A game for 2019?

[Wulff]

Sounds about right, Greg. But personally I find commercial interests a fairly bland and uninspiring thematic driver.

[...]

Well it is a multiple factor kind of thing. With Superhero Movies it goes back to Disney buying Marvel's character rights back in the 2000s for reasons they believed they'd be able to profit off them as a connected "world" structure. That was likely influenced by the success of the Lord of the Rings movies and changes they saw coming in the media landscape, but beyond that there is the question of why superheroes specifically have found such success and that, to me, seems to speak to a increasingly complex and hard to grasp world for many people and the rise of the internet mode of communicating with good vs evil and simple messages being the primary method of individual interaction, and social interaction is frequently organized around "fandom". Trump himself ran on something akin to a superhero/supervillain campaign of being the "one guy" who can right the wrongs his supporters believed infected the world, and those that opposed him see as a evil plot for control. The fear of immigrants and growing white cis male anxiety of losing place in the world to women and minorities lends itself to that same sort of "ultimate battle" construct, while those that seek change see the Trumpers as the thing that needs overthrow.

The influence goes both ways though, media informs how we talk about politics and society and our response to society informs what we want to see in movies. In the end it mostly seems like fear of the future is strong and driving some want for heroes as saviors or role models or something in that realm. Technology itself drives some of the fear and confusion at complexity of things no one of us can completely grasp anymore. A superhero cuts through that with and "answer" usually involving beating the crap out of those you don't like, which appeals to a lot of people in moments of uncertainty. That's a simplistic version of a guess anyway, superhero movies are a bit more complex than that themselves, see how technology is used within them for example, but the broad outlines seem to roughly fit.

[...]

Oh, and I almost forgot, there's no ignoring the demographics at pay here as also being an important driver of the trends. Nostalgia reboots and remakes are central to the film industry right now due to DVDs and streaming services which as made watching movies at home so much more important than at the theater for many. Older fans are offered things they remember from their youth which they pass on to their kids so Disney, or whoever, can hook them into a whole life of attachment. Videogames are a big part of the change too, making younger people a less central audience and in emphasizing fighting as emotional release.

[Wulff]

Keyword Themes 1966-2016:

http://fantheory.viacom.com

If you click on the words on the graph it charts their prevalence over a 50 year period.