Now that 2016 is in the rearview mirror, it’s a time to reflect on a prominent talking point of last year: film. According to boxofficemojo.com, 2016 was the highest grossing box office year in history. With a global total of $11.37 billion, the 2016 box office passed up 2015’s record year of $11.21 billion.

A few noteworthy occurrences in the film industry this year were set by Disney. In 2016, Walt Disney Studios box office accumulate north of $7 billion worldwide. Furthermore, Disney was also the first company to ever gross north of $3 billion at the domestic box office and the fastest to ever reach $1 billion (it took them 128 days.) And as of the release of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story in December, Disney also had the top five highest grossing movies of the year. In addition to Rogue One, the other four films were Captain America: Civil War, Finding Dory, Zootopia, and The Jungle Book.

Universal Studios, who previously held the record for highest box office gross in a single year, only had one movie in the top ten highest grossing films of 2016: The Secret Life of Pets. The Secret Life of Pets accumulated an $875 million worldwide gross which was a longshot from their most successful film last year, Jurassic World, which made $1.52 billion worldwide.

For Warner Bros., a company that was critically ridiculed throughout 2016 for their comic book adaptations, managed to prevail against the disdain and had three financial blockbusters. The two movies that received a lot of antagonism from critics were Suicide Squad and Batman v Superman, who grossed $873 million and $745 million respectively. And with help of the Harry Potter spinoff, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which grossed $801 million, Warner Bros. managed to be the second most profitable studio of 2016.

“My favorite movie of 2016 was Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. It was my favorite because I am a huge Star Wars fanboy and even though I think that Captain America: Civil War and Deadpool were probably better movies, I’d still just have to say that Rogue One was my favorite just because I’m pretty biased to the franchise and I always hold it to a higher regard than perhaps it actually is. It was really cool how they used CGI to put Tarkin and Princess Leia into the movie and also how all the action at the end of the movie played out. Also, it was a nice touch how the prequels were called back to at some points as well as hints toward the original trilogy at other points,” said senior Jack Vento.

“I don’t know if there was exactly a worst movie this year that I saw at least, but the most boring movie I saw was called Me Before You. The thing I didn’t like about it was that I did not understand the protagonist’s transformation. He goes from being really stubborn then he just starts to warm up to the female character, whose name I can’t remember, and there’s never a reason why. It just sort of happens. It eventually got to a point in the movie where I fell asleep. Not to mention, I had to see it against my will because my girlfriend made me see it,” says Vento.

“My favorite movie of 2016 was Hacksaw Ridge. I think Mel Gibson did a good job directing the movie and the cinematography was really good. I also liked how they built up the character of Desmond Dawes early on first before sending him off to the battlefield, which was essentially the pits of hell.The scenes in the war were brutally realistic which made for good cinema,” says senior Carson Kennedy.

“Of all the movies I saw this year I’d have to say the worst was Suicide Squad. The movie was very messy, the editing was really bad, the characters weren’t built up very well so you couldn’t connect to them much. Not to mention, the movie looked and felt like it was just a bunch of trailers put together into one movie,” Kennedy said.