The year 2020 has been a strange one for the entertainment industry. Most of this weirdness has come from the global impact of COVID-19, which has irreversibly impacted almost every aspect of film and television. Most major films scheduled for theatrical release in 2020 were delayed, and the production schedules for several TV shows were drastically changed.
The move towards streaming this year was also huge. Netflix has been dominating the television market for several years now, but the platform reached new notoriety this year thanks to the increase in people staying home to watch movies. Some of the most talked about films of this year debuted on streaming services. The success of streaming has even encouraged WarnerMedia and HBO Max to pursue a radical strategy for 2021, planning to make all of their upcoming films available on streaming.
But it’s not just the business side of films that have been strange this past year. There have been plenty of unconventional movies and shows released in 2020, and a lot of unusual tropes keep popping up in all of them. There are plenty of potential reasons why movies have seemed weird recently, but one possibility is that with major blockbusters being delayed, audiences had more time to focus on some of the more offbeat stories out there. There’s no way to account for every unusual 2020 movie trope, but there are a few that really stand out. From musicals to monster hunters, here are the absolute weirdest movie and television tropes from the year 2020.
Harry Potter Villains in Unrecognizable Roles
This may not have been immediately obvious, but former Harry Potter stars were everywhere in 2020 films. There is of course the much-discussed Johnny Depp film Minimata, his project following departing from the Fantastic Beasts franchise. But other former Harry Potter villains have been taking on new roles as well. Helena Bonham Carter gave an engaging performance as Princess Margaret in season 4 of The Crown. Both Jason Isaacs (Lucius Malfoy) and Ralph Fiennes (Voldemort) showed off their voice acting talent in Scoob! and Dolittle, respectively. But perhaps the most dramatic transformation was Tom Felton’s appearance in the young adult fantasy movie A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting, pictured above. His performance as a nightmare-creating villain was equal parts surprising, weird, and utterly delightful.
Pedro Pascal Plays a Dad Doing His Best
Pedro Pascal really earned the title of world’s best dad this year. Pascal returned to Disney+ in 2020 for a second season of The Mandalorian, a show which had already established Pascal’s character Din Djarin as a loving father figure to the adorable Baby Yoda (aka Grogu). But the world of Star Wars wasn’t the only place where Pascal was turning out top-tier dad energy.
Pascal starred in Wonder Woman 1984 as the film’s villain Max Lord, who, among other things, was a hapless dad who didn’t really know how to connect with his son and almost caused an apocalypse because of that. Viewers get a markedly better dad in the Netflix film We Can Be Heroes, where Pascal plays a retired superhero and father of the main character. The biggest takeaway from this trend is that everyone in Hollywood seems to want Pedro Pascal as their dad, and really, who can blame them?
Body Swapping Can Be Heartwarming... Or Troubling
Speaking of Wonder Woman 1984, it’s time to talk about one of the more troubling tropes of 2020 movies: body swapping. Due to some magical shenanigans in the Wonder Woman sequel, Diana’s love interest Steve is brought back to life… by taking over the body of another man. This plotline has sparked a lot of controversy among Wonder Woman fans, and many are discussing whether the filmmakers adequately addressed the moral repercussions of this plotline.
However, a different 2020 film shows that a body swapping plotline actually can be handled well, and can even have a positive impact on the story. The newest Pixar film Soul is a poignant tale that includes scenes where the two main characters switch bodies, resulting in important character revelations for both of them. Writers this year seemed to recognize the potential body swap stories have, even if some of these stories are handled better than others.
Musicals are Hot Stuff
All the musical theater nerds out there are having a moment. The biggest musical release of 2020 was, of course, Hamilton. The filmed version of the hit stage musical brought in a wave of new viewers to Disney+, showing just how successful movie musicals can be. The Netflix adaptation of The Prom also made waves recently, although the criticism surrounding this film was a bit harsher.
2020 musicals weren’t limited to live action, however. Plenty of animated musicals, like Netflix’s Over the Moon, have gotten their time in the limelight. The musical movie Trolls: World Tour especially debuted to huge success, illustrating the commercial potential for video-on-demand releases. This past year, musicals have impacted the film industry more than they have ever before.
The Wacky Offbeat Period Piece
But musicals weren’t the genre to have a moment in 2020. The past year seemed to be the year of the wacky offbeat period piece, a very specific subgenre of historical fiction. A wacky offbeat period piece is a film where all the characters dress in period clothing from a vague undefined area of history, but interact with each other in distinctly modern and often flamboyant ways. The best example of this is the Netflix movie Enola Holmes, a movie with a quirky and modern tone despite being set in the 19th century. Other 2020 films like Emma or The Personal History of David Copperfield could also be considered examples of this genre. Even Netflix’s Christmas movie Jingle Jangle could be considered a wacky offbeat period piece. Not only are these types of films delightfully unusual, but they’re also incredibly popular right now, and it’s entirely likely audiences will see even more wacky offbeat period pieces in 2021.
Why Were Movies So Weird This Year?
The final question in all of this is why this past year had so many strange movie tropes in the first place. The obvious answer is that the events of the past year had an unprecedented effect of the entertainment industry, and filmmakers were thrown into a mad scramble to put something together to varying degrees of success. However, new entertainment trends like the migration to streaming often allowed filmmakers to experiment and take risks that they may not have considered otherwise. 2020 may have had a lot of strange film and TV tropes, but all these weird tropes are actually very wonderful.