The year is 1964. You’re sitting in a freshly-spruced movie theater chair watching Clint Eastwood and Steve McQueen face off against the villainous goes out in the wild west. The Silver Age of Cinema (1950-1967, according to Screen Rant), was the birth of what Hollywood is today. Ever since then, classic Westerns have been left in the past except for the few films that managed to capture the same magic they held such as Gore Verbinski’s 2011 film `Rango” and Quentin Tarintino’s love letter to Hollywood “Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood.”
Flash forward to the 1990’s and 2000’s. Think of any Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, Will Farrel and Vince Vaughn movie and that’s what you would be watching on any given Saturday night, with your friends or a night in alone. These films held no purpose, meaning or message whatsoever. But the charm and the gut busting scenes they contained kept the audience coming back to the theaters to see these mindless knee-slapping film flicks. These too have become a forgotten relic of the past living only in memories or straight to on demand films that no one is willing to pay $15 to see. The last true late-night comedy that did well was probably “The Hitman’s Bodyguard” in 2017, “Project X” and “Ted” both in 2012.
The final genre I will specifically talk about is the infamous or famous Mockbusters. Probably the most exclusively liked film genre, possibly ever, the mockbuster was an early 2000s trend to take the biggest blockbuster at the time so for example, 1996’s “Scream” was the most popular horror movie at the time and soon after in 2000, “Scary Movie” came out. It takes the main story of the original movie but throws in slap-stick, college frat type humor literally everywhere. This genre slowly died into the 2010’s after a few box office bombs from multiple production studios.
These three genres are forgotten but this past quarantine, many of these kinds of movies each had their own little spotlight during the time of rewatching when no new content came out. So with quarantine bringing the popularity of the movies back, these genres that aren’t made anymore could come back to the silver screen with a punch in the next coming years.
While it may be a while until they start to pick up the pace with production, film students, young writers, directors and producers have the chance to begin thinking of new ideas for films to create the next “Man with No Name,” the most relatable high school comedy and the mockiest mockbuster of all time to poke fun of the industry and all of the audience.