Intro: The year 2016 has had a lot of movies that have been very popular among the public, such as ‘Captain America’, ‘The Jungle Book’, as well as ‘Dr Strange’, with the latter to be released on November.

     To answer the question, “Is 2016 the climax of the movie industry” I interviewed three movie fans who visit cinemas more than 3 times a month. Interestingly they all had different opinions about the topic.

The poster for X-men Apocalypse ©이십세기폭스코리아

Q: Is 2016 one of the biggest years for the movie industry during the last decade?

A: Yes, above all, the scale of the films that are making their appearances this year are extremely notable. For Instance, ‘Captain America Civil War’, ‘X-men Apocalypse’ as well as ‘Dr Strange’ grabbed a lot of attention globally. Money-wise, 2016 has been something. ‘Captain America Civil War’ alone has made over a billion dollars with ‘Zootopia’ making over nine hundred million globally.

B: No, there have been too many box office crisis’ throughout the first half of this year. Some of the movies were complete failures. Look at ‘Gods of Egypt’, I nearly puked when I saw that movie. ‘Batman versus Superman’, ‘London has fallen’, as well as ‘Huntsmen’ are also mentionable. It is true that there have been a lot of blockbuster movies recently, yet some of them are shown to be very disastrous. Thus, I don’t think so, it would be even ‘sad’ if people call 2016 the best year for the movie industry.

C: Yes and No. There were a lot of good movies that I enjoyed, but there were also a lot of terrible movies that nearly ruined the movie industry this year.  I have high hopes for movies such as ‘Warcraft’ and ‘Doctor Strange’, but I’m also worried that the movies are going to be uber-failures like ‘Batman versus Superman’ and ‘God’s of Egypt’.

Q: Ok, what were the best and worst movie of the year so far?

A: So far the best was Captain America thanks to the impressive storyline, humor and mentionable action scenes. The second best would be the X-men Apocalypse due to the very powerful action scenes. I don’t have a worst.

B: The best, I would go for Captain America for the same reasons. The worst movie is Batman versus Superman, for it was expected to be a boom, but it turned out to be an uber-class failure.

C: The best blockbuster was Captain America. The worst was definitely Gods of Egypt, every scene was terrible.

Q: How do you expect the second half of the year to be to the movie industry?

A: It will go well, ‘Dr Strange’ and ‘Star Trek’ will be spectacular, driving the movie boom in the second half.

B: I don’t expect much actually. There are some attention grabbing pieces but who knows? There may be another ‘Gods of Egypt’ level failure.

C: It will go pretty decently, thanks to the support of ‘Dr Strange’ and ‘Warcraft’.

Conclusion: Overall, I--also a regular movie goer--would say 2016 was the real big year mostly thanks to superhero blockbusters. However, as mentioned, not all of them were decent, to tell the truth. Both epic successes and failures were made in the first half of 2016, making this year noteworthy in many ways. The first half was a good start, and I, as a huge movie fan, wish the second half to be as great as the first half.

Matthew Choi
Grade 8
Asia Pacific International School