Man: Across the Spider Verse) did pretty mid in the box office but is known as one of the best animated movies to date.” 

The climate of movie theaters and the movies that succeed in them have changed so much in the last year. Comic book movies have seen a dramatic fall from grace, once dominating the theaters now being relegated to “popcorn flicks” and slammed by popular directors like Martin Sorcesse. The movies themselves haven’t changed much if at all but the audience perception certainly has. It seems the classic big name blockbuster is back in the center stage with movies like Barbie absolutely blowing away the box office this past year.

Since the pandemic, movie theaters have been through many weird phases. When the pandemic started, the climate of theaters was in a unique spot. The only movies that were turning any big profit were franchise hits such as the incredibly popular “Marvel Cinematic Universe” or “Star Wars”. However not all movies in this category did as well. For instance, Marvel’s rival, DC Comics, struggled to bring its characters to the same quality on the big screen as their chief competitor and the box office results reflected that. After the biggest year yet for these movies, 2019, bringing us smash hits like Spider-Man: Far From Home or Avengers: Endgame which became the highest grossing film of all time for a short period, 2020 changed the landscape entirely. 

The COVID-19 pandemic rocked the world in so many ways and the world of movies was no exception. During this period, almost no movies were being made causing the movie making machines like Disney to slow down. The movies that were already made and just about ready to go, were put out but also onto streaming platforms due to most people not going out into the theater. This dramatically reduced the box office returns for several years. Even since then, people are back out into the theaters but that hasn’t gone away. 

Many people just sit back and wait for certain movies like the Marvel movies or other popcorn flicks to release on a streaming platform like “Netflix” or “Disney+” so they can watch it from the comfort of their own home. 

“At home I can just be comfortable by myself and do it whenever,” Said senior CJ Tirone.   

This has caused a same but different climate in theaters to resurface so to speak. Before the boom of comic book movies arguably beginning ironically enough with Batman Begins back in 2005, blockbusters went by a very different look. They would usually be made by a big name director, for example, Steven Spielberg and be something brand new. A story that’s huge and one you don’t forget. Recently, since the “re-opening” of the world, comic book movies haven’t done great at theaters. Some call it “Superhero Fatigue”.  

With the only exception being Spider-Man: No Way Home they haven’t come close to reaching the height they did before the pandemic. The biggest movies of last year was the war between Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, a drama detailing the life and diving inside the mind of the man who built the atom bomb and Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, a comedy based off of the incredibly popular toy line of the same name. Both of which made a giant profit with Barbie being the most profitable movie of the year. It seems like this is the future of the cinema landscape; going back to movies you just have to sit down and watch to enjoy. Not ones where you have to watch five more before it.