Movies 2023: The Good, The Bad, and The 'Strikingly' Ugly

Every year has its ups and downs as far as entertainment.  Taylor Swift's ultimate, worldwide, musical domination, along with Sunday Night Football, has been unprecedented and, sorry to all you non-Swifties out there, will most likely continue throughout 2024 as well. She even took over the box office for over a month with her Taylor Swift - The Eras Tour Movie. 

But there were other successes in movie theaters in 2023 and one of the biggest of the year included another famous blonde - Barbie.  With her pink house and pink car and pink toothbrush and pink…you get the idea… she championed "woman power" and became the litmus test as to whether or not one's boyfriend was a "keeper".  She reigned the summer box office and took the biopic, Oppenheimer, along for the ride.  Barbieheimer was the double feature this past July that we didn't know we needed.
 

The Highs and the Lows

If the previously mentioned summer blockbusters were the highs this past year, but one can't count out the "Oscar Bait" movies of the fall season.  Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon was classic Scorsese…brilliant but exceptionally, unnecessarily long.  May December starring Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore, and Charles Melton is both funny and tragic and should have its actors on a shortlist for an Academy Award. Past Lives is another entry into 2023's best but it will most likely be eclipsed for Nolan's Oppenheimer.

Among the worst offerings of 2023 are superhero films (more on that later), Pricilla, and Disney's Wish.  The latter is somewhat shocking but Disney, as a whole, has had a bad year movie-wise, and sadly, 2024 doesn't bode well for them either.  One has to wonder if ousted Disney CEO Chapek had anything to do with their movie slump.
 

The Horror of It All

Let's face it… there will always be horror movies.  From a production company standpoint, they typically have small budgets that garner big returns at the box office and 2023 had its fair share.  Fans of Jigsaw heralded the return of Tobin Bell in Saw X,  bringing the franchise back to its roots after the dismal 2021's Spiral. The Exorcist: believer brought Ellen Burstyn back as well but even her presence could save the movie. Horror film deity, Eli Roth, gave audiences his rendition of the commercialization of the holiday season in Thanksgiving, starring People's sexiest man alive, Patrick Dempsey.  Another check in the positive column is Talk To Me.  Technically a 2022 film, it had its World Premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2023 and set the bar for other horror films to live up to the rest of the year.
 

The Superheroes

As Marvel and DC Comics battled it out on the big screen in 2023, it seems the fight may have been for the worst superhero movie of 2023.  Marvel had a big contender at the start of the year with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania; garnering a 46% on Rotten Tomatoes down from 83%  for Ant-Man merely 8 years earlier.  Marvel also has less than stellar (no pun intended) showings with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and The Marvels.

DC, who could have cashed in on Marvel's loss, showed slight promise with their summer launch, the Latino superhero, Blue Beetle.  While not the best of what DC comics could have offered, hit had heart and humor and some good action sequences. Shazam! Fury of the Gods was also a letdown. However, DC's heavy hitter was this month's sequel, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom which, to date, has made only $132 million worldwide at the box office on an over $200 million budget.  To say that it is a worse flop than anything Marvel put out in 2023 is an understatement.  
 

The Critic's Choice

My Top Five

1. Oppenheimer
2. Past lives
3. Killers of the Flower Moon
4. Poor Things
5. Maestro
    

My Bottom five:

1. Mafia Mamma
2. 65
3. Paint
4. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts
5. Strays
    

The "Strikingly" Ugly

It is no big surprise one of the biggest stories for entertainment in 2023 was the Writers' and Actors' strikes.  Affecting every aspect of filmmaking, the Studios were forced to postpone or shelve some of their strongest titles that were expected to premiere in 2023 (see The 2024 Offerings below).  Dune: Part Two, Kraven the Hunter, etc. will now be released in 2024 while other titles are indefinitely suspended.  Because of these delays, new material releases will be limited and, once again, movie theaters will have fewer options to offer audiences in the new year.  Once again, the industry and the world will need to wait and see, like during the COVID shutdown, which theaters will survive in the long run.

The 2024 Offerings

Well if 2023 will be remembered for a run on pink-tinged apparel, 2024 is shaping up to be the year of the "quels".  Sequels, prequels, and "threequels" will be in abundance in the coming year and that is both a good and a bad thing.  We all know sequels are rarely as good as the original and "threequels" usually just scream, "We are going to ride this cash cow as long as possible" from the studios.  Prequels, however, can go either way, as we saw with this past November's hit, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.

As previously mentioned, Dune: Part Two will now see a 2024 release and, after the success of Part One, will hopefully bolster the year's early box office numbers.  Kung Fu Panda 4, and Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire have also been given Winter 2024 release dates. Furious: A Mad Max Saga is one of the prequels that Warner Bros. Studios is looking to cash in on, Disney has Mufasa: The Lion King, also a prequel,  and Transformers One will try to make up for 2023's Rise of the Beasts.  Deadpool 3, Venom 3, Sonic The Hedgehog 3, A Quiet Place: Day One, and Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse are some of the "threequels" audiences can expect.

Original Content includes Argylle, Madam Web, and Biopics, Bob Marley: One Love, and Back to Black.  The animated fare will include Garfield, Inside Out 2, Despicable Me 4, and If.  Borderlands, a new entry into the video game turned movie genre, is slated for an August 9th release and Beetlejuice 2 comes out September 6th. We also will be getting Terrifer 3 just in time  for Halloween and Wicked Part 1 for the Holiday season offerings,

While new content will be minimal, there are some worthwhile options with prequels, sequels, biopics, stage-to-screen, and animated films. Only time will tell how the 2023 box office and the union strikes will shape movie-going in 2024 and beyond,