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Almost two years on, Furiosa's $175m worldwide gross still looks like the most depressing box-office story of the 2020s. Not because the film is bad, it is not, but because of what its failure reveals about the economics of the action film.
Alex Garland made a film about an American civil war and deliberately stripped out the politics. A year and a half later, the emptiness in the middle of Civil War is not a choice to respect. It is the thing that breaks the film.
A year and a half on from the sequel, the case for Dune: Part Two is less about its scale and more about its refusal. An argument for the blockbuster that does not entertain.
A year after Deadpool & Wolverine made $1.3 billion and saved a bad year for the MCU, the film looks less like a triumph and more like the last thing Marvel is going to get away with.
Amazon's third Reacher season adapted Persuader across eight episodes in February 2025 and did the specific thing the show exists to do. The formula holds, and the reasons it holds are worth marking.
The Crow remake, after two decades of failed attempts, finally arrived in August and confirmed every reason the attempts should have stayed failed.
Lee Isaac Chung's Twisters sequel-slash-reboot should not have been any good. It is, instead, one of the strongest American genre films of the summer.
Jonathan Nolan's Fallout is the best video game adaptation anyone has made, because it treats the source material’s tone as the thing worth preserving.
Donald Glover and Francesca Sloane's Amazon spy drama is not a remake. It is a character study dressed as a spy show, and it works because of what it refuses to be.