Just to be clear, the top grossing movie so far this year: Super Mario Galaxy. And #3: Toy Story 5

In 2025 all the top 10 films were either 3D animation or CGI-heavy action, with one exception: F1 used a lot of practical effects.

Maybe the problem with Moana and Mandalorian is that even lazy uninformed movie-goers recognized an empty cash-grab when they saw the trailer.

In addition to CG fatigue I think users are having remake fatigue. Audiences don't want to see a Moana remake, another Marvel movie or another Superman spin-off. Star Wars and Marvel are getting so overexposed people aren't bothering to show up for them to theaters.

No, everyone just watches Nolan movies because he's seen as a director who can do no wrong. It says nothing about CGI.

It's one of the greatest stories of all time directed by Nolan. CGI or not, whatever.

There’s a clear thread of human effort and presence from The Muppets to Space Jam to Dune that this Odyssey movie’s creators understood. People want Amelié, not Avengers. It’s fine to use so much CGI that your film can’t be re-exported in 4K (yes, that’s why) so long as you have people wearing stuff and standing in front of other stuff. It’s not fine to film your entire movie with mocap bodysuits on green backgrounds and having them perform to a tennis ball as co-actor that will be AI-generated from a dead actor later. I probably won’t watch the Odyssey but I will absolutely celebrate this aspect of it to others now that I know.

Is that really the take away?

I think the real take away is that audiences want good movies. The Odyssey is a good movie - it just so happens to be made the hard way.

(Or, in other words, correlation does not imply causation, and that's all this article has.)