Over the past 4 years, the film industry has navigated through some unprecedented and difficult circumstances. From the shutdown of film sets due to the pandemic and unfair treatment of writing and acting employees by film executives in Hollywood, the past few years of films have been somewhat subpar to say the least. Then came 2023, a year that revitalized the film industry and empowered the workers who in the past had been oppressed.
It is hard to look at the achievements in films from their commercial successes and improved quality without acknowledging the groundbreaking movements set forward by the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the Writers Guild of America (WGA).
The WGA strike began on May 2 and went on until September 27, and it was based on a dispute between the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) over residual payments and the pay cuts that many writers experienced, which they argued were unjust. The SAG strike, which started on July 14 and lasted until November 8, was a major labor dispute between the actors’ union and AMPTP over a long period of specified grievances.
The strikes effects were unprecedented, with TV show and film writers and actors simply halting their work and creating a major disruption in the production and distribution of TV and films and a major hit to the economy of Hollywood, costing billions of dollars once negotiations were finally reached later in the year. The solidarity between actors and writers was also never seen before, with thousands of workers picketing in the streets of Los Angeles, A-list movie stars among them.
Aside from the strikes which, for now, showed to be successful, the success of the movies released in 2023 is of a degree not seen since before the pandemic. From a box office standpoint, movies did incredibly well at a more consistent rate than seen in past post-pandemic years, with “Barbie” racking up over $630 million domestically, garnering itself the #1 spot on the U.S. box office.
It was also a major year for animation, with the #2 and #3 spots on the U.S. box office being “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” and “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”, receiving around $570 million and $380 million, respectively.
2023 was also a groundbreaking year for diverse representation in films that had previously gone under the radar. An example is in Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon”, a movie surrounding the Osage nation in Oklahoma, as the main actress in the film, Lily Gladstone, is Indigenous herself, along with a great percentage of the cast. Gladstone has been awarded numerous times for her performance, many of which mark the first time an Indigenous woman has been awarded for a leading acting role.
On the awards season, this year’s Academy Award nominations include a diverse lineup of actors, directors, writers, designers, etc.—at least compared to past years. Movies like “The Color Purple” and “The Little Mermaid” brought back and retold the stories of African Americans and were also incredibly successful commercially.
Finally, one cannot analyze Hollywood in 2023 without mentioning the greatest movie rivalry in years: the frenzy of Barbenheimer, the internet’s decided title for the rivalry between Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” and Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer”, both premiering on July 21. The importance of Barbenheimer was not solely on the juxtaposition of two major-market films going head-to-head, but rather the excitement that resulted from it. The rivalry arguably boosted both films’ popularity, with a major driving factor behind the frenzy being the comparison of both films – which seems more like apples and oranges in hindsight.
Beyond the scope of controversy surrounding film unions and the bounce-back that was needed from the pandemic. 2023 finally shut the door on limitations and boundaries for filmmakers and cinephiles alike, while opening the door for more inclusion and excitement surrounding films, one that hasn’t been felt since before the pandemic.