25 Film Trends Of The 2000s

Can you believe we're already at the end of the decade?  The 2000s, which have taken up exactly half of my life, have been the source of some amazing movies and some amazing box office performances.  I'm not really the kind of person that would make a list of the best ten movies of the decade.  It's just not my style.  I don't really criticize- I analyze.  Thus, I thought it might be interesting to look at how the world of movies has changed over the last ten years, since every decade has its own trends and its own style.  In celebration of a great year here at The Box Office Junkie, this List Wednesday, I wanted to do something ambitious.  Therefore, allow me to present you with my longest list ever: 25 Film Trends Of The 2000s.  Check out the list below, and then share your thoughts in the comments!

1. May = Summer

In 2001, The Mummy Returns flirted with the idea of establishing the first weekend in May as prime box office real estate, opening with $68 million.  However, it wasn't until 2002, when Spider-Man shocked analysts with a then-record $114 million opening, that Hollywood officially declared the first weekend of May as the start of the Summer at the movies.  Since then, the slot is reserved for only the most high-profile releases, like X2: X-Men United, Spider-Man 3, Iron Man, and... er... Van Helsing.

2. People Are Losing Interest The Oscars

The Academy Awards have dwindled in popularity during the 2000s.  The average viewership for the Academy Awards in the 1990s was 45.7 million viewers.  In the 2000s, viewership sank to an average of 39.3 million viewers, and they hit a record low in 2008, with just 31.76 million viewers tuning in.  To me, it's obvious why this is happening.  The Academy is out of touch with society!  Voters are old, liberal, Hollywood curmudgeons, and The Oscars have quickly become an overly politicized, pretentious affair that seem to be more influenced by buzz than anything else.

3. Studios Realize That Women Go To The Movies

It took a while for Hollywood to understand the sheer buying power of the collective population of women, but they've officially come around.  Similar to the way men are targeted with action films, during the last half of the decade, instead of the typical slate of romances and romantic comedies, big event films like Sex And The City, Twilight, and Mamma Mia! have targeted women almost exclusively and found great box office results. 

4. Awful Spoofs
When Scary Movie debuted in 2000, it was legitimately funny.  The film actually spoofed horror movies, and it was fresh, funny, and creative.  Much less funny were the endless other "spoofs," like Scary Movie 2, Scary Movie 3, Scary Movie 4, Date Movie, Epic Movie, Superhero Movie, Meet The Spartans, Dance Flick, Disaster Movie, and Transylmania.  Increasingly, these became nothing more than cheap, slapped together, tasteless flicks that could earn a quick buck.  Leaving their themes and their wit by the wayside, each of these films is nothing more than series of poorly produced reshoots of recently popular movie scenes.  Why not just call them all Movie Movie?

5. Traditional Animation Replaced by CG

When Toy Story burst onto the scene in 1995, computer generated animation was absolutely revolutionary.  During the late 90s, Pixar had the CG animation market cornered.  However, by the 2000s, rival studios had developed their technology enough to attempt their own CG animations.  Ten years later, CG animation is pretty much the only type of animation we see.  CG films are incredibly popular family destinations, and franchises like Shrek, Ice Age, Toy Story, and Madagascar are massively popular worldwide. Has traditional 2D animation totally fallen by the wayside?  For now, the answer remains unclear, but the somewhat underwhelming performance of Disney's classically animated The Princess And The Frog isn't helping its cause.

6. Higher Ticket Prices

From 1990-1999, the average ticket price increased $0.75, from $4.23 to $5.08.  From 2000-2008, it increased from $5.39 to $7.18, a price bump of $1.79!  Indeed, the soaring ticket prices are certainly a reason for concern.  In suburbs, a ticket will cost you about $9-10 dollars, and in big cities, tickets run for $12-15 dollars.  Add in the additional cost of 3D glasses, which an increasingly common factor, and you find yourself shelling out some serious dough just for an hour and a half long movie.  I attended a matinee showing of Avatar the other day, just so I could save some money, and it still cost me $13.75!

7. Super Hero Movies

Spider-Man, Batman, Iron Man, Superman, The Hulk, X-Men, The Punisher, Ghost Rider, The Fantastic Four, Daredevil, and many other famous comic book super heroes received film adaptations in the 2000s, and most of these films were extremely successful.  Spider-Man jump started the trend in 2002, earning an astounding $403 million, and in 2008, The Dark Knight set a new high for the genre, with a $534 million total.  It should be noted that the heroes of this decade weren't the invincible, flawless, proper heroes of yesteryear.  Super heroes in the 2000s had problems that made them accessible to people.  Guilt, crime, death, and pride haunted these characters, and audiences felt connected to these super heroes as people.

8. The :

It's not Pirates Of The Caribbean 2, it's Pirate's Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.  It's not Ice Age 3, it's Ice Age: Dawn Of The Dinosaurs.  It's not G.I. Joe, it's G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra.  For some reason, in the 2000s, Hollywood decided that people didn't like short titles, and that they hated numbers in the titles of their sequels.  The colon provided the perfect solution.

9. The Increasingly Globalized Cinema

It's a slow process, but the movies started to represent the rest of the world, other than America, during the past decade.  While American-made movies like Babel and Crash emphasized diversity, international movies began to find an audience as well.  Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon found major success in America, and Amelie, Pan's Labyrinth, and The Motorcycle Diaries found smaller, but substantial grosses for foreign language films.  On top of that, Mexican directors like Alfonso Quaron, Guillermo Del Toro, and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu garnered major attention, and foreign actors like Javier Bardem (Spain) and Marion Cotillard (France) received Academy Awards for their work.

10. Movies Open Bigger And Fall Harder

Films used to play in theaters for months at a time, earning steady revenue throughout their runs.  These days, films have larger debuts, and then quickly fizzle out.  You're lucky to find a movie playing in theaters six weeks after it debuts, and that's because films now make most of their money in the first two weeks.  The 2000s gave birth to the mega-opening weekend, and though it would have once seemed impossible for a film to break the $100 million threshold on its opening weekend, such occurrences are now almost commonplace.  The bigger a movie opens, though, the faster it is likely to fall.  Movies like Cloverfield, Hulk, and Scary Movie 4, which appealed to fanboys and young people, each opened well, but fell very hard.  The opening weekend accounted for 50%, 47%, and 45% of their final grosses, respectively.

11. R-Rated Comedies And The Frat Pack

Raunchy, crass, and often just plain wrong, the 2000s brought back the irreverent R-rated comedy in a big way.  The breakout success of both Wedding Crashers and Judd Apatow's The 40-Year-Old Virgin in 2005 launched a string of comedies that weren't afraid to be lewd, brutally honest, and foul-mouthed.  Knocked Up, Pineapple Express, Superbad, and I Love You, Man have all ridden the wave of R-rated comedy popularity.  These films have also helped to establish the Frat Pack, the group of male actors that typically appear in these films, including Vince Vaughan, Seth Rogen, Owen Wilson, Steve Carell, Jonah Hill, and Paul Rudd.

12. Pixar

This animation studio has more namebrand credibility than any other studio in the world.  Of its ten films, (Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, Ratatouille, Wall-E, and Up) every single one has been a financial and critical darling.  Pixar places quality high above quantity, which is why the studio only produces one amazing film per year.  Their popularity and talent are undeniable, which is why Disney purchased the company for $7.4 billion in 2006. 

13. Ballooning Budgets

 In the 2000s, film frugality was thrown out the window.  For most of the decade, studios frivolously spent millions upon millions of dollars on their films.  With the international and home markets now accounting for a major additional chunk of a film's revenue, studios were willing to shell out absurd amounts of money.  Paramount invested $130 million in Sahara, Warner Brothers forked over $165 million for The Polar Express, Sony gave $200 million for Spider-Man 2, Universal was willing to shell out $207 million on King Kong, and Fox spent $237 million on Avatar.  The recession is now forcing studios to balance their checkbooks, but for most of the decade, budgets were overblown and enormous.

14. More Previews Before Movies

 It used to be that a movie would have three previews before the feature presentation.  That's all changed in the last ten years.  Before a high profile release, you're likely to see six or seven previews, as well as Fandango commercial or two.  You can get to the theater twenty minutes late and not miss a second of the feature presentation.

15. If At First You Don't Succeed, REBOOT

Some franchises simply don't break out, and some other fail over time.  But if there's one thing that the 2000s have taught us, it's that just because a movie fails, doesn't mean it will always fail- you just have to reboot it!  Why wait so long to rebuild a franchise from square one?  Instead, reboot the franchise completely.  New actors, new storyline, new everything.  Capitalizing on our short attention spans, studios attempted to make what didn't work in the past work in the present.  When Batman And Robin disappointed fans in 1997, Warner Brothers gave them a new Batman eight years later in Batman Begins.  When Hulk didn't break out in 2003, the rebooted The Incredible Hulk came out in 2008.  When Vin Diesel and Paul Walker wouldn't come back for a third The Fast And The Furious film, Universal attempted to relanuch the franchise with Tokyo Drift.  When that film didn't succeed, Universal re-re-launched their franchise with its original cast in 2009's Fast And Furious.

16. VHS Out, DVD In

Ten years ago, in the car after soccer practice, I remember my dad trying to explain the concept of DVDs to me.  "It's basically a video tape on a CD," he said.  It's hard to believe that at the turn of the century, VHS was the standard video format, for DVDs assault on the home market was swift and effective.  Less swift was the drawn-out battle betwen HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, though Blu-Ray has finally emerged as the winner.  DVDs are small, easy to navigate, and can hold loads of special features, which offer a fun home viewing experience. Overall, it's just a better format.

17. 3D

My personal opinion aside, the 3D format really took off in the late 2000s.  Most studios have contributed quite a bit of funding to the craze, collectively helping theater owners buy the expensive 3D projectors that can show these films.  They're willing to do this because they are confident in the format and because there's a ton of money to be made.  To be clear, there's a lot of upfront costs, both on the production and distribution sides of 3D, but charging premium ticket prices for 3D films inflates grosses quickly.  That helps both theaters and studios.  With IMAX, Dolby Digitial 3D, and Real-D all available, only time will tell which format will become the most popular.  

18. Torture-Porn Horror

2004 brought us a small Lionsgate horror movie called Saw, which featured gruesome, brutal torture and death scenes.  The film became a minor hit, and not only has it produced six sequels, but it created a sub-genre popularly called "torture-porn" that dominated horror movies in the 2000s.  Unlike the supernatural brand of horror in The Ring or The Grudge, torture-porn films, like Hostel, The Hills Have Eyes, Saw I-VI, and The Strangers seemed to appeal to the barbaric side of humanity, since they offered up disgusting, extreme violence as entertainment.  Despite the fact that few films outside the Saw franchise (which has seen major diminishing returns) were successful, torture-porn became the norm during the 2000s.

19. Cell Phones Invade Movie Theaters

That obnoxious ring in the middle of your movie?  A cell phone.  The distracting glare coming from your neighbor? A cell phone.  That unbearable texting noise that steals your attention away from the story?  A cell phone!  The introduction of cell phones into society has left theater owners scratching their heads, trying to figure out how to enforce courtesy in the theater.  I'll admit it- sometimes I take out my phone to check what time it is, but after the countless reminders to silence your cell phone at the beginning of the movie, I have little patience for a loud ring.

20. Christmas Apparently Starts In November

Just as May marks the start of Summer at the box office, studios are eager to establish the first two weeks of November as the beginning of the Christmas season.  Attempting to maximize the window of time in which these films can make money, studios release them early on, hoping they'll endure throughout November and December.  This strategy was employed for the releases of The Santa Clause 2, Elf, The Polar Express, The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause, Fred Claus, and A Christmas Carol. Audiences haven't totally bought into this trend, as many of these films have seen lackluster results, and in this box office analysts opinion, studios would be better off doing what Four Christmases did in 2008: releasing Christmas movies a little closer to Christmas! Crazy, right?

21. Return Of The Musical

The resurgence of the musical film started with Best Picture winner Chicago in 2002.  The film's $170 million gross showed that the genre still had some life in it.  The musical film hit the big leagues in early 2006, though.  Disney Channel's High School Musical indoctrinated a brand new generation into the world of musicals, and it created a mini-phenomenon.  Since then, Dreamgirls, Hairspray, High School Musical 3: Senior Year, and Mamma Mia! have all had very successful theatrical runs.

22. Dogs

We live in a world where people often exhibit more sympathy for animals than they do for their fellow humans.  Thus, it is perhaps fitting that man's best friend has arisen as a true box office star in the 2000s.  Scooby Doo, Marley And Me, Beverly Hills Chihuahua, Cats And Dogs, Eight Below, Snow Dogs, and Hotel For Dogs were all box office hits, proving that canines could really pack audiences into theaters.  We've come a long way since the days of Air Bud, haven't we?

23. Michael Bay And Jerry Bruckheimer

These super-producers have a knack for churning out widely appealing, eye-popping, special effects-filled, hugely popular movies, and they helped create some of the decade's biggest films and franchises.  Bruckheimer is the man behind Black Hawk Down, Pirates Of The Caribbean, National Treasure, and the hugely popular CSI television series.  Meanwhile, Bay, notorious amongst critics for placing explosions above story, is the brains behind Transformers, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003), Bad Boys II, and Pearl Harbor, which Bruckheimer also produced.  They may not be winning any awards from critics, but these men know how to deliver at the box office.

24. Three Is A Magic Number

Every other franchise in the 2000s seemed to be a trilogy.  The Lord Of The Rings movies set the precedent, kicking off the decade with a one-two-three punch of greatness.  Other franchises hoped to do the same, but none could live up to the quality of Peter Jackson's achievement.  Still, there were a number of extremely lucrative franchises that put out three films in the 2000s.  Spider-Man, Shrek, Pirates Of The Caribbean, Austin Powers, The Santa Clause, Ice Age, and X-Men all delivered their stories over the course of three movies.

25. Critics Matter Less, But Everyone's A Critic!

During the 2000s, as the print industry has crumbled, the internet has simultaneously provided people with more information than they could ever need.  No longer do most people read their local critic's movie reviews in the newspaper.  Instead, they can go to RottenTomatoes or MetaCritic and look at a numerical average rating for the film.  Indeed, despite the fact that people rely on these review-aggregators more than thorough individual reviews, there has never been a time in film history when more film reviews were produced.  Every blogger, YouTuber, or message board commenter can weigh in with their own opinion on any film, and it's a fascinating to me how the internet has transformed film criticism.  Like most everything else, it's democratized the process.

Phew! Did you make it all the way down here?  What do you think of the list?  Agree?  Disagree?  Got anything to add?  Let me hear your thoughts in the Comments!