Thread: What happened to the movies?
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the last years of a dying empire, looking inward and reliving past achievements because there isn't any hope that there are better days over the horizon
Last years of a declining republic*. If history is to repeat, we will have a Caesar moment and become an empire.
Let's hope we actually have a Caesar and not someone who doesn't live up to his caliber.
Then again people like Caesar come along once every few centuries, so I wouldn't get hopes up.
There is no way a modern man will live up to the legacy of Julius Caesar, but the good news is we only need him to be a fraction of the man Caesar was.
I watched Top Gun Maverick over the weekend. It was a solidly-executed basic popcorn flick with no surprises of any kind, and 20 years ago I'd have called it pleasantly mediocre - but in today's cinema culture, the mere fact that they delivered a solidly-executed basic popcorn flick and didn't shoehorn in a painful amount of tone-deaf woke propaganda made it sadly exceptional.
Even 10 years ago it would have been just a normal film.
It's amazing how rapidly our civilization has declined.
I don't know, the stereotypical Hollywood cigar-chomping sexual harassing fatcat movie executives seemed to like money more than the people running the place today. One of my favorite TV series, Star Trek TNG, was only good because Paramount forced Rick Berman to keep Gene Roddenberry tucked away in a corner where he couldn't do much damage, because he had a "message" he wanted to push, while they just wanted to sell a product.
Rick Berman gets a lot of flack, but he really was one of the major forces behind Star Trek's renaissance in the 80s and 90s. He stopped Gene Roddenberry's nuttier ideas, while sticking to the underlying principles that made Star Trek so unique and popular.
I don't know if you can say studio interference is a good or bad thing.
For every story of "studio ruins movie" there's a counter argument where the changes were objectively better. The first one just makes a better story.
You'd really need to count the number and scale of studio intrusions on movies to know.
its the media equivalent of planned obsolescence. They would rather throw out "safe" broad demographic (wahman) movies that are completely forgotten in 2 years than "risky" well crafted stories that have a smaller demographic and the ability to be iconic for decades.
But they don't hire people actual for talent. they hire based on DivErsIty
They're passing on scripts and writers because of ideology. That explains most of it.
100 years of state education is what happened. That and the media being one of the earliest converged industries
Look at the entrance exams for universities in 1880 compared to 2020, look at the general knowledge that was expected of a view to get a joke or understand a reference in films from the 20s, or 50s. Look at how smart your average person is though he has a supercomputer and encyclopedia within arms reach.
The same thing happened to all media. It's now made for a highly 'educated' class who know nothing and are incurious, though they profess to 'fucking love science'.
Now add the politics atop that, and the funny money accounting and tax shenanigans that happen in hollywood, and there's no incentive to make anything good.
I bet a majority of that is credit rolls
Yes it does. If people have a preference for sequels, it's because there might be a vestige of something they liked before instead of whatever woke trash they are trying to shoehorn in.
At it's most fundamental our societies past times have changed. People used to go to the movies to socialize and enjoy the ac, big screen, and some snacks. It was the same with things like baseball; it's a social thing and you didn't have screens in your face 24/7.
Things just don't work like that anymore and the last generation to enjoy the way it used to be is dying off. This generation has missed all the reasons things like this used to be different.
They focused more on polls, surveys and committees than first writing a great script. There are a few gems here and there but there is a massive mountain of ambivalence because of how generic a lot of the films wind up to be
They got woke.
The entertainment industry has been on a very long slide, getting into the specifics usually doesn't turn out well for where the thread has to go. However I'll attempt to take a different tack.
The problem is us.
Movies are easy to see versus reading a book, a book versus a movie is like getting your dopamine hit quick and cheap while reading a book is an actual investment to get your imagination going and senses tingling.
In a world full of noise and distractions, it is not difficult to see why few have the attention span to make investments in long form entertainment.
Maybe the movies that women direct are just bad?