The 2023 Year in Review

Simon Morris looks back on 2023, and notices two big changes. A lot of long-running series and franchises are coming to a close, and the biggest movies of the year are individual and rule-breaking.At the end of Groundhog Day you may remember, Bill Murray wakes up in bed with Andie McDowell. This is a bit of a surprise for him, since for the entire movie he's been waking up alone on the same day, over and over again, to the same irritating breakfast DJs."Something is different," says Bill. "Good or bad?" asks Andie. "Anything different is good," replies Bill. And this year I had the same feeling.2023 started out the same as the last ten years or so - a few blockbusters, a couple of Oscar hopefuls, a dumb movie starring Jason Statham. But after that, things started changing. For a start, many of the blockbuster franchises started closing down. Cillian Murphy in Oppenheimer.No, not Avatar, thank goodness. New Kiwi James Cameron plans to keep them coming for the foreseeable future, I gather. This is a relief to Cameron fans around the world, and to the New Zealand film industry, mostly in Miramar, Wellington.But many other apparent hit series are suddenly calling it a day.John Wick is over now, as is Indiana Jones. Mission Impossible and Fast and Furious are both grinding to a halt. I'm not complaining, you understand. Frankly most of these titles were running out of puff three or four instalments back. But it's very unusual for a cash cow to shut up shop while there's still box office life in the old dog, if I can mix about four separate metaphors. It seems in each case, some brave soul simply said "Enough already" and suggested the franchise-holders switch the lights off as they go.As well as these Great Big Titles, there are several that don't warrant capital letters in the description but have also started looking a bit rocky. Including Rocky itself - or rather this year, Creed 3.Creed barely mentioned Rocky at all in the third outing, though perhaps former star Sylvester Stallone was a bit busy. As well as his new reality TV show, he had to put out the fourth of the less than exciting Expendables series.The best description of Expendables 4 was "it came and it went". And you could say the same about other B-List blockbusters like Transformers, Hercule Poirot, Equaliser 3 and Magic Mike's Last Dance.It became cool in 2023 to admit you were moving on. This is very big news in an industry that for years had depended on one immutable rule: "keep doing it again". Sequels, prequels, remakes and knockoffs, in other words…Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details