A poster for the “Joker” movie in Burbank, California. Credit Robyn Beck/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images.

[“The existing Hollywood order, the current pop-cultural regime,”] is built, to an extent that would have been unfathomable even 20 years ago, on the commercial exploitation of what was once called “genre” entertainment — the comic-book movie especially, the Marvel empire above all, with a wider range of science fiction and fantasy blockbusters and sequelae around that superhero core.

(Ross Douthat, “Against the Superhero Regime,” NYTimes, 10-26-19)

Doff of the cap to Ross Douthat for teaching me the plural of “sequel.”

(c) 2019 JM