Nostalgia has always been a driving force behind marketing, but sometime in the 2010s, it felt like this got pushed into overdrive, with whole films being nothing more than reclusive bubbles just regurgitating and repackaging what we had seen before.
Star Wars is probably the main culprit to this. You all remember The Force Awakens trailer right? Star Wars was in a very different place back in 2014, with the last mainline film ending on this scene of Darth Vader. (It's not the exact end scene, but it's what most people remember)
Revenge of the Sith was from 2005, so 9 years later we get this trailer one day.
And people lost their minds, pretty much everyone was hyped for the big-screen revival of star wars. And just about everyone showed up to watch The Force Awakens, becoming the fourth highest-grossing film of all time.
And Nostalgia has been baked into the Star Wars even since, with the Sequel Trilogy, Spin-Off films like Rogue One and Solo, as well as TV Series like The Mandalorian heavily dabbling in it. Sometimes at the cost of original storytelling as well (Especially with Mandalorian Season 2 in this regard). It's starting to go full circle once more, with series like Kenobi and Ahsoka aiming to get the nostalgia money that grew up with the Clone Wars era of films. Expect in another 8 or so years for the cycle to repeat with the First Order films too.
Disney in general seems to be going pretty hard on nostalgia for selling stuff. Much has been said about the Disney Vault in the past. But recently we've got live-action remakes of many of their old films. They briefly dabbled in this in the late 90s and early 2000s with the live-action remakes of 101 dalmatians (and its less remembered sequel, 102 dalmatians). As well as the much disliked Direct to Video sequels. But the big money started coming in the 2010s with Tim Burtons Alice in Wonderland kicking things, and the remakes kept coming with films like The Jungle Book, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King.
Many of these films are almost direct remakes of their animated counterparts, the same story beats, same song numbers, pretty much almost everything from the original, and the reception for pretty much all of them (Except for Cinderalla and MAYBE Jungle Book) is generally seen as negative, with many listed as losing the charm the original animated versions have. Even the films that diverge from their source material like the Villain Films such as Maleficent and Cruella, many note that the forced callbacks to the original films as the weakest parts of those films. But they make money, lots and lots of money. 2019s Lion King is the 7th highest-grossing movie of all time. And more Live-Action remakes are coming with The Little Mermaid currently slated as the next one coming out.
It's not just Disney though that are guilty of this. Warner Bros. has been getting their hands in the field as well. Whilst Ready Player One plotline revolves around a lot of nostalgia based on the plot. Warner Bros. was quick to slice in some of their properties like The Iron Giant into the film. Scoob seemed to jump the gun and try to set up an entirely Hanna Barbara Universe instead of telling its own unique Scooby-Doo story, and then there is Space Jam: A New Legacy, which felt more like a commercial for HBO Max and all the properties Warner Bros. own than a movie (Which... is at least rather fitting for Space Jam at least.)
There are some cases where a film can use Nostalgia for the advantage of its storytelling. The Creed Films, for example, come to mind, focusing on the idea of living up to your legacy. But for many a film, it honestly feels more of a case of just getting a quick rise out of the audience because that was a thing in the old film. Remember when Benedict Cumberbatch announces to everyone that he was Khan?
Or when the Indoraptor did the old Tapping Toe thing in Jurassic World?
They don't mean much if anything for the characters in the film, and for the audience, it's mainly just reminding them there is an older better film they can be watching instead (Or just "Oh they did that old thing I liked!" which is what some executive is saying).
We are at the point now where films are running their advertisement campaigns on nostalgia. With the upcoming Ghostbusters Afterlife leaving long lingering shots on props from the old film like a Protonpack and the ECTO-1, or in Spiderman No Way Home the return of baddies from old films like Spider-Man 2's Dr. Octopus.
But I think the most egregious of these is the teaser trailer released for The Flash recently.
So it's hard to get too much hope up for the new Flash film (because of Erza Miller being the lead) but this is the first Solo Film for The Flash, so if you are a fan of The Flash, that's something to get excited about, right?
Instead, the teaser seems to be trying to get us hyped up about the return of what appears to be Michael Keaton's Batman instead. With a final shot teasing what appears to be the old Batmobile?
So, to clarify. The Movie about THE FLASH is going to make us want to watch a film about THE FLASH by... teasing us that it's going to have an old Batman in it? Are we really at this point now? I'm just done with it all at this point.
It's a problem that exists in other media as well like Video Games, but it feels most dominant in films at the moment. So Hollywood, Give me some newer fresh stuff to watch instead please. When I try to think of new IPs of the 2010s, the few things that come to mind are John Wick, The Conjuring Movies... erm... Frozen? the How to Train Your Dragon movies? There's not a lot honestly. Yet if I were to count reboots and reimaginings of old stuff I'll probably be here until 2022 listing them all. Nostalgia is nice to have in small doses. But when it is all your getting you honestly feel like the Ouroborus Snake eating its own tail with how you've seen all this already. And how long will it be until we see the remake of the remake of the old thing we liked. That's going to happen someday soon...
