“I met a traveler from a distant land,
Who said— ‘Half sunk a broken bust of durasteel
Stands in the desert, whose black-helmed frown,
And angry, snarling mask of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Darth Vader, Dark Lord of Lords;
Look upon my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.'”~ With deepest apologies to Percy Bysshe Shelly.
Star Wars… Star Trek… Doctor Who… James Bond… Indiana Jones… Lord of the Rings… Assassin’s Creed… The Crow… Marvel and DC Comics… Dungeons & Dragons… These names used to fill nerdy hearts with so much joy. Now, only the die-hard fans who purchase anything bearing the sigils of their favored franchises still hold true to their exalted fandoms like fanatical cultists while everyone else who used to enjoy such works has either moved on to enjoy other things, rewatched the older entries in these franchises instead of patronizing more recent works, or have recorded and/or written over two decades’ worth of angry, mournful dirges for these apparently fallen franchises on YouTube or at various blogs and online news outlets.
The problems with these franchises and others arose for various reasons cited by numerous critics, including: the recent release of lackluster and ill-received reboots, remakes, prequels, sequels, re-quels, and “re-imaginings”; mismanaging franchises like in naked cash-grabs; the injection of ill-conceived, preachy, unwanted and unnecessary, overly-metatextual, “smack-you-in-the-face” obvious, so-called “woke” political pandering into various entries in these franchises;1 major studios pushing poorly-penned and poorly-produced films and streaming series in a pop cultural gold rush to establish new multimedia “universes” and failing miserably; Hollywood studios and their allies in the mainstream media allegedly using race- and gender-baiting accusations to silence reasonable, valid criticisms by painting all their critics as far-right racist or sexist agitators; and, ultimately, deciding to “pivot back to profitability” by finally giving fans the media and characters they want to see (or giving the fans something close to what they want to see)… two decades far too late, after the fans have already stopped being fans and have moved on with their lives out of jaded, bitter apathy.2
Naturally, the various studios involved have lost entire fortunes over the past decade-and-a-half, so much money that some franchises have shuttered for the time being and some franchise owners have merged in full-on attempts to stave off bankruptcy. Wizards of the Coast — the embattled Hasbro-owned tabletop and card gaming company that has become more infamous for using the thuggish Pinkertons to harass gamers while investigating leaks than they ever have been for any of the products they’ve produced — mismanaged the Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering brands enough to drive fans away (among other recent sins) and cause a $83.3 million drop in their operating profits during 2023. Warner Bros. Discovery was rocked by record-smashing box office failures from their poorly-managed Zack Snyder DC Comics-based properties, causing the company to “course-correct” by appointing Hollywood “villain” David Zaslav as CEO, who shelved some planned films like Batgirl, ditched Zack Snyder and appointing Marvel veteran James Gunn to reboot the DC Studios cinematic universe only for their first major cinematic outing to lose big at the box office, and by greenlighting animated failures like Velma and Space Jam: A New Legacy. Meanwhile, the extremely troubled Walt Disney Company — the home of Marvel Studios, Pixar, and Lucasfilm — has seen its stock drop from $145 per share on Monday, 29 July 2019 (the year Avengers: Endgame was released, when Disney set the record for the highest-grossing year for a movie studio ever) to $88 per share at market close on Friday, 10 November 2023, with its lowest stock price that posted at an adjusted $79.19 per share in September 2023.
In January 2026, former Star Wars boss Kathleen Kennedy stepped away from helming Lucasfilm in disgrace according to Star Wars and Indiana Jones fans, with only her Hollywood peers declaring her run at Lucasfilm a “triumph.” In March of that same year, Bob Iger also stepped down far earlier than planned to much celebration (as people were ecstatic to see him leave), leaving an ill-prepared Josh D’Amaro and dark horse Dana Walden as his successors. Meanwhile, Paramount Pictures — which itself was bought out by J.J. Abrams’ friends at Skydance Pictures a year earlier — acquired Warner Bros. amidst much public disdain. As for Doctor Who, its evil overlords at the BBC and their American partners, Sony Pictures and AMC Media, are considering rebooting the age-old franchise entirely due to the severe damage done to it by Disney, Russel T. Davies, and Chris Chibnall.
Will any of these managerial transformations really mean positive changes for the Star Trek, Star Wars, Marvel, and DC franchises? Most likely, the answer is “no,” as the corporate mindsets behind these franchises (David Ellison’s political ties notwithstanding) remain depressingly the same as before.
While Donald Trump’s re-election promised to eliminate DEI wherever he and his cronies may find it has inspired some meager hope in nerd circles that the bleeding may stop and that movies, games, and comics may become better quality products with greater storytelling in the not-too-distant future, many audience members still remain rightfully skeptical. Future products from both Walt Disney and Warner Bros. (like The Mandalorian & Grogu and Star Trek: Strasnge New World‘s upcoming final two seasons) have yet to truly inspire audiences to care enough to pre-order tickets or games anymore (especially after The Acolyte, Section 31, and Starfleet Starfeet Academy drove many audience members away), and both companies’ pet comic publishers — Marvel and DC respectively — still haven’t seen their sales numbers increase the way their parent companies hope they will in the light of the overall comics industry’s oncoming sales apocalypse.
The great powers of Hollywood have been shaken.3 Who among them may survive?
While many in the audiences for these franchises initially responded with anger, sorrow, and frustration, these emotions eventually dissipated into apathy and ennui. As YouTube commenter JesterBell (a.k.a. “Female Frodo Baggins”) stated in a 2024 YouTube video about the flagging Marvel Cinematic Universe:
“I’m just… apathetic about all things MCU. How can this be? I was ‘The Ultimate Marvel Fan Girl’! Just two years ago, I couldn’t stop talking about Marvel! […] Marvel was my thing for the better part of ten years, and now… I just don’t care? What happened?”
I‘m not here to discuss any of that in-depth, though. Greater minds than mine, from the snarky Critical Drinker and Nerdrotic to the highly analytical Dave Cullen, the indie newshounds at Clownfish TV, and the irreverent gang at Red Letter Media, have tackled this question to death.
I came not to praise nor bury Caesar, for the state funeral has already been held, and it was cooked.
No, I came to be that guy, protesting outside the wake wearing a placard bearing the words, “REPENT, SINNERS! THE END IS NIGH!” as I watch the skies above for falling meteors.
I understand that other media are coming up — or have already arisen, in the case of the rising popularity of anime and manga to replace mainstream comics and comic book movies for American audiences — and I understand that the fires of hope still burn somewhere else, ’round a bend in the road or over the bough of a hill. I just don’t see that hope in the decades-old American multimedia franchises or in the Hollywood-led American entertainment industry anymore anymore.
Major American motion picture studios aren’t just releasing the occasional flop like Batman & Robin, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, X-Men 3: The Last Stand, or Catwoman anymore; almost all of their films are comparatively as terrible as those older failures now, with the occasional breakout hit like the one-two punch of Barbie and Oppenheimer in 2023, 2024’s breakout nostalgic hit Deadpool & Wolverine, or 2026’s unexpected powerhouses Project Hail Mary and Michael being the outliers of outliers. Even these box office blockbusters have yet to stave off the overall “doom-and-gloom” atmosphere at the movie theater ticket counters.
Aside from the never-ending faith of the hardcore fans, the trust that mainstream audiences had in these franchises has evaporated.
Nobody outside hardcore fans and Hollywood executives really cares about future Star Wars, Indiana Jones, or Marvel Cinematic Universe properties anymore. Few mainstream viewers really believe David Ellison can turn Star Trek or the DC Studios films around. Old fans of British properties Doctor Who, James Bond, and Lord of the Rings have abandoned those fandoms after their most recent offerings, and old-school Dungeons & Dragons fans feel like Wizards of the Coast have chased them away from a game they’ve enjoyed since the 1970s. The Terminator, Avatar, The Crow, and Aliens franchises haven’t wowed audiences in a very long time, either, and announcements of upcoming franchise reboots for franchises like Highlander draw more groans from audiences than cheers. Film and television profits have been in freefall for a decade now, and even with recent cinematic wins, the future of the American entertainment industry is cloudy and uncertain.
For decades, major multimedia properties like Star Wars, Star Trek, Marvel Comics, and DC Comics were the gods and demigods of American pop culture, the idols we worshipped in cult fashion… and it seems the old gods are dying, their worshippers still awaiting the blessings of their fallen deities with downcast faces and broken hearts as the entertainment industry endtimes looms o’er the Hollywood elite like the mythical Sword of Damocles.
Maybe there’s a spiritual reason for this Western pop cultural downfall that none of us really want to face.
Iconoclast that I am, I can’t help but wonder: maybe this is all part of the will of God? With the most recent round of trouble occurring in Israel, with the turgid underbelly of global antisemitism going mainstream, the recent revelations surrounding Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, and P Diddy, given other catastrophes occurring nationwide in the United States and worldwide, and given how we’ve built up an entertainment industry worth $29.86 billion in 2022 and growing, maybe what’s going on with the downfall of various American pop culture idols is the Lord’s way of waking us up from our entertainment-induced somnambulance to face what may become the end of modern human civilization as we currently know it.
Perhaps God is removing our empty pop cultural distractions to force us to focus on what’s truly important in life.4
Because of this, I now refer to the past two decades as the era of the “Fall of the Old Gods”.
No more bread and circuses! Let the old gods burn! May we never worship them again! They were empty man-made idols anyway. It’s time to wise up and rise up, to prepare our souls for whatever the future may bring soon, and start readying ourselves to fight back against the real forces of darkness that stand against humanity. May the old, stale, dying franchises pass away to be replaced by new, fresh, and interesting artistic works!
- According to many, many YouTube critics such as the controversial Midnight’s Edge, Nerdrotic, Geeks + Gamers, Real Life Fake Wizard, Thinking Critical, WDW Pro, Doomcock, Snarky Jay, Dave Cullen, Disparu, and The Critical Drinker, among countless others, the satirical “Put a chick in it! Make it lame and gay!” mantra introduced into the mainstream consciousness by South Park: Joining the Panderverse could be applied to the entertainment industry as a whole and not just to the Walt Disney Company.[↩]
- These are not the only problems with these older multimedia franchises; these are merely the most glaring and oft-repeated online.[↩]
- To say nothing of what the WGA/SAG-AFTRA strikes have done to the entertainment industry![↩]
- Also, given how so many fringe fans have turned these franchises (especially Star Trek and Star Wars) into literal objects of worship, perhaps the Lord is merely toppling a few silly competitors that have taken too great a stranglehold on the hearts and souls of their fans?[↩]
