2020s
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The 2020s (pronounced "twenty-twenties"; shortened to "the '20s" also known as "The Twenties") is the current decade that began on January 1, 2020, and will end on December 31, 2029.
The 2020s began with the COVID-19 pandemic—the first reports of the virus were published on December 31, 2019, though the first cases are said to have appeared nearly a month earlier—which caused a global economic recession as well as continuing financial inflation concerns and a global supply chain crisis.
Several anti-government demonstrations and revolts occurred in the late 2010s and early 2020s, including a continuation of those in Hong Kong against extradition legislation; protests against certain local, state and national responses to the COVID-19 pandemic; others around the world, particularly in the United States, against racism and police brutality; one in India against agriculture and farming acts; one in Israel against judicial reforms; another in Indonesia against the omnibus law on jobs; ongoing protests and strikes in France against pension reform; an ongoing political crisis in Peru, Armenia, and Thailand; and many in Belarus, Eswatini, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Iran, China, and Russia against various forms of governmental jurisdiction, corruption and authoritarianism; along with citizen riots in the United States and Brazil in an attempt to overturn election results. The world population grew to over 8 billion people, and in 2023, India overtook China as the most populous country in the world.
Ongoing military conflicts include the Myanmar civil war, the Ethiopian civil conflict, the Kivu conflict, the Mali War, the Yemeni civil war, the Somali Civil War, the Syrian civil war, the Russo-Ukrainian War, and the 2023 Israel–Hamas war. The Russian invasion of Ukraine became the largest conventional military offensive in Europe since World War II, and resulting in a refugee crisis, disruptions to global trade, and an exacerbation of economic inflation. Smaller conflicts include the insurgency in the Maghreb, the Iraq insurgency, the Philippine drug war, and the Mexican drug war. The year 2021 saw the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, ending twenty years of war in that country, and leading to the republican loyalist uprising against the new emirate government.
With many extreme weather events magnifying in the early 2020s, several world leaders have called it the "decisive decade" for climate action as ecological crises continue to escalate. In February 2023, a series of powerful earthquakes killed at least 57,000 people in Turkey and Syria; this event fell within the top ten deadliest earthquakes of the 21st century.
There were significant improvements in the complexity of artificial intelligence, with American companies, universities, and research labs pioneering advances in the field. Other technological advances have also been made, impacting many, such as the use of teleconferencing, online learning, streaming services, e-commerce and food delivery services to compensate for lockdowns ordered by governments around the world during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. 5G networks have launched around the globe at the start of the decade as well, and became prevalent in smartphones. Research into outer space greatly accelerated in the 2020s, with the United States also dominating space exploration, including the James Webb Space Telescope, Ingenuity helicopter, Lunar Gateway, and Artemis program.
Film
The COVID-19 pandemic heavily impacted film releases especially early in the decade, resulting in a drastic drop in box office revenue as well as many films postponing their release or shifting it to a streaming services. Avatar: The Way of Water is the highest-grossing film of the decade so far, and currently the third-highest-grossing film of all time. Other financially successful films at the box office include Top Gun: Maverick, No Time to Die, Jurassic World Dominion and Oppenheimer. Superhero films mostly continued to do well financially, with Spider-Man: No Way Home being the second-highest-grossing of the decade. Other successful superhero films include The Batman as well as most of Marvel Studios' "Multiverse Saga of the MCU". However, DC Studios' "DC Extended Universe" films began to generally underperform at the box office.
Nintendo and Mattel made their own big-budget theatrical releases, resulting in the massive successes of The Super Mario Bros. Movie and Barbie. These films became the highest grossing movies of 2023 internationally.
Critically successful films nominated for awards include Nomadland, CODA, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, Licorice Pizza and The Fabelmans.
Animated films such as Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, Soul, Encanto, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse have also been highly acclaimed.
Film reboots regained popularity as many were released on streaming services and in theaters. Some of these film remakes, reboots and returns to older franchises include: Clerks III, Bill & Ted Face the Music, Space Jam: A New Legacy, Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Top Gun: Maverick, He's All That, A Christmas Story Christmas, Scream, The Little Mermaid, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Good Burger 2, Wonka, Snow White and Coming 2 America.
Literature
Books published throughout the decade include The Vanishing Half, Leave the World Behind, Transcendent Kingdom, I'm Glad My Mom Died, The Glass Hotel, Memorial and The City We Became. Recent releases on this decade include How to Prevent the Next Pandemic by Bill Gates, Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall by Alexandra Lange, Wikipedia @ 20 by Joseph M. Reagle Jr. and Jackie Koerner, It's OK to Be Angry About Capitalism by Bernie Sanders, and The Candy House.
Over a year after Friends: The Reunion, Matthew Perry released Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing (which had a foreword written by Lisa Kudrow). The book became a New York Times best-seller.
See also
