The names flash past in the trailer for the new Murder on the Orient Express like carriages on a bullet train: Kenneth Branagh (who also directs), Penélope Cruz, Willem Dafoe, Dench, Depp, Gad, Jacobi, Pfeiffer, Ridley. The whole approach screams: “Never mind the story; look at those names!”

The all-star movie dates back to the 1930s and Grand Hotel, but it approached saturation levels in the 1970s, mainly via mediocre disaster movies and war films cobbling together a melange of A-listers and celebrities. Peak all-star was probably 1974, when the year’s top earners included The Towering Inferno, Earthquake, Airport 1975 and … Murder on the Orient Express. The cast included Albert Finney, Lauren Bacall, Sean Connery, Ingrid Bergman, John Gielgud and Vanessa Redgrave. It even inspired a star-studded Christie spoof, Murder By Death, two years later.

It was films such as these that prompted Roger Ebert’s “Box Rule”, where film ads had a row of small boxes across the bottom showing the face of a different star. “The rule is,” Ebert advised, “automatically avoid such films.” The boxes are gone, but the all-star movie prevails in new guises, such as superhero flicks, where big names unite for franchise-spanning plots and big pots of cash. Next up: Thor: Ragnarok (Hemsworth, Ruffalo, Hiddleston, Blanchett, Elba, Hopkins, Cumberbatch, Goldblum).

Some auteurs draw them in with prestige, however, such as David O Russell, Paul Thomas Anderson and Steven Soderbergh (whose Ocean’s series revived another classic all-star format). Then there’s Wes Anderson, whose celebrity troupe expands with each movie – hence his need to devise ever bigger structures in which to accommodate them: mansions, ships, scout camps and a Grand Budapest Hotel.

Kenneth Branagh was once one of these all-star auteurs. His Shakespeare movies, including Much Ado About Nothing and Hamlet, had no trouble drawing in luminaries such as Denzel Washington, Keanu Reeves, Julie Christie, Judi Dench and, er, Ken Dodd. That experience in celeb-corralling seems to have primed him for big-budget studio movies nicely.

Far from heralding a new golden age, though, all-star movies could be a sign of desperation; the watering hole in the drought where the big beasts pack together to survive. As well as the original Murder on the Orient Express, 1974 brought The Godfather: Part II, Chinatown, The Conversation and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. A new guard were taking over; they didn’t need the old stars any more. Perhaps we’re due another cull.

Murder on the Orient Express is in cinemas from Friday 3 November