The Latest Phenomena: Hollywood's Current Trends

When looking back at past decades of film history, it’s always fascinating to notice what kinds of genres were most prevalent, as well as what used to be considered a staple of pop culture at any given time. If you look at the cinema of the 1950s, you’re gonna find hundreds of indistinguishable westerns and retrofuturistic sci-fi films. If you go back to the films of the 1980s, you’ll likely see a bunch of bombastic action films and slasher horror flicks at their peak. If you think about the fairly recent decade of the 2010s, you’ll probably remember that it was a time of gritty franchise reboots and young adult novel adaptations.

So, as we find ourselves a little over halfway through this decade of the 2020s, I wanted to take a look at the current trends in cinema, the kinds of movies that the industry seems to be gravitating towards at the moment. And although it is arguably more than a bit foolish to try to make any predictions regarding the business of cinema, I still would like to offer my two cents on where I think that Hollywood seems to be going in the near future.

For this blog post, think of me as a weatherman for the film industry. I obviously can’t guarantee that my prognostics will be 100% correct and prescient. All I’m doing is looking up at the distant clouds, and I’m making my best educated guesses about the storms that seem to lie ahead.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017)

Video Game Adaptations

It’s funny to think that until quite recently, video game adaptations were considered one of the few genres that Hollywood could never really crack. With infamous flops like the first cinematic attempts to adapt Super Mario Bros. (1993) and Street Fighter (1994), it seemed for the longest time that video game adaptations were at the bottom of the barrel in terms of Hollywood blockbusters, because they tended to be very unfaithful adaptations that disregarded a lot of the aesthetic and lore of the original games, ultimately becoming generic studio films with only the most passing resemblance to their source material. Neither fans of the games nor general audiences found themselves enjoying these films, and thus the resulting conclusion amongst studio execs was that the language of video games could not be successfully translated onto the silver screen.

Needless to say, the 2020s have officially changed the notion that video game adaptations are never successful. At this current moment, the highest-grossing film of the year (both domestically and worldwide) is The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, which has grossed $1.008 billion (it’s also worth noting that this film’s predecessor, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, made $1.361 billion back in 2023). Along with the upcoming Sonic the Hedgehog 4 and The Angry Birds Movie 3, it definitely seems that animation is the medium through which video game adaptations are most accessible and successful, and it does make sense given that the look of a video game can be evoked and expanded in colorful detail through the limitless possibilities of animation.

When it comes to live-action adaptations, however, there still seems to be a lingering feeling that there hasn’t been a total success in that front. The closest thing in recent memory was A Minecraft Movie, which was obviously a huge box office hit, but given its inherently digital setting, that honestly feels much more like an animated film with live-action elements. Moreover, there’s the sense that the TV adaptations of beloved video games are the ones that have actually managed to attain some prestige status lately, as shows like The Last of Us, Arcane, and Fallout have garnered the kind of critical acclaim and awards consideration that no film adaptation has received thus far. To my estimation, the two most respected films that have managed to capture the mechanics of video games are Edge of Tomorrow and Hundreds of Beavers, and ironically those two films share the distinction of not even being adaptations of any game; they just feel like the closest cinematic approximations of video game logic.

It is quite exciting that now there are a few auteurist directors throwing their hats into the ring of video game adaptations. Zach Cregger is releasing his version of Resident Evil later this year, Alex Garland is making his iteration of Elden Ring (which is reportedly far and away the most expensive production that A24 has financed thus far), Michael Sarnoski is working on an adaptation of Death Stranding, and perhaps the most high-profile upcoming release is Wes Ball’s adaptation of The Legend of Zelda, which somewhat surprisingly has never gotten a film adaptation until now. I’m fairly optimistic about the prospect of all these upcoming films, mainly because it’s nice to see that talented directors are attaching themselves to these projects and taking them seriously, and it’s increasingly common that these filmmakers are coming from a place of legitimate fandom and appreciation for the source material.

These are not journeymen directors taking paycheck jobs and doing half-assed recreations. These are genuine fans of the games who happen to possess artistic talent, and upon getting the chance to depict these worlds on the big screen, they’re imbuing them with their personal interests as well as reverence for what came before.

Shelby Oaks (2025)

YouTuber Filmmakers

I’m sure you’ve all noticed how many recent films have been directed by YouTubers. The two most successful horror films of the year are Obsession and Backrooms, respectively directed by Curry Baker and Kane Parsons, two filmmakers who started out as YouTubers making sketches and web series. Apart from them, you have the Philippou Brothers with Talk to Me and Bring Her Back, Chris Stuckmann with Shelby Oaks, Mark Fischbach with Iron Lung, and Dan Trachtenberg essentially serving as the current custodian of the new Predator films, bringing fresh life into a franchise that had largely become stale. Just to put some things into perspective, Obsession has officially made more money worldwide than the first Conjuring film. That’s the level of horror sensation we’re talking about here.

There’s been a lotta skeptical talk lately about the youthfulness of all these filmmakers, a sort of judgmental attitude regarding their perceived lack of experience and the sudden meteoric rise of their careers. Not only do I think this immature attitude does a great disservice to the considerable effort that these artists already put into their YouTube videos, but I also think it showcases a baffling level of ignorance about the prodigious talent that has been attributed to young directors. It’s like suddenly people have forgotten that Orson Welles was merely 26 years old when he made Citizen Kane, and that Paul Thomas Anderson was the exact same age when he made Boogie Nights. And of course, this modern trend of YouTuber filmmakers feels very similar to the rise of popular independent cinema in the late 1980s/early 1990s, which mostly consisted of up-and-coming directors in their 20s, such as Quentin Tarantino, Richard Linklater, Steven Soderbergh, Robert Rodriguez, and Kevin Smith. I’m not trying to say that all of these directors make work that is artistically comparable to that of the previously mentioned YouTubers. I’m simply trying to point out that young filmmakers have always played a significant role in film history, so to pretend otherwise is quite a foolish exercise in my opinion.

I will say, it will be interesting to see YouTuber filmmakers that try to branch out of the horror genre, as that seems to be the main space where all of these directors are operating. I do understand why horror films are so dominant in each year's release schedule, as they tend to be profitable due to their typically low budgets, and they generally have a reliably loyal audience. I just think there’s massive potential for different kinds of films to come from YouTubers, and it’s great to be living at a time where the stigma of being an online creator is slowly but surely being dismantled by these gifted artists.

A Complete Unknown (2024)

Music Biopics

Lastly, there’s been an interesting comeback of a subgenre that’s as old as time.

Obviously there’s nothing new about a music biopic, as those go as far back as The Life of Beethoven in 1927 and The Glenn Miller Story in 1954. It’s actually one of those subgenres that has stayed fairly consistent across the decades, as there is an endless list of influential musicians that end up getting the biographical treatment on film, often telling their complete stories from their cradle to their grave.

That being said, I have noticed that the recent music biopics that have come out are the stories of the most influential and popular musicians of the last fifty years. In terms of individual singers, you had the recent box office hit Michael, which pointedly depicted about half of the life of Michael Jackson from the point of view of his family. I think one could easily argue that the widespread success of the Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody really brought forth this new era of high-profile music biopics. There have been two completely different recent portrayals of Elvis Presley, with the maximalist fever dream of Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis serving as a direct contrast to the minimalist character study of Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla. Apart from that, audiences saw Bruce Springsteen’s life story in the recent film Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, Elton John made a refreshingly expressionistic depiction of his drug addiction struggles in the criminally underrated musical Rocketman, Robbie Williams portrayed a satirical version of himself as an anthropomorphic chimpanzee popstar in the instant cult classic Better Man, and probably my favorite of these recent biopics was A Complete Unknown, which I thought did an excellent job of portraying Bob Dylan’s undeniable songwriting brilliance just as well as his endlessly frustrating arrogance that alienated him from his closest peers.

The most ambitious music biopics are upon us, as there are currently four movies about The Beatles being filmed simultaneously, one for each member of the band. Keeping this in mind, it’s not hard to imagine there will soon be films about the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, or AC/DC. Personally, I would love to see more surrealistic biopics about iconic bands like Pink Floyd and Talking Heads, as I think there is a lot of artistic potential that would go hand in hand with the monumentally experimental music that those bands have provided over time.

More than anything though, I hope that all these upcoming music biopics actually take the time to immerse us in the creative process of these legendary musicians, rather than just offering concert recreations and by-the-number plot beats of all the major moments in their lives. I really do believe that what the best music biopics achieve is not just the sense that the audience has gotten to learn more about a singer’s life, but more so that they have actually gotten some genuine understanding of the singer’s perspective, and how their particular musical expression stands out from others.

In other words, we get to experience what it would be like to spend time with a legendary singer outside of the stage, in the downtimes where conversations can flow naturally, and the deepest feelings within oneself can finally be vividly expressed.