I used to walk out of theaters with that full-body buzz. Plot stuck in my teeth. Visuals dancing in my brain. That instant itch to talk about what I had just seen. Now? I walk out wondering if I should have stayed home and rewatched Shrek 2 for the seventeenth time. Or is it eighteenth?
Something is off. A lot of recent movies are not just forgettable, they are aggressively bland. The feeling is like chewing through wet cardboard with surround sound.
And no, this is not just nostalgia talking. There is a visible dip in creative ambition. Hollywood is handing us empty spectacle, recycled IPs, and studio notes disguised as screenplays. So what happened? And why is it happening now?
Let’s take a long look at the wreckage.
They Keep Rebooting the Same Corpses
There is a difference between honoring a classic and digging it up, stuffing it with CGI, and parading it through a green screen wasteland. Reboots used to arrive with purpose. Now they show up like mandatory updates.
Take The Matrix Resurrections (2021), which tried to outsmart the idea of sequels while being one. The action was sluggish. The commentary felt tired. Instead of reinventing the franchise, it spun in circles, stuck between sincerity and self-parody.
Disney’s live-action retreads landed in the same uncanny space. Pinocchio (2022) and Peter Pan & Wendy (2023) looked polished on the surface but felt emotionally hollow. They served nostalgia without any of the flavor.
Movies are so bad today mainly because of how risk-averse studios have become. Instead of trusting original scripts or visionary voices, they recycle franchises and follow trend analytics. The result is an industry chasing algorithms, not audiences, and delivering content that feels more like a product than a story.
Studios Are Obsessed With Franchises Over Films
One of the biggest problems today is that nothing feels complete anymore. Films do not end rather they stall in place or tee up future content like glorified trailers.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023) was marketed as the start of something big. Instead, it was two hours of setup. There was no payoff, no momentum, just a sequence of scenes wrapped in swirling effects and exposition.
On Reddit, one frustrated viewer summed it up like this: “Phase 5 feels like post-credit scenes pretending to be actual movies.” The line between storytelling and studio planning has never felt thinner.
They Keep Forgetting What Makes Comedy Work
If any genre should offer freedom from formula, it is comedy. Sadly, it is one of the most painfully affected.
Take The House (2017) . Will Ferrell and Amy Poehler starred in a story about desperate parents starting an illegal casino to fund their daughter’s education. The idea had potential, but the jokes were limp, the energy oddly subdued. It wanted to be a suburban Ocean’s Eleven and barely reached sitcom rerun territory.
What made the flop more frustrating was how far it drifted from what casino storytelling could have been. The tone lacked tension, the stakes felt fake, and the setting was never used to its advantage. Even casual players browsing the Casino Seeker site could tell you that great casino experiences hinge on drama, risk, and unpredictability, exactly the elements this script skipped. It felt like a story built around the word “casino” rather than the world behind it.
Visuals Are Getting Louder While Scripts Get Quieter
Modern blockbusters are dazzling, that much is true. Every frame sparkles with precision, but for all the budget that goes into CGI, choreography, and color grading, very little is being invested in actual storytelling. The result is that spectacle has become the main course, and the story has been demoted to garnish.
A lot of recent films feel like extended trailers. They are cut for impact, not coherence. Scenes are stitched together around set pieces, and dialogue often sounds like filler meant to bridge explosions. Moonfall (2022) is a perfect example. It delivered collapsing cities, rogue AI moons, and enough visual effects to melt your eyes, yet almost nothing happening on screen made emotional or narrative sense.
Even celebrated franchises are falling into this trap. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022) had the ingredients to explore infinite realities, but used them mostly for visual shock rather than storytelling depth. At some point, a kaleidoscope of cities becomes meaningless if the characters are emotionally static.
This issue goes deeper than just “bad writing.” It reflects how studio priorities have shifted toward marketability over originality. You can sell a moment in a trailer far easier than you can market nuance or layered character development. The problem is, when everything is constantly dialed to maximum visual intensity, nothing stands out. And eventually, even explosions start to feel quiet.
Writing Feels Like It Was Focus-Grouped to Death
Some scripts feel like they were rewritten until all personality was sanded off.
Don’t Worry Darling (2022) looked beautiful. Florence Pugh did the heavy lifting. But the story lost its nerve. The themes were vague. The twist felt undercooked. Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair described the final reveal as “landing with all the elegance of a concrete block.”
Then came Amsterdam (2022). That cast should have delivered something memorable. Instead, the film meandered without urgency or clarity. It wanted to be important. It barely made sense.
Blockbusters Play It Safe While Indies Spin Off Into the Abstract
Big movies feel like they are holding back. Small movies feel like they are speaking in riddles.
Jurassic World Dominion (2022) brought back legacy characters and still managed to bury them in side plots and biotech nonsense. The dinosaurs were there, technically. But they took a backseat to genetically modified bugs and long-winded dialogue.
On the other end of the spectrum, Men (2022) started strong and ended in abstract chaos. The metaphor got louder than the message. Symbolism can be powerful, but when it replaces storytelling entirely, even curious viewers tune out.
Streaming Turned Film Into Background Noise
Streaming changed everything. That includes how movies are made, marketed, and remembered. Many are watched with one eye while scrolling.
The Gray Man (2022) had stars, budget, and flash. Yet the moment it ended, I could not recall a single line. Red Notice (2021) was another checklist project. Gal Gadot, Dwayne Johnson, and Ryan Reynolds teamed up for a movie that felt built by an algorithm, not vision.
Convenience is great, but without creativity, it turns cinema into wallpaper.
There Are Still Good Movies, But They Get Buried
This is the part that stings. Good movies exist. They just never get the attention they deserve.
The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) was sharp, slow-burning, and emotionally haunting. It was the kind of film that lingers quietly in your head for weeks. After Yang (2022) was another sleeper gem, quiet, futuristic, and deeply human, but both got swallowed by the algorithm and skipped by the mainstream.
Streaming catalogs are endless, yet the stuff with meaning never gets the homepage push.
Final Scene: The Industry Hasn’t Collapsed, But It Needs a Creative U-Turn
We are not witnessing the death of movies. What we are seeing is a crisis of vision, where spectacle and sameness overpower voice and risk.
Audiences are ready for change, they still care. They still want to be surprised by something that feels like a real idea.
Even people who love film will stop watching when every story feels manufactured in a factory line, and disengage if it keeps bowing to algorithms and quarterly earnings reports.