Film Popularity over the Years

So that's why my western war musical failed so hard.

You can also try to recoup your money by releasing a behind the scenes documentary about the horrifying financial crimes that went on during production of the first film.
I heard about that western war musical. I was excited to see "Alamo!" but they didn't advertise it out here so I forgot.
Great, now I have Texans singing about the Alamo in my head.
"Cannibal! The Musical" came close to the genre.
Just make a documentary about it

Comedy looks popular but I feel lucky if I watch even one decent one in a given year.

A lot of films are categorised as Comedy “something” these days, most notably Comedy Drama. I imagine this counts towards the stats.
- I fucking hate modern categories.
  
  If I see Lord of the Rings listed in my science fiction category again I'm gonna reach through the internet to back hand whoever decided that through their computer screen.
  
  No, The Expanse does not count as Fantasy.
  
  Is it fantastical? I guess.
  
  Does it fit the movie genre of Fantasy?
  
  Fuck no. It's 'Hard science fiction" as in science fiction based on real world science. Star trek is more soft science fiction. Possible, but basically magic to us. Star WARS on the other hand, I'd say fits into both.
  
  Most of my gripes come from science fiction categories and how their movies are labeled. I swear I once saw Bridget Jones listed in science fiction.

Cool but awful design, why is every graph in a different scale

So that you can compare the relative changes over the years without having a tiny line for less popular genres.
It actually tells you right below the title why they've chosen to do that
Depends on the goal of the visualization. This is an excellent choice if the goal is to show relative popularity changes over time, not absolute popularity relative to each other.

That said, the y-axes should be more prominent to draw readers' attention to the differing scales to decrease the chance this graph is misread.

It's also not explicitly stated that movies can be tagged with more than one genre, but, eyeballing the numbers, I'm pretty sure that must be the case.

This graph sucks, the y axis differs between the genres

Yeah, romance is way past its peak but still above sci-fi + fantasy combined
It says so in the text there. This feels like the only way anyway, since the boundaries between genres are fuzzy and it's not possible to decisively compare genre tags on IMDB.
- Graphs are for visual representation, a table is more apt for what you’re describing

Unpopular opinion: I hate horror.

Personally I only dislike the horror that's purely for jump scares/shock/gore. I find it cheap and not engaging.
- Theres a line between those/slashers and psycological horror, which is probably more in your alley.
- I love shitty jump scare horror when I’m faced on molly for some reason. Otherwise I like slow burn horror.
What do you hate about it?
I'm generally just uninterested in genres I don't enjoy, save for movies that instill and spread hate and intolerance or try to pass off falsehoods as fact.
- I hate horror just because I cannot withstand it and begin panicking. It's damn too stressful, esp. when there's too much stress IRL. That's what I meant.
- I don't like the stress/strain sensations it puts my body through. It's not enjoyable. Being scared isn't fun.
Yeah most horror movies I've watched are plain and boring.
But how else will you not sleep tonight?

Other than being a crappy design, this graphic is almost 6 years old

RIP western

It really is a shame, even though the actual west was nothing like most if not all westerns, it’s so unique and I think has a lot of untapped potential

Edit: I think the best we’ll ever get is westerns made in a different genre, this is my opinion but I think Inglourious Basterds is a western set in WWII. I could see more things like that from different directors, although in fairness you could make that comparison to a lot of Tarantinos work
- I think of westerns as a fantasy historical period genre. That period was chosen because it represented a jingoistic mythical American origin story. But we could build myths about a different period instead. There’s lots of untapped historical and cultural potential out there.
- It's funny how actual war, romance and to an extent crime are nothing like their movie genre usually show them to be
- You're right, westerns don't have to be 1880's, west of the Mississippi. There are excellent modern examples:
  
  Hell or High Water (2016)
  
  Wind River (2017)
  
  No Country for Old Men (2007)
- Eh it’s such a niche topic, like whoever thinks about the American ‘Wild West’ period? There’s very little international appeal for it.

Nanook of the North (1922) is considered to be the first documentary ever made, so how is there a giant spike on the documentary graph at 1910, and a smaller one shortly after?

I suspect there might be some different terms grouped together under documentary.

Found this, but not sure how this works towards the larger picture (I need some coffee lol).

https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?genres=history,documentary

It's too bad this data only runs up to 2018. The current/post pandemic era I think has made us all somewhat different consumers of film nowadays. Still cool to see though what we trending towards.

Bring back westerns and musicals!

Give us Blazing Saddles: The Musical!

What genre are superhero films? Fantasy? Sci-fi? E.g. what is Superman or X-Men?

Both. Maybe leaning a little bit more on sci-fi since they try to explain many things with science like kryptonite. But definitely also fantasy for X-Men, mutants have superpowers because the DNA does ... things.
- I dislike the common definition of sci-fi as science-flavored fantasy. It's just not a useful distinction to me vs plain 'fantasy'. What I love the most about sci-fi is the exploration of what it means to be human by projecting the implications of drastically improved technology. All a matter of taste, of course.
  
  I'm curious, though: why should a kryptonite explanation be any more sciency than mutant DNA? I see one as an entirely unexplained magic rock, and the other as an extension of the scientific triumph of understanding genetics (plus hilariously and deliberately misunderstanding evolution). X-Men is very nearly sci-fi to me; if mutants were a human creation it would be.

I've seen this pic a couple times before but this is the first time I wonder how the Drama genre graph would look like

Adventure too, it's a dying art, it seems

It's quite funny that it has become a genre comparable to comedy or thriller. Imagine a genre inspired by Senegalese Fishermen, or Nepalese Yak herders, that becomes 10% of all movies produced.

I'm so glad musicals are dying out.

Also the fact that Thrillers and Horrors are steadily becoming more popular is kind of concerning. There seems to be a growing latent appetite for murder in the general population. lol

You lament the growing appetite for murder yet readily praise the death of musicals.

If I had 3 of my friends and a piano, we'd dance and sing our frustrations at you!
- musicals make me want to murder
Alternatively, people's appetite is unchanged, but the way they express it is changing towards consumption of visual media.