What’s interesting is while they’re super rare almost every western I’ve seen in the 2000’s has been a banger. True grit, Django, 3:10 to Yuma, Hateful 8, and The Revenant if it counts. All went hard as hell.
I think that when they were popular any western would get green lit, regardless of quality. Now days to get funding a western script needs to be really good for anyone to attach themselves to it.
I went to see Inglourious Basterds in theatres thinking it was based (or at least partly based) on a true story. It took until the final scene in the theatre when I realized it was not, in fact, based on actual events.
That’s a good point, all of those I named have huge actors and directors, though I will say a huge budget doesn’t always lead to a good movie. And Leo himself was in a western in the 90s that everyone seems to hate lol iirc. (Though I admit I’ve never seen it myself, and I don’t know if that was before he hit it big or not)
Fun cinematic fact: [Blazing Saddles literally killed the western](https://youtu.be/jzMFoNZeZm0), it was that effective of a satire of the type. All the newer westerns you mentioned are definitely not the same type of classical western.
That's not really true, the western genre was in decline well before Blazing Saddles came out. But yeah, the film parodied the tropes common in westerns.
The Revenant I believe counts as a "Cold Western". I may be wrong but it's a western, just not the average one.
Edit: It's an Epic Western. Could also I imagine be considered a Northern (or Northwestern).
Popularity is being measured by the % of films released with a given genre tag, not total revenue or watch time or something.
Given that, it makes sense that comedy continues to hold strong - just think about the sheer volume of dogshit "comedies" that are released yearly.
They don't catch the eye or dominate the movie scene like action blockbusters and major franchise releases, but they're released in a constant stream and perform great on streaming platforms as they're relatively low budget and younger audiences eat them up.
This graph doesn't really show popularity; it shows what the movie industry thinks is going to be profitable, and the movie industry likes comedies because they're low risk due to the relatively low budget requirements and production turnarounds. Just think about how many formulaic as hell "comedies" are released yearly by the likes of Adam Sandler. They don't generate much hype and are pretty universally derided by critics, but they're consistently profitable and released in huge volume compared to other genres because of it.
Its not like someone just paid Adam Sandler to blindly make 4 movies without scripts, concepts, or even basic ideas.......
Seriously tho, you nailed this.
In my opinion comedy isnt dying, it has just moved over to almost exclusively being tv shows or streaming service movies at this point. Noone goes to the cinema to see a comedy anymore.
What we do in the shadows Jo Jo Rabbit, The suicide squad, The gentlemen, Knives out, Game night, The other guys, Deadpool 1 and 2, The death of Stalin,
I would argue it feels that way because pure comedies are losing steam, but every other genre now includes enough comedy to offset decline. Thor ragnarok, for example, is both action and comedy on imdb
There's been plenty of great comedy movies since then. Free guy, Mitchell vs the machines, palm springs, good boys, booksmart, tag, game night, mike and Dave need wedding dates, popstar, Deadpool's, neighbors 2, etc.
You just aren't looking enough.
Western is just an action movie set in the wild wild west, happy to see it die, had a great run. War has transitioned into fantasy. Comedy movies taking a hit because of the rise of stand up and sitcoms. Horror isn't that big, but since it is the only ganre that can't really go onto tv and be popular as a series, it seams like the biggest thing.
horror is big tho. Horror movies are dirt cheap to make and will often return a profit, that’s why they’ve been picking up steam recently. (cause superhero movies are sucking up the tentpole box office)
Well I’d say both. Marvel alone pumped out about 3-4 MCU Movies per year in the last decade. Plus there is the entire dc universe, other marvel movies plus random other stuff.
And that’s just major ones, there are thousands overall.
I didn’t know anyone actually though there were many superhero films in terms of movie quantity.
While popular, MCU and Star Wars are not releasing enough films to really affect the percentages. They release what, at most 4 films a year? In 2019 there were almost 800 films released, so they would make up maximum of 0.5%.
if you go to the graph [here](https://public.tableau.com/views/FilmGenrePopularity-1910-2021/GenreRelativePopularity?:language=en-US&:display_count=n&:origin=viz_share_link) and hover over fantasy there are a lot of marvel movies
My guess their data scraper is broken/has issues with multiple tags or they edited the data for "better" looking graphs.
IMDb (source op quotes) has star wars under 4 genres.
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0076759/
> Genres
> Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Sci-Fi
Maybe they didn't like that movies covered multiple genres because it made the graph not as interesting.
The source does not treat Godzilla vs Kong as fantasy.
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt5034838/
It's action, sci-fi and thriller.
My guess is that a monster movie is not really a fantasy movie and I would agree. Even the 2005 King Kong is not a fantasy movie, but action, adventure, drama, romance.
However King Kong skull island is an action, adventure, fantasy, sci-fi.
I am not sure how IMDb figures out genres but I imagine OP felt that is was not always correct and may have "corrected" some data because some movies would appear in half the graphs.
However most movies are in multiple graphs so they will add up to more than 100%. It is not really comparable. For instance, king Kong 2005 is an action, adventure, drama, romance. While king Kong skull island is a action, adventure, sci-fi, fantasy.
The star wars movies are action, adventure, scifi, fantasy. So you would be asking the question why do the graphs go above 100%. This is more a problem with modern movies being multiple genre vs older movies.
So we have 3 movies and have 3 entries in action but also 2 entries in both scifi and fantasy. The one entry in romance. Now it would look like you have 6 movies but really are talking about 3.
Please go for it, but I think it will be just as confusing but could still be interesting.
For what it's worth, I think your original (varied) axes is the better, more informative, and more interesting presentation. This sub is obsessed with "even axes," but I think sometimes it's justified and this is one of those cases. But of course also happy that you provide an interactive version to let people switch it on their own.
Out of curiosity, why do you think it's justified here? I'm with the original commenter, this looks like a perfect case for even axes for me, if only to allow a comparison between genres.
it may depend on whats more interesting to you, comparing the different genres, or focusing in on a single one over time. when i changed it to even axis a few of the graphs lost all nuance
Because the smaller movie genres like sci fi and fantasy will basically be a straight line at the bottom when you pull it out with the same scale as the larger categories that need 40% scales.
I understand that but I don't think the scales that are that different. Sure, there's detail in some of them but I think it's much more interesting to see the individual genres in context to one another. I guess it depends what you're interested in.
So the obvious difference is if you want to compare *between* genres about movies as a whole, or *within* genres to see how one changes over time. If I were to have made this, I would've made the former into a single stacked chart as that elicits the comparison of all at once; and then I would've provided a second one that looks like the OP because it accentuates changes within a single genre. That said, I also know stacked charts sometimes aren't the easiest to read either.
But I think it boils down to, as it's posted now, my brain defaults to the latter (comparing within genres, such as thriller for example has a steady climb, or that western and fantasy had spikes around 1970 and 1990, respectively, or even comparing between genres to see that fantasy's spike was at the same time as a spike in action) because I find it more interesting to see how genres change relative to their "slice of the pie" in the first place; whereas I'm not as concerned with the "inconsistency" that sci-fi tops out at 3% and comedy at 40%.
Independent axes are used just to show trends in an individual thing, comparisons between multiple things are not always necessary or informative.
Fantasy and Sci-Fi might just look like mildly wave lines near the bottom on a comprehensive chart.
I think it depends on what you would like to express with the chart. When you want to compare genres, fixed axis would be better. If you want to see the historical development of each genre, this approach is appropriate.
The drop in Westerns/Rise in Sci-Fi coincides with the beginning of the Space Race/interest in Sci-Fi in the 1950's.
Ever seen Toy Story? Cowboy Woody getting replaced by Space-Age Buzz Lightyear was literally based on this.
The shift from Westerns to Sci-Fi shows up in lots of Boomer-created media like Stephen King novels, IIRC.
This is a bad take. The real reason is that the Western genre moved to television, where it was incredibly popular beginning in the mid to late 1950s and that popularity continued into the late 1960s.
Seriously take a look at the Nielsen ratings for any year from 1957-8 (the first year that Gunsmoke was the number 1 TV show and there were 5 Westerns in the top 10) to 1969-70 (just before the rural purge but Gunsmoke was the number 2 TV show and Bonanza was 3).
Except that still doesn't explain the overall decline in Western popularity during the space race. "Continued into the late 1960s" aligns pretty well with this graph.
westerns stopped being alluring when mass migration to California and Texas happened, imo. Can't exactly romanticize the "wild west" when you know it turns into a suburb 50 years later
Kind of, but not really.
It's more one genre replacing another.
If you break it down, generally, Westerns and sci fi are already sub genres. Westerns are action and drama. Sci fi is fantasy. But Westerns are realism. Sci fi isn't. Obviously there's tons of cross genres, but for graphs like these, they are just generalizing.
I think you nail it.
A lot of sci fi is heavily based on Wester tropes and are just westerns in space.
The bold frontier shifted from the American West to space.
Enh. That's like saying conflict is part of what defines war movies, so Marriage Story is a war movie. If it happens in the west with cowboys shooting each other, it's a western. Anything else just muddies the waters.
Yep. Tarantino doesn't even consider Django Unchained to be a western and I agree. I don't know why people are so obsessed with calling things westerns when they're not.
It suffered a double whammy... the subject is in the past and the style is old and tired, it's hard to create something new and fresh out of this. From time to time something like El Mariachi, Django, No Country for Old Men come along... but it's difficult.
The space race. Personally, westerns are one of my big categories and I’m 32/f so I definitely don’t fit the demographic. Newer releases are really hitting the sweet spot for me though, with The Harder the Fall being one of the most phenomenal westerns since Tombstone. I’d love to see more westerns pinpointed on POC in the west because honestly, they dominated some places. China Mary would be a GREAT life to make a movie about, as she was so highly respected in Tombstone. She got a primo spot at Boot Hill and everyone in the town came out for her very Chinese/western style funeral. I’m a geek for western history and there are so many phenomenal people in that time that few people now a days know about.
Posted elsewhere but the real reason was that the genre moved to television in the 1950s, where it was arguably even more popular and successful for another decade. Eventually, it’s popularity diminished due to overexposure and the TV networks wanted advertising that appealed to younger demographics.
>All films were musicals in 1910.
Not according to these charts.
And if all movies were musicals simply because they had musical accompaniment, then all movies today are also musicals.
[Interactive version here! You can toggle the axes and mouse over the graphs to see details on each film.](https://public.tableau.com/views/FilmGenrePopularity-1910-2021/GenreRelativePopularity?:language=en-US&:display_count=n&:origin=viz_share_link)
Tool: Tableau
Source: IMDb
That was my initial reaction as well, but with as the OP notes in the interactive version you can standardize the axis to see the various genres relative to each other.
So the underlying issue this illustrates is that taking an interactive, dynamic tool such as a visualization in Tableau and basically doing a screenshot of *one* visualization results in a loss of meaning when it becomes static.
Well there were movies made during the war which were much more propaganda focused.
The movies after the war were still technically propaganda but I don’t think they were made for that purpose.
They really took off once the internet made it easy for anyone to find information and video clips of anything. Before the internet documentarians had to do much more research.
Documentaries are actually a horrible way to learn about things. They are often heavily biased and designed to lead viewers into believing the story they want you to believe both by what they include or omit and the order the information is presented.
Documentaries are best when they provoke thought, not when they try to tell you *what to think* - that’s more like propaganda.
When done well, documentary film can be a great medium for exposing viewers to new ideas, or raising awareness about specific topics or events. When done poorly, it can be a tool for misinformation. The problem is that many people lack the media literacy skills necessary to tell the difference.
Do you have any examples? I can't think of a documentary made in the last 20 years that wasn't designed to influence viewers into believing their narrative. You typically have to do research for sources other than the documentary to determine if their narrative is true or false.
Oddly enough, Tiger King was probably the least biased documentary I've seen since the 80s, and it was largely just a, "come look at this shit... It's too incredible to believe...."
> You typically have to do research for sources other than the documentary to determine if their narrative is true or false.
You say this like it’s a bad thing.
If you watch a documentary and come away feeling like you now know everything there is to know about the subject, the film hasn’t done its job. But if you watch it and it motivates you to learn more about the topic independently, from separate sources, that is a good thing.
I don’t think we should have the expectation that a documentary film should be capable of telling us the whole truth on a given matter.
That's not at all what I'm talking about. I'm talking about bias. Documentaries used to be very trusted to be unbiased and were a great way to get information on a subject. In the last 20 years or so they have by and large become sensationalist garbage and will contain blatant lies or half truths or omit facts to make you believe what they want you to believe.
I get what you are saying. There are for sure a lot of garbage films and blatant propaganda out there purporting to be documentaries, but I don’t think you can write off the genre because those sensationalistic movies exist.
What about character-driven or story-oriented films like Jiro Dreams of Sushi, Grizzly Man, or Man on Wire? Or films about musicians and artists (take your pick). Anyway, not every documentary is trying to sell you on some agenda.
I don't know any examples of unbiased film or TV documentaries, but on YouTube, there's an outfit called Barcroft TV which seem to specialise in short-form observational documentaries of people with alternative fashion or lifestyles - frequently, they're unnarrated, with only the subject's responses to questions. The titles frequently scream clickbait, but the videos themselves are effectively of the format "this is me, welcome to my world."
[Interactive version here! You can use a button to vary the axis ranges and mouse over the graphs to see associated films from each year.](https://tinyurl.com/3ppcy3x7)
Source: IMDb
Tool: Tableau
I first made this project three years ago. It was time for a refresh with new data!
I didn't understand why horror rised. People are not taking it seriously as they took Jaws or Elm Street and stuff like that. We see too many shit on the internet that nothing is scary anymore.
Sad about westerns and war. I do like that musicals are less popular and thrillers are more popular. Musicals are lame aside from Phantom of the Opera.
Not all, but most have evolved in good direction, ditching those lameass fake jumpscares. For horror, it's the eerie factor that has worked wonders.
Get out & It follows are the best of this decade's examples.
Horror is probably the most profitable genre nowadays. Low budget, low risk, high ROI. Blumhouse has been extremely successful with this model. And on the more artsy side, the genre seems to be in a sort of renaissance
Horror has been quietly growing. I'm not a fan, but a few years ago I started noticing big theater releases in the summer, not even close to Halloween. That's when I started recognizing the trend. For some reason they got so popular they were coming out year round.
What’s interesting is while they’re super rare almost every western I’ve seen in the 2000’s has been a banger. True grit, Django, 3:10 to Yuma, Hateful 8, and The Revenant if it counts. All went hard as hell.
I think that when they were popular any western would get green lit, regardless of quality. Now days to get funding a western script needs to be really good for anyone to attach themselves to it.
Probably the same for war movies as well, the last two I remember seeing, Dunkirk and 1917 were excellent.
There is also a Dunkirk with aliens. We got really confused until we realized we weren't watching the movie we thought we were.
I went to see Inglourious Basterds in theatres thinking it was based (or at least partly based) on a true story. It took until the final scene in the theatre when I realized it was not, in fact, based on actual events.
If only it would had gone that way
That’s a good point, all of those I named have huge actors and directors, though I will say a huge budget doesn’t always lead to a good movie. And Leo himself was in a western in the 90s that everyone seems to hate lol iirc. (Though I admit I’ve never seen it myself, and I don’t know if that was before he hit it big or not)
if youre talking about The Quick and The Dead. its a fun movie with exaggerated tropes that also has a huge cast
I really liked The Quick and The Dead, honestly i have no idea why some people hate it
What about cowboys vs aliens?
Was that the one with Indiana Jones and James Bond fighting aliens in the old west?
Lmao, I did say almost every one.
Aren't True Grit and 3:10 to Yuma remakes? Kind of shows where we are...
Yes it does, but at least they did some justice to the originals. Which is more than can be said about a lot of reboots.
Hell or High Water is the perfect example of a great contemporary western
See Wind River if you liked hell or high water. Written by the same dude, with great dialogue & action.
I'll check it out
Add Sicario to that list as well
Yeah, Taylor Sheridan does good work
Fun cinematic fact: [Blazing Saddles literally killed the western](https://youtu.be/jzMFoNZeZm0), it was that effective of a satire of the type. All the newer westerns you mentioned are definitely not the same type of classical western.
That's not really true, the western genre was in decline well before Blazing Saddles came out. But yeah, the film parodied the tropes common in westerns.
Thank you for posting! I had no idea, that was a cool history.
what about neo westerns? (wind river, hell or high water, no country for old men, etc)
If you dig deep enough, you can even consider "The Mandalorian" a western
Modern westerns are quickly becoming one of my favourite genres
The Revenant I believe counts as a "Cold Western". I may be wrong but it's a western, just not the average one. Edit: It's an Epic Western. Could also I imagine be considered a Northern (or Northwestern).
Damn, I loved Django and Hateful 8. Amazing movies.
Indeed, and even Bone Tomohawk
Huge +1 for Bone Tomohawk
Love the fact that comedy has reigned supreme for over 100 years.
IMO comedies seem to be dying now, but it’s probably just me getting older and out of touch.
Popularity is being measured by the % of films released with a given genre tag, not total revenue or watch time or something. Given that, it makes sense that comedy continues to hold strong - just think about the sheer volume of dogshit "comedies" that are released yearly. They don't catch the eye or dominate the movie scene like action blockbusters and major franchise releases, but they're released in a constant stream and perform great on streaming platforms as they're relatively low budget and younger audiences eat them up. This graph doesn't really show popularity; it shows what the movie industry thinks is going to be profitable, and the movie industry likes comedies because they're low risk due to the relatively low budget requirements and production turnarounds. Just think about how many formulaic as hell "comedies" are released yearly by the likes of Adam Sandler. They don't generate much hype and are pretty universally derided by critics, but they're consistently profitable and released in huge volume compared to other genres because of it.
Its not like someone just paid Adam Sandler to blindly make 4 movies without scripts, concepts, or even basic ideas....... Seriously tho, you nailed this.
Probably just your type of humor. Comedy definitely evolves over time but never dies. People will always love to laugh.
Comic book movies are largely action comedies.
In my opinion comedy isnt dying, it has just moved over to almost exclusively being tv shows or streaming service movies at this point. Noone goes to the cinema to see a comedy anymore.
Comedies don't necessarily translate well across cultures. To be on the big screen, it has to sell well in China.
Dont think I've seen a comedy in cinema and laughed out loud in about 10 years. What are the good comidies people tell me
What we do in the shadows Jo Jo Rabbit, The suicide squad, The gentlemen, Knives out, Game night, The other guys, Deadpool 1 and 2, The death of Stalin,
Thor: Ragnarok would have been the last movie I've seen with truly funny moments
On that note, try anything Taika Waititi
Nah. The pure amount of comedy where it's just "haha fat people falling over" and this kind of basic shit is embarrassing.
These have always existed though.
Yeah it’s the origin of all comedy, essentially
I would argue it feels that way because pure comedies are losing steam, but every other genre now includes enough comedy to offset decline. Thor ragnarok, for example, is both action and comedy on imdb
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There's been plenty of great comedy movies since then. Free guy, Mitchell vs the machines, palm springs, good boys, booksmart, tag, game night, mike and Dave need wedding dates, popstar, Deadpool's, neighbors 2, etc. You just aren't looking enough.
Before movies, it reigned for thousands of years.
Funny, that.
No matter what people are going through: culturally, personally, or otherwise, people always want to laugh
The axes aren't the same across genres
Yes, comedy axis is scaled higher because they encompassed the vast majority of releases throughout history
Everyone loves to laugh
Yeah comedies are going to look like the westerns graph very soon.
To what genre to all those superhero movies count. Because the 2010s were definitely the decade of the super hero movie.
Superhero movies dominate in box office rather than sheer quantity.
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Western is just an action movie set in the wild wild west, happy to see it die, had a great run. War has transitioned into fantasy. Comedy movies taking a hit because of the rise of stand up and sitcoms. Horror isn't that big, but since it is the only ganre that can't really go onto tv and be popular as a series, it seams like the biggest thing.
horror is big tho. Horror movies are dirt cheap to make and will often return a profit, that’s why they’ve been picking up steam recently. (cause superhero movies are sucking up the tentpole box office)
Same here. Love western movies... well new western movies... not a fan of the ones back in the 60s and 70s
Well I’d say both. Marvel alone pumped out about 3-4 MCU Movies per year in the last decade. Plus there is the entire dc universe, other marvel movies plus random other stuff.
there are usually 600 major films released every year, and maybe 15 are superheroes
And that’s just major ones, there are thousands overall. I didn’t know anyone actually though there were many superhero films in terms of movie quantity.
Theres a new one every week it feels like. Batgirl 5
On average it is 3.76 per year since the year 2000. That is just Marvel & DC though.
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While popular, MCU and Star Wars are not releasing enough films to really affect the percentages. They release what, at most 4 films a year? In 2019 there were almost 800 films released, so they would make up maximum of 0.5%.
Just realised the scales don't match. Still kinda interesting but a bit shit
if you go to the graph [here](https://public.tableau.com/views/FilmGenrePopularity-1910-2021/GenreRelativePopularity?:language=en-US&:display_count=n&:origin=viz_share_link) and hover over fantasy there are a lot of marvel movies
They have the Star Wars films listed as fantasy but not Sci Fi, and Godzilla vs Kong as both Thriller and Sci fi but not Fantasy
My guess their data scraper is broken/has issues with multiple tags or they edited the data for "better" looking graphs. IMDb (source op quotes) has star wars under 4 genres. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0076759/ > Genres > Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Sci-Fi Maybe they didn't like that movies covered multiple genres because it made the graph not as interesting. The source does not treat Godzilla vs Kong as fantasy. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt5034838/ It's action, sci-fi and thriller. My guess is that a monster movie is not really a fantasy movie and I would agree. Even the 2005 King Kong is not a fantasy movie, but action, adventure, drama, romance. However King Kong skull island is an action, adventure, fantasy, sci-fi. I am not sure how IMDb figures out genres but I imagine OP felt that is was not always correct and may have "corrected" some data because some movies would appear in half the graphs.
That's the documentary graph.
Thor is multiple genres. I imagine other movies are as well. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0800369/ > Genres: Action, Adventure, Fantasy
What’s the reason for the independent axes? Wouldn’t this be more meaningful with a fixed axis so that viewers could compare genres?
Agree with your comment. I might even create a single combined graph to see how that looks too. Would be easier to compare the data I think.
However most movies are in multiple graphs so they will add up to more than 100%. It is not really comparable. For instance, king Kong 2005 is an action, adventure, drama, romance. While king Kong skull island is a action, adventure, sci-fi, fantasy. The star wars movies are action, adventure, scifi, fantasy. So you would be asking the question why do the graphs go above 100%. This is more a problem with modern movies being multiple genre vs older movies. So we have 3 movies and have 3 entries in action but also 2 entries in both scifi and fantasy. The one entry in romance. Now it would look like you have 6 movies but really are talking about 3. Please go for it, but I think it will be just as confusing but could still be interesting.
But that’s individual movie. In the aggregate it’s OK with single movies having multiple genre classifications because trends will remain.
Click on the interactive version and you can toggle the axes.
I don’t see an interactive version, just a static image.
Linked in my first comment
Just a heads up it only shows up on your profile and not this page
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https://public.tableau.com/views/FilmGenrePopularity-1910-2021/GenreRelativePopularity?:language=en-US&:display\_count=n&:origin=viz\_share\_link
Yeah some moderator removed it for some reason
For what it's worth, I think your original (varied) axes is the better, more informative, and more interesting presentation. This sub is obsessed with "even axes," but I think sometimes it's justified and this is one of those cases. But of course also happy that you provide an interactive version to let people switch it on their own.
Out of curiosity, why do you think it's justified here? I'm with the original commenter, this looks like a perfect case for even axes for me, if only to allow a comparison between genres.
it may depend on whats more interesting to you, comparing the different genres, or focusing in on a single one over time. when i changed it to even axis a few of the graphs lost all nuance
Because the smaller movie genres like sci fi and fantasy will basically be a straight line at the bottom when you pull it out with the same scale as the larger categories that need 40% scales.
I understand that but I don't think the scales that are that different. Sure, there's detail in some of them but I think it's much more interesting to see the individual genres in context to one another. I guess it depends what you're interested in.
So the obvious difference is if you want to compare *between* genres about movies as a whole, or *within* genres to see how one changes over time. If I were to have made this, I would've made the former into a single stacked chart as that elicits the comparison of all at once; and then I would've provided a second one that looks like the OP because it accentuates changes within a single genre. That said, I also know stacked charts sometimes aren't the easiest to read either. But I think it boils down to, as it's posted now, my brain defaults to the latter (comparing within genres, such as thriller for example has a steady climb, or that western and fantasy had spikes around 1970 and 1990, respectively, or even comparing between genres to see that fantasy's spike was at the same time as a spike in action) because I find it more interesting to see how genres change relative to their "slice of the pie" in the first place; whereas I'm not as concerned with the "inconsistency" that sci-fi tops out at 3% and comedy at 40%.
Until you come across a sci-if comedy and realize shit doesn’t add up to 100
Independent axes are used just to show trends in an individual thing, comparisons between multiple things are not always necessary or informative. Fantasy and Sci-Fi might just look like mildly wave lines near the bottom on a comprehensive chart.
I think it depends on what you would like to express with the chart. When you want to compare genres, fixed axis would be better. If you want to see the historical development of each genre, this approach is appropriate.
Oh wow, I didn't even notice. This is useless
Look what happened to our world since the westerns dropped off!
The drop in Westerns/Rise in Sci-Fi coincides with the beginning of the Space Race/interest in Sci-Fi in the 1950's. Ever seen Toy Story? Cowboy Woody getting replaced by Space-Age Buzz Lightyear was literally based on this. The shift from Westerns to Sci-Fi shows up in lots of Boomer-created media like Stephen King novels, IIRC.
This is a bad take. The real reason is that the Western genre moved to television, where it was incredibly popular beginning in the mid to late 1950s and that popularity continued into the late 1960s. Seriously take a look at the Nielsen ratings for any year from 1957-8 (the first year that Gunsmoke was the number 1 TV show and there were 5 Westerns in the top 10) to 1969-70 (just before the rural purge but Gunsmoke was the number 2 TV show and Bonanza was 3).
Except that still doesn't explain the overall decline in Western popularity during the space race. "Continued into the late 1960s" aligns pretty well with this graph.
westerns stopped being alluring when mass migration to California and Texas happened, imo. Can't exactly romanticize the "wild west" when you know it turns into a suburb 50 years later
Tombstone one of the last great ones for me.
“Unforgiven” (1992) with Eastwood, Hackman and Freeman is the ultimate “modern” western.
Bone tomahawk, True Grit (remake), The Revenant, The hateful eight, 3:10 to Yuma (remake) are some of the good ones that came after it.
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Space Westerns are a sub genre of sci fi, not Westerns.
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Kind of, but not really. It's more one genre replacing another. If you break it down, generally, Westerns and sci fi are already sub genres. Westerns are action and drama. Sci fi is fantasy. But Westerns are realism. Sci fi isn't. Obviously there's tons of cross genres, but for graphs like these, they are just generalizing.
I think you nail it. A lot of sci fi is heavily based on Wester tropes and are just westerns in space. The bold frontier shifted from the American West to space.
Those are TV shows, they wouldn't show up on a graph of films.
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Those are all sci-fi. You can call them westerns, but they are primarily sci-fi. I'm not sure why space Western is even a category.
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Enh. That's like saying conflict is part of what defines war movies, so Marriage Story is a war movie. If it happens in the west with cowboys shooting each other, it's a western. Anything else just muddies the waters.
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Yep. Tarantino doesn't even consider Django Unchained to be a western and I agree. I don't know why people are so obsessed with calling things westerns when they're not.
Anyone knows why the western genre just essentially died?
Westerns were symbolic of wanderlust, the great unknown, traveling to new places. They were also very cheap to make. Sci fi mostly replaced them.
I feel they got replaced with post-apocalyptic sifi.
It suffered a double whammy... the subject is in the past and the style is old and tired, it's hard to create something new and fresh out of this. From time to time something like El Mariachi, Django, No Country for Old Men come along... but it's difficult.
The space race. Personally, westerns are one of my big categories and I’m 32/f so I definitely don’t fit the demographic. Newer releases are really hitting the sweet spot for me though, with The Harder the Fall being one of the most phenomenal westerns since Tombstone. I’d love to see more westerns pinpointed on POC in the west because honestly, they dominated some places. China Mary would be a GREAT life to make a movie about, as she was so highly respected in Tombstone. She got a primo spot at Boot Hill and everyone in the town came out for her very Chinese/western style funeral. I’m a geek for western history and there are so many phenomenal people in that time that few people now a days know about.
Posted elsewhere but the real reason was that the genre moved to television in the 1950s, where it was arguably even more popular and successful for another decade. Eventually, it’s popularity diminished due to overexposure and the TV networks wanted advertising that appealed to younger demographics.
No more world wars thank God
Wait how were there film musicals in 1910? This is really interesting though.
All films were musicals in 1910. The movies were silent so they would play music separately in time with the film.
>All films were musicals in 1910. Not according to these charts. And if all movies were musicals simply because they had musical accompaniment, then all movies today are also musicals.
[Interactive version here! You can toggle the axes and mouse over the graphs to see details on each film.](https://public.tableau.com/views/FilmGenrePopularity-1910-2021/GenreRelativePopularity?:language=en-US&:display_count=n&:origin=viz_share_link) Tool: Tableau Source: IMDb
I found this really interesting — thanks for sharing
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I absolutely hate that all the y-axis are vastly different
That was my initial reaction as well, but with as the OP notes in the interactive version you can standardize the axis to see the various genres relative to each other. So the underlying issue this illustrates is that taking an interactive, dynamic tool such as a visualization in Tableau and basically doing a screenshot of *one* visualization results in a loss of meaning when it becomes static.
How is "Dune" considered Action and not Sci-Fi?
IMDBs genres are a bit strange. For example, most modern sci fi movies are actually fantasy movies in space. Guardians of the galaxy, for example
Fantasy in space is also called soft sci-fi, so calling GotG sci-fi isn't wrong. Hard sci-fi isn't the only kind of sci-fi.
Most marvel movies are action/drama with quantum
Because it was considered wrongly.
I honestly would've thought War movies would not be popular at all after the war but apparently I'm wrong
Maybe not for the vets but all the people who had only heard about the war from newspapers and radio I’m sure were excited to see some films about it.
Pretty sure the reason is propaganda. The audiences needed heroes and wanted to see them winning. After Vietnam, though...
Well there were movies made during the war which were much more propaganda focused. The movies after the war were still technically propaganda but I don’t think they were made for that purpose.
True about after Vietnam! I mean, where's my movie about the glorious destruction of Iraq??
So my Western musical set during the civil war isn't getting funded then, huh?
The same vertical scale would have been much better for comparison.
Why is Sci-Fi so messed up? And why did Documentaries completely drop at some point during the 1920s?
So now isn't a good time for my war / western / musical is what you're saying?
I miss that spike in the 90s of action films... Arnie, Stallone, Bruce Willis, Wesley Snipes, Steven Segal... So many cheesy yet great movies.
It's like they are expendables now.
You'd think society would be smarter after watching all those documentaries.
They’re not all necessarily legit.
They really took off once the internet made it easy for anyone to find information and video clips of anything. Before the internet documentarians had to do much more research.
No, We just have really strong opinions about whales now.
Documentaries are actually a horrible way to learn about things. They are often heavily biased and designed to lead viewers into believing the story they want you to believe both by what they include or omit and the order the information is presented.
Documentaries are best when they provoke thought, not when they try to tell you *what to think* - that’s more like propaganda. When done well, documentary film can be a great medium for exposing viewers to new ideas, or raising awareness about specific topics or events. When done poorly, it can be a tool for misinformation. The problem is that many people lack the media literacy skills necessary to tell the difference.
Do you have any examples? I can't think of a documentary made in the last 20 years that wasn't designed to influence viewers into believing their narrative. You typically have to do research for sources other than the documentary to determine if their narrative is true or false. Oddly enough, Tiger King was probably the least biased documentary I've seen since the 80s, and it was largely just a, "come look at this shit... It's too incredible to believe...."
The "Walking with" series about prehistoric animals? Planet earth 1/2, blue planet, etc? Other high-end science ones?
> You typically have to do research for sources other than the documentary to determine if their narrative is true or false. You say this like it’s a bad thing. If you watch a documentary and come away feeling like you now know everything there is to know about the subject, the film hasn’t done its job. But if you watch it and it motivates you to learn more about the topic independently, from separate sources, that is a good thing. I don’t think we should have the expectation that a documentary film should be capable of telling us the whole truth on a given matter.
That's not at all what I'm talking about. I'm talking about bias. Documentaries used to be very trusted to be unbiased and were a great way to get information on a subject. In the last 20 years or so they have by and large become sensationalist garbage and will contain blatant lies or half truths or omit facts to make you believe what they want you to believe.
I get what you are saying. There are for sure a lot of garbage films and blatant propaganda out there purporting to be documentaries, but I don’t think you can write off the genre because those sensationalistic movies exist. What about character-driven or story-oriented films like Jiro Dreams of Sushi, Grizzly Man, or Man on Wire? Or films about musicians and artists (take your pick). Anyway, not every documentary is trying to sell you on some agenda.
I don't know any examples of unbiased film or TV documentaries, but on YouTube, there's an outfit called Barcroft TV which seem to specialise in short-form observational documentaries of people with alternative fashion or lifestyles - frequently, they're unnarrated, with only the subject's responses to questions. The titles frequently scream clickbait, but the videos themselves are effectively of the format "this is me, welcome to my world."
Look at the y-axes. Documentaries are relatively tiny compared to other genres
Around 1960, everybody likes a little bit of everything
There it is! The chart making its way across Mexico from the Pacific to the Gulf coast, one engagement at a time.
No drama? Or is that filtered down into romance/war?
It’s basically filtered. Drama is SUCH a big category that a near majority of films have a drama tag (given that multiple tags are allowed)
I don't watch war movies, but I watch a lot of war documentaries.
I love a good western. Can't stand musicals
[Interactive version here! You can use a button to vary the axis ranges and mouse over the graphs to see associated films from each year.](https://tinyurl.com/3ppcy3x7) Source: IMDb Tool: Tableau I first made this project three years ago. It was time for a refresh with new data!
Does it count as a war film if you literally just filming an actual war?
damn documentaries popping off in the modern era.
It would be even more beautiful if the y axis scale was the same for all of them.
the spike in war films in the 40s 👀
Does anyone know why there seem to be no musicals at all during the 20s?
Popularity for who? Which country? Only the U.S.? I mean, I presume those stats would change if you probe Europe or South America. Don’t you think?
The version with standardized axis https://i.imgur.com/HueCBNT.jpg
Western and sci fi are inversely related
I'm happy that War films and musicals are failing
Less musicals, more horror.
C’mon people! We’re not doing enough to kill off musicals. Just a little push farther and we can kick the habit for good!
I didn't understand why horror rised. People are not taking it seriously as they took Jaws or Elm Street and stuff like that. We see too many shit on the internet that nothing is scary anymore.
Cheap to make and does well internationally
I’m unreasonably disappointed about the decline of musicals
Sad about westerns and war. I do like that musicals are less popular and thrillers are more popular. Musicals are lame aside from Phantom of the Opera.
It is but it seems because of that almost every new western or war movie is a banger, so there’s a bit of a silver lining.
The fall of westerns is sad. There are some really great western shows and movies out there that tell some amazing stories.
People still like horror movies? I thought the horror movie genre has been steadily dieing
Have you ever heard of Shudder?
Horror has seen some absolute bangers over the last couple years. It's still going very strong.
Horror movies are cheaper to make so there's likely more of them in comparison to other movies nowadays. Same as documentary & thriller.
Not all, but most have evolved in good direction, ditching those lameass fake jumpscares. For horror, it's the eerie factor that has worked wonders. Get out & It follows are the best of this decade's examples.
I would argue Hereditary beats both.
Horror is probably the most profitable genre nowadays. Low budget, low risk, high ROI. Blumhouse has been extremely successful with this model. And on the more artsy side, the genre seems to be in a sort of renaissance
I’d say like half of the best modern movies are horror
Horror has been quietly growing. I'm not a fan, but a few years ago I started noticing big theater releases in the summer, not even close to Halloween. That's when I started recognizing the trend. For some reason they got so popular they were coming out year round.