While this summer offered a wide selection of movies, there were two undisputed box-office favorites. Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which has swung past two billion dollars in worldwide box office sales in three weeks; and The Odyssey, the Greek epic that has become director Christopher Nolan’s highest-grossing movie ever. Both movies are billion-dollar successes. Both feature Tom Holland, Zendaya, and Jon Bernthal. Both follow the isolating, sacrificial, burdened reality of a hero’s journey. The true question is, which is better? For me, the question remains a bit of a toss-up — and the opinions of other Lakesiders are also divided.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day is the fourth Spider-Man movie within the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Functioning as a fresh narrative for Tom Holland’s Peter Parker, Brand New Day follows Peter Parker’s life after the mind-wipe spell occurring in No Way Home, the third movie in the series. Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, the film has a stark tone shift, striking far more grounded than its preceding trilogy. Ishaan A. ‘28 agreed, saying, “I really liked the more grounded and emotional feeling of the Spider-Man movie. I feel like the plot was a bit more low-stakes compared to the average Spider-Man movie, but I didn’t mind it too much.”
Personally, I find myself biased towards this movie in comparison to other releases this year. I’m a major Spider-Man fan, and I’d bought my tickets for the early-prescreening in Dolby Cinema within minutes of them becoming available. However, bias aside, there is genuinely much to love about this film. Destin Daniel Cretton’s directing, along with The Amazing Spider-Man visual effects supervisor Jerome Chen’s web-swinging, delivered a wonderfully refreshing take on Peter’s life. Grounded in New York, Peter’s character felt part of the city and the culture for the first time, a theme I hope we continue to see in future superhero films. Furthermore, what has served the iconic Spider-Man stories of the past performs it anew: the tangible, relatable characters are authentic in their actions, leaving the audience wholly invested in their emotional journeys.
Meanwhile, The Odyssey is director Christoper Nolan’s take on Homer’s 3,000-year-old epic. The movie stars Matt Damon as Odysseus along with a Hollywood A-lister-packed ensemble. Captured completely on physical 70mm IMAX film, The Odyssey follows Greek king Odysseus’s grueling ten-year journey back to Ithaca after the Trojan War. Isla W. ‘28 expressed her satisfaction, saying, “I just know that […] in the Odyssey book, he’s a complete war hero, and it spends a good amount of time kinda portraying him as super prideful […] It was super well made in that you get to watch Odysseus’ pain, guilt, and trauma throughout his battles and journey in a new light. It also looked magnificent.”
I came into this movie having not read the book and with most of my knowledge of Greek mythology built on the Percy Jackson series. Despite its sometimes confusing time skips, it was staggering. Sophisticated in theme, emotion, and performance, I was pleasantly surprised. While I was unfortunately not able to enjoy The Odyssey in IMAX 70mm, praise for the cinematography is appropriate nevertheless. Even in standard, it’s clear that Christopher Nolan’s directing was a visual triumph.
It’s easy to conclude — both of these movies are pretty good. But what do the successes of recent movies tell us about the new age of movie theaters? Quite a bit, actually. In 2019, nine movies grossed one billion dollars. Since the 2020 pandemic, the maximum number of movies to reach that level of success in a year has been four, a sizable decrease. However, so far this year, five movies have achieved billion-dollar success. This is reflected within Lakesiders, as (per the September Tatler poll), the majority of students report going to a movie theater more this past year than they have in years before. This is only expected to rise, as “Dune: Part 3” and “Avengers: Doomsday” are yet to be released. Box office analysts expect both to reach a billion as well. Clearly, theaters have begun to break through the limits the pandemic created. Star R. ‘27 added that she’s been to a movie theater seven or more times just this year, mainly because of an “AMC Stubs membership [which] makes movies free, and [because] it feels like there’s just an insane selection to see this year.”
Of the top ten movies this year, six were sequels or part of a larger cinematic franchise, whereas the other four were standalone movies. This might not seem grand, but in 2019, every movie that grossed enough to land a spot in the top ten was either a sequel, a live-action remake, or part of a larger superhero universe. The variety in 2026’s selection proves that audiences are ready to go back to movie theaters: that lower-budget films like Obsession or Backrooms and high-budget blockbuster movies like Michael or Project Hail Mary can work in tandem to bring back the movie-going culture society lost during COVID. The diversity of film today is what drives consumers to theaters, not vice versa.
