Monthly Archives: December 2025

Movie Previews

The Movies of Early 2026

We come to another end of the calendar year for Hollywood, and 2025 provided us with some interesting insights into how the overall business is doing.  While 2025 did see some success at the box office for many films, the industry still is showing signs of overall weakness.  A lot of the lingering effects of the pandemic and strikes have stiffled a recovery at the box office, and a lot of hopes that this year would have been a smashing return to pre-pandemic norms were sadly unrealized.  Not only that, but 2025 also stirred up fears about what might be in the cards for the future of the movie business.  The proliferation of AI produced videos made a lot of industry professionals nervous that uses of this tech would start to lead to massive layoffs across many departments.  We are already seeing such a thing take place in the visual effects field, as many digital artists are being laid off now because many of their skilled positions are being replaced with AI software.  And the fact that big studios like Disney are now allowing their IP characters to be used in AI programs like OpenAI’s Sora video generator is only making things even more dire for people hoping to make a career for themselves in the movie business.  2025 was also a troubling year with regards to massive mergers and acquisitions leading to less competition in the market.  Paramount completed it’s multi-billion dollar merger with Skydance entertainment, which saw the legendary studio fall under the ownership of the extremely rich Ellison family, who wasted no time changing the culture around the studio and it’s subsidiaries, including stifling news stories on CBS News that were critical of the Ellison’s DC connections.  Even more troubling is the whole drama with Warner Brothers.  The legendary studio, which had a remarkable year in general with a string of massive hits, was put up for sale this year, with Netflix coming out as the preferred bidder, though Paramount/Skydance also is attempting their own hostile takeover.  Instead of having a year where it looked like the dust was finally going to settle over the film industry and things were going to seem like normal again, we instead had another disruptive one that may end up changing the face of Hollywood as we know it.

Moving past the year that was, it is now time to look at the year ahead.  The early months of 2026 for the most part looks a lot quieter than normal, with the latter half of the year being the one that seems more loaded with the heavy hitters.  That’s not to day that there’s nothing worth talking about in these next four months.  Like my previews of past years, I will be taking a look at a few of the most noteworthy coming attractions of this movie season, and breaking them into the movies that I believe are Must Sees, the ones that have me worries, and the ones I believe you should skip entirely.  Keep in mind, these are my own outlooks based solely on how I am responding to the movie’s early hype and the effectiveness of their marketing.  I have misjudged movies in the past, so keep that in mind too.  I primarily write these previews as a way of helping you the reader be more aware about what is on the horizon at the movies, and hopefully shine a spotlight on some movies worth discussing.  So, with all that said, let’s take a look at the Movies of Early 2026.

MUST SEES:

PROJECT HAIL MARY (MARCH 20)

One of the more intriguing films to come out in the next few months is this Sci-Fi epic based on a novel from the same author who wrote The Martian, which of course because an acclaimed film from Ridley Scott.  Author Any Weir, as he demonstrated with The Martian, does an excellent job of taking complex scientific concepts around space exploration and wraps them around a compelling, easy to grasp storyline.  There’s real science behind his stories, but he also makes the characters interesting and relatable, and often time charmingly funny, and that’s a rare combination to make work in any story.  With Project Hail Mary, Weir expanded his storytelling beyond just interplanetary travel, and shows us a journey that takes us from Earth out into far out galactic exploration.  It’s also a very different story from The Martian.  While it has the same core basis, with a lone man learning to survive on his own, Project Hail Mary takes things into a much more other-worldly place.  What is going to be key to the film’s success is if they manage to nail the story’s main character.  Ryan Gosling seems to be the right match, given his talent for portraying lovable losers, though fans of the book say that he may be a bit too handsome and clean cut to play the character Ryland Grace that’s described in the book.  Still, Gosling is the kind of actor that can make us overlook that.  The other interesting thing about this movie is that it’s the first live action film in over a decade from the filmmaking team of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller; the guys behind The Lego Movie (2014) and Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse (2018).  Their last bout with the sci-fi genre didn’t work out too well, as they were fired from the Star Wars project Solo (2018), so hopefully we do get to see them finally put their stamp on the genre through their own style.  They certainly will help to make the film a lot funnier, but hopefully they nail the epic granduer that the story deserves as well.  Of all the Early 2026 movies coming up, this one certainly feels like the one that must be seen on the biggest screen possible.

WUTHERING HEIGHTS (FEBRUARY 13)

Just in time for Valentine’s Day comes this newest adaptation of one of literature’s most famous love stories.  There have been many adaptations made of Emily Bronte’s iconic gothic romance over the years; most famously in 1939 with Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon.  This one in particular is coming from one of the more daring filmmakers working today.  This marks Emerald Fennell’s third outing as a director, after winning a screenplay Oscar for her debut with Promising Young Woman (2020), and then shocking us all with her scandalous follow-up, Saltburn (2023).  Saltburn in particular proved that Emerald was a filmmaker who was not afraid of crossing taboos in order to tell her story, and while it may have crossed the line for many people, it also won the respect of many more who found her daring vision very unique and exciting (myself included).  Now with her third film she is taking on an oft told story and hoping to put her own unique spin on it.  And to do it, she’s bringing on board some of her favorite past collaborators.  The dashing star of Saltburn, Jacob Elordi, is cast here as the iconic Heathcliffe, one of literature’s most dashing rogues.  The statuesque actor seems perfectly suited for the larger than life character that won the hearts of readers over the centuries, as is another one of Emerald Fennel’s favorites, Margot Robbie (her Barbie co-star) in the role of Cathy, the doomed love interest.  Emerald Fennel has been celebrated for her work as a writer, but I feel she has yet to get her due recognition as a visual storyteller as well.  Hopefully Wuthering Heights helps to change that, as it is the latest major Hollywood film to resurrect the long out of use Vistavision process, most recently put to great use in The Brutalist (2024) and One Battle After Another (2025).  Some of the visuals already shown in the trailer indicate that this movie is likely to be a visual feast for the eyes, with just a little bit of the weirdness we saw in Saltburn sprinkled in.  I hope this continues Emerald Fennell’s hot streak as a filmmaker, and that it shows that she can deliver on something traditional while at the same time modernizing it with her own eccentric style.

HOPPERS (MARCH 6)

A new film from Pixar Animation is always something to look forward to.  Sadly, they have also been an animation studio that’s been severely neglected in recent years.  Parent company Disney’s decision to drop three of their movies in a row onto streaming instead of playing them in theaters has sadly hurt their brand, and they don’t have the pull at the box office that they once had.  This was evident last summer when their newest film, Elio (2025) failed to ignite at the box office, making it the first non-pandemic effected movie in their whole history to fall short of $100 million.  And this was after Pixar set box office records the year before with Inside Out 2 (2024), which makes the future for Pixar look fairly grim as the pressure is going to be on them to rely more heavily on sequels than original films.  That seems to be what’s happening this next year as well, as it looks like Disney is going to invest more heavily in promoting next summer’s Toy Story 5, over the release of their next original film Hoppers.  It certainly is harder to get audiences excited for a film without brand recognition, even when the Pixar name is attached to it.  But I really hope that people give this movie a chance.  It should have an easier time selling to family audiences than Elio did, as movies with cute talking animals do quite well at the box office (see the success of Zootopia 2 for example).  The premise also seems to have some potential, with an Avatar style spin put on the main character infiltrating the animal kingdom and stirring up some trouble.  And people shouldn’t be so quick to declare the end of Pixar.  Despite it’s low box office, Elio was still a charming and fun little film, and my hope is that Hoppers is another pleasant surprise.  Pixar built up their reputation for being a story first studio for a reason, and I don’t think they would fail to do the same for another one of their original stories like this one.  So yes, Toy Story 5 is likely to be the movie that Disney and Pixar are going to bank more of their fortunes on, but I hope that Hoppers also convinces them that it’s worth investing in new ideas as well.

28 YEARS LATER: THE BONE TEMPLE (JANUARY 16)

One of the more pleasant surprises of last summer was the long in the making sequel to a landmark zombie film directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland.  28 Years Later reunited the team from the classic 28 Days Later (2002), and allowed them to imagine what the same world they created over 20 years ago would look like today.  The sequel was much less a continuation of the original narrative and more of a refresh of it’s original concept, showing us a world that has long adapted to their new norm under the threat of the rage virus that still lingers in the English countryside, terrorizing those who are left.  And what we got with 28 Years Later was a surprisingly poignant coming of age story surrounding a young boy named Spike (Alfie Williams), who would brave the dangerous zombie infested world in order to save his dying mother.  But, interestingly, it appeared that Boyle and Garland had a more ambitious plan in mind for this franchise.  Instead of just saddling themselves with just one new film, they planned out a whole trilogy, and even had another film shot simultaneously with the first one.  Now, only a short 7 months later, we get the next chapter of this story, picking up right where the last one left off.  Danny Boyle, unfortunately only committed to shooting one of the films, choosing to instead hand off the duties to someone else for the next film.  Nia DaCosta, director of Candyman (2021) and The Marvels (2023), got to step up and pick up the mantle, and it seems like she made a good fit because the movie definitely feels right in line with first film, especially in it’s wild visual style.  One of the exciting elements of this new film is that it’s going to expand on some of the most memorable elements of the first movie, including Ralph Fiennes Dr. Kelson and the flamboyant Jimmy Gang.  Let’s hope they continue to build on the potential of the original and lead into what will hopefully be a standout third film to close out this trilogy, though we may have to wait more than seven months for that one.

SEND HELP (JAUNUARY 30)

One movie that could be a sleeper hit is this new film from Sam Raimi.  After playing around in the MCU with his Doctor Strange sequel, this new film has Raimi working a bit closer to his roots as a filmmaker.  Sort of a Horrible Bosses meets Cast Away, the movie is a two hander about a woman who is stranded on an island with her nightmare of a boss.  The reversal of fortune narrative that plays out is nothing we haven’t seen before, but it will be interesting to see how a twisted filmmaker like Raimi works with it.  The movie also plays with the theme of isolation and how it affects the psyche of the characters, which is a field that Raimi helped to revolutionize with his Evil Dead movies.  He’s assembled an interesting cast here, with Rachel McAdams (working again with Raimi after appearing in Multiverse of Madness) and Dylan O’Brien, an actor who has been coming into his own recently after some critically acclaimed roles.  But what makes this movie look like it will be a lot more fun to watch is the fact that it doesn’t look like either of these characters are going to bond and learn to work together to survive.  Instead, it seems like Raimi’s going to play around with the idea that the isolation that these characters are dealing with is only going to lead to more friction, and that could lead to an engaging game of cat and mouse that could take the story down some dark paths.  Raimi has always been a filmmaker that has enjoyed toying around with flawed characters, and not letting them get off easy (see Drag Me to Hell), and it will be interesting to watch what he does with these two characters who are very much in the severest state of isolation imaginable.

MOVIES THAT HAVE ME WORRIED:

THE SUPER MARIO GALAXY MOVIE (APRIL 3)

Nothing that I say about these Mario movies is going to matter in the end, because like the first film this sequel is pretty much destined to be a billion dollar movie at the box office.  I wasn’t much of a fan of the first Mario Brothers movie and I feel like I’m going to have the same reaction to this new one.  But, I will say as far as directions to go with making a sequel in this franchise, adapting the popular Mario Galaxy games seems to be an ideal choice.  The Galaxy games are some of the most imaginative that Nintendo has ever made, and bringing that to the big screen is a smart choice.  It will be interesting to see the variety of different worlds they explore with this.  I also like the choice in new characters they are bringing in.  Because this is a Mario Galaxy movie, they obviously have to bring in Princess Rosalina as a key new character, and I like the choice of Brie Larson as the voice.  She can easily tap into a Disney Princess like warmth into her performance, but still leave some room for that Captain Marvel edge in there.  Also, I approve of the addition of Bowser Jr. as a new antagonist to the franchise, and that he’s being given the voice of Benny Safdie.  The highlight of the last film, Jack Black’s hilarious performance as Bowser, also looks to be a major part of this movie.  Unfortunately we still have to deal with one of the biggest flaws of the original film, and that’s the miscasting of Chris Pratt as Mario.  I’m sorry, but that vocal performance just does not fit and it’s distracting.  It doesn’t even sound like Chris is even trying anymore to sound Mario-like in this new film, and he just sounds like himself which he does in most of his other performances.  We’ll see if the movie does improve on the last one, but given that Illumination tends to double down on their comfort zones rather than pushing their limits as an animation studio, I doubt this movie is going to be that much more of a level up.

THE BRIDE (MARCH 6)

This is one of the more puzzling movies to come out in the coming months.  For this reimaging of The Bride of Frankenstein, one would think that it would be coming from some horror film auteur or art house outsider.  But no, this is coming from actress Maggie Gyllenhaal in only her second film as a director after 2021’s The Lost Daughter.  This seems like a wild departure for her; going hyper-stylized and delving into the grotesque.  I’m not saying that she couldn’t pull a movie like this off.  She may have been dreaming of doing this movie for a long time, and now that she has some clout as a film director she can finally show off her abilities as a visual filmmaker.  But, there is uncertainty if she can pull it off; it’s all going to depend on the execution.  A lot of what we see in the trailer comes across as a bit try-hard, and it just looks like she is not really doing enough to define her style and is instead trying to emulate other filmmakers like Guillermo Del Toro and David Cronenberg.  She has assembled some good actors to help in her effort though.  Jessie Buckley is an interesting choice to play the titular Bride, and she’s an actress capable of delving into some weird places.  Also Gyllenhaal is working again with her The Dark Knight co-star Christian Bale, who seems well suited to play Frankenstein’s monster; although the flat top forehead seems a little too much as it feels out of place with this version of the character.  It does look like Warner Brothers has high expectations for this project, as they let Maggie film with IMAX cameras, and they’re planning on a 70mm IMAX roll out for the movie in the spring, something that is reserved for some of the most prestigious releases.  Can Maggie Gyllenhaal pull it off and take a big leap forward as an even filmmaker, or will this be another passion project gone wrong?

MERCY (JANUARY 23)

Another Chris Pratt film that could go either way.  One of the worries that I have about this movie is that it may end up mishandling the message of the movie, which is to be a cautionary tale about the uses of AI technology.  I can’t tell from the trailer which side it seems to be taking; is it a warning about the dangers of relying too heavily on AI to govern our lives, or is it an endorsement?  I have a feeling that this movie is not going to have a nuanced take, and is just merely using our current fascination with AI as a means of lamp shading an otherwise flimsy action movie.  My hope is that it can be better than that, and perhaps be a more subversive movie than we realize.  But, the trailer is not giving me a lot of confidence, and I doubt a movie critical of modern tech would get the greenlight at a studio run by one of the largest tech companies in the world, Amazon.  Hopefully, Chris Pratt is able to make the movie at least entertaining, and he’s getting to work opposite a heavyweight actress like Rebecca Ferguson, whose become a standout after appearing in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune movies.  The premise also has some promise, with Pratt’s character having to prove his own innocence against an all knowing AI program.  A lot will depend on the execution of the story.  There is potential for this to be a movie that’s smarter than it has any right to be, but at the same time it does look like it’s just going to favor loud and dumb action set pieces over thought provoking ideas about how much we are reliant on technology that does not exactly work in our best interest.

READY OR NOT 2: HERE I COME (MARCH 27)

The first Ready or Not movie was a bit of a subversive surprise when it came out in 2019.  The horror thriller with comedic undertones wrapped it’s story around a twisted, deadly game of hide and seek and even added some satanic cabal elements to the mix.  It was also a movie that worked very well as a one off.  But, like all hit horror movies, a sequel is inevitable.  There are some things that are pleasing to see that this movie is doing.  It’s upping the stakes by making this a winner takes all contest.  Also, I do like the addition of actor Elijah Wood acting as an arbitor at the center of this operation.  Wood has been getting into his character actor phase of his career, and he looks like he’s having fun playing these weird enigmatic characters in movies like these.  Samara Weaving, who was the breakout star of the first film, also returns which is another plus.  The one questionable thing about this movie is that it seems like they are just repeating the same beats as the first movie.  A bunch of rich, Satan worshipping snobs are hunting our hero for sport and the keys to the kingdom, and our heroine has to find clever ways to stay alive and kill her would be killers.  Also, we get more people popping like bloody balloons as indicated from the trailer.  A lot of sequels run the risk of being too much like the first movie, which only spotlights the fact that some movies are better as one offs.  Hopefully, this sequel is able to squeeze just a bit more out of the premise.  A bit more world-building would help, like seeing just how far this Satanic network actually goes.  The inclusion of Elijah Wood’s character gives a hint of a grander world wide conspiracy at play, and that’s what I hope we get with this movie.  Because if it doesn’t, then we were better off just having the original and nothing else.

MOVIE TO SKIP:

MICHAEL (APRIL 24)

There are times when you can see a disaster coming from a mile away, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it from happening.  That’s what this new biopic about the life of pop singer Michael Jackson feels like.  Musical biopics have become increasingly tired and cliched, and you can tell which ones are going to be bad when they are the ones that refuse to be truthful about their subjects.  Too many of these movies tend to be too reverential of their subjects, and only paint them in the most flattering light, and that has the end result of making them bland as a result.  That seems to be what we’re going to get with this Michael Jackson biopic.  Despite coming from an accomplished director like Antoine Fuqua and screenwriter like John Logan, this movie just seems to bee doomed from the start because it’s one that had to adhere to the wishes of the Jackson estate; meaning we are going to get the most whitewashed retelling of Michael Jackson’s story.  It shouldn’t be a surprise that this is coming from the same producer of Bohemian Rhapsody (2018), another musical biopic that watered down it’s subject (the rock band Queen) to make them more palatable to mainstream audiences.  It doesn’t help that Michael is not being played by a professional actor, by Michael Jackson’s own real life nephew Jaafar Jackson (son of Tito) in his acting debut.  It’s obvious that this movie is just pure nostalgia bait, purely there to be a greatest hits account of Michael’s rise to fame without ever going in deep to explore who he was, and what may have led to the demons that led him to the darker chapters of his life.  A true exploration of Michael Jackson as a character may never actually come to pass, given the tight control his estate has over his image, and that unwillingness to be truthful has likely destroyed any chance of this movie ever standing on it’s own.

PRIMATE (JANUARY 9)

One of the sillier horror premises to come to us lately, this movie has a group of college aged kids being terrorized by a pet chimpanzee.  What caused this ape to suddenly go feral and murderous is honestly irrelevant.  You can just tell that the filmmaker’s pitch was what if we did a slasher pic, but with a monkey, and that’s what got greenlit.  The good thing is that it looks like they did the ethical thing and didn’t use a real life chimpanzee for the filming of this; instead relying on puppetry and CGI to bring him to life.  But, that’s the only good thing I’ll say about this movie, because everything about it looks ridculous and cheap.  The only value I can see audiences getting out of this is that it might be one of those so bad it’s funny kind of horror movies.  But there is no possible way anyone is going to be terrified by this movie.  It just seems so silly how the trailer is trying to make this premise feel like an intense thrill ride.  It’s all immediately undercut when you see the ape’s face flash onto screen.  The toy ape from Osgood Perkin’s The Monkey (2025) had more of a terrifying presence than this supposedly living ape.  And that movie was intentional in it’s use of comedy.  This one looks every bit like a joke, and I don’t think that was done intentionally .

SCREAM 7 (FEBRUARY 27)

Old franchises die hard it would seem.  Though the Scream franchise has seen a bit of a resurgence in recent years, this new film is missing some of the ingredients that helped build up the newest generation of movies in the series.  One is the unceremonious departure of two of the new franchises main stars, Melissa Barrera because she was controversially fired for her pro-Palestinian post on social media, as well Jenna Ortega who quit in protest to show solidarity with Barrera.  It’s not a good look when a franchise stifles the free speech of it’s cast members.  Regardless, the filmmakers pressed on and greenlit this seventh film in the franchise without it’s newest stars.  This one seems to be leaning much heavier into nostalgia for the first movie, which is going to be celebrating it’s 30th anniversary in 2026.  Series mainstays Neve Campbell and Courtney Cox are returning, and surprisingly so is Matthew Lillard, whose character died in the original film.  This also marks the first film in the franchise directed by it’s original writer Kevin Williamson.  While he does bring some continuity to the franchise, he also is a far cry from the series’ original auteur, the late Wes Craven.  For one thing, it’s going to be difficult for this movie to shake off the controversy that was stirred up between movies, and I don’t think any nostalgia bait is going to win back fans who feel betrayed after seeing their new favorite lead actors being shown the door over censorship.

So, there you have overview of the movies of early 2026.  What is interesting about this season of movies is that it is largely devoid of major franchises.  Sure there are sequels like The Super Mario Galaxy Movie and Scream 7, but some of the other major franchises that placed stakes in the Winter and Spring in past years, like Marvel or the Legendary Pictures Monsterverse, are nowhere to be seen.  A lot of the biggest tentpole franchises are making their claim for the summer dates instead, and that is causing these next few months to be filled with more, big swing films like Project Hail Mary and The Bride.  We’ll see if this more wide opened field allows for some of this movies to shine a little brighter.  It was mixed in that regard over this last year, as some big swing originals like Mickey 17 failed to launch at the box office, while others such as Sinners did.  Regardless, the hope is that things will hopefully improve at the box office over the next year.  There’s a lot of uncertainty over the horizon, especially with regards to the ongoing situation at Warner Brothers.  Either way that it plays out, it will unfortunately mean that yet another studio will lose it’s independence in Hollywood, and there will be one fewer place for filmmakers to go to pitch their big new idea.  The proliferation of AI will also make things murky for a while.  The one thing that we can hope for is that audiences will choose wisely and give their money towards supporting movies that move the artform into a better place and also support movies that maintain that handcrafted touch.  And there will plenty of exciting things coming in the Summer season thereafter including Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey (probably the movie I am most excited about for the whole year) as well as the next Steven Spielberg blockbuster and other hotly anticipated big screen spectacles.  Here’s hoping that 2026 proves to be a standout year at the movies, and one that helps to keep the theatrical experience alive for generations to come.

Movie Reviews

Avatar: Fire and Ash – Review

When James Cameron became “king of the world” with his astronomical success making the movie Titanic (1997), many wondered what he would do for a follow-up.  Well, he did have an idea about what he wanted to do next, but we wouldn’t know what that would be for another 12 years.  Even before Titanic, Cameron had a seed of an idea for a movie set on an alien world very much like Earth, but with it’s natural beauty still unmarked by mankind.  It would be a world populated by creatures unlike anything we had ever seen on the big screen before, with a blue skinned tribal race known as the Na’vi being the most advanced civilization on this alien world.  With Titanic providing him with the capital to get anything he wanted to make in Hollywood greenlit, he decided that this would be his next project.  The only thing was, visual effects had not advanced to the level needed for what he envisioned.  He didn’t want his Na’vi characters to be simple computer animated creatures; he wanted them to have the full expressive range that a real physical actor could bring.  Motion capture technology made it possible for Cameron to bring his vision to reality, and he went to the digital artist who made that leap forward in visual effects possible to bring them on board to realize that vision.  The folks at Weta Digital, the Oscar winning team behind The Lord of the Rings, were now tasked with helping to push motion capture to the next level.  Cameron, as we have seen, is a patient man and he will not execute his vision unless he knows he has the tools necessary to make it happen.  It would be a process that would go on for a decade, but eventually James Cameron got to the point where he was satisfied with the results.  He was now able to get his actors’ performances to shine through with these digitally rendered puppets, and he had the confidence to finally get his vision on the big screen.  The movie, Avatar (2009) as it would be called, hit theaters in the same holiday time window that Titanic opened in, and while it started off with modest box office, it remarkably kept bringing in people week after week until Cameron managed to top his own record and have the highest grossing film of all time, 12 years after he did the same feat with Titanic.

Of course, after you’ve managed to take the box office crown twice in your lifetime, people are going to wonder if you could do it again.  James Cameron did have plans, but they would still remain in the Avatar world that he created.  In fact, he had ideas for as many as four more Avatar films.  People expected that he would quickly try to get another Avatar film out soon after the first, but it wouldn’t be that simple.  Ever the perfectionist, Cameron was not ready to dive back into the world of Avatar until he felt he was confident that he could pull it off.  With the first film, the challenge was in perfecting the look of the Na’vi characters.  For his next film, Cameron wanted to explore a different environmental setting within that same world of the first movie; one set around a lot of water.  Creating water in a digital environment had been tricky.  The way water physics work has been difficult to simulate with computer animation.  In most films up to that point, water effects often looked either plastic-y or were only possible with live action mattes.  For someone like James Cameron, who has spent a good portion of his adult life in and around water, both as the director of Titanic and as a deep sea explorer, he had a particular high standard for how water should look, and digital effects needed some extra time to advance to get to the point where it met his high standard.  But, the team at Weta Digital managed to finally crack that nut after another decade of work, and Cameron was finally able to get rolling on his next Avatar film, with a release date now a whole 13 years after the last one.  Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) had a lot to prove.  It had been so long since the last Avatar.  Would audiences still care?  It turns out they did.  The Way of Water performed at the box office nearly identical to how the original did, and while it didn’t achieve the same height at the box office, it came pretty close.  But, audiences wouldn’t have to suffer through another decade long wait for another Avatar.  Cameron planned to shoot two of these Avatar sequels back to back, utilizing the same crew and cast, and developing the visual effects in tandem.  So, only three years after the last one, we now have Avatar: Fire and Ash coming to theaters.  The only question is, can James Cameron do it again?

Avatar: Fire and Ash picks up right after the events of Way of Water.  Jake Sulley (Sam Worthington) and his family are still reeling from the loss of their eldest son Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) in their last battle with the human beings they call the Sky People.  Jake’s wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) is particularly taking the loss very harshly, and has isolated herself from the others.  But their time of peace proves to be shortlived.  The human boy who lives with the Sulley family named Spider (Jack Champion) is running low on batteries for his oxygen mask, the thing that helps him to breathe because of the toxicity of the Pandoran atmosphere to human beings.  The Sulleys decide that it is safer for Spider to return to the research base where he was born, because they’ll have the supplies he needs to survive.  They say goodbye for now to the Metkayina clan that has protected them, including their Chief Tonowari (Cliff Curtis) and his wife Ronal (Kate Winslet), and set out on their journey.  Unfortunately on their way, they are ambushed by a clan of volcano-dwelling Na’vi known as the Mangkwan, who are led by their blood-thirsty queen Varang (Oona Chaplin).  The skirmish ends up splitting the family up.  Neytiri becomes wounded but escapes.  Jake Sulley ends up getting captured by an old adversary, Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang) who keeps defying death and remains determined to destroy Jake and his family.  The children of the family try to remain hidden in the forests of Pandora, led by the now oldest son Lo’ak (Britain Dalton).  Unfortunately for them, Spider’s mask starts to malfunction, nearly out of juice.  The adopted Sully daughter Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) uses her connection with the spirits of the natural world to try something to save Spider.  Miraculously, she manages to save him, and he can breathe the Pandoran air without a mask.  This causes profound curiosity amongst both Na’vi and human alike.  What does it mean for Pandora and the Na’vi now that there is a way for the humans to freely breathe their air, and why was Spider saved by the goddess Eywa in this way and for what purpose?

There’s one thing going into any of the Avatar films that we all seem to understand, and that is that these movies are far more about spectacle than substance.  James Cameron is unequalled when it comes to crafting spectacle.  It is quite remarkable that even 3 movies into this series, he’s still able to create a sense of awe and wonder for his audience.  There is indeed a lot to admire with Avatar: Fire and Ash.  I for one still love the fact that Cameron allows for the movies to take their time, allowing us the chance to be immersed in this world.  The dedication to world building is incredible, and that is likely what Cameron loves most of all about making these movies.  He wants to make us all believe that Pandora is a living breathing world with sights and sounds unlike anything seen on the big screen before.  But, the Avatar movies also have the same weaknesses that most of Cameron’s other films have and that’s the story and writing itself.  Cameron, ever the perfectionist, is committed to putting his voice throughout all his movies, and that includes writing the screenplay.  While Cameron remains strong in plotting his movies (very few of his films ever feel like they drag) he unfortunately still proves to be very amateurish when it comes to dialogue, and Fire and Ash is no exception.  James Cameron is corny and prone to cliché, and his characters often feel more like archetypes than actual people.  While he can from time to time come up with a clever line, most of his films still show their weakness in the dialogue.  This was true even with his Oscar-winning Titanic.  While Fire and Ash continues Cameron’s trend of sophomoric level dialogue (just count how many times they say ‘bro’ in the movie), the movie thankfully still attains the director’s high level of visual storytelling.  The movie does soar when it’s using the mood and setting to tell part of the story.  There are some especially interesting uses of eclipses in this film, which provides some very striking visuals.

There’s one other issue that plagues this movie as well.  When Avatar came out 16 years ago, it stood out because it was unlike anything we had seen before.  The Way of Water managed to overcome the sophomore slump because it came out so long after the first one that it made us the audience feel like we were rediscovering the world of Pandora again because of that long absence.  Fire and Ash doesn’t have that benefit of re-discovery, because it’s getting released after a relatively short 3 year gap.  One thing that Cameron could have done with this movie to help make it feel new and fresh was to allow us to see a whole other biome of Pandora and spend most of the film there, making it distinct from the visuals of the other movies.  For a while, it looked like that’s what Cameron was about to do, given how prominently the character of Varang and her tribe or Ash Na’vi featured in the marketing of this movie.  But, alas, we only spend a brief time with her clan in their home environment, on the slopes of an active volcano.  It would’ve been very exciting to have used this ash covered wasteland as a key battleground within the story, but sadly that’s not what we get.  Instead, this story chooses to re-tread most of the same locations we saw before in the series; the forests and the oceans of Pandora.  It all makes Fire and Ash feel less like it’s own movie and more like The Way of Water Part II.  It’s also sad that even with a 3 hour and 17 minute run time (the longest so far in the series) the story still doesn’t feel like it advances that much more than Way of Water did.  At least Cameron keeps things active, so it’s not a dull three hours.  But, this is the first film in this series where I feel like the novelty is clearly wearing thin.  If James Cameron says there are still 2 more films to go in this series, he needs to shake things up big time from here out because otherwise audiences are going to stop caring.

At this point, it’s the visuals that are carrying the series more than anything else.  I feel like I got the most out of the experience based on my choice of presentation.  In a select few IMAX theaters nationwide, not only are audiences able to see the film projected in 3D, but also at a high frame rate.  The high frame rate craze never really took off in the 2010’s, with it quickly fizzling out after the mixed reactions from the Hobbit trilogy’s usage of the format. 3D as well has been in a steady decline over the years.  But, James Cameron is still choosing to present his Avatar movies with these gimmicks still a part of the experience, and strangely enough it actually kind of works.  The high frame rate does take some getting used to, but over time it actually looks quite good.  I think it has to do with the fact that the majority of the movie features digital animation (whether it’s the environment or the actor’s motion capture performances) which looks better in a higher frame rate than live action.  And without a doubt, the Avatar movies feature the best uses of 3D photography ever put on screen.  It helps that Cameron made these movies with high frame rate 3D in mind, and crafted his movies to better integrate the gimmicks into the experience.  One of the best uses of the formats is a scene when Quaritch meet with Varang, and she gives him a powerful hallucinagenic drug to allow her to read his mind.  Cameron allows us to see from Quaritch’s POV in this scene, so we get the full hallucinagenic experience, which looks wild in 3D and with the smoothness of the high frame rate.  While we aren’t seeing the giant leap forwards in visual effects that the first two films represented, the Weta Digital team still delivers some incredible visual treats throughout the film, and it’s good to see this legendary visual effects studio continue to push the limits thanks to the challenge of keeping up with James Cameron’s vision.  Even if you are unable to see this movie in the ideal High Frame Rate IMAX 3D experience, you’ll see be amazed by the imaginative things that Cameron and company came up with for this third chapter.

The movie does also benefit from a committed cast of actors who over time have gotten better working with the motion capture technology over these last 16 years.  Zoe Saldana still remains the MVP of the series.  While Neytiri takes a bit of a back seat in the plot of this movie, Zoe nevertheless still shines in every moment she appears on screen.  Sam Worthington also seems to improve his portrayal of Jake Sully with every new film.  Starting off as pretty wooden in the first film, he has managed to become more forceful with his portrayal in the these last two.  He’s also becoming more flawless with that American accent, to the point where you can’t even hear any trace of his natural Australian accent anymore.  But, much like with many other space fantasy films, it’s the villains that become the favorites.  Stephen Lang returns again as the primary antagonist Colonel Quaritch, and he still is a blast to watch with his scenery chewing performance.  But, the best thing about his role here is that they paired him with another equally fascinating villain to work off of.  Oona Chaplin is easily the best new member of this cast, delivering a delightfully deranged and venomous performance as Varang.  She is a very compelling villainess, and she brings an incredible, sinister presence into the movie.  I also love the unique design of her outfit too, with the mix of blacks and reds making her feel all the more twisted.  The best part is also how well she works off of Stephen Lang’s performance as the Colonel, making their scenes together all the more electrifying.  The downside of the cast in this movie is that Cameron perhaps has too many characters taking up space in the plot, to the point where some even get neglected despite there being 3 hours to tell the story.  The Sully’s youngest child Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss) for instance is barely a presence at all throughout this story.  And some performances seem to suffer from that lack of focus.  I still find Sigourney Weaver’s performance as Kiri to be a little off.  It’s distracting when you are listening to a older aged woman attempting to play a teenager.  It’s clear that James Cameron and the actors love these characters, but it also feels like the movies are not doing them justice either with it’s odd choices in pacing and stilted, unnatural dialogue.

In the end, my feelings about Avatar: Fire and Ash are pretty much the same with regards to how I felt about the other two Avatar films; that they are good but fall short of being great.  There are many times throughout this franchise where I do feel James Cameron coming very close to achieving greatness with these movies.  But, then he’ll drop the ball by falling back on clichés and making his characters deliver some pretty clunky dialogue.  In comparison, I believe that Fire and Ash falls a bit short of The Way of Water, mainly because so much of it feels like a retread.  But, at the same time, I like both of the sequels better than the original.  As flawed as these sequels are, I still feel the ambition behind them, and Cameron is working with a full deck of spectacle that is far ahead of what we had seen in the original.  It’s quite a feat to make these two, 3 hour long epics feel like they breeze by.  Truth be told, I was feeling the movie drag in it’s last hour, especially with a battle scene that felt like it went on a beat too long, but it never got me to the point where I was checking my watch, hoping it would be over soon.  I feel like this movie is unlikely to sway audiences one way or another.  People who hated the other two will like hate this one as well, while people who loved the other movies will get exactly what they want with this new film.  I for one liked revisiting this beautifully realized alien world on the big screen once again, but I feel like the novelty has worn off as well and it’s time for James Cameron to start reconsidering where he should go with the next film.  It’s not enough to keep making the same style of movie over again.  There is potential to be mined here in the world of Avatar; like say taking us to a completely new location on Pandora, like maybe a desert or the frozen polar regions.  Avatar needs variety to help make us care about returning to these worlds.  That’s the thing that I felt was lacking the most with this new release.  At the same time, I was mostly having a good time watching the flick, because Cameron can still deliver some exhilarating action sequences.  We’ll see what the future holds for this record-shattering franchise as James Cameron maps out his final two chapters and whatever lies beyond.  For what it’s worth, he did manage to do it again, but again merely means making almost the same movie as the other two, and we’ll see if that’s enough to set a fire to the box office again.

Rating: 7/10

Off the Page

Off the Page – The Polar Express

For a lot of children over the last forty years, one of the most recognizable stories around the holiday season has been that of The Polar Express.  The short story told through exquisitely painted illustrations in the now famous book by author and illustrator Chris Van Allsburg has become a staple for the holiday season and one that has been passed down through generations.  First published in 1985, the book was an instant best seller and became the winner of the pretigeous Caldecott Medal for it’s excellence in children’s literature.  But what is it about this book that has made it endure.  For one thing, I’m sure many of us Gen X and Millenial kids at some point got this book as a Christmas present, helping to solidify it’s connection to memories of the holiday itself.  But the quality of the book itself has also given it a long standing reputation among readers.  Van Allsburg’s illustrations are vividly realized and draws the reader into it’s imaginative world.  Just the cover image alone is enough to draw the eye.  For a lot of childen, there’s nothing more evocative than seeing a train driving itself down a neighborhood street in the late night snow and stopping right in front of your front long.  Van Allsburg of course had a talent for creating imaginative imagery in his drawings to go along with his other-worldly stories, being the author of other beloved classics like Jumanji and Zathura.  This is probably why his books have often lent themselves so well to movie adaptations, because they already had a very cinematic look to them already on the page.  Jumanji of course inspired a 1994 adaptation starring Robin Williams, as well as blockbuster series in the 2010’s starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.  These films though brought Van Allsburg’s stories to the big screen in a live action form, which loses a bit of the magic that the book’s illustrations had.  While Jumanji had to leave something out in the translation to the screen, an enitrely different approach was given to The Polar Express (2004) when it was finally given a movie adaptation.  This approach would be taking the extra step to be fully faithful to the original style of the book, and it would utilize what was at the time the cutting edge of computer animation technology.

Enter Oscar-winning filmmaker Robert Zemekis.  Zemekis had been spending the last 20 years as one of Hollywood’s most innovative directors, using his films as testing grounds for cutting edge visual effects.  And this included one of the most impressive runs of any director in the industry’s history.  He hit it big with Back to the Future (1985) and would continue to deliver many other visually impressive films in the years ahead, including Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988), Forrest Gump (1994), Contact (1997) and Cast Away (2000).  Each of these films didn’t just land strongly with critics and audiences, but they also astounded with their visual effects innovations. Zemekis always seemed to be one step ahead in his embrace of new innovations in visual effects and he found creative ways to incorporate them into the stories he wanted to tell.  And a lot of those effects still look impressive even after 30 plus years, including the mix of animation and live action in Roger Rabbit, or the digital removal of actor Gary Sinise’s legs for his role as wounded veteran Lieutenant Dan in Forrest Gump.  But, after Cast Away, Zemekis was looking to dive deeper into a field that he had tested briefly before, which was animation.  He was drawn to the book The Polar Express like many others, and saw it’s potential as a movie.  But, you couldn’t adapt it the same way that had already been done with Jumanji.  A big reason why The Polar Express the book is beloved is because of those stunning illustrations.  Making this movie in live action would rob the story of some of that whimsical nature, so Zemekis and his team opted to make Polar Express an animated film instead.  But, it would be a very different kind of animation, and one that would indeed be threatening to the status quo at the time with regards to how animation works.  While Zemekis’ commitment to keeping the visual storytelling true to the book with his adaptation is commendable, his approach unfortunately missed the mark with making it worthwhile, and sadly a lot of the movie has aged like egg nog.

“These tickets… are not…. transferable.”

What Robert Zemekis’ The Polar Express is most noteworthy for is for being the first full length movie entirely animated through motion capure technology.  The mo-cap system had been used throughout the 90’s for various visual effects shots, mainly to help create various movements for digital sprite characters in CGI generated crowd simulations.  But, in 1999, George Lucas used the technology to completely animate one of the main characters in his new Star Wars movie The Phantom Menace (1999), based on an on-set actor’s performance.  This character would be the much maligned Jar Jar Binks, and say what you will about the character, but his creation was very much a breakthrough for motion capture technology.  The tech would be further refined by filmmaker Peter Jackson and his crew when they used it to create the character Gollum based on actor Andy Serkis’ standout performance in The Lord of the Rings trilogy.  But, thus far the tech was used mostly to bring creatures to life that would blend in with live action settings and co-stars.  No one had ever attempted to use the techonolgy for an entire film with every actor’s performance put through that animation filter.  That’s the challenge that Robert Zemekis was willing to take.  His production company ImageMovers specifically set itself up as an animation studio devoted to working exclusively with motion capture, and Zemekis would lead the charge with The Polar Express being his next film and the first under this new initiative.  But, despite the creative freedom that motion capture technology allowed for someone like Zemekis to work with, it also had drawbacks that unfortunately have only grown more obvious over time.

“One thing about trains.  It doesn’ matter where they’re going.  What matters is deciding to get on.”

For The Polar Express, Zemekis called upon one of his long time collaborators to not just be the headlining star of this movie, but also his guinea pig for all the experiments they were about to try out with this new technology.  Tom Hanks would be working for the third time with the director, after Forrest Gump and Cast Away, and it wouldn’t be the last as they have recently teamed up again for Pinocchio (2022) and Here (2024).  But, unlike their past collaborations, Hanks wouldn’t just be playing one role, but many.  What seemed to draw Hanks to the film was the fact that he would be able to play multiple characters in the same film without ever having to change wardrobe or disappear through make-up.  All he would have to do is put on a motion capture jumpsuit and have his physical performance recorded on an empty soundstage through sensors.  It’s less of a hassle for preparation, which would give Hanks more of an oppurtunity to focus on his physical characterizations.  Some actors may find that kind of way of acting to be outside of their comofort zone, as they would find it difficult to act without a physical set to act in, but for an actor like Hanks it didn’t matter because he’s always been someone whose focus has been on mentally finding himself embodying a character.  And he’s given a lot of variety to do that in this movie.  He plays no less than 6 different characters, including Santa Claus himself.  He’s even doing the mo-cap performance for the Hero Boy, the main character (though his voice is provided by a young Daryl Sabara).  Of all those character, only one actually looks like Hanks in the finished film, The Conductor.  And while Tom Hanks commitment to playing six different roles is impressive in of itself, the mo-cap animation unfortunately robs a little bit of the character out of the performance due to it’s limitations.  The technology was still fairly young at the time, and with the movie going very hard in trying to achieve a sense of realism in it’s animation, it unfortunately sends the actor’s performances as the characters into the Uncanny Valley.  Hank’s facial features on a ten year old’s body especially come across as unsettling in some shots because it just doesn’t look natural.  And the dead eye stare of the characters in many shots, where of course mo-cap technolgy hadn’t perfected eye movements just yet, really points out the creepy unnatural state that was limiting this tech at the time.

The Polar Express as a movie for the most part seemed to be too ambitious for it’s own good when it came to the mo-cap animation of it’s characters.  But, one of the reasons why Zemekis chose this as a way of adapting the book was because he felt that it was the best way of staying true to Van Allsburg’s original illustrations.  When the movie isn’t showing the characters, it actually does succeed in adapting the look of the original book.  Every environment has that glowing aspect to it, with the balance of light and shadow conveying the balance between the chill of the winter snow and the warmth of the interior spaces.  The depiction of the North Pole village where Santa lives expecially feels in the same spirit as Van Allsburg’s drawings, with all the buildings built with bright red bricks.  But of course, given that this is a story coming off the page, Zemekis needed to take these still tableaus from the books and given them movement.  The are some creative visual ideas thrown into the film that take the initial concepts from the book’s drawings and expands on them.  An extended sequence where we watch a a ticket flutter around in the wind across the landscape really shows off what was possible with computer animation at the time as Zemekis turns the whole thing into a oner with camera movements that would be impossible to pull off with a real camera.  But other moments kind of rob the scene of the simple charm that were in the original drawings by creating too much activity on screen.  The “Hot Chocolate” song and dance sequence is one such moment where it feels like Zemekis is just showing off because he can, and it doesn’t add anything of value to the story.  That’s why so much of the movie feels at war with itself, because at time it does showcase some impressive animation while at the same time also showing us how bad mo-cap animation can look when it’s trying too hard.  One really feels that a better movie could’ve been made had it had a more affirmative side; being either a live action film with elements improved through motion capture animation, or just fully animated in general.

“There’s no greater gift than friendship.”

There’s also one other issue negatively affecting the movie.  As beloved a story as The Polar Express story is, it’s also very brief.  That was always the point; Van Allsburg intended this to be a holiday themed bedtime story that a parent could read to their child in one sitting, or a child could thumb through an appreciate the pictures.  At 32 pages in length, there’s not much there for a feature length run time.  So, inevitably there is a lot of padding that has to be added to the story itself.  Van Allsburg mostly tells the story from the point of view of an unnamed boy character.  The Boy doesn’t have much character in the story and is mainly just the avatar for the reader, having the journey to the North Pole being presented through his eyes.  The story essentially is about reconnecting with childhood, and finding the ability to believe in magical things again.  The connection to that comes through the boy wanting to hear the sleigh bells of Santa’s reindeer, but in order for that to happen, he must open up his mind to believing that it’s real.  The book concludes with the sleigh bell that is given to him as a gift by Santa becoming a symbol of that connection to childhood wonder.  Over time, the narrator who was that Boy shares that he never lost the ability to hear the ringing of that bell as he grew older though many others had.  The movie also makes this an important part of it’s climax, and the scene where the Boy does finally hear the ringing of the bell is still poignant.  But, unfortunately we have to go through a lot of scenes that ultimately add little to the plot, like a prolonged sequence across an icy lake, in order to get to the one scene that matters.  The book gets it’s point across through a beautifully realized journey of discovery through a child’s perspective, while the movie is a lot of noise and action that ultimately just lead nowhere.

The problem is that Zemekis is trying make the movie bigger than it really needs to be.  It’s loud, full of slapstick antics, and also I might add a musical.  And sadly the music is also doing too much as well.  The great Alan Silvestri (a long time collaborator of Zemekis) wrote the score for this film, and it unfortunately becomes very repetitive after a while, replaying the same melody from the signature song “Believe” over and over again.  Too much of the movie takes these plot cul-de-sacs before ultimately returning to what was originally in the book.  It inevitably makes the movie feel cumbersome after a while, because you just know that these moments purely exist to give the movie extra length.  With the limitations of the animation and the uninteresting detours that the plot takes, The Polar Express as a movie comes across as a soulless product, purely made to capitalize on holiday spirit.  And it seemed to work, as the movie did quite well at the box office, riding the wave of holiday season crowds looking for anything that embodies the spirit of the holidays in their entertainment.  But, the film over time has not aged well, with people now looking it as a poster child for how poorly early motion capture animation looks compared to what is possible now.  The Uncanny Valley look of the characters just becomes off-putting to viewers today, neither being endearing or pleasant to look at.  We’ve seen the techonology become impressively implemented in films like Avatar (2009), and also used to bring previously impossible characters like Thanos in the Avengers movies to vivid life while still maintaining a connection to the subtlties of the actor’s performance.  The Polar Express hasn’t even improved over time even as an artifact of an earlier time in the growth of the technology, like what happened with Tron (1982).  There’s an unfortunate soullessness that sticks with The Polar Express even if it was made with good intentions by Zemekis and company.

“Seeing is believing, but sometimes the most real things in the world are the things we can’t see.”

The only reason it seems that The Polar Express managed to become a hit at all is because it’s an easily marketable movie for holiday viewing.  It still has a place on most holiday playlists on TV, but it’s legacy as a pioneer in animation is almost non-existant.  Things did not go well for ImageMovers in the years after The Polar Express.  Zemekis would direct two more films using the mo-cap technology (Beowulf and A Christmas Carol), while two other films by other directors (Monster House and Mars Needs Moms) would also be made through ImageMovers.  Disney, which financed A Christmas Carol and Mars Needs Moms, ended up buying ImageMovers in 2009, and after the spectacular box office failure of the latter, they shut the company down completly and absorbed it’s assets into it’s own in house animation studios.  Robert Zemekis was reportably in early development of a motion capture remake of the Beatles’ classic animated film Yellow Submarine (1968), and some test footage of it has surfaced online over the years, but that came to an end once Mars Needs Moms collapsed the whole motion capture craze.  Zemekis went back to live action filmmaking with 2012’s Flight and has put this whole era of his career behind him.  In the end, audiences chose to see fully animated movies made by actual animators instead of this weird hybrid style that motion captue was. The credits for Pixar’s Ratatouille (2007) even proudly touted in it’s credits that it was “100% Genuine Animation,” a blistering rebuke towards motion capture being a possible replacement for it’s creative model.  One would hope audiences feel the same about this troubling push towards AI in recent years, and how that threatens to upend animation as we know it today.  Is The Polar Express a terrible Christmas movie?  Hardly.  There’s nothing really offensive about the movie.  It’s just a film that falls well short of achieving what it sets out to do, and that’s mainly due to the fact that it exists more as a gimmick to tout new technology than as a worthwhile story to be told.  The book does a much better job of conveying the wonder and warm feelings of Christmastime.  Though the movie The Polar Express does come close in brief moments to capturing the simple wonder that was found in Chris Van Allsburg’s book, it mostly gets lost in all the excessive additions that Robert Zemekis added to pad the story out.  The original story reminds us all why Christmas Time brings us so much joy because it connects us with that wonder and spirit that lived so much in us when we were little.  The Polar Express movie unfortunately reminds us of the things that were better left to be forgotten, especially when it is looking back at you with those lifeless doll like eyes.

“Though I’ve grown old the bell still rings for me, as it does for all who truly believe.”

Editorials

That’s All Folks – What Netflix Buying Warner Brothers Means for Hollywood

The year was 2010.  Netflix had grown into a massive media company off of their business model of through the mail movie rentals.  Their success over the years even eliminated their prime competition, Blockbuster Video, who were unable to adapt to the shifting market.  But, Netflix wasn’t done disrupting the media market just yet.  They saw the growing potential in streaming after watching the rapid growth of YouTube.  If there was an appetite for watching short videos over the internet, what was keeping the industry from producing long form content as well.  Netflix began their initial dip into streaming in 2007, with low quality video of films and shows that were also available to rent on disc.  In 2010, they were ready to provide a full, high definition streaming platform for a separate fee to their subscribers.  Eventually, the disc based service would be eclipsed by the more robust on demand digital service.  But, a lot of people in the entertainment business were unconvinced by this newer model, especially when Netflix announced that they were going to begin making original programing exclusive for their platform.  Netflix was still green to the whole production side of filmmaking, and they were going up against the big entrenched studio system that had run Hollywood for over a century.  Most notably, the then Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes, who was in control of Warner Brothers, notoriously dismissed Netflix’s potential to be a threat to Hollywood, saying “Is the Albanian army going to take over the world?”  Well, not long after Bewkes made his statement, Netflix premiered the show House of Cards, a buzzworthy drama that Time Warner passed on for their HBO channel, and it not only gave Netflix the industry cred it needed to prove itself, but it even set off a chain reaction that will possibly be the end of Old Hollywood as we know it.

15 years after Jeff Bewkes made his dismissive insult Netflix is now on the cusp of taking ownership of his old studio.  In September 2025, David Ellison, the CEO of the newly formed Paramount Skydance, made the first initial offer to buy Warner Brothers Discovery.  Coming so quickly off their own mega merger, Paramount Skydance was ready to expand even further, making a play to develop a mega studio that would be more competitive with the likes of Disney/Fox and Netflix; the two current leaders in the streaming market.  With backing from other investors, including Saudi royals, Ellison made the first pitch of $78 billion.  Of course, Warner Brothers had to declare their intentions to sell in accordance with the law, but they weren’t ready to strike a deal just yet with Paramount Skydance.  They believed that they could sweeten the pot for their shareholders by holding out for a better bid from other interested parties.  And they were right.  Soon after, Netflix and Comcast (the parent company of NBC Universal) began their own campaigns to bid for Warner Brothers.  No matter who was going to come out on top, the truth is that Warner Brothers worth is certainly of high value.  The victor would be gaining a century old library of some of the most important and celebrated movies and shows that have ever come out of Hollywood; not to mention some very valuable present day brands like Harry Potter and DC Comics.  A lot of people believed that Paramount would still come out on top, but surprisingly it now looks like Warner Brothers has favored someone else.  On December 5, 2025 it was revealed that Warner Brothers has accepted a $82 billion dollar deal from Netflix, which in turn has gotten much of Hollywood buzzing, as well as worrying.

The streaming wars of the last several years was born out of the Hollywood studios seeing Netflix as a threat to their decades old business models of distribution, and they were desperate to adapt to this new normal.  Even Warner Brothers got in on it by establishing their own streaming platform, which went from being called HBO Max to just MAX and then back to being HBO Max.  Despite the brand name confusion, Warner Brothers did manage to rise up to third place in the streaming market, falling just behind Disney+ and far behind Netflix.  But, with Netflix now on the cusp of owning Warner Brothers, they now have essentially become the undisputed victor of the streaming wars.  Even if Disney and Hulu combined continued to steadily grow into one platform, they still won’t have the combined subscriber reach that Netflix and HBO Max now will pull together.  And this is what worries a lot of people in Hollywood.  Netflix is essentially removing a huge competitor from the marketplace, and it is giving them a huge chunk of the market share, which will give them more of a monopoly over streaming in general.  In a studio system that has increasingly become more homogenized through mergers and acquisitions, many believe that this move will only make it harder for new inventive ideas to emerge in the entertainment industry.  We’ll have one less place to pitch a screenplay or show idea to and not only that, but two powerhouse production companies coming together means that many people are going to lose jobs out of redundancies.  It’s a scenario that we already saw play out when Disney bought Fox, which resulted in the latter essentially being hollowed out and turned into just a production label called 20th Century Studios, minus the Fox.  A lot of people on the Warner Brothers lot are probably worrying about their future in the months ahead.

This deal has only happened in the last couple days as of this writing, so a lot of the details haven’t been fully revealed just yet.  We don’t quite know what Netflix studio head Ted Sarandos and Warner Brothers Discovery CEO David Zaslav agreed to that made the deal happen, and what that means for the future of both companies.  One theory is that Warner Brothers Discovery still intends to go through with their plan to divide into two separate companies, and that Netflix’s bid is just for the half that includes the famed studio.  David Ellison’s bid of $72 billion was for the whole pot, studio and networks, but Netflix put up an even bigger bid for just the half that they want, which means that Ellison would have to double his bid in order to buy everything.  All of this is probably why Warner Brothers is confident in Netflix’s bid, because they are better able to back it up and help bring extra value to the Discovery Networks side, once they decide to put that half up for sale.  But, this is just a theory.  One thing for sure is that David Ellison is not happy and plans to take legal action against Netflix if they follow through with it.  The deal still has to go through a year’s worth of federal review before it can be finalized.  Now, the current administration has been less restrictive towards mergers and acquisitions, but that’s largely due to gaining special favors from the parties involved in a rather corrupt quid pro quo way.  This is what happened to finalize the Paramount Skydance merger, where the Paramount owned CBS Network cleared a big chunk of their newsroom of journalists who were critical of President Trump, especially on the program 60 Minutes, hired on a new news team that was more politically aligned with the administration, and even prematurely cancelled the the long running show of vocal Trump critic Stephen Colbert.  All of this spotlights a pretty clear reason why it’s a good thing Paramount Skydance isn’t getting a hold of Warner Brothers, which among other things is the parent company of CNN and other crucial news outlets.  But, there is the worry that in order to ease the review of their own acquisition, they’ll concede a lot of favors to the administration like the Ellison family did that will involve among other things censorship of critical voices.

That’s the sad state of our media landscape, and sadly there really is no good option out there.  If not Netflix, Warner Brothers would be absorbed into another studio if it were to join Paramount Skydance or Comcast, where it would destroy both itself and Universal together.  As of right now, the most vocal critics in the industry are the Guilds and Unions.  The WGA already put out a statement condemning the move, and they were quickly joined by the Teamsters, both of which are rightfully worried about the loss in competition this will bring to the industry.  One less player in the market means fewer job openings for film sets and writers rooms.  For an industry that’s already reeling from a pandemic and a lengthy strike, this will be yet another blow against recovery.  This move is not likely to strengthen the job market in Hollywood.  If anything it’s going to put more people out of work with the layoffs due to redundancy.  The one silver lining with Netflix is that they are a competitor to Warner Brothers solely through the streaming market.  What Netflix has been lacking that all the other studios have had is a distribution division that brings their movies to national theaters.  Instead of growing their own organically, Netflix has instead been trying to bend the industry to their video on demand model.  They’ll be inheriting Warner Brothers’ long standing distribution organization that has been working with theater chains around the world.  The only question is, is Netflix willing to keep it or is that going to be the first thing to go as Warner Brothers is forced to conform to Netflix’s business model?  It would be a very expensive department to just buy up to destroy, but perhaps that’s part of Netflix’s way of forcing more conformity in Hollywood to their model.  One would hope that more of Warner Brothers’ way of doing business rubs off on Netflix and remains in tact.

That’s what has a lot of other people worried about this potential merger; the downstream effects it will have on other industries.  Movie theaters have been desperately trying to hold onto their deals with the movie studios to release new films on their screens.  Thus far, they’ve been managing to scrape by, but streaming has been drying up the products available to present on the big screen.  Netflix has especially made it difficult with their business model, which they proclaim is the better option to guarantee filmmakers that their films will get seen by a bigger audience.  It would be devastating to the movie theater industry as a whole if one of the biggest studios suddenly stopped showing their movies in theaters.  And Warner Brothers has had a good year at the box office in 2025, with movies like Sinners (2025) and Weapons (2025) being especially profitable.  Imagine if movie theaters this year didn’t see any of that revenue.  It’s not just that, but physical media collectors are also worried that Netflix would also be abandoning physical releases of Warner Brothers movies, dealing a death blow to an already diminished marketplace.  For a lot of different industries, this would feel like Netflix is kicking them while they are already down.  Is it all but certain that such a deal would kill off these beleaguered industries for good.  It all depends on what was involved in the deal that was struck.  It would be difficult to end theatrical distribution as a whole at Warner Brothers, given that it involves so many longstanding contracts that will take years to finalize.  Netflix has been dipping their toes a bit more with theatrical in recent years, with KPOP Demon Hunters winning them their first box office weekend title, and their plan to put the Stranger Things series finale on the big screen this New Year’s Eve.  But, would acquiring Warner Brothers finally give them the reason to go all in, or will we be seeing Netflix forcing Warner Brothers to comply.

One thing that could be a big factor in determining the future for both Netflix and Warner Brothers is what the creatives in the industry have to say.  Netflix has managed to get some filmmakers to consent to having their movies premiere through the direct to streaming method, such as David Fincher and Richard Linklater.  But, if Warner Brothers were to follow Netflix’s lead and stop releasing their movies in theaters, there would be significant pushback to that.  Some filmmakers, such as Quentin Tarantino and Christopher Nolan would never sign on to a deal that excluded a theatrical premiere.  In fact, Christopher Nolan ended his long time partnership with Warner Brothers over this very issue, after they planned to go against his wishes and release Tenet (2020) straight to streaming without a theatrical window.  He wanted them to wait until movie theaters were re-opened after the pandemic shutdown so that the movie would get a proper theatrical release, but Warner Brothers weren’t willing to sit on this film for another year, so what ended up happening was Tenet got a small theatrical release in whatever theaters were open during the pandemic (which excluded big markets) and it still was quickly rushed onto streaming soon after, just so Warner Brothers could fulfill the minimal requirements of the contract.  That’s why Nolan today is set up now at Universal, which benefitted in getting his Oscar winning Oppenheimer (2023) and next year’s The Odyssey (2026).  Nolan and many others would likely have it written in their contracts that their movies must have theatrical releases, and if Netflix doesn’t accept that, then they would be loosing out on many coveted projects from many established and up-and-coming filmmakers.  Recently, such a situation happened when Weapon’s director Zach Cregger walked away from developing a new film at Netflix because they couldn’t guarantee a theatrical release.  Greta Gerwig, whose developing a new adaptation of C.S. Lewis’ Narnia book series with the streamer, even went behind Netflix’s back to secure a theatrical window for the film with the IMAX corporation.  If Netflix were to force Warner Brothers to conform to their streaming first model, they would be alienating themselves even further from some of Hollywood’s most creative people, and it would make them lose out on what could ultimately be the next billion dollar idea.

We’ll have a clearer idea what this deal will entail over the next year as this acquisition goes through review.  What we know as of right now is that this deal is being met with a great amount of skepticism.  People are worried, rightfully so, about what it could mean for the future of Hollywood.  Warner Brothers has been an enduring fixture in the history of Hollywood.  It was one of the bedrocks of the studio system, and is undeniably one of the most valuable libraries of movies and television shows in the entire industry.  By buying Warner Brothers, you have access to characters as varied as Bugs Bunny to Batman.  But, there’s one thing that is undeniable about Warner Brothers and that is they go big.  Their movies deserve to be seen in the biggest way possible, so it would be a shame if the only place you could watch them is from a small screen at home.  Warner Brothers’ history shouldn’t be reduced down to a thumbnail on a streaming app.  If that Warner Brothers golden badge doesn’t grace the silver screen again, it would be a great loss.  One hopes that part of Zaslav’s negortiations with Netflix to broker this deal was to keep that legacy in tact and secure Warner Brothers ability to continue screening movies on a big screen.  Say what you will about Zaslav’s tenure as CEO of Warner Brothers; he didn’t abandon the movie theater industry, and in fact he doubled down on it over the last couple years.  We’ll see if Netflix eases up on their insistence on straight to streaming.  So many of their own movies should have been given more robust theatrical releases over the years; maybe now they’ll be convinced to give it a chance.  One thing is for sure; Hollywood will never be the same again if this deal goes through.  Warner Brothers thought it could dismiss the threat of Netflix before, and now they are about to become a part of them.  The Albanian Army is indeed about to conquer the world, and it shows you should never believe yourself to be untouchable in this business.  One hopes that Netflix will be a good steward to the legacy of Warner Brothers, but there is a lot of justifiable skepticism that is surrounding this deal and people should worry.  At a time when the movie industry should be getting bolder and bigger, we are instead unfortunately seeing it shrink even more.