Most mainstream films follow a theme in that they reflect the cultural attitudes and interests of the time. Nowhere is this as obvious as with the action genre, with the antagonists in the Cold War era commonly being portrayed as Russian, whereas today the Middle East has largely become the de facto fictional home for bad dudes.
As interests in many greater topics have demonstrably appeared in a cycle, with retro often becoming the new cool, we have to wonder exactly where this leaves us in terms of film theme resurgence. What is ready to make a comeback, and what is it which we want to see returning to the silver screen?
Perhaps the most obvious answer to this is the land of casinos. The original popularity of these businesses among public consciousness was owed to what they stood for in terms of human accomplishment. Las Vegas, for example, was an example of not just wealth, but of progress. It was more than a novelty; it was a monument to the dominance of man on the grandest scale possible.
While we might not still have that level of obsession with traditional casinos, which inevitably led to the decline in film coverage, the industry itself is now in a far better place than it has been in years.
This modern popularity is owed to the success of online casinos, which offer more opportunities and at greater levels of convenience than ever. These cover the classics like blackjack and roulette to newer developments like facing live dealers in an online casino environment, and this has accomplished a great deal in resolidifying their place in our lives.
Sure, online casinos might not be the easiest to adapt to film, but the interest and nostalgia they have drawn back to traditional casinos have done more than enough to prove a viable path of pursuit.
The other topic which we would be remiss to, well, miss, is that of the classic western. Unlike casino-based films, which appeal to our pride of progress, these draw us back in an opposite direction. Old westerns make us think of an earlier time, a simpler time, where man fought the wilderness with nothing but gumption and quickness of wit.
Again, this might have fallen out of its former level of public awareness, but the current exhaustion which many of us feel with the modern world helps this to appeal to us more than ever. These work as an escape to a place many of us would like a piece of, even if we wouldn’t care to dwell within it permanently.
Time alone, time to think, and time to socialize with similarly world-weary individuals, all of these aspects drive a return to western interests, as films like Hell or High Water and Hickok have shown so well.
This is not to say that we don’t love the modern age of spectacle, with the likes of superhero films and animated films holding an important part within our hearts. Sometimes, though, we want more of a return to the classic, to those which popularised the world of film and television in the first place. That said, we’re sure there will be many other examples coming around the track again, so what are you looking forward to the most, or which would you be happy to see relegated to annals of history?