It’s hard to believe that another incredible year in Hollywood has come and gone, but it has. And with it, many incredible achievements and unforgettable memories. Here are some interesting things that happened this year.
The Oscars Are Back!
It’s been almost a decade since the last installment of the famed Academy Awards, and this year marked the return of Hollywood’s biggest night. The 90th Academy Awards were held at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. The ceremony was hosted by Jimmy Fallon with presenters including Emma Stone, Regina King, Lakeith Stanfield, and Priyanka Chopra. Stone won the award for Best Actress for her role in Avengers: Infinity War while Chadwick Boseman and Daniel Kaluuya won for Best Actor for their roles in Black Panther and Get Out, respectively.
Fallon’s opening monologue was full of jokes about the Oscars being outdated and not reflecting the times we live in. He also addressed the issue of the lack of women in film, saying, “For the first time in history, no woman was nominated for Best Picture…and I’m not sure if we’ve ever been more proud of that achievement. The nominees were incredible and so were the female spectators who turned out in force to support cinema’s first ever all-male honour roll.”
Biggest Box-Office Hits
It’s fair to say that the past year has been a massive year for cinema. The highest-grossing films of the year were Black Panther with $1.26 billion, Avengers: Infinity War with $1.16 billion, and Toy Story 4 with $1.01 billion. These were followed by It: Chapter Two with $934 million, and Aladdin with $921 million.
The top three were followed by Incredibles 2 ($892 million), Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom ($868 million), and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker ($857 million). Incredibles 2 and Jurassic World were both part of the Disney blockbuster trilogy, while Aladdin was the year’s biggest live-action remake. While most of these films were blockbusters, none of them were particularly groundbreaking, interesting, or innovative. They just happened to be extremely profitable this year.
The Most Influential Films Of The Year
It’s always a delight to see what the most influential films of the year are, and 2018 was no exception. This year, films such as Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War, and Toy Story 4 all reign as the top three most influential films of the year. While those three films were massive successes, it’s important to remember that they weren’t particularly groundbreaking, interesting, or innovative.
The most influential films of the year were defined by the content they presented rather than the methods they used to tell the story. For example, Avengers: Infinity War and Black Panther are both exciting, action-packed films that are set in alternative versions of our universe. But beyond that, they’re very similar in terms of the material they present. Toy Story 4 is a coming-of-age fairy tale that examines what it means to be a kid and how you grow up. There’s also a lot of talk about family in these films, marking a shift in the subject matter of superhero movies.
Comic-Con’s Most Popular Film Fandoms
If you’re a comic book fan, then you’ll know that there are multiple comic-cons throughout the year. The biggest of these cons is Comic Con, which took place in San Diego between 4–7 July. One of the highlights of the convention is the popular film fandoms that turn up there. It seems that many of our favourite actors, directors, and writers have fanbases that extend far beyond the world of films and into the world of comics. A fun fact about San Diego is that it’s the closest major US city to Antarctica, which is where the headquarters of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) are located. That’s a lot of geography for one city!
The top two fandoms from San Diego were Black Panther and X-Men. The former was arguably the biggest movie of the year and the culmination of 20 years of continuous filmmaking in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It also introduced a whole new generation to the joys of Afrofuturistic living.
X-Men was also a major success, spawning the largest trailer graveyard in existence. But even more impressively, the franchise as a whole became one of the highest-grossing film series of all time, surpassing even James Bond and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And that’s not all. The X-Men franchise also holds the record for the most sequels, with 13 total.
The Most Influential Game Of The Year
It’s hard to believe that it’s already been a year since the last installment of Game of Thrones was released, and it’s been an incredible year for gaming. The highest-grossing games of the year were Marvel’s Avengers: Infinity War with $1.16 billion, Red Dead Redemption 2 with $1.14 billion, and Call of Duty: Black Ops III with $1.04 billion. Those are the only games that made the top ten, and they’re all first-person-shooter games.
First-person-shooter games were once considered an outdated category, but they’ve become extremely relevant this year. These are the kinds of games that celebrities play, and it’s often seen as a status symbol to show that you’re a fan of popular games. It’s likely that we’ll see a lot more of these types of games in the near future, as they’re extremely exciting and offer a different dynamic to any other type of game.
Did Robert Pattinson Get an Oscar Nomination For “The Lost City”?
It would be an incredible feat if Robert Pattinson won an Oscar for Best Actor in the upcoming 2019 Academy Awards for his portrayal of John Doe in The Lost City. The film itself is based on Manu Brabo’s 2005 novel of the same name, which in turn was inspired by William Shakespeare’s 1610 play Othello. The novel follows the story of a despotic ruler who forces a marriage upon his beautiful daughter in an attempt to secure an alliance with a European power. While on a hunting expedition, the jealous husband realizes that his wife is having an affair and kills them both. The dead are then brought back to life by a voodoo priestess who puts them into a deep sleep. In this form, the bodies are capable of living on their own for several years before being revived, which is precisely what happened to the jealous husband and his beautiful wife. When they’re finally brought back to life, the husband, John, assumes the role of his late wife, Desdemona, and begins a process of self-rediscovery that leads him to question his morals and values. John eventually leaves the village and begins a new life in the city, while the revived bodies of the Desdemona and Othello remain asleep. It’s an incredibly interesting project and a testament to its ambitious director, Céline Désert, who also helmed Olivier Assayas’ 2007 erotic thriller, Clouds of Sils Maria. It would be a monumental achievement for Pattinson, especially since this is his first nomination for Best Actor. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We have to wait and see what the academy has in store for us this year.