What do you think is the dominant genre in TV/cinema today (especially for young adults) ?

Submitted by MarignanVZ t3_y5d892 in television

Hi,

As a 23 year old, my childhood and teenage/early adult years have been marked by a few genres and works that I still cherished today. In retrospective, it's very easy to see that the world of fiction, whether on TV or elsewhere, was dominated by different styles and genres the last two decades. In the 2000s, I think it was Harry Potter and the whole "teen fantasy" trope, along with the "teen fantasy but with mystical creatures that are edgy" like in Vampire Diaries and Teen Wolf (which I never watched). Then, between 2010-2015, the "teen post-apocalyptic with a bad government and the population is divided between districts/clans/whatever" or something, like Divergent, Hunger Game, The Maze Runner. And then, between 2015-2019, the Game of Thrones craziness, and along with it, the "dark fantasy era", more adult, maybe because the same people who used to watch Harry Potter were then in their 15's or something. I have no idea what the kids were watching then, honestly. The new Star Wars trilogy, Fantastic Beasts maybe ? There was also Marvel, but the hype more or less died in 2019 after Endgame, and now it seems people are watching new iterations by the force of habit more than anything.

And now, what ? I'm almost thinking I'm getting out of touch with what has been going on the last few years. Am I being conservative, or what we have today is just more of the same thing we got as teenagers and children, but worse ? In the 2000s and 2010s,, I grew up with new works, and they were great : Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, the Star Wars prelogy, even Hunger Games at its peak, and of course Game of Thrones. They were all new. And now... Lord of the Rings, HP/Fantastic Beasts, Star Wars, Game of Thrones. Yeaaaah. Except they switched to TV shows, with Rings of Power and all the new shows around Star Wars. The only new and great "mainstream" thing I know of is Stranger Things, and even this show relies on nostalgia. There is also Winx I recently watched, and I liked it, but the show really gave me the vibes of "2000s nostalgia when everything was still nice". What else ? Shadow and Bone, The Witcher. Not bad, but clearly not as hype as Game of Thrones.

So, is that it ? Dark fantasy and nostalgia ? What do you think I missed ? What is your opinon on the dominant genre in fiction today ? I think I'm a bit out of touch, so if you could help me see through this fog, I'd appreciate it.

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ChangeUpstairs3352 t1_isiz1sc wrote

I don't think there Is a dominant genre. People like Severance, House of The Dragon, Squid Game, Cobra Kai & Dahmer. These shows are quite popular but still very different.

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scrapeinbotoom t1_isj0hz5 wrote

Replying to MarignanVZ (#115,436)

Yeah, I was, but it just sucked. It's like every character in the MCU is just a bad caricature of a human being now. She Hulk had some funny jokes but besides Thor almost every character on that show is a great example of this. The Thor character is the worst though. It's like watching Simple Jack as a God

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tetoffens t1_isj0uc2 wrote

Replying to MarignanVZ (#115,436)

Thor 4 made more money than the previous Thor. In fact, the last three Marvel films were all sequels that made more money than the previous one in their series. Marvel just hasn't had a huge Avengers scale film in a few years but everything they make is incredibly popular and no sign of any decline at all. Black Panther 2 is about to make like 2 billion dollars.

People have been claiming superhero films are in decline for near a decade now. They've been wrong every time,

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Skavau t1_isj1n0n wrote

People love 'dark fantasy', as you allude to - but there actually isn't much of it due to the amount of money it costs to make and do well.

In terms of genre: True Crime, Teen Drama, Police Procedural (older network demographic) and Superhero but these are only 'strongest' in a very loose sense.

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GenericAustin t1_isj26r2 wrote

Replying to tetoffens (#115,484)

>Thor 4 made more money than the previous Thor.

That's not entirely accurate, Thor 3 made more money globally than Thor 4

But 4 was not released in China and Russia unlike 3, so if we ignore those 2 countries, Thor 4 made more money

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u2sunnyday t1_isj4x8r wrote

Replying to MarignanVZ (#115,436)

I tend to agree with 'superheros fatigue', but one thing you have to keep in mind is for every 18 to 20 - ish year old who ages out of the genre, there is also a 8 - 12 year old aging into it.

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smesch83 t1_isjdl0e wrote

it's not THAT huge on TV - but I think in the YA book market, romance and teen drama are merging in a way that makes romance more normal & mainstream. so: you will find many shows like "Heartstopper", "Love, Victor", "Never have I ever", "The Summer I turned pretty" right up to stuff like "Bridgerton" and popular K-Dramas that are all much less niche than similar teen romances 10 or 15 years ago. (plus, all these Christmas/Hallmark movies for older people and stuff like "Emily in Paris").

I don't mean "there are romantic comedies, and some of them happen to get a TV series version", I mean "romance fiction was this very ghettoized genre, and now the tropes and dynamics of romance fiction suddenly dominate most queer and most female-skewing TV dramas and a lot of current YA fiction"

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ncghgf t1_isjfnqt wrote

Nostalgia shows and superheroes I guess.

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TheSuspiciousDreamer t1_iskpthi wrote

Star Wars was not new in 1999. The Star Wars content we are getting today is better than what we got in the the prequel trilogy.

Peter Jackson's film trilogy was not the first time Tolkien had been adapted for the screen.

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Wozard__Of__Iz t1_isksblu wrote

Replying to tetoffens (#115,484)

Thor 4 was a sloppy mess with pacing issues. It made money, but the quality? In decline for quite a while. And look at the TV shows.

Money made really shouldn't matter when discussing the quality of media.

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