In his article highlighting the best movies of 2019, Richard Brody of The New Yorker said, "It's the year of apocalyptic cinema of the highest order, the year in which three of our best filmmakers have responded with vast ambition, invention, and inspiration to the crises at hand, including the threats to American democracy, the catastrophic menaces arising from global warming, the corrosive cruelty of ethnic hatreds and nationalist prejudices, and the poisonous overconcentration of money and power.
At the same time, it's a year of inside-movies practicalities, of special attention to the business at hand, because of the structural threats to the movie business from new and powerful players.
Versions of that refrain come up every year, but what used to be merely a gap between the multiplexes and limited releases has now become an abyss.
The Lion King, Frozen II, Spider-Man: Far From Home, Captain Marvel, Joker, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Toy Story 4, and Aladdin all grossed $1 billion, with the second, third, and eighth as the first, second, and fifth highest-grossing animated films, respectively.
Joker became the first R-rated film in history to surpass $1 billion.