TLDR: Hollywood dismantled much of the business model that made serious adult movies a mainstream attraction. The collapse of physical home video, expensive marketing, franchise dependence, and the migration of adult drama to television squeezed the space where films like The Fugitive and The Firm once thrived. Good movies still get made, but an industry that once offered a broad range of grown-up entertainment has become much less willing to make those bets.
Watch The Fugitive today and something stands out beyond the train wreck or Harrison Ford’s ability to look exhausted while running. The movie expects you to enjoy watching people think. Richard Kimble studies records, follows leads, and uses his medical knowledge. Samuel Gerard questions assumptions and adjusts his investigation. Their intelligence makes the chase exciting.
That is the part of the death of modern cinema I find most depressing. Hollywood once treated an intelligent thriller about adults as a perfectly normal reason to sell millions of tickets. A movie could offer a compelling mystery, a few excellent performances, recognizable human stakes, and an ending. That was enough of a proposition to build a major release around.
The Firm, Primal Fear, A Few Good Men, The Pelican Brief, and Enemy of the State belonged to a film culture that made room for that proposition. These movies varied in quality, scale, and seriousness. What they shared was confidence that adults would pay to watch other adults lie, investigate, compromise, and occasionally discover how badly they had misjudged someone.
Hollywood has spent years making that kind of confidence look commercially irresponsible.
These Movies Were Mainstream Hits
The easiest way to dismiss this complaint is to call it nostalgia. Of course people remember the good movies and forget the disposable ones. The 1990s produced plenty of junk.
But the commercial scale of the films we remember matters. These were major studio releases that drew enormous audiences.
| Film | Reported Production Budget | Worldwide Box Office |
|---|---|---|
| A Few Good Men (1992) | $33 million | $236.5 million |
| The Firm (1993) | $42 million | $270.3 million |
| The Fugitive (1993) | $44 million | $353.8 million |
Figures are from The Numbers, rounded and unadjusted for inflation. Production budgets exclude marketing, and box-office grosses include money retained by theaters. Box Office and Financial Information
Those qualifications matter when calculating profit. They do not change the basic observation: millions of people bought tickets to legal dramas and investigative thrillers. These films occupied the center of popular culture.
There was also more financial range than the label “mid-budget movie” sometimes suggests. The Numbers lists Enemy of the State at $85 million, making it a substantial production even then. The loss extends beyond one precise budget bracket. It concerns the willingness to spend meaningful money on a complete adult story. Box Office and Financial Information
The DVD Collapse Destroyed a Second Chance
The old movie business gave a film several opportunities to earn its keep. A theatrical run could lead into video rentals, purchases, pay television, and later television licensing. VHS helped sustain the 1990s model; the DVD boom made the home-video business even more lucrative afterward.
A person could see a movie in a theater, rent it months later, and eventually buy it. Those were separate transactions. A film that disappointed on opening weekend could still build an audience and generate substantial revenue after leaving theaters.
The size of that market is easy to forget. Home Media Retailing estimated U.S. DVD purchases at $16.32 billion in 2005. DEG’s year-end report puts U.S. sales of all physical video formats combined at about $870 million in 2025. These are consumer-spending figures covering film and television, but they show the scale of the collapse. Home Media Magazine
Streaming created an enormous business in its place. DEG estimates U.S. subscription-streaming spending at $57.5 billion in 2025. The money exists. It reaches individual movies through a different system. degonline.org
A subscriber can watch ten films without making ten purchases. Streaming licenses and commissions can finance movies, sometimes generously, while digital rentals and purchases still provide income. But subscription viewing does not automatically reproduce the repeated, title-specific transactions that once helped a theatrical film become profitable.
That changes which projects look worth financing. Losing the home-video safety net made the uncertain adult thriller a harder bet.
Hollywood Made the Middle Harder to Finance
A modest production budget does not guarantee a modest commercial risk. A movie still needs to be sold, and a wide theatrical campaign can be expensive relative to the cost of making it.
Steven Soderbergh described this problem in his 2013 State of Cinema address. He explained how release costs helped prevent Behind the Candelabra from finding a studio home. The obstacle included the amount it would need to earn once a theatrical marketing campaign was attached. Rope of Silicon
That is the trap facing the middle of the business. A very cheap film can survive on a smaller audience. An enormous franchise production can promise a global event, sequels, and a familiar brand. A substantial adult drama occupies an uncomfortable position between them.
It needs professional actors, good locations, enough shooting days, and real marketing. Its likely audience may be large enough to support a successful movie without being large enough to satisfy a corporation hunting for its next giant property.
The result is a narrowing of ambition. Projects are pushed toward cheaper production, streaming, or a more easily advertised spectacle. The kind of movie that once justified its existence by being a good commercial thriller increasingly needs another explanation.
That is a miserable standard for an entertainment business to adopt.
The Movie Star Gave Way to the Permanent Franchise
Harrison Ford’s presence used to make an unfamiliar story feel like a reasonable purchase. The same was true of Tom Cruise, Julia Roberts, Denzel Washington, Sandra Bullock, and other major stars. The actor provided continuity while the characters, settings, and stories changed.
That arrangement gave audiences familiarity without requiring the same fictional universe every time.
Franchise filmmaking moves more of that familiarity into something the company owns. Batman can be recast. A dinosaur brand can outlast its original characters. A successful property can generate another installment even after the people who made it successful have left.
The distinction needs to be precise because the 1990s were full of adaptations. The Fugitive came from a television series. The Firm and The Pelican Brief came from John Grisham novels. A Few Good Men began as a play. Hollywood has always liked a recognizable title.
But those films delivered substantial, self-contained experiences. You could arrive without homework and leave with the story finished. The appeal of a familiar source was put in service of that evening’s movie.
An industry organized around permanent franchises has different incentives. An ending becomes an opportunity to announce another beginning. Supporting characters become potential spin-offs. Eventually, even an entertaining film can feel burdened by its obligations to future products.
The larger international market reinforced the appeal of easily advertised spectacle. Soderbergh also identified that pressure in 2013: action, fantasy, and visual scale fit the pursuit of a broad global audience particularly well. A dinosaur attack is easier to communicate in a short trailer than the legal predicament at the center of The Firm. Rope of Silicon
That is a marketing advantage, not evidence that audiences abroad cannot appreciate complex stories. The danger comes when the easiest thing to sell becomes the only thing a studio wants to make.
Corporate Consolidation Narrowed the Decision-Making
Studios were already parts of conglomerates during the supposed golden age. There was never a pure Hollywood in which art floated free of corporate money.
But further consolidation matters. Disney’s 2019 acquisition of much of 21st Century Fox brought another major film operation, including Twentieth Century Fox and Fox Searchlight, under the same parent company. The Walt Disney Company
When ownership consolidates, fewer independent corporate centers decide which projects deserve resources. Individual labels may retain talented people and distinct identities, but their films operate within a larger company’s priorities.
My objection is to what those priorities can reward. A familiar franchise is easy to explain in a presentation. An unusual thriller requires someone to defend the script, the filmmaker, and the audience they believe exists. It requires taste and a willingness to be wrong.
No spreadsheet eliminates uncertainty. Plenty of expensive sequels disappoint. Corporate familiarity can make a decision feel defensible without making the movie interesting or the investment sound.
A business can become very good at explaining its choices while becoming much worse at giving people something worth watching.
Prestige Television Gave Adults Somewhere Else to Go
The audience for complicated adult stories has plenty to watch. The Americans, Mindhunter, The Night Of, Mare of Easttown, and The Night Manager demonstrate how comfortably television can accommodate investigators, compromised institutions, professional expertise, and moral uncertainty.
Some stories benefit enormously from that room. The gradual corrosion of a marriage or a years-long undercover operation can justify a series. Television deserves credit for work that theatrical studios became reluctant to support.
But the feature film has its own discipline. A good thriller must establish the problem, develop its characters, complicate the evidence, and deliver a conclusion within a concentrated span. That pressure can produce remarkable storytelling.
Stretching a strong two-hour premise across six or eight episodes does not automatically deepen it. Sometimes it produces repetitive interviews, secondary plots, and several installments of waiting for someone to discover what the audience already suspects.
I want television to keep doing what it does well. I also want the option of watching a complete, ambitious adult story in one evening. Losing that option from much of the mainstream theatrical calendar is a real cultural loss.
We Lost Some of the Pleasure of Watching Competent People
The adult thriller often draws suspense from a simple arrangement: capable people possess different information and pursue conflicting goals.
In The Fugitive, Kimble’s medical knowledge matters. Gerard’s investigative skill matters. The pursuit changes as they learn. Neither character needs to become an idiot so the other can have a good scene.
That makes the smaller moments exciting. A record can matter as much as a chase. Someone noticing a discrepancy can shift the entire story. The audience gets the pleasure of following the reasoning and anticipating what will happen when two lines of inquiry meet.
A Few Good Men builds toward a confrontation in which language, preparation, ego, and judgment do the dramatic work. Primal Fear makes interpretation dangerous. These films ask viewers to pay attention to people rather than simply wait for the next impact.
There is nothing inherently uncinematic about an enormous action sequence. The Fugitive itself contains a spectacular train crash. What matters is the relationship between spectacle and story.
The crash changes Kimble’s circumstances. It gives him an opportunity and creates a pursuit. It has consequences that shape everything afterward.
When an action film relies on one escalating emergency after another, the protagonist can become little more than a durable object being hurled through expensive scenery. Survival replaces investigation. More things happen, but less develops.
For me, that is a large part of why some modern thrillers feel exhausting without ever becoming involving.
The 1990s Thriller Had Physical Weight
There is also a material difference in how many of these films feel. Streets, hospitals, offices, tunnels, and railway tracks give the action a recognizable world. We can judge distances, understand obstacles, and imagine how much something would hurt.
Director Andrew Davis has described the practical planning behind The Fugitive’s train wreck, including the fact that the production had one train to crash. The sequence also used sophisticated visual-effects techniques, including projection work. Its achievement came from combining methods convincingly. actionewz.com
The result has weight. The machinery looks dangerous. Chicago feels like a place Kimble must navigate, with crowds and institutions that have purposes beyond accommodating the plot.
That credibility matters more than whether every image was captured without effects. Digital tools can support the same kind of physical clarity. Trouble starts when unlimited visual freedom produces action with no stable geography or believable limits.
The period also gave thriller writers useful constraints. People had computers and mobile phones, but they did not carry today’s networked smartphones everywhere. Information could exist without being immediately available to every character.
A missed call, an inaccessible record, or the need to find someone in person could generate suspense without elaborate explanation. Modern technology can create excellent thriller premises too, but the older environment naturally gave pursuit and investigation more room to breathe.
Adult Audiences Still Buy Tickets
The death of modern cinema becomes an especially frustrating argument whenever a substantial adult film breaks through. The audience keeps supplying evidence that it can still be reached.
Knives Out earned about $313.6 million worldwide against a reported $40 million production budget. Its attractions included a murder, an obnoxious family, an engaging detective, and a screenplay that trusted viewers to follow its reversals. Box Office and Financial Information
Oppenheimer went much further, earning more than $950 million worldwide. Its $100 million budget and Christopher Nolan’s event-film stature make it a different proposition from a routine mid-budget thriller. Even so, audiences bought tickets for three hours of adult conversation, political conflict, professional rivalry, and moral consequence. Box Office and Financial Information
Those successes do not mean every courtroom drama will make money. Nor should every acclaimed film be presented as a commercial triumph. Quality, audience reach, and profitability are different questions.
But the repeated willingness to declare adult audiences commercially irrelevant looks increasingly like an excuse for failing to cultivate them.
My view is that the industry has helped train people to stay home. If theaters are consistently advertised as the place for giant franchise events, while adult stories arrive conveniently on subscription services, audiences learn the distinction. Their behavior then becomes evidence for making the same allocation again.
Breaking that cycle requires sustained commitment. One prestige release cannot rebuild a habit by itself.
A Healthy Film Industry Needs More Than Events
What I miss most is variety at a meaningful scale. A courtroom drama, a submarine thriller, a romantic comedy, a political conspiracy, and an action spectacle should all have a plausible place in mainstream moviegoing.
The death of modern cinema is the erosion of the business and creative confidence that supported that range. Talented filmmakers still exist. Excellent movies still arrive. The system has become less dependable at giving those filmmakers resources, theatrical access, and an audience that has been told their work matters.
Restoring the middle will require budgets matched to plausible audiences, marketing that can sell a distinctive premise, and companies willing to support a range of films over time. It will also require viewers to buy tickets for the movies they say they miss.
But the industry has to offer them those movies consistently. It cannot keep treating a grown-up thriller as an embarrassing commercial risk and then act surprised when the audience stops expecting one.
The Fugitive understood that a frightened man, a determined investigator, and a well-built story could fill a theater. Hollywood would benefit from remembering how much that was worth.
References
- The Numbers: A Few Good Men, The Firm, The Fugitive, and Enemy of the State.
- Home Media Magazine: 2005 Spending Up 2.5 Percent.
- DEG: Year-End 2025 Digital Media Entertainment Report.
- Steven Soderbergh: 2013 State of Cinema Address, Transcript.
- The Walt Disney Company: 2019 Acquisition of 21st Century Fox.
- Actionewz: Interview With The Fugitive Director Andrew Davis.
- Befores & Afters: How They Made The Fugitive’s Bus and Train Sequence.
- The Numbers: Knives Out and Oppenheimer.
