That iconic final shot of 2018’s A Quiet Place left little ambiguity about what the future held for the Abbott family. As she cocked back the shotgun that had finally bested one of the mysterious sound hunting beasts, Evelyn (Emily Blunt) clearly signaled that better days are ahead. Finishing with such a clear, definitive scene made the almost immediate announcement of A Quiet Place: Part II feel unwarranted. The sequel could have been just another studio cash grab, but it turns out returning director John Krasinski had more in mind.

Modern Hollywood offers precious few opportunities for auteur directors. Long gone are the days when a big name auteur behind the camera — someone like Hitchcock or Coppola — meant a critical mass of eyeballs. Big franchises have crowded out the idiosyncratic blockbusters of old, either assimilating their directors or shunting them to mid budget indies. Only a handful of directors are left who can draw a crowd and, for some reason, one of them is Zack Snyder.

If there is one defining feature of the empire Marvel has built over the last 13 years it would be the homogeneity of their films. After Iron Man launched the most popular franchise in the history of film, the MCU has understandably clung to the formula that launched their success. Each installment features some variation of the same fights of good vs evil, the same hero archetype, the same fundamentally evil villain and a staunch avoidance of anything remotely controversial.

“[We] made it for the fans.” Although this quote is specifically attributed to a David Ayer tweet following the relentless pans of his 2016 Suicide Squad, the sentiment could have come from any franchise director of the last few years. As Hollywood has become more and more IP driven, the fans have become more and more of a shield for bad movies. Marvel and especially DC have consistently put out lifeless films with just enough fan service to get their die hard supporters to flood into theaters multiple times. Now it seems that Warner — purveyors of both the DCEU and the recently ended MonsterVerse — is attempting to graft this format onto Mortal Kombat.

I’m starting to become concerned about the 2021 film year. A few big titles have trickled in, from Judas and the Black Messiah taking advantage of the the extended Oscars window to Disney testing out Premier Access again with Raya and the Last Dragon. Those have been great, but so to date are proving to be the exceptions to the rule. What movie fans feared of 2020 is coming to a more dire fruition now.

From it’s very inception, there has been a contentious battle at the the center of Warner’s modern MonsterVerse. No, it isn’t Godzilla vs Kong, it’s the monsters vs the humans. Godzilla (2014) took heat for investing too much time in the people while it’s titular Kaiju lurked in the background. Kong: Skull Island (2017) and Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) overcorrected the other way with an overwhelming amount of monsters and a small group of people specifically tied to them. People weren’t too happy with that either. So, what makes a good monster movie? Maybe it isn’t about how the two much people feature, rather how they’re used.

Remember the Oscars? Believe it or not, more than 13 months have passed since Bong Joon-ho and his masterwork cleaned up at the Academy Awards. To some Parasite winning Best Picture is still the last good thing to happen in a since ravaged world. The film year that took place in those intervening months saw theaters closed and many would be awards contenders pushed back. Despite the migration of prestige films to 2021 and beyond, plenty of great films find themselves in contention this year. With nearly every title accessible at home in some form, the 93rd Oscars may be the toughest to prognosticate yet.

We’re a year into a pandemic that has fundamentally changed every facet of life. Given that the coronavirus has been front of mind for so long, it’s no surprise that a lot of films have begun to emerge with plagues, disasters and COVID itself at their core. What is surprising is just how many pandemic films were made before the real life pandemic.

If there is one thing Marvel Studios is world class at, it’s fumbling the ball. The studio has nearly a century of characters with rich backstories to draw on, a seemingly bottomless pool of Disney money to spend and the whole of Hollywood’s A-list of actors and directors from which to cast. Yet despite the their unparalleled basket of ingredients, the Marvel recipe consistently spits out finished products that fall well short of the sum of their parts.

Among the many beauties of life and love coexists the tragedy of loss that inevitably follows. To get close to someone or something is to know that eventually they’ll be gone. For most that bargain is one worth making but for so many others burned by it in the past, loss can be just too much to bear.