It seems like it was ages ago that director Darren Aronofsky was relying on large physical sets, seeing how wholeheartedly he has embraced generative artificial intelligence. Aronofsky broke out on the indie scene and reached the pinnacle of his career with the Oscar-winning psychological thriller Black Swan, which was released in 2010 to blockbuster success and critical acclaim. The movie earned him the figurative blank check Hollywood gives to directors who make money for the industry. Aronofsky cashed in his cachet with a large-scale biblical epic, the sort of movie that Hollywood had been reluctant to make at such a scale. Interestingly, Aronofsky’s movie was released in the same year as Ridley Scott‘s Exodus: Gods and Kings, which bombed with critics and audiences alike.
Exodus, starring Christian Bale and Joel Edgerton, grossed $268 million worldwide against a reported budget of $200 million. It attracted controversy for its whitewashed casting, which Scott defended in his trademark inelegant manner. Exodus received poor reviews and is now sitting at a 29% score on Rotten Tomatoes. Aronofsky’s movie, on the other hand, was considerably more successful. It was released a few months before Exodus, and ended up grossing around $360 million worldwide against a reported budget of $160 million. And now, more than a decade after its release, the movie is climbing the streaming charts again.
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
Darren Aronofsky’s Epic Remains a Fan-Favorite
We’re talking, of course, about the very controversial epic Noah. Starring Russell Crowe as the titular biblical figure, the movie was banned in several territories around the world, owing to its religious themes. Noah also featured Jennifer Connelly, Emma Watson, Douglas Booth, Logan Lerman, Ray Winstone, and others. It holds a “Certified Fresh” 75% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes, but has been pretty heavily review-bombed by viewers who’ve brought its audience score down to 41%. Nevertheless, the movie recently witnessed a viewership spike at home. According to FlixPatrol, Noah was among the most-watched movies on the Pluto TV streaming service this week. Aronofsky followed it up with the divisive Mother!, another movie inspired by biblical stories but told on a much smaller scale. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
