There used to be a time when you would walk out of a movie theater and the main character stayed with you. Not the action scenes, special effects or even the soundtrack. No, it was the person. You thought about them driving home, while also talking about them at school.

Those characters were the ones that would be remembered decades after the fact and legacies would be built just around them.

Now, in 2026, that kind of reaction is only getting harder and harder to find.

I am not saying good movies stopped being made. They did not. What stopped was the commitment to building characters that audiences would never forget.

Studios are spending more money than ever on visual effects and sequels, but the people at the center of those movies keep getting
flatter and more forgettable. At some point, the industry traded characters for content and the return on investment has already been seen.

Back in 2024, every movie in the top 10 of the domestic box office was somehow a sequel. “Inside Out 2,” “Deadpool & Wolverine,” “Despicable Me 4,” “Moana 2” and “Dune: Part Two” led the way, with none of these movies having an original character that people would actually care about.

So let’s go back in time, shall we? It’s the year 2000 and eight of the top 10 movies were brand new stories with brand new characters.
“Gladiator,” “Cast Away” and “Meet the Parents” were all original bets with all of them paying off because the characters at the center were worth watching.

Studios used to trust that a character could, in fact, carry a film on name recognition alone. Now the only name recognition that matters belongs to the franchise, not the person on the poster.

You know, I grew up on characters that far surpassed my generation. You have “Star Wars: A New Hope,” which came out in 1977
and wasn’t even called “A New Hope,” yet, it was just “Star Wars.” However, I still treated Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Darth Vader
like they belonged to me.

Filmmaker George Lucas created a shared universe, where he gave each character real plots, stakes and flaws and that was enough
to surpass generations. The fact that kids born decades after 1977 still care about those characters says everything about what good
writing can do.

Actor Robert Downey Jr. pulled off something similar with Tony Stark. Before 2008, most people outside of comic books had no idea who Iron Man was. Downey changed that so much that the original film was inducted into the U.S. National Film Registry for its cultural impact.

Over the next decade, Stark carried the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe, and when he sacrificed himself in “Avengers: Endgame,” people in theaters cried. That is why my favorite superhero is Iron Man, because he was the cool, funny, but smart, businessman that Downey portrayed so perfectly that my own vocabulary can’t describe. That’s what characters should do because that kind of connection does not happen by accident.

Actor Heath Ledger did it in a single movie. Now you may say, “Well, Joker isn’t an original character,” and yes, you may have
a point. But if you have ever watched The Dark Knight, Ledger’s Joker was so powerful that even an actor like Timothée Chalamet said watching the film at 13 is what made him want to act.

Almost 20 years later, people still quote Ledger’s performance in everyday conversation. After his death, Ledger won a posthumous
Oscar and changed what a villain could be in a hit movie.

With modern Hollywood today, money cannot replace the commitment that these characters have in today’s society. “Avatar,” for example, made nearly $2.9 billion worldwide and remains the highest-grossing film ever, but in a viral YouTube video from Jacksfilms, people on the Santa Monica Pier could not name a single character from the movie.

Canadian filmmaker James Cameron’s creations are some of the biggest movies in history and his characters barely left a mark. Mind you, he created three movies and over $7 billion later, they managed to sell only tickets, not the characters.

It does not always have to be this way. Filmmaker Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” proved that audiences will absolutely show up for original characters when the story is there. Michael B. Jordan’s dual role earned a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes and the film opened as the biggest original debut since “Us” in 2019. It became the first original film to cross $200 million domestically since “Coco” in 2017, earned a record 16 Oscar nominations and grossed nearly $370 million worldwide. Coogler put the character at the center and the audience responded. The formula still works when someone actually uses it.

The bigger problem is that only nine new franchises launched in 2025, down from 20 the year prior. The domestic box office failed to crack $9 billion for two consecutive years, sitting more than 20% below where the industry was before the pandemic. Theaters are now programming re-releases of “Kill Bill” and “Back to the Future” to fill slower months, because they will still pay to see characters they actually remember.

So the question now is whether the movie industry will start becoming original again, or keep chasing sequels and hoping that a familiar logo is enough to make people care.