POP-CULTURE COLUMN: The Summer of IMAX
By Dan Brown Now that fall has arrived, the question can be asked: Who, or what, had the best summer this year in the entertainment industry? Was it Ella Langley, who’s ubiquitous number Choosin’ Texas was clearly the song of the season? Was it the suffix “-maxxing,” which got added to virtually every noun and verb in the English language during the warmer months? Was it Tomdaya, the celeb couple du jour who seemingly appeared on every red carpet on Earth? Nope, it was none of these. The hottest summer personality/event/trend/franchise was . . . IMAX. Out of all the people and things that make up the entertainment business, the one that had a better summer than anyone or anything else was a formerly obscure film format that has transcended its weird origins – this summer, it moved to the centre of the cultural conversation. If you didn’t know what IMAX was before this summer, by the end you may have been an expert. That’s thanks largely to two summer releases, Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Just look at the numbers. Of the more than $1.7 billion dollars The Odyssey has grossed since it was released on July 17, $521 million of that amount has come from the sale of IMAX tickets – which makes it the highest-grossing IMAX movie ever, higher even than Avatar. Of the $360 million that Brand New Day pulled in on its opening weekend at the end of July, fully 24 per cent came from IMAX and other PLFs (premium large formats). It’s fair to say more people paid more money to see films in IMAX this summer than ever before. This column won’t go into the technical specifics of IMAX, except to note that Nolan had to have a special camera built to realize his dream of adapting Homer’s epic. Nolan has been working his way toward filming an entire movie in IMAX, previously filming select sequences in movies such as The Dark Knight Rises. IMAX has been around for decades, but it went mainstream in 2026, along with other premium formats. For a long time IMAX seemed like a curiousity that was limited to nature documentaries and the NASA space shuttle. There have even been moments when the company’s future was in doubt. It has met its moment. And you can bet, come awards season, IMAX will be getting thanked in multiple acceptance speeches. Why the mass appeal? The explanation may be as simple as, there are now entire generations who grew up watching motion pictures on their laptops and cellphones. Those movie lovers are hungering for as big a picture as possible, and IMAX is a revelation to them. The big brains in Hollywood have been trying new ways to get people back into movie houses. 3D movies were a thing for a while, but then the studios got so desperate, they even tried guilting people into watching movies in the theatre. Even before COVID-19, movie fans were shifting away from the traditional movie-watching experience. Now theatres are back, in a big way. And there is a hunger like never before for specialized formats. You might even say movie fans were IMAX-maxxing all summer long. Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 34 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly Graphic-Novel Group book club.
Some Theories About Superhero Movie Fatigue
Some Theories About Superhero Movie Fatigue By Dan Brown You’ve probably heard of “superhero movie fatigue.” It’s the idea that the public has grown tired of motion pictures featuring the costumed do-gooders who first appeared in comic books, then made the leap to the big screen. The theory goes something like this: Superhero burnout is the reason why big-budget effects pictures starring these superpowered champions of justice are a risky bet for studios after years of sequels (and TV shows, in Marvel’s case). That’s why the superhero moment has passed at the multiplex. But is it real? Or is superhero movie fatigue a press creation? I have some theories. Theory No. 1: It’s real. The fatigue is genuine. Exhibit A would be this June’s Supergirl movie, which came and went without making a ripple in the pop culture. Made on an estimated budget of $170 million, it came nowhere close to earning its costs back with a worldwide gross of $126 million. (Numbers from the Internet Movie Database.) But if moviegoers are sick of superheroes right now, then you’d have to account for the staggering success of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which came out in August and has grossed more than $2.4 billion (on an estimated budget of $225 million). Theory No. 2: It’s real – but it’s a superhero thing, not a superhero-movie thing. According to this line of thinking, the fatigue is part of a larger cultural reaction against superheroes. The popularity of superheroes is always waxing and waning. We may be in a period similar to the middle decades of the 20th century, when comic-book publishers moved away from superhero titles in favour of horror and romance comics. So it has little to do with the ubiquity or quality of the films being released, superpowered beings just aren’t working right now in any format. Theory No. 3: It isn’t real. Perhaps superhero movie fatigue is entirely a press creation. It’s one of those trends that media types latch onto and repeat without thought. It’s just the latest example of the conventional wisdom circulated by journalists and pundits that sounds valid, but falls apart on closer inspection and has no actual bearing on reality. If so, then you have to account for the failure of Supergirl this summer, which not even co-star Jason Momoa could save from fading into obscurity. Why wasn’t Kara Zor-el able to draw a crowd? Theory No. 4: Movie fans are way more discerning than we give them credit for being. Maybe moviegoers judge each Hollywood release on its own merits, in which case we can’t blame the box-office failures on any given movie’s genre. Genre doesn’t enter into their decisions, or at least it’s not the determining factor it may have been in the past. This would explain why some superhero flicks fail, yet others generate billions of dollars in ticket sales. Hence their selective appeal. Theory No. 5: The superhero movie as a genre doesn’t exist anymore. Movies like 1978’s Superman and 1989’s Batman and even 2002’s Spider-Man were recognizably part of the same genre. Those days may be over. You’ve probably noticed this. There are so many superhero releases now – some are comedies, some dramas, some mysteries, some kung-fu movies, some horror flicks, some space fantasies. So “superhero movie” may not be a term that applies anymore, and a film’s track record can be explained by the subgenre it belongs to. So Supergirl failed earlier this year not because it starred a superhero, but because it has a lot in common with a specific western, True Grit, and movie fans weren’t in the mood for a space western this summer. You may be asking: Why does any of this matter? Well, there’s a big superhero movie coming out at the end of year called Avengers: Doomsday, which could be the difference between a decent year for Hollywood and a great year. Not to overstate its importance, but a lot is riding on it. In fact, if Doomsday is a flop, you can bet the online pundits will scream that it was foolish of Marvel Studios to make a big superhero movie for the silver screen. On the other hand, if it does bonkers business, that will guarantee more of the same will be coming soon to a theatre near you. What do you think? I would love to hear your own theories in the comments! Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 34 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
POP-CULTURE COLUMN: Beware the Movie Marketed On the Strength Of Its Low Budget
By Dan Brown A movie’s ultra-low budget is not a good enough reason, on its own, to see it. It’s a legitimate reason for the entertainment press to talk about the movie — because in 2026, a low-budget, microbudget, or no-budget film that takes the box office by storm is a novelty. The latest examples of the Hollywood media buzzing over films with minuscule production costs both happened this spring. May 15 saw the release of the horror movie Obsession. Made for about US $750,000, Obsession has grossed more than $427 million worldwide. Two weeks later, the horror film Backrooms – budgeted at roughly US $10 million – debuted in cinemas. To date, it has made over $365 million globally. These two films have prompted hundreds of headlines along the lines of: * “How ‘Obsession’ became an unprecedented box office horror hit – and one of the year’s most profitable movies” (Variety) * “Backrooms and Obsession: How two low-budget horror films caused a Hollywood earthquake” (BBC) * “‘Wildly unpredictable’ low-budget horror hit fans are flocking to the cinema to see” (Yahoo) * “Small-budget horror is the winning ticket these days” (Darden Report) If you know one thing about these horror hits, it’s that they were cheap to make. What you don’t know from reading the blanket coverage is whether they’re actually worth the trouble of schlepping your butt to the local multiplex, then buying a ticket. Despite all the column inches, the minutes of airtime, the bandwidth, we don’t know if they’re any good. Readers with long memories have seen this movie before. When it came out in 1993, it was called El Mariachi. That Mexploitation flick’s remarkably low budget isn’t in the first sentence of the film’s Wikipedia page, but the fourth: “The US $7,225 production was originally intended for the Mexican home-video market, but executives at Columbia Pictures liked the film and bought the American distribution rights.” As I recall, every time the picture appeared in the media back then, some talking head would inevitably mention, “Did you know Robert Rodgriguez made that thing for $7,000?” The focus of the coverage wasn’t on whether it was worth seeing, but rather the fact that a guy had made a whole feature for such a scant amount. It happened again five years later, when The Blair Witch Project received the attention of journalists and industry experts who fixated on its original production budget of US $35,000. Imagine that! (Midbudget movies don’t garner much press attention because, by definition, they aren’t newsworthy.) Now, it’s true Hollywood filmmaking has always been a battle between art and commerce. No question. But in the commotion surrounding these low-budget oddities, the art part gets left out. It’s all about the business aspect. And it’s still happening. That’s why I’m always cautious when its low budget is the first thing I learn via the web, newspaper or TV about a soon-to-release motion picture. It’s true, in the hands of an imaginative director, less of a budget can mean more of a movie. I do believe that. However, those cases are rare. And you wanna know a secret? I don’t care about a film’s production cost, be it low or high. It doesn’t enter into my film-watching experience. At all. After all, no one walked out of the theatre in 1994 after seeing Clerks (which cost Kevin Smith a mere $28,000 to make), and said, “I hated that movie, but I’m just glad they didn’t spend a ton of cash on it.” Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly Graphic-Novel Group book club.
One Actor, Two Superheroes
By Dan Brown They’ve made a ton of superhero movies. How many, exactly? Here's one measure: There are now multiple actors who have played at least two different comic-book characters in their careers. When Supergirl debuts in theatres on June 26, the list will grow even longer because it features Jason Momoa in a supporting role. You might be thinking, I see, Supergirl will be teaming up with Aquaman – the underseas hero who Momoa has played in movies like Justice League and the Lost Kingdom. Nope. Momoa now stars as Lobo, the interstellar mercenary, not the dude who can command whales to do his bidding. The DC movie universe rebooted with last summer’s Superman, so Momoa has in front of him a new acting challenge, if that’s the right word. Nor is he the only one. Perhaps the most famous example is Ben Affleck. In 2003, he appeared as brooding Marvel crime-fighter Daredevil. Thirteen years later, he donned the cape and cowl belonging to brooding DC crime-fighter Batman. In acting, they call that range. Ryan Reynolds has technically appeared as three different comic characters: Green Lantern, an early version of Deadpool (in X-Men Origins: Wolverine), and the actual Deadpool we all recognize now. In fact, in the latest Deadpool movie, there’s even a joke about the trend of performers appearing as more than one hero when the merc with a mouth mistakes the Human Torch for Captain America, who were both brought to life by Chris Evans. Other examples of the trend are Karl Urban and Elliot Page. If you include both heroes and supervillains, you can also add Michael B. Jordan and Michael Keaton. If you’re asking yourself, “So what?” there is a relevant point to be made here. What the growing list shows is fickle movie audiences are more than willing to give an actor a second chance. They don’t hold a stinky performance against them. Fans of superhero flicks are more than willing to embrace a performer who takes on a new persona. Green Lantern was a notorious bomb in 2011. Reynolds appearing in that role was clearly a career miscue, yet to this day theatregoers are more than happy to buy tickets to see him as Deadpool. Same with Affleck – although the Daredevil motion picture was aggressively mediocre, that failure didn’t stop fans from supporting him as the Dark Knight in multiple adventures. Heck, how many superhero/actor portmanteau nicknames are there? I’m talking about “Batfleck.” No one should be surprised how some actors are making a living by playing “the superhero type.” Exactly how many cowboy roles does Clint Eastwood have on his filmography? Along the same lines, Robert De Niro is the eternal gangster and Noah Wyle has played two different Emergency Room doctors, and has plenty of time left in his career for more. But perhaps the riskiest comic-book recasting is to come at the end of this year when Avengers: Doomsday arrives in theatres on December 18. You likely know by now that Robert Downey Jr. – formerly Iron Man — will appear as the titular bad guy, Victor Von Doom. However, no one knows how the creative team making the movie is going to handle his return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe after Tony Stark's death. Is this Doom a Stark variant from another reality? Will they even acknowledge that Doom has the same face as Stark? Will the other Avengers recognize him? Presumably he’s going to take his mask off at some point in the upcoming film, so stay tuned to see how Marvel diehards react to whatever plot device the filmmakers decide to use. As for the inverse of this trend – the Hollywood tradition of superheroes who have been played by more than one thespian – there’s not enough space here to name all of them. Superman alone has been played by, like, a kazillion different guys! Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly Graphic-Novel Group book club.
POP CULTURE: The Oscars Recognize Drew Struzan
By Dan Brown Drew Struzan’s name cropped up at the Oscars on Sunday. He’s a guy who never got a nomination in his 78 years, but surely deserved an award for his lifetime of service to Hollywood. Struzan – who was mentioned during the ever-expanding In Memoriam segment – defined movie imagery for a generation of film fans like me, even though he never made or appeared in a motion picture himself. He died last October in Pasadena. We may never see another cinema artist who has as vast an influence as Struzan did. If you grew up geeky in the 1970s or 1980s, you knew his work — even if you had never met him or didn’t know what he looked like. He was billed at the Academy Awards telecast as a poster artist, which doesn’t sit well with diehard movie enthusiasts who considered him a visionary genius. As a kid, I thought the right word to describe his work was “photorealistic,” but his trademark style was actually the result of airbrushing, which was much in vogue in the 1970s. Especially if you owned a Chevy van. Perhaps the first work of his I came across wasn’t on a poster, but the cover of a paperback edition of Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The publisher took Struzan art from Blade Runner and used it as the front, since the Dick novel was the source material for Ridley Scott’s 1982 sci-fi feature. I remember looking at that cover, eyeing the likeness of Harrison Ford closely, and thinking, “This can’t be a drawing or a painting, it’s too detailed. This must be a photo.” That was my first awareness of Drew Struzan. I was 13 years old. I was already in love with movies, and movie posters. Struzan began his career with one-sheets for such drive-in fare as Empire of the Ants and Food of the Gods, then caught a lucky break helping a fellow artist with a poster to announce the re-release in 1978 of Star Wars. The result of their collaboration was a meta-poster: The painted composition looks like an old circus poster plastered on the plywood fence around a construction site. It was also the beginning of his long partnership with George Lucas. Even after Struzan ended his career, he would come out of retirement to help the Star Wars creator with art for such movies as The Phantom Menace. His other posters included E.T.: The Extraterrestrial, Back to the Future, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Risky Business, Coming to America, the Goonies and the Muppet Movie. He could produce intricately crafted images, and he could so on a tight deadline: He painted the poster for John Carpenter’s The Thing remake literally overnight. For a generation of geeks like yours truly, Struzan’s posters defined the look of motion pictures. He brought aliens, adventurers, weirdos, muppets and Tom Cruise to life when young people weren’t sitting in a theatre. To understand his influence, you have to remember the context he was working in: VCRs were scarce back then, so you could see movies only in theatres, or occasionally on network TV. Posters were the main representation in the public’s mind of any given film because trailers weren’t as omnipresent as they are now. We had no YouTube to watch them on. Believe it or not, there was a time when people decided to see one film over another based solely on the posters outside the theatre, and Struzan deserves a golden statuette simply for the fact he sold countless movie tickets in his decades-long career. (For all I know, the Oscar folks may have tried to give him an honorary Oscar, but his family turned them down; Struzan suffered from Alzheimer’s in his later years.) Drew Struzan was one of the all-time greats, and is a personal favourite of mine, along with Nick Cardy. We may never see Struzan’s like again. All these decades later, I’m amazed Hollywood is still using movie posters to advertise their products. The artistry of posters persists, but this form of art could be living on borrowed time, along with movie houses themselves. We can only hope future generations of film fans recognize the artistry that’s involved, and keep demanding posters rendered exclusively by human hands. Our responsibility is to help educate those future geeks, making sure the names of creators like Drew Struzan don’t pass entirely from the collective memory. Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
Still No Stunt Oscar
By Dan Brown It’s 2026. The world changes every day. And yet there’s still no Academy Award for stunt performers. In fact, the stunt-design category for the Oscars won’t be handed out until 2028, which marks one century of the bloated Hollywood awards show. By then, those who literally put their bodies on the line to create convincing movie action scenes will have waited a full 100 years to be recognized by the Academy. I was thinking about this when the Oscar nominations were announced last week. You may have heard or read something about this year’s nods. The biggest headline emerging out of the press conference was that a vampire flick, Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, got 16 nominations – making it the most-nominated film in the history of Hollywood. That’s more nods than Titanic ever got, or The Godfather or Ben-Hur. It sounds like an impressive achievement until you look a little more closely. Although fall guys and gals won’t get much-deserved recognition until two years from now, the Oscars did add one new category this time: The honour for best casting. So with one extra category, the odds of ANY film breaking the record for most Oscars went up a bit this year. Sure enough, one of the nods for Sinners is in the casting division. I’m not saying casting directors don’t work hard or don’t have an impact on a movie’s success. But the fact the stunt Oscar has been delayed for so many years tells you a lot about Tinseltown’s priorities. Compared to other awards shows, the Oscars are way behind the times. According to a report in the Guardian, the Actor Awards (formerly called the Screen Actors Guild Awards) already have a stunt-ensemble trophy for both film and television. And the Emmy Awards give prizes to both the outstanding stunt coordinator and outstanding stunt performer. As no less an authority than Jason Statham once said, it’s an injustice that “poncy actors” standing in front of a green screen get rewarded for their onscreen fakery while stunt performers remain anonymous. These folks jump from buildings, get set on fire, make fights look authentic, yet they toil in obscurity. It’s almost like the Hollywood elite don’t want them to become household names, alongside the actors they represent on the silver screen. Stunt workers are cinema’s second-class citizens despite the crucial role they play. You might even think actors and actresses don’t want to share the glory by the way they continue to perpetuate the fiction that A-list stars do their own stunts. If you’ve seen a motion picture lately, more than likely it has scenes that called for stunt work – even in this age of computer-generated imagery. Yet when was the last time you heard a big-name star boast in an interview, “Do my own stunts? Are you kidding? No way am I putting my butt on the line!!!” Besides, it’s not like the insurance company would let them. Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
