The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

Fun fact: movie sales, in terms of tickets sold, peaked in 2002. [1] All the 'box office records' since then are the result of charging way more to a continually plummeting audience size.

And this is highly relevant for things like this. People often argue that if movies were so bad then people would stop watching them, unaware that people actually have stopped watching them!

Even for individual movies. For all the men-in-spandex movies, the best selling movie (by tickets sold) in modern times is Titanic, 27 years ago.

[1] - https://www.the-numbers.com/market/

Movies are still great, just not the main circuit. If you live in a large city most often you have access to indie movies or secondary rotation of festival movies instead of 3 marvels, one remake and one romantic like in the big box places.

I think they simply did what AAA video games did. They found what sold best at one moment in time and then obsessively tried to work to copy that.

But the problem is that people don't want to play 40 different Call of Duties, or watch 30 different Batmen. It's just that Batman or Call of Duty were the 'meet in the middle' of a variety of different tastes. But when those other tastes aren't accounted for, it becomes nauseating. It's like how most of everybody really likes cake icing, but eating nothing but cake icing is quite a repulsive concept.

I think things like Dune, Interstellar, and other such films emphasize that there's a gaping hole in the market for things besides men in spandex, but it's just not being filled. And there's even extensive social commentary in Dune (as in the book) but it's done through metaphor rather than shoving it down your throat. And the movie is also rather slow paced with some 3 key events playing out in a 155 minute film, yet it continues to do extremely well. On the other hand those Fremen suits are kind of spandexy...

Not sure that pointing out the success of sci fi franchises is proof audiences want diversity.

The VAST majority of movies that have been made in the past (when the real indicator, % of population going to movies, peaked) deal with ordinary, realistic human stories. Murders are incredibly popular, of course, but so are fraught romances, coming-of-age, and grounded hero-quest movies (which even Bachelorette Party borrows from).

But your point is otherwise completely valid. They found out everyone likes cake, and converted their buffet restaurant to all-cake all-day!