Gotta look at the aggregate total. Individual movies can succeed or fail depending on their budgets sure, but theatres only care about butts in seats. And there’s more butts this year than last year.
This is all correct. I'd love fantasy to come back tbh. The 2000s was the decade of fantasy, with LOTR and Harry Potter and Pirates all burning up the charts.
I'll be interested to see how Next Goal Wins does in Australia. Thor L&T was the third biggest movie last year after Avatar and Top Gun, and I reckon Taika Waititi still has some credit left here vs DOM.
I'm not sure I'm on the same wavelength as critics when it comes to recent Disney and Pixar movies, when decidedly mediocre movies like Raya and Encanto get in the 90s, but Elemental only gets to 74%.