Picture this: It’s 2006, and you’re enjoying life with abandon as a child, then boom! High School Musical is released on Disney Channel. The movie opens with a flurry of snow above a ski resort, and you soon realize that won’t be the only flurry of something you experience that day. Then the singing and dancing start, banger after banger, accompanied by superb choreography that spans moods. Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens give the performances of their lives as Troy Bolton and Gabriella Montez, waking up the butterflies in your stomach. Sharpay Evans (Ashley Tisdale) bodies everyone at East High. We witness love, friendship, conflicts, and comebacks. The movie ends with “We’re All in This Together.” And before you know it, our walls and school stationery are plastered with photos of the cast.
When I look back at my tween and teenage years, I can only respond with gratitude. We were feasting at the teen media buffet courtesy of Hollywood treating teenagers as a serious demographic because it knew our parents would fund us.
But now, I look at my younger cousins and wonder: What do they watch that doesn’t appeal to me?
That’s not to say that I only consumed teen media and didn’t watch anything targeted at adults. I used to watch Vevo music videos, clearly labeled as explicit. But as teenagers, my peers and I grew up with something we could call ours. Something we knew was made for us and only us. So, where have the good teen movies gone?
The 2000s through the early 2010s were the golden era of teen movies. There were iconic made-for-television, mid-budget movies: Wendy Wu: Homecoming Warrior, Cadet Kelly, and Jump In. Then, there were the teen musicals: the High School Musical trilogy, the Camp Rock duology, and the Cheetah Girls trilogy. These movies were the true north for teenagehood and entertainment.
At their core, these movies carry similar stories or messages: the value of friendship, looking past differences, and the importance of believing in oneself. What stands out about them is the production value and the care the filmmakers took with stories centered on teenagers. The High School Musical trilogy had great cinematography. The Cheetah Girls traveled to Spain and India!
Don’t even get me started on the musical numbers. Every song, every piece of choreography was done as if the creative team was chasing EGOT status. Kenny Ortega directed and choreographed all three High School Musical films (among others), and he trained the cast like his life depended on it. High School Musical 3: Senior Year (2008) graduated from a TV release to a theatrical one, and I’d argue that it was his magnum opus. Every single scene was designed beautifully: the dramatic opening scene of the Wildcats’ final basketball game, the Broadway-inspired “I Want it All” number, Troy Bolton’s hair flip during the Spring Musical, the heartwarming closing scene, and everything in between.
Beyond made-for-television musicals, we also had an extensive selection of movies for older teens, including A Cinderella Story, Easy A, Monte Carlo, Accepted, Mean Girls, and so on. These movies imbued the writing with more of that high school angst, wit, and social dynamics. But the foundation remains the same: movies that revolve around believing in yourself and building connections, delivered with the creativity and seriousness teens deserve.
There was also a stint of young adult dystopian movies: The Hunger Games series, The Maze Runner, and the Divergent trilogy. This genre departed from the straightforward relatability of the previous two genres, but it still felt quintessentially like a teenager’s thing and, most importantly, was produced with high production value. Catching Fire (2013) was a knockout. The world-building, the acting, and the cinematography were great. To this day, people still talk about the IMAX aspect-ratio change when Katniss enters the arena.
All of this is not to say there aren’t any good teen movies post-2015. To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (2018) was a great comeback for the teen romcom, spurring a lot of online chatter. It felt like Hollywood might give us a renaissance of banging teen movies. We also had Edge of Seventeen, Moxie, Dope, Booksmart, and a few other notable movies. But apparently, these movies are not the rule; they’re the exceptions. Teen movies became few and far between. The good movies tend to be a more serious watch, the casual ones sound like they were written by a boomer who’s never met a real-life teenager before, and the movies that got a big push tend to be recycled IPs or blockbusters that mix genres.
Hollywood started casting a wider net for its viewership, favoring big-budget movies that could reel in fandoms or all age demographics. This change came off the back of people’s increasing use of social media and, as Nina Metz pointed out in The Chicago Tribune, the competition between streaming and cinema. Hollywood simply thought that teenagers on their own aren’t a profitable demographic anymore.
But the demand is there; it might have gone and come back, but it’s there. IndieWire reported that while Gen Z and Gen Alpha may have incorporated social media into how and where they consume film, they believe that they watch movies more than older generations assumed. Teens also showed an appetite for more stories that focus on friendships and are hopeful and relatable, rather than shallow or toxic romance stories. Young people are also craving original stories and films produced by independent creators over big IP revivals, according to a white paper published by Tubi.
It’s high time that film studios take teenagers seriously again and deliver more than a few good movies every couple of years.
Read NYOTA’s interview with Analesa Fisher about their movie Saving Buddy Charles (2025), a teen comedy about two best friends on an eventful road trip.
