2023 Was A Big Year For Pop Culture Nostalgia, So Here Are The Moments That Did (Or Didn't) Work
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Worked: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
Eight years after the final Hunger Games movie came out, a President Snow-centered prequel movie graced our screens in 2023. While The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes was based on a 2020 novel, getting excited for a new Hunger Games movie no doubt aroused feelings of immense nostalgia for fans first introduced to the series in middle school (i.e. me).
Didn't work: Zoey 102
Given the numerous allegations Alexa Nikolas has made about her time on Zoey 101 and the general bad press star Jamie Lynn Spears has faced over the past year, it's worth considering how much a revival movie could ever have hit in 2023. That being said, the director has expressed a desire to continue with the franchise and Jamie Lynn has appeared in everything from Dancing With the Stars to I'm a Celeb — so perhaps a Zoey 103 will have a chance to beat its predecessor's 4.9 rating on IMDb.
Worked: Barbie
Of course Barbie worked: it was a cultural phenomenon. It's stating the obvious. Not only would any Barbie movie have been nostalgic by its very existence, but this one went out of its way to evoke the melancholy of missing playing with dolls in adulthood. Besides, no one is nostalgic for the creation of the atomic bomb.
Didn't work: Pink Friday 2
No offense to anyone who enjoyed Nicki Minaj's Pink Friday 2, the sequel to her 2010 breakthrough. It debuted at number one, so, commercially speaking, it's far from a flop. But still, one must wonder how much Nicki's leaning into her former glory stems from an attempt to distance and rebrand herself from the very real controversies she's faced in recent years that cannot be ignored.
Worked: The Woman In Me
2023 was a busy year for celebrity memoirs, but Britney Spears' The Woman in Me no doubt shone and offered the much-wronged singer her own narrative after far too long. While damning excerpts about her relationship with Justin Timberlake made headlines, the insight it gave into her conservatorship was heartbreaking.
Didn't work: The *NSYNC reunion
The band reunited for the first time in two decades for the Trolls Band Together soundtrack, which would have been fine had it not been suspiciously good timing for Justin given the release of Britney's memoir the following month.
Worked: The Last of Us
A decade after the release of the first video game, a live-action Last of Us hit HBO to rapt critical and commercial success. With stellar performances from its cast and welcome story additions that differentiated itself from its predecessor and suited its medium, signs look good for how Season 2 will adapt 2020's The Last of Us Part II.
Didn't work: The Ned's Declassified sex revelations
One can debate whether or not the child-show-to-podcast pipeline is oversaturated and inherently unworkable, but one moment that certainly stuck out for the wrong reasons was Devon Werkheiser and Lindsey Shaw describing in *graphic* detail the sex acts they engaged with as 15-year-old costars. Perhaps I'm a prude to include this, I just don't want any mental images.
Worked: Reunions on the SAG-AFTRA and WGA picket lines
Undoubtedly some of the best cast reunions this year were for a good cause: The SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes. Just some of the reunions included Breaking Bad, Parks and Recreation, and Modern Family.
Didn't work: Haunted Mansion
Disney's spooky new movie arguably had its cards stacked against it with its release date being in July, rather than October. Then throw in the SAG-AFTRA strike, which meant that no stars actually attended its red carpet premiere, and things were bound to go not-great. While the movie did perform well in Japan, it failed to make back its $150 million budget and scored a mere 37% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Worked: The Eras Tour
Taylor Swift's tour has already broken records, and it hasn't even wrapped up yet. Pairing alongside her re-recording project as a tour through her previous musical eras, the tour has people Googling photos of her during her Red release so that they can glue a red sequined coat for one of the UK dates next year (it's me, hi).
Didn't work: Taylor Lautner constantly talking about Taylor Swift
The reappearance of Lautner in the Taylor universe began wholesomely enough, with backflips at the Eras Tour and a starring role in her music video for “I Can See You." However, Lautner has undoubtedly fallen into somewhat of a media cycle trap (which may not be his fault!) over a relationship that only lasted a few months in 2009. In the past months alone, he said on Call Her Daddy that she broke up with him, he backflipped at an Eras Tour movie screening, and he told People that it was "nice" to be called Taylor's "best ex." Please, may we all move on in 2024.
Worked: The Little Mermaid live action movie
The Disney live-action world can often be a bleak affair, but the release of The Little Mermaid proved to be a welcome change. Excluding "The Scuttlebutt" and some questionable fish realism (see: Flounder), the remake added some wonderful new songs and joyfully fleshed out its original.
Didn't work: "This isn't your mother's Mean Girls"
2023 was a big year for Mean Girls nostalgia, with a cast reunion for the Walmart commercial and the release of a trailer for a new movie based on the Broadway musical, which was based on the 2004 movie, which was based on a book. Perhaps most baffling in the trailer — other than its apparent decision not to show that the reboot was a musical — was the tagline, "This isn't your mother's Mean Girls." Of course, this could have been intentional to cause as much of a hubbub among millennials as possible — in which case nice trolling, Paramount.
