If you spend as much time online as I do, you’ve probably noticed a disturbing trend dominating our feeds in 2026: an overwhelming wall of noise engineered to watch the entertainment industry burn. Driven by bots, bad-faith trolls, and presumptive rage-baiters, the internet has built a machine that weaponizes negativity before a film even has a chance to breathe. Instead of giving original cinema the benefit of the doubt, audiences are pressured to take bad faith reviews as gospel, joining an echo-chamber chorus until their digital voices are hoarse with misgivings.
Over the past several months, we’ve watched some of the year’s best and most original features crash and burn before they’ve had a chance to breathe in theaters. Some examples include DreamWorks Animation‘s Forgotten Island, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Digger, and Travis Knight’s Masters of the Universe. While Masters is a beloved IP that deserved better than it got at the box office, Forgotten Island and Digger represent original ideas that offer something wildly different, even as most studios become more risk-averse with every cinematic misfire.
Dying in the Dark Before Getting a Chance to Breathe
Look, I get it, movies need to make money. That’s a given. Still, if we, as audience members, don’t show up for the big swings, we’ll have no one to blame but ourselves when theaters are filled with nothing more than uninspired sequels, safe bets, and franchise fodder. Forgotten Island is bursting with fresh ideas, celebrates a culture and mythology rarely seen on the big screen, and represents one of the most visually creative animated films since Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. And yet, barely anyone showed up for it. It made $53.8 million worldwide against an $80 million production budget, and arrives on digital platforms on October 27. Forgotten Island deserved far better than it got.
The High Cost of Playing It Safe
Meanwhile, Digger had one of the most intriguing lead-ups to its release. Who remembers that giant shovel in the desert in Indio, California, near the Coachella festival grounds? How often do we get to see Tom Cruise completely transform for an oddball role outside of Vanilla Sky or Tropic Thunder? Sure, the movie looks strange, and critics were divided about its quality. Still, what happened to hedging bets and forming your own opinion? I’d rather filmmakers take a chance and fail than serve me the same slop time and again.
Whatever Happened to Forming Your Own Opinion?
What makes this development frustrating is that audiences do appear hungry for original fare. This becomes evident in successes like Kane Parsons’ Backrooms, Curry Barker’s Obsession, and, most notably, Coyote vs. Acme, a box-office gem that Warner Bros. vaulted on the assumption that it would fail, only for public outcry to force its theatrical release. How satisfying was it to see WB eat crow on that one? I don’t know about you, but I ate their embarrassment up with a fork and knife. Fans rallied, organized, and showed up. It was beautiful. We need more of that energy. If we don’t show up for the movies that take chances, the only ones we’ll get are the ones we deserve for our inaction.
The Proof Is There: We Want Originality
I’m not saying we should spend our hard-earned money on mediocre experiences. With gas prices through the roof, food costing almost as much as rent, and the internet pumping AI sewage into our eye sockets like a pipeline directly from Hell, I understand people’s trepidation. Still, if we don’t say “fuck it” every once in a while, go against the grain, and show up for the filmmakers trying their damndest to alter the game, who will survive and what will be left of them?
A Pipeline Straight from Hell
Currently, I’m beating the drum for LAIKA Studios’ Wildwood so hard that I feel like Danny Carey of Tool on the track “Tempest.” LAIKA’s sixth and best effort to date is now playing in theaters, and the box office projections are concerning. Here is this epic, hand-crafted movie that took 16 painstaking years to produce, and its success remains a question mark rather than a foregone conclusion. I’ll tell you this right now. If you’re interested in this movie at all, and don’t see it on the big screen, you’re going to regret it. Wildwood is special. I’ve already seen it, and yet I’m treating my wife and four friends to a screening this weekend. If the only thing that speaks to this industry we love is dollars, you bet your ass I’ll be voting with my wallet for this one.
Details Matter: How to Become a Beacon of Positivity
So what’s the fix? It starts with tuning out the rage bait and making up our own minds. I’m a movie fan who’s lucky enough to have this platform to share my thoughts, and I think we’d all be better served if we turned the volume down on negativity and gave original movies our support instead of burning them at the pyre before studios get the wrong idea. See the movies you’re curious about. Make your own opinions. If you like something, celebrate it. Make sure people know what worked for you and why. Like Jack Reacher always says, “Details matter.” Don’t be afraid of the bots. Become a beacon of positivity for this art form you hold so dear. You would not have read all the way to the end of this plea if you didn’t give a shit. Go forth, get weird, and embrace the outliers.
The post The Death of the Big Swing: How Online Echo Chambers Are Killing Original Movies appeared first on JoBlo.
