3 pieces
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.
The argument against CGI and for practical effects has hardened into a specific aesthetic dogma that no longer tracks the actual craft. An essay on what the argument originally responded to and why it now misfires.
Hollywood's opening-weekend-dominant distribution model was built for a specific marketplace that no longer exists. An essay on what has broken, which films are succeeding despite it, and what a replacement would look like.