Illustration: Damon Dahlen/HuffPost; Photos: Getty
Farewell To... is an end-of-decade series that explores some of the biggest cultural trends of the last 10 years. HuffPosts culture team says bye to the celebrity feminist litmus test, so long to lily-white and mostly male literary institutions, RIP to some of our favorite internet-famous animals and more.
A fresh decade offers fresh beginnings, but on Dec. 31, 2009, mere hours before a new one dawned, we suffered an untimely death. That was the day Disney finalized its $4 billion acquisition of Marvel Entertainment , gaining thousands of established comic-book characters to be recycled in perpetuity a transaction that would reshape Hollywood as we knew it.
Just like that, the longstanding movie-star era perished. The cinematic universe took its place.
Stars still exist, sure. Sometimes they appear in movies. Every now and then, those movies earn large profits. But the concept of the movie star as a linchpin of American culture has diminished, taking a lot else with it.
Over the course of the 2010s, to varying degrees, the major studios Disney, Warner Bros., Sony, Fox, Universal and Paramount stopped prioritizing traditional stars, meaning those rarified big-screen specimens who appeal to audiences, time and again, on their own merits. Movie stars can carry projects not tied to enduring franchises, capture the zeitgeist through sheer likability and demonstrate a willingness to play the celebrity game.
But with Marvel and its ilk monopolizing corporate entertainment, the brand is the star. What now drives popular media, at the expense of actors, are fantastic beasts , Baby Yoda and the ever-morphing Avengers roster . (Ask five people to name two Chris Evans roles that arent Captain America or the Human Torch. Go ahead, Ill wait.) And now that platforms like YouTube, Instagram and TikTok have democratized fame , movie stars can no longer claim supremacy, which says more than we realize about the world we live in.
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