We’re so starved for original blockbusters that the bar for what qualifies as “original” has been lowered to the floor. 2022’s two highest-grossing films, Top Gun: Maverick and Avatar: The Way of Water, are sequels. Neither is anything new. But they aged just enough to smell fresh to audiences: both films outperformed Marvel’s annual slate of sequels, none of which hit the global $1 billion mark and are thus catastrophic failures in the eyes of Kevin Feige.
