2014 was a wild and wacky year in movies

One year ago, Hollywood found good reason to celebrate with a record-setting box office take of $10.9 billion. Oh, for those days of wine and roses.

This year ends with a very different tone amid a less-stellar box office (we'll see if it can hit $10.5 billion) and a shocking daily dose of revelations after the biggest data breach in Hollywood history.

USA TODAY's movie staff takes a look at the highs and lows of a certifiably bizarre 2014.

Women kicked butt

Taking care of business. That's what women did this year in film, flexing their biceps, fighting evil and raking in millions worldwide at the box office.

Kudos to Shailene Woodley, who launched the year as our bold new dystopian hero in Divergent. In July, Scarlett Johansson kicked Hercules' rear at the box office with Lucy (did you hear that, Marvel?), and Eva Green and her ruby lips proved she was a dame worth killing for in Sin City 2. And then there's The Hunger Games' Jennifer Lawrence, whose reluctant Katniss finally assumed the powerful Mockingjay mantle in November — to the tune of a $121.9 million opening weekend. (Disney is game: Even in the holiday musical Into the Woods, our Cinderella is fighting back!)

With successes like these, has the mandate ever been clearer? Audiences want more powerful women at the top of the call sheet. Your move, Hollywood. — Andrea Mandell

Year of the leak

Sony Pictures' chilling hacking scandal was a stark reminder of the precarious place in which Hollywood finds itself in 2014. Cyberhacking from a group calling itself Guardians of Peace wreaked havoc with the satirical comedy The Interview and led to the release of personal data and high-level e-mails from Sony employees (Angelina Jolie was called a "spoiled brat" in one exchange).

Lionsgate dealt with a major leak for TheExpendables 3 when the action film began circulating online three weeks ahead of its August release and was viewed hundreds of thousands of times.

Even Star Wars showed the dark side of the Internet when 32 key drawings from J.J. Abrams' The Force Awakens got out, more than a year before the movie's December 2015 release. — Bryan Alexander

Profitable placeholders

Did we really need four Hunger Games? Critics sniped about Lionsgate's decision to turn Suzanne Collins' three-part best-selling trilogy into four movies. But could the studio resist? The extra effort resulted in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1, which has become the second-most-profitable film of 2014 with $289 million to date — even if there was plenty of angst-filled padding. The film also sets up 2015's surefire finale Mockingjay — Part 2 in November.

Warner Bros. saw similar dividends after slicing J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit into three financially satisfying movies: 2012's An Unexpected Journey ($303 million), 2013's The Desolation of Smaug ($258 million) and the final Battle of the Five Armies ($108 million to date). — Alexander

The heavyweights

2014 probably won't reach 2013's record box office, but these films have pulled their weight so far, according to the latest figures from Rentrak:

Guardians of the Galaxy, $333 million

Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1, $289 million

Captain America, $260 million

The Lego Movie, $258 million

Transformers: Age of Extinction, $245 million

The bombs

Arnold Schwarzenegger is still struggling with his film comeback. The former box-office titan led the clunker Sabotage as one of the top box office and critical duds for 2014 ($10.5 million total). Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone made one mission too many with Expendables 3, which eked out $39.3 million — a significant drop from the $85 million Expendables 2 earned in 2012.

It was a tough year for comedy, with heavily promoted films drawing mostly critical ire and audience yawns: Jason Segel and Cameron Diaz's Sex Tape ($38.5 million total); Horrible Bosses 2 ($48 million); and Ted director Seth MacFarlane's misfire, A Million Ways to Die in the West ($43 million).

The year also buried the non-Biblical sword-and-sandal feature with Pompeii imploding in February ($23 million). Kellan Lutz brought shame to The Legend of Hercules ($19 million). Dwayne Johnson came the closest to victory with Brett Ratner's Hercules, which still made un-Rock-like numbers ($72 million). — Alexander

A year to forget: Johnny Depp

Mark 2014 as the year Johnny Depp traded his acclaimed unpredictable-artist status for that of a head-scratching tabloid figure. The headlines were not terribly kind: A year after The Lone Ranger doused his box-office mojo, Depp's $100 million sci-fi film Transcendence bombed. This fall, Twitter took him to task for a rambling speech he gave at the Hollywood Film Awards. And tabloids began to bare their teeth, suggesting that his relationship with 28-year-old fiancée Amber Heard, whom he proposed to in February, has "cooled."

But there may be light at the end of Depp's tunnel: A turn as the Wolf in Into the Woods could launch Depp into a much friendlier 2015, when he stars in the comedy Mortdecai and plays Boston gangster Whitey Bulger in Black Mass. — Mandell

Winning deglamorizations

Suddenly, frothy, fashionable Rachel is no more. Jennifer Aniston has snagged Screen Actors Guild and Golden Globe nominations for her turn as an emotionally and physically scarred woman in Cake.

Earlier, Shailene Woodley embodied a spunky yet wan cancer patient in The Fault in Our Stars, which raked in $125 million and critical plaudits. And we're capping off the year with Reese Witherspoon stripping off the makeup, pulling on a backpack and hiking the Pacific Crest Trail in Wild.

Grim is the new glam. — Donna Freydkin

Career most in need of a transformation

You know you might have some major image issues when Mel Gibson comes to your defense. It's been quite a year for Shia LaBeouf, once the promising star of 2003's Holes and 2007's Transformers.

In June, LaBeouf was thrown out of the Broadway performance of Cabaret for drunk and disorderly conduct. His tattered blue shirt was the opposite of a fashion statement. And he capped off 2014 by announcing that he had been raped during his Los Angeles art installation #IAMSORRY.

Truly, this career needs a major rewrite. Paging Michael Bay. ​ — Freydkin

Breakthroughs that mattered

A tip of the hat to these stars, who used 2014 as a giant career springboard:

• Ellar Coltrane, filmed over 12 years by director Richard Linklater, marvelously (and literally) grew up in front of our eyes in Boyhood.

• British actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw impressed by playing a pop star in the year's most critically acclaimed romantic drama, Beyond the Lights, along with the period taleBelle.

• Jenny Slate led a captivating romantic comedy about abortion (yes, you read that right), Obvious Child.

• No actor portrayed the psychosis of musicians as well as J.K. Simmons, who played a Juilliard-level instructor who pushes a young drummer (Miles Teller) to the brink in Whiplash.

• And David Oyelowo finally achieved leading-man status with a transcendent performance as Martin Luther King Jr., in Selma, now sweeping through awards season.

Our advice: Keep your eye on this bunch. — Mandell

Fond farewells

Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb provided a strong sendoff for two beloved film legends: Mickey Rooney, feisty and funny as museum guard Gus, and Robin Williams, whose touching turn as Teddy Roosevelt was his last.

Philip Seymour Hoffman showed great chemistry with Julianne Moore in their fourth film together, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1. Hoffman's Plutarch Heavensbee will appear in the final Mockingjay — Part 2 next November, but the actor's last leading role came as the brilliant, troubled spy master in July's film adaptation of John le Carre's A Most Wanted Man.

James Gandolfini's role as Cousin Marv in The Drop, released in September, provided a final look of where The Sopranos actor would have taken us. —Alexander