The early 2000’s were an interesting transitional time for comic book movies.  After the crushing failure of 1997’s Batman and Robin, the genre as a whole went into a bit of a recession as it tried to re-establish what it needed to be.  The Batman franchise had evolved from moody and grim to campy and colorful, and it was not what audiences were looking for.  Heading into the new millennium, a different approach was looked at.  Bryan Singer’s X-Men (2000) got the ball rolling by grounding the super hero mythos in something that was more familiar to the world that we live in.  A couple years later, Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man (2002) took the genre in a direction that made it’s adventure fun but not overly camp.  In many ways, the genre was heading in a direction that honestly was much closer to the comic books that these movies were based on.  Fidelity to the comic books was the guiding force now rather than the traditional standards of genre that had been present before.  And each comic book movie was able to have it’s own identity rather than follow formula, though there were still common tropes that still stuck around.  By the end of the 2000’s, the comic book genre had gone from being on life support to being the dominant force in Hollywood, and it would only continue to grow into the following decade and beyond.  But while the mighty forces of Marvel and DC were battling for supremacy in Hollywood, it could be argued that both have an entirely different source to thank for setting the tone right for the genre.  The movie that had the most profound influence on the super hero genre over the last 20 years (with impacts on everything from character development to the sense of humor present) didn’t come from Marvel nor DC, but rather from an animation studio called Pixar, which itself saw it’s own meteoric rise during this same period.

Pixar’s The Incredibles (2004) came at a pivotal time for both animation and super heroes.  For Pixar, it was a big leap forward for them in terms of animation.  Up to that point, they had steered away from depicting human characters, often leaving them to the background as they were far more difficult to model in a believable way.  You look at the early character models of characters like Andy and Sid in Toy Story (1995) and you can see why Pixar chose to center their early movies on stylized toy characters like Woody and Buzz Lightyear.  Animals or non-humanoid creatures also gave the studio more creative freedom with the primitive tools they had to work with, which was evidenced in the movies A Bug’s Life (1998), Monsters Inc. (2001) and Finding Nemo (2003).  However, they faced increased competition from Dreamworks Animation, which struck a huge hit with Shrek (2001), which featured more human characters in prominent roles.  For studios like Dreamworks and Pixar, the dilemma was to find the perfect medium in animating humans that would avoid the uncanny valley pitfall that can often occur.  The solution that Pixar ultimately landed on was to treat their human characters less like perfect recreations, and instead look for ways to make them stylized in a way that would make them easier to animate.  And what better example to look for exaggerated forms of human physique than in comic books.  There are plenty of examples of comic book artists doing away with traditional character models and bringing their own unique stylistic twists to the looks of popular characters; in many cases creating body shapes that could only make sense as part of comic book art.  This is likely what inspired the artists at Pixar and drew them into the idea of making a super hero movie that felt very heavily inspired by the freeing graphic inventiveness of comic books.  Instead of characters with perfectly rendered anatomy, Pixar’s Incredibles would have humans with extreme features that not only made them stand out, but would also be perfectly accentuated to their personalities as well.

The interesting thing about how The Incredibles came to be at Pixar is that it marked the first time that the studio went outside of their own inner circle to green-light a new project.  Now, writer and director Brad Bird was no stranger to the Pixar team before he came to work for them.  Bird was part of the same class at Cal Arts that also included Pixar Animation co-founder John Lassater, and both men started out as junior animators at Disney in the early 80’s, so they were already familiar to each other.  Bird, however, left Disney fairly early on to pursue independent work.  He would work on projects such as Steven Spielberg’s Amazing Stories anthology series, as well as directing a couple episodes of The Simpsons, including creating key supporting characters such as Krusty the Clown and Sideshow Bob that still remain a part of the show to this day.  It was, however, when he made his feature film debut in 1999 with The Iron Giant that Brad Bird began to make a big splash in the animation industry.  Though The Iron Giant is celebrated as a masterpiece today, it did not have a great opening in theaters and ended up prematurely closed the studio that made it, which ended up making Brad Bird a free agent again.  Regardless of box office, the love for Iron Giant was strong across the animation industry so there were a lot of studios that were willing to meet with Bird during this time, and that’s when John Lassater decided to call up his old colleague.  It would prove to be fortuitous because Brad Bird had been developing this idea for a film centered around a family of super heroes that fit perfectly with the desire of Pixar to experiment more with stylized human characters.  Up to this point, the Pixar legacy team had consisted of the people who worked on the original shorts as well as Toy Story.  Lassater had directed the firs three features, while Pete Doctor and Andrew Stanton helmed Monsters Inc. and Finding Nemo respectively.  The Incredibles would be the first new film by someone who had not come up through the ranks of Pixar, but as evidenced by the results, Brad Bird fit in very much with the Pixar community.

There are a lot of layers to what makes The Incredibles a perfect super hero movie.  For one thing, the film is not about the characters doing super hero things, but rather it shows us how they try to build a life outside of their super powered identity.  In the world of The Incredibles, super heroic acts have been made illegal due to a string of incidents where people have become collateral damage in the fights between super heroes and super villains and in turn have led to law suits.  As a result, super heroes have live anonymously underground, forced to suppress their abilities.  The Parrs, a family of “supers,” try to blend in with this new normal and this is the focus of the story.  The movie has fun with how the Parrs use their powers in this domestic setting, but it’s ultimately about how they function as a family unit rather than what they must do to save the world, which does come into play in the final act.  The movie brilliantly allows each character to have their own power type too.  Bob Parr, aka Mr. Incredible, has super strength; his wife Helen is super stretchy and goes by the alter ego Elastigirl.  And their children are unique as well; shy Violet can make herself invisible and creates a force field around her, while hyperactive Dash has super speed.  And the baby Jack-Jack, well, that would be spoiling too much.  The Parr family also has a close relationship with Lucius Best, whose freezing powers have earned him the name Frozone.  You can see the parallels with these characters with pre-existing characters from comic books, like Ice Man, Invisible Girl, or The Flash, but putting them together as a family was a unique way of framing their story and examining how being super would function in an average family narrative.  Super hero families aren’t a novel idea; Marvel has tried for years to make a Fantastic Four movie work, with attempt number three coming next summer.  But with The Incredibles, it’s a focal point for the story that works and helps to endear each of these super beings in a way that makes them relatable to the everyday average family.

But what was the thing that set The Incredibles apart as a super hero movie.  What Brad Bird did, in addition to directing an action packed film, was craft a script that in many ways deconstructed the very idea of being a super hero.  The brilliance of the story is that the super heroes are forced to suppress their powers in order to function as a citizen of society, and if a super hero can’t use their powers, what are they left with.  Bob Parr’s crisis in the film is that he has all this power, and yet he has to work a boring day job like everyone else.  What this motivates him to do is to break the rules just a little bit while still trying to balance his home life, with a wife who is more determined to keep him and the family in check.  We see that Bob is a hero to his core and wants to use his powers for good, but is foolhardy to the point where his desires don’t take into account the repercussions of what his actions may do.  By looking into this side of Bob’s character, we see how Brad Bird is examining the duality of being both a god among men and a flawed human being at the same time.  It’s a more introspective examination of the tropes of super herodom that in many ways has found itself worked into the whole genre at large.  When Marvel began their MCU, it was noticeable from the get go that they were taking a much more introspective look at the characters themselves.  The humor of the MCU is definitely more meta than super hero films of the past, and you can’t help but recall how a lot of their deconstruction of super hero tropes fell reminiscent of the ones from The Incredibles.  There’s a through line to be sure of the jokes in Incredibles about villains monologuing leading to 20 years later where Wolverine punches out a villain and says “Not everyone gets a speech,” as seen in Deadpool & Wolverine (2024).

But The Incredibles is far more than just examining the home life of super heroes.  The point wasn’t to just show what Superman does when he is only Clark Kent.  Brad Bird’s film is ultimately about embracing the special part of what makes us who we are; something that is a common theme in his films.  Some have criticized the movie for promoting an Ayn Randian objectivist point of view; where exceptional people should be held up as better than the rest of society.  The Randian elements seem most pronounced in the movie with Bob Parr’s frustrations over being held back by the anti-super laws, but I don’t see the movie as a validation of Randian beliefs either.  If anything, Brad Bird’s point in the film is not objectivism, but rather the way society scapegoats it’s problems on those who are different.  Ultimately, the Parr family realizes that just sitting on the sidelines doesn’t make society better either, and that the need to conform is not just restrictive to them, but it’s also preventing them from having a healthy family life as well.  When they get to be super powered in the open, they grow closer together as a family.  Exceptionalism, according to Brad Bird, is not in being better than everyone else, but in being the best version of oneself.  That’s something that he showed more definitively in his next film, Ratatouille (2007), where the motto “Anyone Can Cook,” reveals itself to be the idea that a great artist can be anyone, even the least expected.  And he also celebrates the idea that people who chose less power can often be the best representation of oneself; such as The Iron Giant choosing not to be a weapon and instead becoming “Superman.”  This is another idea that has helped shape the characterizations of super heroes over the last 20 years.  It’s the motivation that makes Wonder Woman walk into No Man’s Land and act as a human shield, or Spider-Man choosing to let everyone in the world forget who he is, or Thor letting his home world be destroyed in order to save it’s people.  Like the Incredibles family, modern day super heroes don’t just choose to be super to be better; in many ways they have no choice but to do what’s best for those they care about.

It’s the complexity of character that The Incredibles brought that certainly helped create ripples throughout the super hero genre, though there certainly were many cases before of complex characterizations.  One other thing that the movie had a strong influence on was the way it showcased the power sets of it’s characters.  The movie seems to have the most fun with Helen’s Elastigirl power set, as her stretching ability gave the animators a lot to work with.  One of the biggest highlights of the movie though is the sequence dubbed the “One Hundred Mile Dash.”  It’s a chase scene involving Dash as he tries to escape guardsmen trying to hunt him down.  Even to this day I don’t think super speed powers have been as showcased as well on screen as it is here, and we’ve had two Quicksilvers and one Flash in the movies by now.  There are many other great elements of the movie that the movie set a high bar for that I don’t think any other super hero film has been able to match.  One is the presence of the character Edna Mode (voiced by Brad Bird himself).  We see all these amazing super suits in Marvel and DC movies, but are never given an explanation about who makes them, with a few exceptions.  A character like Edna is a great addition here, and it makes sense that a person who designs suits for super heroes would be a type A personality herself.  She is easily one of the highlights of the movie and a character type you wish would be more present in the genre.  One other brilliant part of the movie is the villain, Syndrome; easily one of the greatest in all of Pixar’s canon.  Syndrome’s role is a great deconstruction of toxic fandom, where one’s fascination with super powers often leads to eventual loathing of not having control over it, and a desire to flip the power dynamic in their favor.  Syndrome wishes to create a society where everyone has access to super hero ability (which he will profit off of by selling it to them), so that in his eyes, “when everyone is super, than no one will be.”  He’s a character that has become frighteningly all too real in the last 20 years, as tech bro billionaires have used their wealth to bully their way into politics and culture.  Given Pixar’s close proximity to Silicon Valley, it’s almost like Brad Bird and his team knew what was coming and tried to warn us, but we didn’t listen and are now in a world increasingly run by Syndromes.

Unlike The Iron Giant, Incredibles was an immediate success upon it’s initial release.  The movie grossed a respectable $260 million domestic and Brad Bird won his first Academy Award for Animated Feature that year.  What’s more, it was a major milestone for Pixar Animation, as it helped them improve their style of animation and showed that they could tell a human story without having to be rigid in their animation of the human figures.  You know you’ve got great stylized human characters when each one’s silhouette alone conveys personality.  It also was a great leap forward in staging, pushing the medium of computer animation further into a cinematic mode, with the movie very much reaching epic heights in it’s sense of scale.  But at it’s heart, Brad Bird drove home the idea that this was a family film as well.  The heroes aren’t just defined by their deeds, but in how they act as a family unit as well.  And it contrasts so brilliantly with a villain who only sees the powers as the only thing that makes a hero who they are, completely missing the whole point of what heroism is.  While The Incredibles is working with tropes that were already there present in the genre, it did help us to look at them in a fresh new way, and that in many ways guided the shifting winds that would define the genre through the whole rise of the MCU and the DCEU.  One noteworthy contribution to the genre that definitely has a direct connection to The Incredibles is the contributions of it’s music composer Michael Giacchino.  After writing music for television and video games for years, Giacchino was able to make his studio feature film debut as composer for The Incredibles, with a mid-century jazz score reminiscent of the James Bond films. Cut to a decade later, and Giacchino is credited with writing the fanfare for Marvel Studios.  You now hear his music before every Marvel movie, which is quite a legacy to leave behind, and it all started with writing the score for The Incredibles.  Marvel even gave the longtime comic book fan a chance to make his debut behind the camera as director of the special Werewolf by Night (2022) for Disney+.  Even 20 years later and The Incredibles still remains a high water mark not just for animation, but for super hero films in general.  Even it’s sequel, Incredibles 2 (2018) performed like a MCU film at the box office, grossing over a billion worldwide.  Culturally, it is undeniably Brad Bird’s most influential film, and that’s saying a lot for a man with multiple masterpieces on his resume.  It’s an action packed ride, but also one where the heart is in the right place, showing how heroism in the end is not about personal glory, but instead about discovering the best way to use what you have for good.  It’s old school in that way, and there’s no school like the old school.

There is no doubt the biggest disruptor in cinema over the last few years has been the company known as Netflix.  The Silicon Valley startup that had the novel idea of renting out movies through the mail from an online platform has since grown into a megalithic player in Hollywood itself, literally re-shaping the way that business is conducted within the movie industry.  It has also been one of the causes for a lot of destruction of the old standards of production and distribution.  The first casualty of Netflix’s rise was the video rental industry.  Blockbuster Video, which had itself leveled the competition to leave themselves in a position where they were the only video rental option in most markets, fell very quickly in response to Netflix’s easier to use service.  By the time Netflix was moving away from it’s mail service model to a streaming model, making on demand entertainment even more convenient, Blockbuster went from being a national brand to a ghost of it’s former self, now only open in a single location in Bend, Oregon.  The shift to streaming has also led to a significant decline in physical media in general, with most big box stores no longer featuring a movie aisle as most physical copies are now sold exclusively online.  Studios that once made a mint on selling their legacy titles on physical media have instead decided to play in the same field as Netflix, and launch their own streaming platforms instead.  There really is no other company that has changed the culture in the movie industry as much as Netflix has, and after leveling past juggernaut industries like that of home entertainment and video rental, they seemed poised to put another prominent column of Hollywood out to pasture as well; the movie theater industry.  However, this next step has taken some unexpected twists and turns that in some ways has put pressure on Netflix to rethink it’s whole business model.  Is it better for them to seek to destroy the theatrical model of distribution, or is there a better option for them in actually working with movie theaters?

One thing that has surprisingly emerged in the last couple of years in the wake of the streaming wars is that movies that released in theaters first actually perform better on streaming than the movies that were put out as streaming exclusives.  This has been the case with the studio run services like Disney+, Max, and Paramount+.  One noteworthy example is Disney’s Moana (2016), a film released in theaters 8 years ago, years before there was a Disney+, and even after all this time it is still ranked high on the all-time watched list for every streaming platform.  More recent films like The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023) and Barbie (2023) have also given their streaming platforms a boost after their initial theatrical runs, which by the way both netted over a billion dollars each.  Which is to show that releasing the movies first in theaters does not decrease their viewership numbers once they are released on streaming after.  If anything, it shows that movies have resiliency.  Of course, I’m citing examples of movies that were universally beloved by audiences, and their repeat watching value certainly translated into viewership on streaming.  But, it’s also a sign that a theatrical roll out doesn’t hurt either.  In fact it is more beneficial in the long run for a movie to premiere on the big screen first because of the patterns of viewership that help to spotlight any certain film.  When a movie is in theaters, the choice is limited to the availability of screens, so the customer is making a very active choice in what movie they are going to see.  Whether the experience is good or bad, the movie goer still had a clear idea of what experience they were paying for.  Movies on streaming on the other hand don’t benefit from that factor of audience interest.  They are algorithmically spotlighted on a platform that customers usually spend scrolling through hundreds of titles in order to find something to watch.  At a cost between $10-20 a month, streaming gives it’s customers and abundance of options, but very few quick choices.  And naturally, the movies that people saw on a movie screen will be the ones that they actively seek first, while straight to streaming will tend to be buried.

This has become a contentious thing between Netflix and the movie industry now.  For years, Netflix has been spending billions on expanding their library of movies and TV shows, which was something they had to do out of necessity after studios like Disney and Universal began to remove their films and shows from the platform in order to consolidate for their own platforms.  And as part of this expansion of their in-house production, they also were trying to build their brand as a prestige name in the industry.  They did this by getting big name talent like Martin Scorsese, the Coen Brothers, David Fincher, and Alfonso Cuaron to bring their next projects to their studio.  Netflix developed this reputation for being generous to filmmakers with movie ideas that probably were not going to work in the Hollywood business model as it was.  This attracted a lot of talent to Netflix and away from the other studios, who were starting to fret about the pull that Netflix was having in the industry.  And for a good while, it was working.  Netflix went from being an online streaming platform featuring films from all studios to a major studio within itself.  They were buying up real estate across Hollywood, including the legendary Sunset Bronson studio lot that was once home to both Warner Brothers during it’s early years.  They were beginning to frequently appear at awards ceremonies  including the Oscars and even racked up a fair amount of gold along the way.  But, the streaming market has definitely changed with all the other studios now running their own platforms.  And while Netflix still dominates as the streaming champion, their status as the ideal place for filmmakers to go has somewhat diminished.  Before, Netflix could persuade filmmakers to come to their offices with the appeal of getting their dream projects made, sparing no expense.  But now, the legacy studios of Hollywood are beginning to lure the filmmakers back with a different appeal that seems to be more ideal to them nowadays; that they can get their movie seen on the big screen.

One has to thing that filmmakers are making a calculated risk between these two options now.  One, they go to Netflix and get their strange, unconventional movie made without restrictions but also see it play exclusively on streaming and potentially be buried in the algorithm.  Or, they go to the studios and potentially face numerous obstacles from executive meddling, but eventually they’ll see their work play in front of an audience on the big screen.  But, there are those filmmakers who very much desire to have their movies screened for a wide audience and that’s becoming a more and more desirable option to some.  Box office is a very tangible measure of a film’s success, so it’s a great way to gauge if your movie managed to succeed or not.  On streaming, your movie becomes one of numerous titles listed simply as thumbnails on a smaller screen.  Most streaming platforms don’t even publicly state their internal numbers, so the measure of success is somewhat a mystery.  And there are just a lot of filmmakers out there who are still succeeding without even thinking twice about choosing to go theatrical first.  Christopher Nolan for example clashed with his previous home studio (Warner Brothers) after they were about to push his film Tenet (2020) to streaming during the pandemic against his wishes of waiting for theaters to re-open.  He jumped ship, went to Universal who gave him an assurance of a theatrical first release, and he made Oppenheimer (2023) to resounding box office and awards season success.  Tom Cruise likewise convinced his studio Paramount to sit on Top Gun: Maverick (2022) until the theatrical market recovered, and it payed off extremely well.  So, what filmmakers are seeing is that there is an added benefit to getting the movie seen in theaters to lots of people, because it gives their film an added spotlight that can be tangibly felt.  That’s why a lot more filmmakers are starting to demand a bit more on their distribution front, and ensuring that their film is not just made, but also viewed.

One of the biggest challenges recently to Netflix’s streaming first policy is a recent push by filmmaker Greta Gerwig to get her next film project set up at Netflix released on more screens nationwide.  After her success with Barbie, Greta inked a massive deal with Netflix to launch a brand new take of the Narnia books from C.S. Lewis into a major film franchise.  Clearly, Netflix sees this as a major potential win for them, but Greta Gerwig believes (rightly I’d say) that such a franchise can’t just thrive on streaming alone.  Narnia is a major title to produce, akin to The Lord of the Rings in scale and scope, which is what prompted Disney and Fox’s short lived run with the book series.  They are movies that demand a big screen treatment, and that’s why she’s putting pressure on Netflix to consider a wider release.  It’s not something new for Netflix to go wide with one of their films.  As part of their contract with director Rian Johnson, Netflix did agree to release the first of his two Knives Out sequels, Glass Onion (2022), in a wide theatrical release before it was put on streaming.  However, they limited the amount of time it played in theaters, and the film was gone after only two weeks.  This clearly limited the amount of box office it was going to take, and by all accounts, Glass Onion did pretty well in it’s short run.  Who knows how much money Netflix left on the table by pulling it after such a brief run.  Perhaps the Netflix accountants think that box office is miniscule compared to the $15 a month they currently get from their hundreds of millions of subscribers, but any box office is is helpful to the bottom  line, especially when it can off set production and marketing costs.  For Greta Gerwig, she actually has a powerful ally in her camp; the IMAX Corporation, who are interested in getting Ms. Gerwig’s Narnia films on their screens.  IMAX has a lot of pull in the industry, and have proven to be a big driver of box office for films because of the premium ticket price.  Greta clearly wants to get her movie seen properly on a bigger screen than just having it streamed on a platform; but at the same time, she is working with Netflix’s money, who ultimately have the final say.

Netflix has been defiant, but the other streamers have reconsidering their plans to put a bunch of their movies exclusively on streaming.  Paramount made a last minute choice to take their musical re-make of Mean Girls (2024) and put it into theaters in advance of it’s premiere on Paramount+.  The choice proved fruitful as the movie grossed over $90 million at the box office, making it a hit for the struggling studio that they otherwise wouldn’t have had if it went straight to streaming.  There is also an example of movie studios that were planning on making multi-part mini-series for streaming all of a sudden restructuring them into feature films for theaters.  Disney’s upcoming Moana 2 (2024) was one of those streaming series projects that got re-worked and now it’s being projected to be a box office winner for Disney Animation, which is really in need of one. But perhaps the biggest example of a shift back to the theatrical model that payed off big for a studio was Warner Brothers decision to take Tim Burton’s long anticipated sequel, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024) and put it into theaters after initially greenlighting it as a streaming exclusive.  To date, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice has grossed nearly $300 million domestic and over half a billion worldwide.  Had they gone the streaming route, Warner Brothers would have missed out on a net profit of over $100 million on this film, which they definitely need after the box office flops of Furiosa (2024) and Joker: Folie a Deux.  But there are other examples of some studios doing the reverse.  After a string of box office disappointments like Napoleon (2023) and Argylle (2024), Apple Studios has opted to pull back from theatrical and release more of their films straight to streaming, like they did to the recent film Wolfs (2024) starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt.  That film was planned for theaters, with trailers already running in most markets, and in the eleventh hour the movie was shifted to streaming instead.  While there’s this case to prove a bit of the point to Netflix’s argument, the trend of movies going from streaming to theatrical is growing bigger.

In many ways, it comes down to what type of movie gets either the theatrical or streaming treatment.  The movies that seem to get the lowest bit of interest are the ones that studios feel safer putting out in streaming, meanwhile the safer bets and higher profile projects get the theatrical market.  But with Netflix, they seem content on going all in on streaming; at least up to now.  They only used limited theatrical releases to put their movie out for awards contention, since they still have to play by the Academy’s rules in this regard.  But still, that limits the visibility of their in theaters to just a handful of theaters, namely in Los Angeles and New York, where Academy voters mostly live.  Movies play differently on living room entertainment systems compared to the movie theater experience.  If Netflix wants their prestige movies to gain any traction in awards season, make it so that they have the highest profile in the grandest presentation possible.  When Netflix was starting to disrupt the industry in the 2010’s by investing in Oscar caliber campaigns, they certainly had the kinds of movies to back that claim up.  In some cases, their movies were garnering the most nominations in any year, led by movies like Roma (2018), The Irishman (2019) and The Power of the Dog (2021).  This last Oscars, they had only one nominated film, Bradley Cooper’s Maestro (2023), and it went home empty handed.  Couple this with the fact that straight to streaming films have garnered the reputation of being the new direct-to-video moniker of poor quality, and you can see that Netflix’s brand has somewhat diminished.  All of the Oscar worthy stuff they put out is now being drowned out by the deluge of bad films that get dumped onto their platform, whether made by them or licensed by another studio.   It may now be worth it for Netflix to clean up it’s reputation by putting their name out their more in a theatrical arena, showing that they can be competitive with the legacy studios in Hollywood.

Netflix should not be adversarial with the theatrical market.  It’s a resilient mode of distribution that Netflix has been unable to conquer in the same way it has so many other industries.  Even still, movie theaters are not fully recovered yet from the blow dealt to them by the pandemic.  The problem isn’t so much that people prefer to watch movies at home than go out to a theater.  We’ve discovered in the last couple years that there is indeed a reliable base of customers that will definitely make time to watch movies in theaters.  The issue today is that the movie industry is just not making enough movies in order to fill the demand of the theatrical market, and this is where Netflix could be a lot of help.  Not every movie they make is necessarily worthy of the big screen treatment, but there are a few that absolutely would benefit from a wide release in theaters.  Most people forget that Eddie Murphy made a new Beverly Hills Cop sequel this year exclusive for Netflix, because it never got a theatrical release.  Seeing how much a legacy sequel made so many years later ended up lighting up the box office this fall with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, perhaps Murphy and Netflix realized they missed out on a gold opportunity this year to bank on the nostalgia driving their movie.  Will Netflix make the change?  It’s hard to say.  In many ways, the streaming market is changing once again to something that favors a symbiotic relationship with the theatrical model and not one in opposition to it.  There are added pressures now for Netflix to reconsider their position, including more demands from filmmakers and more competition from other streamers that are benefiting from the theatrical to streaming mode of release.  Given that Netflix has more to gain than lose by just doing more in the theatrical market, it should be an easy choice.  There seems to be signs that some at Netflix value the theatrical experience; they did help save the legendary Grauman’s Egyptian Theater in Hollywood after all.  Netflix needs to shake off the reputation they have as just a content mill, and actually show that they mean business as a new major Hollywood studio by showcasing what they can do on the biggest scale possible by getting their movies out on the silver screen.  They’ll still remain a top dog in streaming for years to come if people get interested in all their movies again, and not just the ones that the algorithm pushes to the top.    For many, nothing beats the theater experience, so for Netflix’s sake if you can’t beat it, join it.

The horror movie genre looks a lot different today than it did a quarter century ago.  While some things haven’t changed, like Hollywood chasing success in the genre with an endless number of sequels, the style of horror movies is much different, and that is due to a shift to a more auteur driven flow within the genre.  One thing that has made horror movies so appealing to the movie studios in Hollywood is that they are a low risk, high reward product for them to invest in.  Horror movies tend to be cheap to make and are able to perform well at the box office, meaning that it’s a genre with a track record of profitability.  Unfortunately, during the 80’s and 90’s, the cheapness of horror movies became much more of a defining feature of the genre.  The movies of that era could never be considered high art, and were for the most part just manufactured to put butts into seats, typically from less discerning teenage and college age audiences that just wanted cheap thrills.  But even those demographics were growing tiresome of the same old tricks that the Hollywood was giving us in the horror genre.  Particularly towards the end of the 90’s, horror had just been reduced to schlock, with emphasis on cheap jump scares and gross out gore as a means of entertaining their audiences.  There were bright spots to be sure, like Wes Craven’s iconic Scream (1996), but even that got drowned out by a dozen Scream clones that followed in it’s wake.  Horror was in desperate need of a re-evaluation, which for a lot of people was a desire to take the control of the genre out of Hollywood executive offices and back into the hands of filmmakers who had a real hunger for changing the rules of the genre.  Horror films has been a great breeding ground in the past for visionary directors, such as George A. Romero, John Carpenter, and Brian DePalma.  Even Steven Spielberg technically sprung out of thriller filmmaking with movies like Duel (1971) and Jaws (1975).  But what kind of filmmaker would arise in the turn of the millennium to cause a dramatic shift in the horror movie genre.

I think very few people saw the rise of one M. Night Shyamalan coming.  Born in India before his family moved to the States when he was still a baby, Shymalan grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, developing a desire for filmmaking at an early age.  Him and his childhood friends would get together and make short films, so by the time he started attending the Tisch School of the Arts’ elite film program, he already had a good knowledge of visual storytelling.  From these early exercises in filmmaking, he demonstrated a fondness for dark thrillers and tense horror.  He looked to influences like Alfred Hitchcock and Rod Serling in shaping the the way he told stories with a darker edge.  But upon graduating from film school, he didn’t immediately jump into the horror genre right away.  His first feature film was a semi-autobiographical drama called Praying with Anger (1992), and his follow-up after that was a feel good coming of age story called Wide Awake (1998).  At the same time, he was also drafted to write a screenplay for the live action adaptation of Stuart Little (1999).  None of these early film would have led you to know where he was about to go next as a filmmaker.  While he probably appreciated the work he was getting, it’s also apparent that he really wanted to make the kind of movie that he would want to watch, and that’s what drove him to create his first horror movie.  He sent his spec script for his take on a “ghost” story to multiple studios, and found a surprising interested party in David Vogel, the then head of production at Disney.  Vogel belived in Shymalan’s script so much that he agreed to the $3 million dollars for the rights, and the stipulation for Shymalan to direct, without the corporate approval of the Disney higher ups.  It was gamble, but as we all would see, it was a gamble that payed out in a major way.

The Sixth Sense went into production in the Fall of 1998, shooting entirely in M. Night’s home base of Philadelphia.  Unfortunately, David Vogel’s stunt in getting the rights cost him his position at Disney, as he was dismissed shortly after.  Disney would allow the production to move forward, but the budget would be heavily trimmed down.  In many ways, this would’ve destroyed the visions of most filmmakers wanting to shape their movie the way they wanted, but M. Night was able to make lemonade out of those lemons.  No stranger to working with non-existent budgets in his home movie days, Shymalan found ways to create an effective horror movie with the constraints that were thrust upon him.  He relied on old school techniques from the early days of horror, like the use of atmosphere and tricks with lighting to evoke a sense of terror in his scenes.  The film has no post-production visual effects added, and only a few instances where his ghost actors appear in make-up.  As we would see, that is all that was needed in the end.  One of the most effective tricks shown in the movie is another old school slight of hand where actress Toni Colette exits her kitchen and goes into the other room with the camera following her and once she re-enters the kitchen, all of the cabinet doors are open.  Of course, those in the know with regards to filmmaking obviously can put together that once the kitchen is out of view of the camera, a bunch of production assistants swarm in and open all of those cabinet doors before the room is in the camera’s view again.  It’s simple, but effective if you do it right and Shymalan makes it work in his movie.  With The Sixth Sense, Shymalan is not creating just another schlocky horror film; nor was he making something that hadn’t been done before in horror filmmaking either.  He was simply using the art of cinema to tell a horror story really effectively and make old tricks feel new again.  In a time when horror was loud and ugly, Shymalan made something that managed to thrill effectively through it’s minimalism.

It certainly helped that he had a cast who effectively contributed to this more muted style of horror filmmaking.  At the time, the movie actually benefitted from the collapse of another movie.  Bruce Willis was contracted by Disney to complete 3 films, the first of which was the blockbuster Armageddon (1998).  Unfortunately, the second film on that contract, Broadway Brawler, imploded after Willis demanded the firing of the director.  That film never got back on track and the studio needed to find another project quick to allow Willis to fulfill the obligations of his contract.  This is where the arrival of The Sixth Sense proved to be fortuitous, because it was movie that was a departure from the usual films that Bruce Willis had been a part of which were typically action oriented, and would allow him to show more range as an actor.  The part of Dr. Malcolm Crowe gave Willis a chance to be subtle, and even charming at times; a welcome departure from the gruffness of his past roles.  But, while it was beneficial for M. Night Shymalan to have a big name movie star in his film, it mattered a lot more to get the casting right for the crucial character of Cole Sear; the little boy who can “see dead people.”  The crux of the movie is dependent on the ability for the audience to believe that this young boy can see the dead, and that’s a difficult thing for a young actor to nail on screen.  Luckily for Shymalan, he found his Cole in a young up-and-coming star named Haley Joel Osment.  Osment, who had previously played the small part of Forrest Gump’s son opposite Tom Hanks a couple years back, showed acting talent beyond his years in the harrowing performance that he gives as Cole Sear.  It also mattered a great deal that his chemistry on screen with Bruce Willis was believable.  The interactions between Willis and Osment are definitely among the highlights of the movie, with Willis showing a vulnerability on screen that we typically had not see him show.  The film also features an incredible performance from Toni Collette as Cole’s mom Lynn.  Her performance is a heartbreaking one in which she tries everything she can to help her son who is “different.”  And there is a remarkable cameo role from former boy band singer Donnie Wahlberg (brother of Mark) as a disgruntled former patient of Malcolm Crowe, a role that Wahlberg apparently lost nearly 50 pounds for in order to give himself a gaunt look.  It was a blessing of all the right actors coming together for the roles that would indeed propel them to greater things later on.

Of course, the biggest key to the success of M. Night Shymalan’s The Sixth Sense was The Twist Ending.  This was probably the thing that made David Vogel jump so many hurdles in order to secure the rights.  Fair warning, I am about to spoil the twist ending of the film in this paragraph, so if you haven’t seen the movie by now skip ahead.  In the closing moments of the film, it is revealed that Dr. Malcolm Crowe has been dead for the majority of the movie and that he has been appearing as a ghost the whole time.  The only reason audiences didn’t originally pick up on that is because we see him interacting with Cole Sear, a boy who can see and interact with ghosts.  It’s only in retrospect that we realize that Cole is the only character that we’ve seen Malcolm speak directly too.  In the reveal that comes in the end, where Malcolm realizes he is a ghost, that all the puzzle pieces that Shymalan had been laying out start to make sense.  The effectiveness of the twist lies in the fact Shymalan doesn’t just pull it out of thin air; all of the clues were in plain sight, but with the way the story was being told, as it focuses on Cole’s journey, those clues are not at the forefront of our minds until the twist makes us see the story again in a completely different light.  It’s something that Shymalan learned from one of his inspirations, the master of twist endings Rod Serling, who utilized them brilliantly in many episodes of The Twilight Zone.  What was also crucial was that, like many of Serling’s most memorable twist endings, there had to be catharsis with it; that the audience would feel rewarded if it picked up on all the clues, but also not feel dejected if they hadn’t.  It took careful planning for Shymalan to not give away the fact that one of his main characters was dead the whole time, but he had to make sure that the clues would be recognizable by the end.  For this, he borrowed another trick from another one of his inspirations; Hitchcock.  Alfred Hitchcock famously used color coding as a way of signaling the presence of danger, something that he most famously used in Vertigo (1958).  In The Sixth Sense, Shymalan uses the color red to signify when a ghost was present in the scene.  Sometimes this was shown overtly, like when Cole is visited by a ghost girl, played by a young Mischa Barton.  She appears after Cole hides in his bedroom play tent, which of course is a bright color of red.  This helps tie the color to the appearance of ghosts, but when we learn the truth about Malcolm at the end, we sudden notice all those subtle hints of red that were present throughout the movie whenever he meets with Cole.  All of these ingredients helped to give the movie the effective twist ending that it needed and boy did it pay off in a big way.

Part of why The Sixth Sense made the impact that it did was also due to the fact that it came out in the middle of a turning point for the horror genre.  Earlier that same summer in 1999, The Blair Witch Project (1999) premiered and completely turned Hollywood on it’s head.  This found footage horror movie made on a shoe-string budget with a simple digital camera and no-name actors remarkably opened at number one at the box office and grossed an astounding $140 million.  While the gimmick itself was probably what lured a lot of people to the movie theaters to check out this oddity for themselves, it also revealed a craving from audiences for something different in the increasingly stale horror genre.  The Blair Witch Project filled that void perfectly with it’s unconventional way of telling it’s story.  But surprisingly, The Sixth Sense would also benefit from this change in audiences’ taste as well.  While The Sixth Sense was more mainstream than the experimental Blair Witch, it also stood out as being very different from the other horror films of that era.  It wasn’t a slasher thriller; it wasn’t a jump scare fest; and it wasn’t a blood soaked gore fest.  It was an atmospheric ghost story with some mystery elements thrown in.  And for audiences, that was enough.  In many ways, M. Night Shymalan was harkening back to the auteur driven horror movies of the 1970’s, many of which were slower burns than the in your face aggressiveness of the 80’s and 90’s.  Movies like William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973) or Richard Donner’s The Omen (1976) take their time in building their scares to a crescendo, and Shymalan makes his film even more low key than those.  It’s not about how many times you can scare an audience, but by how well you can scare them.  Shymalan brought atmosphere back into the forefront of horror filmmaking, and the effect it had was very evident on the horror movies that have come in it’s wake.

One of the strongest legacies that The Sixth Sense has left behind is the way that it brought horror back into the hands of the filmmakers.  The genre has been much more driven by style and the unique visions of it’s filmmakers.  In the wake of The Sixth Sense,  Hollywood was interested in finding out who would be the next M. Night Shymalan; a question that even Shymalan has struggled to define for himself.  There certainly has been a resurgence in the number of film directors that have emerged as uniquely tied to the genre of horror films.  James Wan is one of those filmmakers that managed to emerge from the horror genre with a clearly defined trademark to his name.  He helped to shepherd the Saw and Conjuring franchises into some of the most lucrative horror series in recent years, and he continues to develop new horror concepts that appeal to modern audiences.  The interesting thing is, his horror movie are wildly varied, from the gory Saw films to the subtler scares of The Conjuring.  Likewise, other horror filmmakers like Ari Aster are re-defining the things that we find scary on the big screen, like how he terrified us with a Scandinavian paganism in Midsommar (2019).  And there are other recent horror filmmakers like Mike Flanagan, Leigh Whannell and Parker Finn who are generating effective scares through the mainstream machine of Hollywood with old standards like Stephen King, Universal Monsters, and just even the simple act of a sinister smile.  Horror has gone through a complete transformation in the last quarter century thanks to what The Sixth Sense and The Blair Witch Project left behind.  It’s honestly now the genre where we see the most creativity allowed for filmmakers, because it’s one of the few avenues where experimentation is rewarded.  In many ways, this is a golden era for the genre, and it’s something that Shymalan thankfully pushed Hollywood into accepting.

When it first released in the waning Summer days of August 1999, The Sixth Sense opened to a respectable but not extraordinary $26 million.  But remarkably, it continued to gross the same amount weekend after weekend, $20 million for 6 weeks straight; a feat only Titanic (1997) had a achieved before.  This was a true phenomenon that Hollywood couldn’t quite figure out at first.  What we witnessed with Sixth Sense’s unprecedented run was one of the first truly viral movies, where word of mouth played a major role in driving up it’s box office.  While people raved about the craft of the film, it was that perfectly executed twist ending that really brought audiences back again and again.  Shymalan created an experience with The Sixth Sense, and not just a product like so many horror movies of the last decade were.  In the end, The Sixth Sense grossed an astonishing $293 million at the box office, making it the highest grossing horror film ever at that time, a title it would hold for 18 years before 2017’s IT surpassed it’s record.  The film would also go on to earn 6 Oscar nominations, including for Best Picture and for Haley Joel Osment and Toni Collette in their supporting roles.  Bruce Willis would also walk away from with $100 million through his back end profits deal when he accepted the role for initially less than his average salary.  Since then, Shymalan has struggled in the shadow of his greatest achievement.  He’s had success here and there, including with Signs (2002) and Split (2016), but he’s been a filmmaker who’s unfortunately been boxed in by his own style of filmmaking, which hasn’t gotten better over time.  Thankfully, Haley Joel Osment has been able to survive the usual pitfalls that can ruin child actors and he’s aged into adulthood fairly well as a beloved character actor, including returns to the horror genre with movies like the recent Blink Twice (2024), co-starring Channing Tatum.  Toni Collette likewise has excelled in her returns to horror, including her acclaimed performance in Hereditary (2018).  While M. Night Shymalan may have become a victim of his own success and struggled as a filmmaker in the years after, there’s still no denying that he crafted a masterful film with The Sixth Sense.  In all of it’s subtleties, it re-freshened a genre that was in desperate need of a transformation, and the great thing is that he managed to make it happen with tricks of the trade that used to be staples of the horror genre that had sadly been forgotten over time.  With hints of Hitchcock and the Twilight Zone present in his movie, he managed to show us what a horror movie used to be and could once again become again, and this helped to usher in a new era of experimentation in horror filmmaking that we are still seeing today.  We have The Sixth Sense to thank for the slow burn intensity of artsy horror like we see in films such as Skinamarink (2022) and Longlegs (2024); movies that don’t force scares on you but still fill you with a sense of terror while you watch it.  It’s unbelievable that a little movie about a child who “sees dead people” would be the kind of movie to change Hollywood horror for many years after.

The movie Forrest Gump (1994) by many accounts would seem to be an unusual choice to be the highest grossing movie of the year as well as the champion of awards season.  A story about a simpleton who has managed to stumble his way into important historical moments while being completely oblivious to his own impact on those same events, as well as the effect he has on the lives of others.  On the surface it doesn’t scream out as being a blockbuster.  And yet, it accomplished all that and more.  Forrest Gump was the undisputed champion of it’s release year both at the box office, and at the Academy Awards, and it’s even more surprising when you see the competition it went up against.  It managed to become the highest grossing film of the year, even with direct competition against Disney’s juggernaut The Lion King (1994) that same Summer.  And during awards season, it managed to beat out universally beloved classics like Pulp Fiction (1994) and The Shawshank Redemption (1994).  So what was it about the movie that made it such a champion with critics and audiences.  When you look at the film, it makes a lot of sense given the context of when it came out and also with the talent that was involved.  Forrest Gump was the right movie at the right time for Hollywood.  America was going through a period of relative peacetime during the Clinton era of the 1990’s, and during this time the culture was beginning to reflect on the struggles of the past and look at how they shaped the country into what it was at the time.  With Forrest Gump, the focus was on the shaky period of American post-War history between the 1950’s and 1970’s that saw the rise of Civil Rights in the South, the horrors of the Vietnam War and the loss of faith in government through the Watergate scandal.  All of these events provide the backdrop of Forrest Gump, but at it’s center is an eccentric character brought to life through an unforgettable performance by an actor who was starting to hit the peak of his powers in Hollywood; Tom Hanks.  All of this collided in a movie that benefited from the right timing, and 30 years on, it’s interesting to look back and see if the movie has the same kind of potency today.

The movie was based on a 1986 novel of the same name by author Winston Groom.  Told as a first person account from a Southern man named Forrest Gump, we witness his life story while at the same time getting a perspective on the national events he witnessed from his own simple and unburdened mind.  The novel was meant to be a picturesque story of America in transition with a bit of humor injected to give a satirical perspective on what it meant to be an American during these tumultuous years.  The story lent itself very well to a cinematic adaptation, and went through a fierce bidding war before eventually landing at Paramount Pictures.  Screenwriter Eric Roth was given the task of refining Groom’s sprawling narrative into a manageable script, and even though it did adhere pretty closely to the original plot of the novel, Roth did make quite a few changes, especially with the character of Forrest himself.  In the novel, Forrest is more of an overt savant, with clearly defined disabilities that made him academically deficient in many things, but also highly proficient in others.  In Roth’s script, Forrest it’s a bit more ambiguous of a character.  We never know what’s going on with him as a person, and why he’s not as bright as the average person.  It wasn’t that long after the film Rain Man (1988) had featured a savant character with severe autism in it’s story, so perhaps the studio just didn’t want that to be the focus of their movie.  In a sense, Forrest is written much more like a Capra-esque “every-man,” but with just a little less mental acuity.  It does fit more with that the intent of the story should be, which to not focus on Forrest’s disabilities but rather the journey he takes through life.  It’s a style of story that dates back to Voltaire’s Candide, and has been the basis for other films of the same ilk like Woody Allen’s Zelig (1983) or Lindsay Anderson’s O Lucky Man (1973), where a common man finds himself wandering though life and finding himself unexpectedly being caught up in the march of history.  The fact that Forrest is not the brightest apple in the bunch is inconsequential to the plot, though it does occasionally lead to some of the funniest moments.  What is of consequence is where his journey in life leads him, and what effect he has on others.

What was also crucial in the making of Forrest Gump was who would end up directing it.  Filmmakers like Ivan Reitman, Penny Marshall, and Terry Gilliam had circled around the project, but the job ultimately went to Robert Zemekis.  Zemekis was an interesting choice for this material, because he was not exactly known as a prestige film director.  He made blockbuster films that were cutting edge in technology, and also enormous crowd-pleasers.  His type of movie were comical adventures like Romancing the Stone (1983), Back to the Future (1985) and Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988).  A period film was not exactly what he was known for, but Zemekis did see the potential of this story through his own unique style.  Given his background in comedic movies, he saw the underlying humor of Forrest’s story to be something that he could easily work with.  He also saw a way to use the story as a means to try out some new visual effects techniques that had yet to be used on screen.  The visual effects used in the movie wouldn’t be the big kind that you would see in blockbusters like Jurassic Park (1993).  Instead, they were the invisible kind that made you forget you were looking at something that was digital touched up in a computer.  In particular, what stuck out to audiences were the scene where Tom Hanks is digitally inserted into real archival footage of famous historical events, which includes meetings with long gone past presidents like John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon.  It’s a subtle effect, but audiences were still struck by the seamlessness of the result.  There were other really effective visual effects that again don’t draw attention to themselves, but in retrospect reveal themselves to be very impressively executed.  Some people, for instance, thought actor Gary Sinise was a real amputee but it turns out his legs were removed through the magic of CGI in the film.  While Zemekis was indeed using his skills as a cutting edge blockbuster director to good use in this movie, Forrest Gump also marked a departure for him from the more zanier movies in his past and got him more comfortable with delivering a more mature, dramatic story, though still with some humor throughout.  Hollywood certainly rewarded him with that maturity, as he won the Oscar for directing.

But, when you think about the movie Forrest Gump, the first person who comes to mind will always be the man who brought the character to life, Tom Hanks.  Hanks had something of a challenge with the character.  Play the part the wrong way, and the character of Forrest could have unfortunately fallen into cringe territory.  The movie Tropic Thunder (2008) touched upon this aspect, where Robert Downey Jr.’s character warns about the perils of going “full r-word” in their bids to win awards for playing in mentally challenged roles.  Forrest Gump was used as an example in the movie of an actor who managed to walk that fine line the right way and of course Tom Hanks got his Oscar for it.  Despite how Tropic Thunder pokes fun at it, Tom Hanks manages to find the right tone with the character of Forrest.  He’s dumb, but not without some thoughtfulness, especially when it comes to expressing his emotions.  This is certainly in line with the more Frank Capra “every-man” angle that Eric Roth tried to make Forrest into.  We can laugh at some of his goofy simplicity, but the movie never mocks him for being who he is.  Forrest makes his way through the film as a pure soul who just is oblivious to the prejudices that infect the rest of us.  Tom Hanks managed to make Forrest more than just a one note character, finding his humanity through all of the relatable aspects of the character; his charm, kindness and enthusiasm for life.  Hanks managed to find the unique sound of Forrest’s deep Southern accent by observing the young actor who would be playing Forrest as a boy.  Young Michael Connor Humphreys (no relation) had this unique way of speaking in his Alabama bred accent that Tom Hanks just loved, and he used it for his own performance.  But Hanks’ performance alone wasn’t the thing that helped to make the movie memorable.  He was given great support by Robin Wright as the tragic love of Forrest’s life, Jenny, as well as the memorable turns of Gary Sinise and Mykelti Williamson as Lieutenant Dan and Bubba respectively; all characters whose lives unexpectedly intersect with that of Forrest and are forever shaped by it.  Tom Hanks himself was coming off of an Oscar win for the film Philadelphia (1993), so his stock was already on the rise.  Thanks to Forrest Gump, he would be only the second actor after Spencer Tracy to win back to back Oscars for Best Actor.

While it’s undeniable that the movie was a massive success in it’s day, looking back on the film from today’s perspective certainly offers up some interesting questions; namely what is the movie trying to say.  One complaint leveled at the film is that it’s a bit shallow, at least when it comes to the perspective it gives about the historical events that it depicts.  The movie approaches everything from this apolitical stance, and some people complain that this leads to some sanitization of important events that shouldn’t be ignored and that it only pays lip service to the social movements that fill the background of the story.  Where the complaint has some merit is in the way it presents representations of the Civil Rights movement and manages to work in an comical awkward moment involving Forrest.  A clip where Forrest politely gives a book back to a student who dropped it during the highly contested school integration protests, and is unaware that he ended up on live television, is certainly in line with Forrest’s character, but it can be seen as a bit in poor taste to throw a comedic scene into a historical moment that still represents an important milestone in Civil Rights.  The thing about the movie is that it is entirely from Forrest’s perspective.  He’s the one telling the story, and in his view, he’s oblivious to the politics of his time.  Some would say that the movie is minimalizing these moments that matter to our society, but at the same time, we as viewers are also aware of the context of these events too.  Robert Zemekis and Eric Roth are not treating Forrest Gump like a history lesson.  It’s much more of a character study, and the character just so happens to live through extraordinary time and meets extraordinary people.

One thing that people can read into the film is that Forrest as a character is a metaphorical representation of America itself; existing through good intentions and principled morals, but oblivious to the consequences of his actions.  Forrest achieves many great things in his story; he becomes a star football player at Alabama, he’s a decorated war hero, he meets at least three presidents, he wins a ping pong tournament in China, he starts a shrimp fishing business that makes him a millionaire, and he even taught Elvis how to dance.  His life is the personification of the American dream.  However, while his life achievements are many, none of it seems to land with the people that he chooses to love in his life.  His childhood sweetheart Jenny goes through a hard fought life of sexual abuse and drug use that ultimately catches up to her.  Lieutenant Dan becomes suicidal and violently depressive after losing his legs in Vietnam, instead of gloriously dying on the battlefield like all his ancestors had before him.  And Bubba doesn’t even make it off the battlefield, dying in Forrest’s arms from his battle wounds.  Even the historical figures that Forrest meets receive horrible fates, from Assassinations to Resignation.  It’s almost like Forrest is an angel of death to everyone but himself.  But, at the same time, the lives of these characters are also enriched by being in Forrest’s orbit.  Jenny’s only source of normality and protection in life comes from the tender love that Forrest shares with her.  Lieutenant Dan accompanies Forrest on his shrimp fishing venture, and he in turn becomes a multi-millionaire himself, and even gets to walk again on “magic” titanium legs.  There may be some merit to the idea that Forrest embodies the sometime naivete and ignorance of America to it’s own faults.  But, the key part of Forrest’s character is that his simple outlook on life also makes him free of prejudice, and that his defining characteristic is unconditional love and respect, even if someone is undeserving of it.  Forrest is not so much a critique, but an ideal of the American dream.

One other thing that stands out about the movie is the way it presents a sense of nostalgia about the past.  Given the context of when it was made, Forrest Gump represented a time where America was feeling comfortable about re-opening some old wounds and confronting some of the darker moments of the past.  The complaints about the minimalization of history perhaps stem from the fact that nothing, from Civil Rights to Vietnam to eventually the AIDS crisis, is ever fully explored in the movie.  And instead of addressing the brutal realities of those historical events, the movie just uses them as a part of the palette in it’s upbeat pastoral of America.  A large part of the nostalgia factor of the movie comes from it’s enormous soundtrack of pop music standards from the era, with songs ranging from Jimi Hendrix, to Credence Clearwater Revival, to Lynard Skynard, to REO Speedwagon all getting playtime in the movie.  Along with the sweeping musical score by Alan Silvestri, the film creates this sense of an idealized version of the past that shows off the grandeur of it’s time period.  The 60’s and 70’s was a prolific period of time with regards to culture, especially when it came to music.  But, this alone does not mean that the time period was free of turmoil, and I don’t think that it’s what the movie is intending to say to it’s audience either.  Like everything else in the movie, the music is part of the background of Forrest’s story.  The movie knows how to place it’s historical context on the cultural touchstone within, without painting a false sense of nostalgia that minimizes the events taking place.  Even still, so many movies that try to whitewash American history by painting a false portrait of the past by milking our sense of nostalgia have often taken a page from the formula put to use in Forrest Gump.  These were harsh times put on screen in the movie, and yet the rocking soundtrack and the glossy filmmaking all make it feel like an idealized world.  It’s not the movie’s intention, because the filmmakers were explicit in letting us know that this was never supposed to be a history lesson.  But, nostalgia can be a powerful tool in shaping our perspective on things, and too often it’s abused by people wanting us to mis-remember the past by falsely presenting us with an idealized one.

Regardless of the critiques, Forrest Gump still stands as a solid piece of entertainment that holds up well after 30 years.  Tom Hanks performance in particular really helps to carry the film, and makes it richer through his ability to give dimensions to a character that could’ve easily fallen into caricature.  The passage of time that the film covers is also interesting to explore, especially looking back on this film as it’s own time capsule.  While it wasn’t the first film to address Vietnam on the big screen (movies like Apocalypse Now and Platoon had already covered it extensively), it certainly put more of a spotlight on the aftermath of the War, especially when it came to the forgotten Veterans whose lives were broken once they came back.  The character of Lieutenant Dan in particular was one that few people had seen spotlighted, especially in a mainstream Hollywood blockbuster, with regards to the War’s aftermath.  Both Gary Sinise and Tom Hanks have become strong advocates for the veteran community since the making of this movie and their charitable contributions have helped many vets get the aid they have desperately needed.  Forrest Gump also represented something of a cathartic exercise in helping America to make sense of an era that for all accounts showed itself as struggling to figure out what it wanted to be.  The era depicted in Forrest Gump was one of a nation in turmoil, seeking to find it’s soul again.  While it does so with a comical twist, the story of Forrest Gump is nevertheless a story about hope in the face of death and destruction.  Forrest is a pure soul that never lets the awful events surrounding him make him bitter, resentful and hateful about the world.  And it’s some, whether he’s aware of it or not, that he is thankfully passing along.  His cross country run inspires a nation to join in because it gives them something good to believe in.  And after Jenny sadly passes away due to an unknown illness (implied to be AIDS), she leaves behind a son she had with Forrest, who he now must be a father to (played by a very young Haley Joel Osment in his first role).  Through Forrest Jr. we get a hopeful sign of a better future as Forrest’s good heart endures for another generation.  That’s ultimately what Zemekis, Hanks, and Roth wanted to convey with the character of Forrest Gump; never giving up on hope.  It’s thing that endures about this movie all these year later; embracing change and letting hope persevere.  That’s why the most famous line from the film resonates: “Life is like a box of chocolates.  You never know what you’re going to get.”  Forrest treated everyday like a surprise and was eager to embrace that feeling no matter what life brought his way.