Arts • Report

A Dying Dream 

By Tanner Coughlan '27 in Spring 2026

For over a century, people have predicted the demise of Hollywood: first television, followed by home video, then the introduction of the internet, streaming services, and now, short-form content has made people believe that Hollywood will be killed at last. However, Hollywood’s resilience has always been able to reinvent itself and stay culturally relevant. Yet in this process of industrial transformation, has Hollywood traded its mythmaking capabilities for commercial survival?

Why do movies feel so unoriginal and empty? Even when observing the nominations for the most recent Academy Awards–Hollywood’s showcase of the most prestigious, cutting-edge films–the honorees still feel conventional and tailored to the Oscars’preference. The Oscars no longer feel like a celebration of radical artistic innovation, but rather winners feel calculated and undeserved. Recent Oscar winners like Green Book, Emilia Pérez, and Hamnet have all faced criticism for relying on Oscar-bait acting performances and allowing trophies and stereotypes to go unnoticed. Regardless of a flimsy, superficial metal statue, however, audiences have the power to determine whether a film is critically received or not, so why are these films being greenlit?

Interestingly enough, the engine driving this hollowness could be us, the audience. Hollywood has always been a business, but it has transformed almost entirely into an IP-ruled industry. Intellectual property deals with the legal rights to pre-existing material. What was once protection for independent artists has become corporate currency–rewarding repetition and punishing creative risk. Studios have abused their ownership rights to milk a franchise. According to Parrot Analytics, out of 2024’s top sixty-six movies to earn 100 million dollars domestically, forty-seven titles were a product of established franchises. Your wallets are producing these Disney live-action remakes and Harry Potter reboots; studios just feed what audiences want, and if costly first-time adaptations continue to misfire, producers are incentivized to invest more into IPs with established fan bases and marketing. Nonetheless, repetition and novelty aren’t mutually exclusive; it's about the storytelling approach that incorporates fresh styles, tones, and points of view. Yet when major corporations buy out movie studios, films no longer become stand-alone works but rather components of a larger brand ecosystem. 

Netflix is the clearest culprit of this corporate stamping. Its original films have been condemned for their use of the same cinematography and production style, often dubbed online as “Netflix lighting.” Lifeless, washed-out lighting functions as Netflix's own personal watermark. As harsh as it sounds, intentionality costs money, and prohibits Netflix from executing its content volume model. In general, there feels like very little risk-taking when it comes to production choices. This even appears in the casting choices of major blockbusters. Film producers seemingly recycle the same A-list actors. Again, while this may be a marketing strategy to promote their projects, studios prioritize the right name over the right actor. Marty Supreme, a 2025 Oscar award-winning movie starring renowned actor Timothée Chalamet and featuring popular rap artist Tyler, the Creator, relied heavily on star power as the main source of the movie’s advertisement. An indirect effect of this casting monoculture has fueled discourse around the physical appearance of many movie characters. Audiences have started to call out actors for their “iPhone Face”– a term coined on Twitter for actors who appear out of place in any period piece, largely due to their conspicuous cosmetic-enhanced features. Any noticeable Botox or facial filler suggests that an actor looks jarringly modern, and further breaks the illusion of the historical piece. It's a minor annoyance that demonstrates how studios overlook casting choices to focus on having marketable icons.

Between recycled story arcs, algorithms, and branding, it's hard to sit through movies when everything feels so formulaic. Not to mention how short-form content continues to condition audiences to expect palatable messages and quicker payoffs. Hollywood has picked up on this cognitive shift–creating safer, bite-sized films. Netflix executives have reportedly pressured writers to develop simpler scripts to keep distracted viewers hooked. This isn’t just Hollywood’s creativity that’s at stake, but a crisis of critical thinking itself.