With summer coming to a close, we can finally say goodbye to what was arguably the most horrendous movie season in the history of summer movie seasons. Good riddance.

Profits dipped and quality plunged. Ticket sales in the United States and Canada are projected to total $4.33 billion, a 2% decline from last year, according to the media analytics firm ComScore. But the fine print is whats important. Disney monopolized the summer to a vast degree, meaning a disconcerting amount of that revenue belongs to one studio alone. Even sequels that seemed like surefire hits for rival companies Warner Bros. Godzilla: King of the Monsters and Sonys The Angry Birds Movie 2, for example fell short of expectations.

Who can blame audiences for that? King of the Monsters was soulless cacophony. Why leave the couch? At the risk of sounding like a grumpy bore, the summers lineup had little to offer discerning moviegoers itching for variety, aside from a few gems (Booksmart , The Farewell , Once Upon a Time in Hollywood ).

The blockbuster deluge nowadays starts in mid- to late April, which gives us four months worth of existential crises rippling through the industry. Here are some upshots.

Disney Had The Quantity. Where Was The Quality?

Summer began with an Endgame. After 11 years and 22 installments, Marvel s core Avengers franchise bid a three-hour adieu to Iron Man and the other OG crusaders who turned superheroes into Hollywoods leading capital. Good luck to anything that hopes to unseat its spot atop the years box-office charts, where it became the fastest movie in history to earn $1 billion globally.

More tellingly, Avengers: Endgame was a harbinger of Disneys huge summer payday, as well as a reflection of the studios overwhelming cultural sovereignty. No one can compete with the Mouse House, which in March added the 84-year-old 21st Century Fox to a cache that already includes Pixar, Lucasfilm and Marvel.

Disney followed Endgame with a live-action Aladdin , Toy Story 4 and a pseudo-live-action Lion King , three overwhelming moneymakers that tweaked familiar stories from the 90s. As a result, Disney can now claim four (including Marchs Captain Marvel) of the years five highest grossers an imperialism that threatens to further homogenize Hollywoods ethos. If Disney has no steadfast competition in the marketplace, what incentive does it have to amplify the creativity of its output? (Sorry, but no matter what you thought of the Lion King reboot, creative is not a word that applies.)

This isnt the only red flag in Disneys corner. The studios leadership axed much of Foxs development slate after the acquisition went through, which implies that Fox home of exemplars like All About Eve, The Sound of Music, Alien and Mrs. Doubtfire will be molded to resemble its parent company. Meanwhile, the forthcoming streaming service Disney+ announced new editions of Home Alone, Night at the Museum, Cheaper by the Dozen and Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Its old hat to bemoan the industrys remake mania, but the summer has felt more unrelenting in this department than ever before.