Why I’m Sick of Hiccup or Stitch

As a movie junkie, I check the North American box office chart around midyear out of habit, like it's my annual health checkup, to see how the 'bloodwork' of the industry looks. But this year the report card ain’t looking so great. Sure, the numbers sparkle, but beneath the shiny surface, it’s all pretty bland.

Let’s take a peek at the current chart-toppers. Minecraft has already banked a whopping $420 million. Right behind it is Lilo & Stitch with $386 million. And the much-hyped How to Train Your Dragon reboot? Barely three weeks in and already flying past $180 million, still gaining altitude. I bet it’ll easily leapfrog Sinner, the current #3, which stands at $270 million.

Notice the pattern here? The year's biggest box office magnets all follow the same foolproof formula: characters on a breezy adventure in a cozy little fictional world, wrapping things up with a warm, fuzzy, happy ending. Not saying they’re bad—hell, pulling millions of people into theaters and getting them to cough up $15 a ticket is an achievement. These movies are like a Big Mac. You know exactly what you’re gonna get. It’s tasty, it’s satisfying, it won’t give you food poisoning. It’s safe. It works.

But that’s also the problem. Movies should be more than just fast food. Especially when these cinematic “burgers” start taking over the entire damn menu.

How to Train Your Dragon? has got solid reviews and a high Rotten Tomatoes score. Fans are loving it—and yeah, that’s great. But let’s not kid ourselves. It had a killer script to begin with. The creative team’s job was to make it prettier, more polished, and have the actors match the anime version more closely. That’s not what I’d call an original film. As for the other two? Minecraft is a game adaptation. Lilo & Stitch is an IP that Disney’s been milking since the early 2000s. None of them are new creations. They were designed—engineered, really—for maximum return with minimum risk.

Honestly, these movies feel less like films and more like investment vehicles. Like, you just know that when the studios greenlit these projects there weren’t scripts on the table—just thick folders of market analytics and risk modeling. They crunched numbers on fanbase loyalty, merch potential, and the audience age range covered by the “family-friendly” label. Every element was calculated to be bulletproof. This is conservative investing 101: minimize volatility, maximize potential returns. Studio execs aren’t chasing immortality in film history—they’re chasing quarterly earnings reports. They fear risk, controversy, anything that might cause a dip in ticket sales. So they play it safe: pick a familiar IP, tell a bulletproof story, wrap it in A+ special effects, and ship it out.

And hey, that’s not wrong. From a business standpoint, it’s downright smart. But from an artistic perspective? It’s straight-up depressing. Cinema is supposed to be crafted and unpredictable. It’s supposed to grab you by the throat, twist your gut, and punch you in the heart. Great films are like aged whiskey—spicy, complex, with a burn that lingers. What we’re getting now? Coca-Cola. Sweet, smooth, gone in a gulp.

So yeah, I miss the old days. Let’s rewind to 1999, just for fun, when the top of the North American box office was Star Wars: The Phantom Menace—no surprises there. Blockbusters gonna block. But just below it? Things got spicy.

Second place went to The Sixth Sense, a low-budget psychological thriller with no explosions, no franchise backing, just a tight script and suffocating atmosphere. Its director, M. Night Shyamalan, was a total unknown back then. Can you imagine today’s big studios betting nine figures on a guy like that?

Further down the list was Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me—a raunchy R-rated comedy dripping with sex jokes and unfiltered satire. Then The Matrix—a sci-fi action flick blending kung fu, anime, Christian mythology, and postmodern philosophy. The film’s entire worldview blew people’s minds.

There was American Pie on the list, another R-rated teenage sex romp. The Green Mile—a three-hour slow-burn drama with Tom Hanks. Notting Hill—a swoony rom-com. And Fight Club—a gloriously messy, subversive fever dream from Fincher and Pitt. It didn’t crush the box office at the time, but it became a cult phenomenon that shaped pop culture for decades.

You see what I’m getting at? Horror, R-rated comedy, philosophical sci-fi, drama, romance. counterculture chaos... It was an era of diversity and possibility. The film market was full of potential. Studios were bolder, too. They believed in their audiences. They were willing to gamble on crazy ideas because they trusted people to get it.

Fast forward a few years to 2004. That’s when Mel Gibson went full rogue and self-funded The Passion of the Christ—a hyper-violent, religious drama in Aramaic and Latin. What seemed like a box office bomb ended up making over $600 million worldwide and became a cultural event.

In the same yaer, Tarantino dropped Kill Bill Vol. 2, a blood-soaked love letter to spaghetti westerns and Hong Kong kung fu flicks. And Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11—a documentary that hit theaters and started real-world conversations.

And now? We get How to Train Your Dragon, Lilo & Stitch, and Minecraft. All safe. All sweet. All sanitized. They’re like sterilized baby bottles—no bacteria, no offense, no edge. You leave the theater smiling faintly. The sun hits your face. You feel... fine. That’s it. Maybe that’s what the world wants now. No depth. No danger. Just two hours of gentle distraction after a long day of grinding.

But I can’t pretend that’s enough—not for me. Driving home in my beat-up Porsche 987 Boxster, the wind in my face, engine growling like an old-school rock riff, I can’t help but ache for something more. I miss the days when movies could surprise you: when I first saw Titanic and felt the entire room flinch as the ship hit the iceberg. When I watched The Shawshank Redemption and cheered as Andy Dufresne stood in the rain, reborn.

Maybe I’m just getting old. Or maybe, just maybe, the movies used to mean something more.

Catch you later for more movie musings!