Credit: Far Out / Sony Pictures / Curzon Artificial Eye / Momentum Pictures / Summit Entertainment
Sat 30 May 2026 12:30, UK
It is remarkable that there is already nostalgia for the films of only 15 years ago.
There isn’t a clear demarcation point in which modern cinema emerged, but 2011 did feel like the end of an era in several ways.
It was a year where the two biggest award season contenders, Hugo and the ultimate ‘Best Picture’ winner The Artist, were throwbacks to the silent era of cinema. The year saw the conclusion of Hollywood’s biggest franchise with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows- Part 2, the re-emergence of Tom Cruise with Mission: Impossible- Ghost Protocol, and the last instance in which Steven Spielberg directed two films that were released in the same year.
Although it was a jam-packed year filled with comic book films, including The Green Hornet, Green Lantern, Thor, X-Men: First Class, and Captain America: The First Avenger, none of them made the top ten highest-grossing films of the year list.
2011’s most notable entertainment industry moment had nothing to do with film, as it was the year in which Game of Thrones premiered on HBO. Although there were still high-quality television shows like Breaking Bad, Friday Night Lights, Boardwalk Empire, Homeland, and Justified that were on the air, Game of Thrones marked a paradigm shift in which audiences could expect cinematic quality storytelling on the small screen.
It would be only two years later that House of Cards would premiere on Netflix and change distribution forever, and only a year before The Avengers sent every studio in a craze to create their own shared universe. Given the state of world politics during the first half of the Obama administration, audiences were also a bit more willing to look for hope at the movies, and had a better stomach for darker content.
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