These were the 30 biggest trends in movies, television, books, music and pop culture in the 2010s:
Superheroes
The zeitgeist of the 2010s can be described with this one word. “Superheroes” is now its own genre. The Marvel Cinematic Universe, which began in 2008, led the surge with 21 movies and 11 TV series this decade. The seven-film DC Extended Universe (2013-present) couldn’t keep up among critics or fans, but on the other hand, DC’s Arrowverse has taken over the whole CW network. The Tens will unquestionably go down in history as Peak Superhero.
1980s nostalgia
It’s weird to say that the 1980s are a defining element of 2010s pop culture, but such is the case. Whether setting stories in the 1980s like “Stranger Things” (2016-present), or continuing stories that started in the 1980s as with “Cobra Kai” (2018-present), or building a game-style plot around 1980s trivia like in “Ready Player One” (2011 book, 2018 movie), the Eighties were inescapable in the Tens. Meanwhile, Nostalgia Video keeps VHS’s memory alive, Video Vortex is an honest-to-god video store and new albums are available on cassette tape. The heyday of malls is long past (unless you like exploring urban ruins), but some are oddly thriving, and I suspect our desire to not lose everything from the analog era has something to do with that.
The mainstreaming of geekdom
In the 2019 film “Blinded by the Light,” a young Springsteen fan in 1987 is shy about admitting he loves the Boss. I remember being hesitant to admit I liked “Star Wars” in the 1990s. And those are mainstream properties. The destigmatizing of geek culture started in the Aughts, and in the 2010s everyone became a geek. There are still socially awkward geeks, but they are matched in numbers by normals who are passionate about an odd corner of pop culture. Witness the cross-section of customers on “Comic Book Men” (2012-18). People like what they like, and few people bother to judge them for it anymore. Instead, we judge the best Comic-Con cosplayers.
Diversity
I like diversity but dislike the constant talk about diversity. By the end of the Tens, we mostly moved past talking about it all day, and we’re left with a diverse array of TV characters and music chart-toppers. For example, “The Mindy Project” (2012-17) has one of the most diverse TV casts ever, but the reason I liked it was because it was funny. My friend Michael makes a similar observation about the 2018 film “Love, Simon”: It’s a totally formulaic, unremarkable rom-com about gay teens. Meanwhile, “Parenthood” (2010-15) featured two characters with Asperger’s. Shows and movies like these ushered in an era when we can stop talking about diversity and just be a diverse culture.
#MeToo
For 2016’s “All the Money in the World,” Christopher Plummer replaced Kevin Spacey after shooting was otherwise completed, as director Ridley Scott wanted to avoid having to market a film with Spacey, who had been accused of sexual misconduct. In 2018, when Roseanne Barr was booted from her eponymous show for alleged racist statements, a humorous meme circulated suggesting that Plummer would be the new “Roseanne” lead. I have since beat this joke into the ground, sending my pal Michael a meme of Plummer replacing whatever actor has most recently been in hot water (usually for sexual misconduct allegations – in shorthand, people who have been #MeToo’d). Not every allegation has stuck: “Guardians of the Galaxy” director James Gunn received overwhelming support from fans after Marvel Studios/Disney gave him a quick ax for old poor-taste tweets. There will be more #MeToo-ing in the future, but nothing to match the flurry in this decade.
Podcasts
Podcasts date back to 2003, but they exploded in popularity in the Tens. If I want to listen to people talk about niche corners of pop culture, such as “Roswell” or Philip K. Dick, I have a handful of podcasts to choose from. My enjoyment of the TV series “I Am the Night” (2019) was enhanced by its official tie-in ’cast, “Root of Evil” – something TNT was happy to sponsor in the wake of true-crime podcast pioneer “Serial” (2014-present). We’re not at Peak Podcast yet, because it’s not exactly easy to buy and set up a Podcast in a Box, but we’re getting there.
Streaming
Netflix changed TV by existing outside of the old way in which we received TV channels (via cable/satellite companies or antenna) and by releasing TV seasons in one fell swoop, allowing for binge watching. Hulu – which used to do weekly episodic releases – often does the all-at-once drop now, too. Amazon Prime is arguably the best value: Getting free two-day shipping on Amazon-direct buys might pay for itself if you shop online a lot, making Prime Video and Prime Music into bonuses. Trying to keep track of it all? I recommend JustWatch, which will tell you if and where a specific film or show is available.
Bad mainstream music
I don’t understand how Drake, Cardi B, Justin Bieber and their ilk are all over lists of the most popular songs and albums of the decade. And is it just coincidence that most music stars are good-looking? Music used to be one medium where ugly people could be cool. On the plus side, butt rock almost entirely left the charts after being prominent in the Aughts. Combined with the rise of easy music access via streaming (like Prime Music and Spotify), a case could be made that listeners had it better than ever, even though top 40 radio still sucks.
Peak TV
Dang, there is a lot of TV out there. Even discounting choice paralysis – spending the evening scrolling through your Netflix or Prime queue but never clicking on anything – no one has time to watch it all. Even professional TV critics admit to this. It’s a good feedback loop, though. Since we can’t watch it all, we are more likely to excise bad shows and keep good ones on our plate. And so TV keeps getting better. On the downside, the TV community is more fractured and less tightly knit, partly because of all the choices, and partly because of …
Binge watching
The practice of TV seasons being consumed in a short window (“shotgunned,” as my friend Michael says) means shows enter and leave our consciousness more quickly. We can regulate our own episodic intake, of course, but the single-drop release eliminates next-episode mass anticipation and time to soak up people’s theories about the storyline.
Cheap physical media
A bonus of the rise of streaming is the proliferation of cheap physical media online and at thrift stores. Seeking out DVDs (and even Blu-rays), or VHS tapes if you’re into defunct formats, for as little as 50 cents is not only fun, but it’ll make you the most popular person on the block if the internet is destroyed but electricity is still working.
Redbox
Those red DVD-dispensing kiosks surpassed 50 percent of the disc-rental market share in 2013. It seems doubtful that people will chose to physically pick up a disc instead of renting it with a click on their remote for much longer; the price gap is already narrowing. As such, the 2010s will likely go down as the prime decade for Redbox, the transition between video stores and streaming.
The decline of 3D
Appropriately in the decade between the first and second “Avatar” films, the 3D resurgence petered out in the 2010s. Cinemas still show movies in 3D, but many moviegoers seek out 2D screenings because the difference in price doesn’t match the difference in quality. Meanwhile, 3D TVs and 3D home-video releases were more of a thing at the start of the decade than at the end.
Recliners in theaters
Around mid-decade, movie theaters started putting in recliners so people can literally kick back while watching a movie. It’s now surprising to go to a cinema that has old-school seating. Watching a movie at home still seems more appealing, but if it’s a movie you can’t wait a few months for, at least the theater experience became more comfy.
Advancement of home theaters
The last of the 480p square-box laggards were bumped out in the 2010s; now everyone has at least a 720p or 1080p flatscreen. And 4K TVs — along with 4K home-video releases — are becoming more affordable. Sound technology lags behind picture, simply because it takes expertise and work to set up a good sound system in your living room (and you need an ideally shaped living room, too). Atmos is the cutting-edge sound-mix tech, but not every home-video release offers Atmos mixes.
Frame-rate frustrations
Paralleling the increase in pixels is the competing fact that movies look best (especially to cinephiles) at 24 frames per second. As Roger Ebert once said, this is the appropriate frame rate for experiencing the slightly otherworldly magic of movies. Televisions’ default settings are 60 fps, ideal for live events such as sports (and also for daytime soap operas, although that genre mostly died out this decade). All TVs allow you to change between “movie” and “live” settings, but it’s not as easy to toggle as it should be. On the flip side, streaming devices such as Rokus don’t offer 60 fps yet, which is no problem for movies and TV shows, but it’s a frustration for cord-cutters who enjoy live sports.
Sequels, spinoffs, adaptations, remakes and reboots
This trend is good in the sense that we’re more likely than ever before to get continuations of our favorite stories. But it’s bad in that it pushes everything else to the margins. Original ideas can be hard to find amid the noise.
(Almost) nothing is truly canceled
It used to be that an old show was distinctly of the past, but in the Tens, old properties became hot properties. Fans led this charge: Consider the 2014 “Veronica Mars” movie funded by Kickstarter. Soon, Hollywood got on the ball: Hulu produced “Veronica Mars” Season 4 in 2019. Among my personal favorites, “The X-Files” and “Gilmore Girls” returned. If you can think of a popular old title, it has either been revived already or someone is thinking of reviving it.
The ongoing search for another “Lost”
After “Lost” (which wrapped in 2010) and “Fringe” (which ended in 2012), the networks spent the 2010s searching for the next metaphysical/philosophical series where the mystery centers on the very nature of what we’re watching. But most were canceled before the finish line, leading to a negative feedback loop where audiences can’t trust they’ll be rewarded with an ending. RIP to these “What the heck is going on?” mysteries: “The Event,” “Revolution,” “Almost Human,” “Extant,” “The Returned,” “The Mist,” “The Crossing” and “The Passage.” The jury is still out on “Manifest,” “Emergence” and “Westworld.”
Continuity in TV series
True, there are a lot of reboots (where a story, in a nutshell, “starts over”), but when a TV or movie series gets an ongoing story rolling, fans want it to stay internally consistent. In the early days, TV shows didn’t worry about continuity, because viewers didn’t have the ability to cross-check what they were watching against old episodes. That started to change in the 1990s with “The X-Files” and VCRs and the internet and eventually DVDs. But even into the 2000s some old-fashioned TV writers didn’t care about in-universe logic (I’m looking at you, “Gilmore Girls” and Rory’s one-episode job at the Stamford Gazette). In the Tens, the time for excuses had passed. We watch “This Is Us” like hawks, making sure everything lines up right. The writers do too.
The end of George Lucas’ “Star Wars”
As part of its mission to buy everything, Disney purchased “Star Wars” in 2012. The company (and media reports) treated it as a resurrection of the property. The problem is that a lot of loyal fans were enjoying “The Clone Wars” and the books and comics, all of which existed in a continuity and galaxy that started being built in 1977. Disney’s soft reboot in 2014 (only the six core films and “The Clone Wars” were kept in continuity, and all ongoing projects were canceled) shrunk the galaxy into something simpler. For those of us now known as “Star Wars” Legends fans, “Star Wars” As We Knew It ended.
Young adult fiction for all ages
J.K. Rowling made YA fiction into a critically accepted genre in the Aughts, but it went to another level in the Tens. This decade gave us the last two “Harry Potter” films, three-fifths of “The Twilight Saga,” and all of the “Hunger Games,” “Divergent Saga” and “Maze Runner” movies, plus one-offs such as “The Fifth Wave” (2016). It’s not all downbeat futures: Coming-of-age author John Green saw screen adaptations of his “The Fault in Our Stars” (2014), “Paper Towns” (2015), “Looking for Alaska” (2019) and “Let It Snow” (2019). In the wake of “Harry Potter,” there’s a general agreement that it’s perfectly normal for adults to enjoy this stuff too.
Making the last book into two movies
“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” (2010-11) was split into two movies, something that was irksome in the theater, although when watched at home it’s a satisfying epic. It launched an annoying trend, though, leading to “Twilight: Breaking Dawn” (2011-12) and “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay” (2014-15). In both cases, at least one of the final two films is the least-liked of the series. “The Divergent Series” (2014-16) saw its fourth film canceled, and “Maze Runner: The Death Cure” (2018) flirted with a two-parter before settling on one. So perhaps the trend has ended.
Musicals
It’s a perpetually fresh old genre. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s stage musical “Hamilton” (2015-present) was inescapable (if also un-see-able). Movie musicals “The Greatest Showman” (2017) and “A Star Is Born” (2018) gave us hit songs, and “La La Land” (2016) came as close as possible to winning Best Picture without doing so. TV gave us “Glee’s” (2009-15) covers and “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’s” (2015-19) genre-hopping originals.
Awful TV Christmas movies
The Hallmark Channel, Netflix and other channels cranked out holiday films, and by most measurements (IMDB, Metacritic, etc.), they are largely terrible. I tried to dip into the trend a little. 2018’s “Christmas Chronicles” is cute and 2019’s “Let It Snow” is OK, but I have yet to find a new classic. These movies will get better when someone makes a great one and it gets higher ratings than the bad ones.
The perfection of (most) special effects
The new “Planet of the Apes” movies (2011-17) don’t get enough credit for being the best special effects films of all time. (The Oscars nominated all three, then snubbed them all.) We watched three movies without ever questioning the reality of talking apes, the same way we don’t talk about the refs after a flawlessly officiated game. Similarly, the three “John Wick” films (2014-19) perfected a new kind of action movie — “gun-fu” — but we probably undersell how much of it clicks because of masterful computer effects.
The good and bad of de-aging special effects
This specific category of special effects is still in its early stages. It sometimes looks great: I’ve heard few complaints about Michael Douglas in “Ant-Man” (2015) or Kurt Russell in “Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2” (2017). Sometimes they get mixed reviews: I thought Sam Jackson looked good in “Captain Marvel” (2019), but my friend Todd was distracted by his look. Sometimes they are awful: Carrie Fisher died shortly after “Rogue One” (2016) came out, and let’s hope the de-aged Princess Leia was not one of the last things she saw.
The (almost) end of print
A decade ago, I would’ve been writing this post (or “article”) for a print newspaper. The title of the magazine Entertainment Weekly is now an open joke; new issues come out monthly. Some print products are going the niche route – a subscription for four issues of Racquet Magazine costs $80. I work for a newspaper company that is aiming to stabilize its online future while serving the last of the print readership. “Spotlight” (2015) and “The Post” (2017) play like thank-you letters to a bygone era. On the other hand, books stand as the exception to the trend. People like their Kindles for convenience, but if given the option, many prefer holding a book and turning pages.
Memes and giphys
LOL. This was the decade when I began communicating on social media and in texts not just with words, but also with a bevy of acronyms, emojis (already a staple in the Aughts, and now a movie franchise), giphys (mini-video clips, often from movies or TV) and memes (images, often from movies or TV, and short text that convey a strong message). My go-to meme was Doge, the concerned/perplexed Shiba Inu who is bad at spelling and grammar; I received a gold-star membership from the official Doge Facebook page. ROTFL. 🙁
The future is (almost) here
In the 2010s, we were scared of civilization ending (see “The Walking Dead” and those YA dystopias). Those fears aren’t invalid. But at the same time, more hopeful storytellers are preparing us for two big things: space travel and the singularity. Science-based stories about our first steps toward Mars were told in “The Martian” (2011 book, 2015 movie) and TV’s “Mars” (2016-18). The former finds us going to Mars in 2035, the latter in 2033, and both extrapolate from current scientific, economic and political thought. Meanwhile, the singularity (humans and robots merging into one entity) was normalized, whether it’s artificial intelligence without a body (2013’s “Her”), AI in a body (2015’s “Ex Machina” and the 2019 TV series “Emergence”), humans in a virtual reality (2018’s “Ready Player One”) or humans with cyborg parts (2019’s “Alita: Battle Angel”). Aside from the 26th-century set “Alita,” the filmmakers set these stories in the near future.
What are your picks for the biggest entertainment trends of the decade? Share your list in the comment thread below.