It’s derivative. It’s loud. It’s obsessed with the past. But when popular media leans into the absurdity of its own commercialism—as Barbie did with genius and Mario did with sincerity—it creates a communal joy that pure "art" often cannot. We are no longer watching movies; we are watching our childhoods get remastered in 4K. And for now, that is enough to keep the projector rolling.

In the landscape of 2020s popular media, the word “original” has become surprisingly terrifying to studio executives. Instead, the reigning champion of entertainment content is the IP (Intellectual Property) reboot. But not the grim, gritty reboots of the 2010s. We have entered the era of the Self-Aware Spectacle —films that function less like traditional narratives and more like two-hour dopamine hits of recognition.

But is it a good movie ? Critically, it is lacking. The plot is paper-thin; Mario needs to save Luigi, and Chris Pratt sounds like he just woke up. Yet, it grossed over $1.3 billion. Why? Because entertainment has pivoted from "story" to Audiences don't want twists; they want to see Rainbow Road rendered in IMAX. As a reviewer, I found it frustratingly hollow. As a consumer of popular media, I admit I grinned like an idiot when the Raccoon Mario flew. The Verdict on the Media Landscape The review of this era of entertainment is mixed. On one hand, we are drowning in recycled content . Studios are mining Lego, Dungeons & Dragons, and even board games ( Clue is getting another remake). Creativity feels like it is in an ambulance rather than a laboratory.

The review here is glowing, but with a caveat. Barbie is brilliant because it weaponizes nostalgia rather than merely servicing it. It is a corporate product that bites the hand that feeds it just hard enough to draw a little blood, but not hard enough to get sued. For popular media, this is a tightrope walk that few will dare to replicate. Conversely, The Super Mario Bros. Movie is the purest distillation of content as comfort food . Directed by Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic, the film is a visual encyclopedia of the video game. Every frame contains a power-up, a sound effect, or a secret warp zone from 1985.

However, there is an upside. The barrier between "high art" and "low art" has evaporated. Greta Gerwig went from indie darling ( Lady Bird ) to directing the highest-grossing film of the year about a fashion doll. This democratization of taste means that weird, niche passions (like Oppenheimer , a three-hour biopic about a physicist) can coexist with dancing plumbers.

Two recent titans define this shift: Barbie (2023) and The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023). While one is a philosophical treatise painted pink and the other a commercial for plumbing, together they reveal where popular media is headed. Let’s start with the obvious winner. Greta Gerwig’s Barbie faced an impossible task: sell a doll while critiquing the patriarchy. Remarkably, it succeeded by turning its plastic constraint into a surrealist comedy. The film is a masterclass in media literacy . It assumes the audience knows the lore (Skipper, Midge, Weird Barbie) and uses that shared vocabulary to sneak in existential dread about death and cellulite.