Why Have Movies Been So Bad Lately? 664
mikesd81 asks: "Why have movies and shows been so bad lately? I find myself looking on my Video on Demand service from my cable company or flipping channels and just nothing seems to have any depth any more. But on the other hand, I happened to watch Stargate Atlantis and there was an incredible scene that just caught the emotion and emergency. So is it the directing? The writing? The acting? It seems more and more movies just aren't worth anything. Let alone paying $20 to go to a movie." Let's not forget the recent number of Hollywood remakes and the amount of "reality TV" being pumped out by the networks.
Slashdot rejected my ask slashdot submission (Score:5, Funny)
About Slashdot stories.
Re:Slashdot rejected my ask slashdot submission (Score:2)
American movies (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Slashdot rejected my ask slashdot submission (Score:5, Insightful)
Answer: Because you've grown up.
Duh!
Re:Slashdot rejected my ask slashdot submission (Score:5, Funny)
At best some lines indicated what some my call cosmic irony, yet most would claim these situations are merely unfortunate, as were the remaing situations, thus perhaps leaning towards "Unfortunate" as a prefered title.
Re:Rain on your wedding day (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyway - most of the people who believe irony is being misused lately believe that true irony has to do with incongruity and double audience. So when you need a knife when you have a lot of spoons, that's not ironic, because you don't expect for there to be knives instead of spoons. Perhaps not finding a knife in a knife shop, having told your friends you were going to the knife
Re:No no no. (Score:3, Funny)
The example that Hyde noticed is ironic because we might reasonably expect Ireland to distance itself from the nation she most hated, whereas, instead, she did pretty much the opposite and emulated it.
The example of 10,000 spoons is not ironic because there's no reason not to have the 10,000 spoons rather than a knife. Maybe she's in spoon factory! There's not enough there to make it ironic. It requires some reason for us to expect a knife rather than spoons (and possibly a reason to not exp
Re:Slashdot rejected my ask slashdot submission (Score:3, Insightful)
"Top" lists are always like this since our collective memory is relatively short term. The shorter it's been since we saw a movie, the better we remember it. Also, as someone pointed out, maybe once we get older, we have a higher critical standard.
I think these "top" lists should only give the options for movies older than say 5 (or maybe 10) years. This would let us get over the rosey glow we have of the movie and judge it for what it is. For example, (note, I haven't seen this yet but I now am look
Hollywood is out of ideas (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, though. I think the constant deluge of remake-after-remake of classic TV series and older movies has killed my interest in going to the movie theater. Why go out, when I can pull 1/2 of the "new" movies off my own DVD rack, or watch the original on late-night TV.
But I guess someone is watching these rehashes, because Hollywood keeps making them.
Re:Hollywood is out of ideas (Score:5, Insightful)
They could show a futurama marathon on the big screen and I'd still go see it. Just for the excuse to get out.
Movies and music in general suck because like any other corrupt practice, they has been heavily marketed. I'm sorry, but at what point is Paris Hilton a properly trained singer?
Why is collin farrel [sp?] playing american hero cops? He's FUCKING IRISH!!!!
Tom
Re:Hollywood is out of ideas (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hollywood is out of ideas (Score:4, Insightful)
Absolute train wreck of a movie that droned on in no particular direction for 3 feckin' hours. I swear, 2 or 3 times I thought it was over and went to make coffee, only to find they were invading some other place when I got back, our hero was still eyeing up his best mate (but, following the advice of his adopted father, and unlike many of his ancestors, hadn't shagged his mother).
There's absolutely no excuse for Hollywood "running out of ideas" and making all these half-arsed re-makes: my bookshelves are crammed with excellent plots, many of which would make a hal;f decent screenplay. Let's face it, if Peter Jackson, could make a series of nicely paced action packed movies from the Lord Of The Rings, surely something could be done with say - half of the PK Dick stories still unfilmed, Magician, The Stainless Steel Rat series, Tad Williams epic, not to mention all the "classic" fantasy fare from Ursula Le Guin (I'm not counting that tripe someone knocked up a couple of years ago), Michael Moorcock (about the only thing Elric hasn't been in is a movie...), EE Smith, Asimov etc.
Put down the red underpants and Step away from the Superman plot. FFS. And Batman - that's been done to death now surely. Makes me laugh when I see the actors in these remakes being interviewed, and explaining their character, his background and his motivation - like we didn't already know.
No one plays their own ethnicity anymore (Score:4, Funny)
(stolen from http://www.latimes.com/features/magazine/west/la-
Years ago, I had an actor friend, John, who happened to be a Native American. We were having lunch one day when he said: "Howie, things are OK with me now. But when I first came out here back in the '40s, I couldn't get a job. I went over to Republic studios. They were doing hundreds of westerns then. I figured I'm a cinch to get an Indian part.
"Sorry," the casting director tells me. "You don't look Indian enough."
"I don't look Indian enough? I happen to be a full-blooded Sioux!"
"So what? You still don't look Indian enough."
"So if I don't look Indian enough, who does?"
"Italians."
"What?"
"You heard me. We only use Italians for Indian parts. They look more Indian than the Indians."
"Well, if Italians are doing Indian parts, maybe I could play an Italian."
"No, we use other people for the Italian parts."
"Who?"
"Jews. They play all Italian gangsters. Paul Muni, Edward G. Robinson, John Garfield. All Jewish."
John told the guy he didn't understand.
"Look," the Republic guy said, "Jews look more Italian than Italians. I was in Rome last summer. I didn't see one Italian who looked how an Italian is supposed to look. They had blond hair, fair skin, high cheekbones."
John said, "Howie, I asked the guy, 'If Italians play Indians and Jews play Italians, then who plays Jews?' He said, 'WASPs. Who played David? Gregory Peck. Who played Charlton Heston's mother in "Ben-Hur"? Martha Scott.'"
John pounded the guy's desk and told him: "OK, Italians play Indians, Jews play Italians, WASPs play Jews. Let me play an Oriental. After all, Indians came over from Asia."
He said the guy apologized. "White guys play Orientals. Who played Charlie Chan? Warner Oland. Who played Mr. Moto? Peter Lorre. Who played Chinese dames for years? Myrna Loy."
Johnny seemed exhausted. The waiter came with the check. I paid. It was the least I could do. I asked him how he managed to stay in the business.
"I got the idea that if Italians are grabbing all the Indian parts, I would become Italian. I changed my name from John to Giovanni. I learned to think like them, dress like them, walk like them. I was ready. I went up for a part in the movie 'Little Big Man,' starring Dustin Hoffman.
"The casting guy asked me my name. I told him I was Giovanni and could play any Indian part he had. The guy gets up from his chair. 'I'm sorry,' he says. 'Things have changed. We only use authentic Native Americans today . . . people like Iron Eyes Cody, Graham Greene, Chief Dan George. Now if you were a genuine Indian, I'd hire you on the spot.'"
John said he couldn't take it. "I screamed at the guy, 'But I'm a full-blooded Sioux. I am an authentic Indian. I am the realest Indian you'll ever find.'"
He said the casting guy laughed in his face. "You actors," he said. "You'll say anything to get a part."
Solomon Chang
Re:Hollywood is out of ideas (Score:4, Funny)
So fsck off back to where you came from!
Re:Hollywood is out of ideas (Score:5, Insightful)
Movies with: actual plots, decent acting, and good taste will always be in fashion.
actual plots means that it's OK to require the viewer to pay attention. Tired, formulaic vehicles are exactly that.
decent acting probably means load-shedding the big names and going for some undiscovered talent.
good taste means that, while we require a hint of the human capacity for evil to understand why the villian is the villian, we aren't really interested in wallowing in the evil. Lynch/Tarentino will always have their fan base, and I'm not advocating censorship here, just letting you know that "less is more". Expanding on that, less emphasis on potty mouth and hormones would also enhance their dramatic value. Finally, stories rooted in sexual confusion are of no interest whatsoever.
Summarizing: movies with some didactic value, not just "chewing gum for the mind", are what is needed.
Re:Hollywood is out of ideas (Score:3, Insightful)
Since Big Media Business has a hardon for mega hits, rather than catalog, they go with things that were
Re:Hollywood is out of ideas (Score:5, Insightful)
Good luck with that one. Taste is purely in the mind of the beholder. What you think is good taste is unlikely to be what any significant majority of the population thinks it is. Your implications about David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino and your outright dismissal of any stories based on sexual confusion is glaring proof of the subjectivity of taste.
For example, while vast numbers of Americans clearly think "Passion" was in good taste, there are more than a few who saw it as exploitive, crude and excessively violent. Similarly with "The DaVinci Code" - I even got email from some people I know who thought it worthy of boycotting because its blasphemy was in such poor taste.
I'll even go out on a limb and say that no movie can rise above the level of passable but forgettably simple entertainment unless it challenges some of the widely held perceptions of what is acceptable in society. Any movie that makes such a challenge is certain, almost by definition, to conflict with what a large number of people in that same society would consider "tasteful."
Re:Hollywood is out of ideas (Score:3, Insightful)
Bring on the challenges.
Your next set of blockbuster flicks:
Re:Hollywood is out of ideas (Score:3, Insightful)
You have made the mistake of equating popularity with quality. The lord of the rings challenged no one to think. As storylines go, it's pretty much pure pablum - that you think it has "depth of plot
Re:Hollywood is out of ideas (Score:3, Insightful)
That's pretty much it.
A big problem of our "modern" societies is that people's attention spans get shorter and shorter. From this side of the Atlantic Ocean I would guess that this is worse in the US than in Europe, but we're on the same track as you are, you just have a head-start.
This means that any message you want a significant number of people to actually notice has to
- be very short
- use very very big letters
Style is always easier to adve
Re:Hollywood is out of ideas (Score:5, Interesting)
Looking at the latest releases of the intellectually barren void that is the entertainment industry, I'm beginning to wonder if the people making entertainment have just run out of ideas. They've been drinking their own koolaid for so long, they can't really think "different", let alone anything revolutionary.
The 2 movies I went to this year (one was Scary Movie 4 which I expected to enjoy at least superficially, but not even that) didn't give me a good ROI. The last decent movie I was at was probably Batman last year.
In 30-40 years, I suspect ultra sized movie theatres will be a thing of the past (note I said ultra sized). It seems the Hollywood Blockbuster is dying out slowly and this summer has been thoroughly disgraceful. I think entertainment will slowly settle more and more into happy niches more specific and targetted than they are now.
Or the current disillusionment with movies could be that many
Re:Hollywood is out of ideas (Score:3, Interesting)
In all fairness, mass-audiences are fickle. Different can often mean easy-to-lose-lots-of-people. I imagine if you put your mind to it, you could call up a good-sized list of movies you liked that lots of people didn't. Think even harder, a
Re:Hollywood is out of ideas (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider how the original Star Wars got to be the highest grossing movie of it's time. It spent over a year in theaters. Heck, the ads for it weren't much more than the movie's logo and some of the music. This movie had the time to let it be judged by the movie goers, who convinced others they needed to see this thing.
Today, there are so many new movies coming out that they're barely in the major theaters for more than a couple of weeks. Even a reasonably successful film may only see a month out there.
This is a huge shift in how movies are marketed, which is coming back to your point about all these remakes, sequels, and TV series. Today, if a movie doesn't produce big time within a couple of weeks, the studios lose money. There's no time for word of mouth, or generating interest in a good movie. If you were a movie executive whose primary concern is making sure everyone gets paid (especially yourself) what would you do?
Heck, we're already seeing what they'd do. Generate movies based on subjects that are already established household names which your marketing department has identified a certain demographic for. Let's toss together a "Bewitched" movie with some notable names and put it out there! Lots of folks over 30 at least saw reruns, and it should have a predictable attendance.
Even as of a few weeks ago I was reading an article concerning a debate over how much time after a movie leaves the theater should the DVD come out. If this shortens up even further (as it likely will) you can expect the remakes and the like to get even worse. 1 year for marketing, 2 weeks in distribution, 3 weeks later the DVD. Sounds like a recipe for even worse film making.
Re:Hollywood is out of ideas (Score:5, Insightful)
And hell, even in mainstream cinema there's some great stuff coming out. Look at anything directed by Chris Nolan (The Prestige is coming out shortly), and anything written by Charlie Kaufman or Aaron Sorkin. In the last couple years we've had fantastic work from Sofia Copola, Tim Burton, Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Quentin Tarentino, and Tommy Lee Jones (The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada was just in theaters this spring).
Go see "A Scanner Darkly". Catch Aronofsky's "The Fountain" when it hits theaters. See Ed Norton in "The Illusionist". Keep an eye out for Lynch's "Inland Empire". There have always been crap films coming out, but if you know what to look for, there's some really exciting things coming out right now. Ignore the remakes-of-remakes, and look around a bit. You'll find plenty of new ideas out there.
Re:Hollywood is out of ideas (Score:3, Insightful)
Ideas? No. I dare say there are literally thousands, tens of thousands of people in California, exploding with creative genius, who would love to make seriously challenging, interesting, unusual, original movies. What Hollywood lacks is guts. It is safer, financially, to put out a movie which is a lot like lots of previous movies. A movie which is based on a franchise which people are already familiar with. A movie which appeals to well-established movie-going demographics. Hollywood cares too much about mo
You. (Score:5, Insightful)
After reading that, I must seriously question your ability to judge any film or video work.
Re:You. (Score:2)
Re:Couldn't Agree More (Score:2)
Atlantis has its ups and downs. If I didn't have 23 hours of unemployment to fill every day, I probably wouldn't bother with it either.
Re:Couldn't Agree More (Score:5, Interesting)
Michael Shanks is their anchor now, and he still has the balance between humor and drama that he honed working with RDA in the earlier seasons. Of course, now he's stuck playing that balance off of Claudia Black, who, while she can give a great performance, often doesn't get the chance because her character is two steps away from comic relief. Amanda Tapping and Chris Judge are also very talented, but for some reason they don't get nearly enough chances these days to go beyond their caricatured roles of nerdy physicist and stoic warrior.
Atlantis, on the other hand, lacks plot direction. It amounts to "flail blindly against the ravages of the Wraith", without any sort of clue as to what the team's plan is or where they're going. I think this is partly due to the Wraith being a faceless horde of nobodies, while the enemies with real personality never seem to pose more than a transient threat. The acting is good (David Hewlett shows the most potential, in my opinion, but any growth his character shows always seems to disappear by the next episode), the directing is good, and the design and effects are top-notch. The writers just need to figure out where this boat is going and clue us in the tiniest bit.
Re:Couldn't Agree More (Score:3, Informative)
I don't call that a stupid tactical blunder, I call that a stupid viewer. I'm sorry, but a little bit needs to be left to the imagination so that you can "what if" the story a little bit, opening your mind to a new possibility. Asking for every single thing to be written out for you is the mark of complete mental laziness.
All of the cities similar to Atlant
Re:Couldn't Agree More (Score:3, Informative)
And in The Siege (Part 3), they do say that the mostly-depleted ZPM which they received from earth would last for days, yes, but that was a depleted ZPM, not a fully charged one. Further, we don't know if ZPMs deplete linearly or not. A conventional chemical battery, for instance, will have a higher voltage when it is fresh than when it is at 10% capacity. It's possible that the first 20% of a ZPM's power would last for deca
art has been replaced by... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:art has been replaced by... (Score:2)
Except for "Clerks II".
Re:art has been replaced by... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:art has been replaced by... (Score:3, Insightful)
Umm, what about Back to the Future?
It proves the point.
Re:art has been replaced by... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:art has been replaced by... (Score:2, Insightful)
For me it doesn't matter if a sequel - or a remake, or a filmatization of a tv-series - sucks or not. A sequel can be fully as good as the original and I'll still not go see it anymore.
My problem is, sequels are dedicated to give me "more of the same" - which I don't want anymore. I saw the original already, I liked it - but why would I want to spend my limited time and money seeing the same stuff again? It's like going to a restaurant and always ordering the sa
New TV format: 45-min. drama serial? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd argue that the market is proving you right, as we speak. I think the new format of choice is not the two-hour movie, but the 45-minute serial. In the past few years we've seen the demise of the "story arc" sitcom (where each episode was basically self-contained and usually returned the situation to wherever it began, for the next episode), long a staple of American television, and replaced it with plot-driven series TV shows. I think the epitome of the genre is "24," just because it's really the antithesis of the sitcom format, but there are many other shows that have popped up that are basically the same thing.
On one hand, people seem to like the shorter plotlines of series shows: you can get your 'dose' of entertainment in 45 minutes if you skip the commercials, rather than in two hours; but on the other hand the sales of DVD sets and my personal experience watching them indicates that people aren't adverse to watching two or three hours of serial episodes in a sitting.
In some ways the whole thing reminds me of another change, which went in the opposite direction: the transition in the 19th century from serial fiction literature, to bound novels. It seems as though today we're going from movies, to series shows where each season has a basically 'cinematic' plot (pretty much any one season of most new dramas could have been a movie, although whether a good or bad one I won't say), and then where that one plot is broken into hourlong sub-plots that are delivered to the viewer in chunks.
If I was cynical I'd say that this is further evidence of the ADD-ization of this country and of our society in general, but I won't pass judgement. I think I'll go watch another episode of Nip/Tuck, instead.
Re:art has been replaced by... (Score:2, Insightful)
I totally agree with you.
I also find it interesting you say this, especially since, when the studios are talking about piracy, they always insist that, if we don't pay for their material, quality will suffer. I'm not trying to condone piracy, or anything, but I think we all know that's a bunch of BS.
Every so often, you hear about some actor who made a big deal (walked off a set, etc.) about
Producers and Studios (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, Bryan Singer was a total dick to leave the X-Men series to die a painful death and go direct a sub-par Superman movie. What an asshole.
Simple answer (Score:5, Insightful)
In the "golden age" of movies (whenever you consider that to be) movies were made by writers, directors, and actors who considered it an art form. Today, the studios are run by people who consider it a profit-oriented business.
Sure, the studios always wanted to make money. But technology has improved and now it is extremely expensive to produce a movie to modern technological standards, so budgets have skyrocketed. No studio will take risks when they're spending $100 million MINIMUM to make a movie. Unfortunately, art is all about taking risks.
Re:Simple answer (Score:5, Insightful)
We went decades upon decades without digital editing, let alone recording.
$100M minimum?
You can make a film, *film* now, for a fraction of that. You could shoot on video and make it a fraction of that fraction.
It seems to me that the amazingly high cost of movie making comes from ridiculous CGI, over-inflated talent payrolls, and marketing blitzes that start a year before the movie's even done shooting.
Clerks was ~$40k
pi was ~$60k
cube was ~$250k
I'm not trying to pull some bullshit romanticism faggotry. I'm just saying that pandering to the masses with shineys and pretty faces that we all know and love isn't going to promote cinema as an art.
There's nothing wrong with either but there should be room for both.
Re:Simple answer (Score:5, Insightful)
I watched all this stuff change when I worked in Hollywood in the 1980s. Everyone talked about how the "bean counters" were taking over Hollywood, and how expensive productions were. I think the breaking point was the big Writer's Strike in 1988, the writers saw how much money producers, directors, and actors were getting, and they wanted a piece of the pie. Of course they didn't get squat.
Yeah, there's always the exception of some ultra-low budget movie that breaks big, but those never come from Hollywood, they're always from outsiders. The Studio system produces BIG movies because they believe that's the way to make big money. That's what pandering to the masses is all about.
Re:Simple answer (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Simple answer (Score:3, Interesting)
The writing is the problem, for the most part (Score:5, Insightful)
David
Re:The writing is the problem, for the most part (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The writing is the problem, for the most part (Score:3, Insightful)
It's bullshit, especially beca
Re:The writing is the problem, for the most part (Score:3, Insightful)
Other problems of todays movies:
1) Emphasis on money rather than artistic values (unlike in the 60s and 70s and even in 80s).
2) Emphasis on good-looking teenage and under-25 actors (because teenagers are the majority of cinema goers). This brings in shallow themes and shallow characters (by the way, I'm 29).
3) Emphasis on the visual FX. This again brings in shallow themes.
4) Someth
Sturgeon's Law (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think movies are getting worse - they're just as crap as they always have been.
Re:Sturgeon's Law (Score:5, Insightful)
The older we get the more crap we have seen and the less tolerant we are of new crap. Hence the question: why is there so much crap around these days?
Things which I thought were pretty good when I was 20 now look like crap to be 20 years later. Maybe the absolute level of crap today is the same as is was in the past.
Re:Sturgeon's Law (Score:2)
Yup. There have *always* been a lot of terrible movies out there. We just forget about them. ('cause they're forgettable.) And there are still some great movies being produced today.
The only difference is that the rise of consolidated suburban multiplexes and the erosion of small locally owned theaters has made it rather harder to se
Re:Sturgeon's Law (Score:3, Interesting)
Compare these extremes: Pixar Studios and youtube.com. In the former case you have a company that has staked its success on a small number of expensive to produce products and consequently the selection process is very stringent before anything reaches distribution. In the latter case, the cost of production
"Lately"...? (Score:3, Interesting)
If you find yourself saying "Gee, TV sure is bad these days" then there's a fair chance you celebrated your 35th birthday recently... TV is the same as it's always been, you've just outgrown a lot of it.
Also see Sturgeon's law.
Re:"Lately"...? (Score:2)
And back to the topic: crap is easier and cheaper to produce. The younger generations have
Some Movies aren't too bad (Score:4, Insightful)
TV generally sucks, but I don't think that's anything new. I rarely watch TV other than the news (and I get most of that off the Internet anyway), and occasionally a sitcom or two while I'm eating dinner.
Re:Some Movies aren't too bad (Score:2)
Re:Some Movies aren't too bad (Score:3, Insightful)
Dear Slashdot (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Dear Slashdot (Score:2)
Uphill both ways (Score:2)
Unless its a quote I didn't reference.
Why are movies so bad lately? (Score:5, Interesting)
Summertime 'popcorn' movies are usually the least fulfilling for intellectual people.
The best original stories are increasingly backended towards the time of year when studios and tabloids focus on awards.
Hollywood doesn't squeeze any new decent TV out this time of year when people are taking their kids on vacation and stuff.
In the meantime, start with the IMDB top 250 and see what you haven't.
It's the "hacktors" (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, and the films. A remake of Dukes of Hazard? Miami Vice? What is next, Married with Children? A Dallas movie? T.J. Hooker? Come on guys, there are great books out there that could be made into films. How about a version of "I, Robot" that actually follows Asimov's book? The last Superman movie. Terrible. They should have waited another year or two and did the film with the cast of Smallville. I mean, seriously, Lex from Smallville vs. the latest Superman's? No comparison.
I can see why great actors like James Spader turn to T.V. now rather than film. Unless you land a Harry Potter film, or are a voice actor in a Pixar film, or are in a Spiderman or Pirates sequel, it probably not going to do well at all.
Re:It's the "hacktors" (Score:2)
Stargate: Atlantis? (Score:2)
Re:Stargate: Atlantis? (Score:2)
Re:Stargate: Atlantis? (Score:2)
If there's one good thing to come from it... (Score:3, Interesting)
That being said, have you been outside lately?! [cnn.com]
Problem soon to be remedied... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Problem soon to be remedied... (Score:3, Funny)
Try harder. (Score:2)
There's a lot of good material out there if you're willing to look for it. Since you mentioned shows, let's use TV as an example. It's easy to stumble upon shows like According to Jim, Hope and Faith, The King of Queens, or Joey (which has been cancelled, thank god) and assume that the sitcom has been left to die a slow and painful death.
If you stop looking there, though, then you miss some of the gems that are out there. Arrested Development never seemed to get the push fr
One cure is getting the (Score:2)
You will see movies that put the story first. The big studios are too cautious, too conservative, too often. Ever wonder what happened to Henry Rollins? He's on IFC.
Oh yeah, greg the bunny. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_the_bunny [wikipedia.org]
The sundance has some ass kicking movies too. google the sundance channel and look at the schedule.
Bad? (Score:2)
The real answer is Nostalgia (Score:2)
When were (most) movies good? (Score:5, Insightful)
That said, there are great independant movies being made every day and even an occasional a big-budget flick that gets everything right. Some of it's foreign, some of them are documentaries, most will require a little more effort to locate (like browsing new areas of Netflix. It's not like the great movies from the past have disappeared, either-- if you can't find anything new to watch, why not try a classic you've never seen?
By the way, there's one more factor to take into account-- maybe you're just getting old. Look at some movies you used to think were great 10 or 20 years ago (I have no idea how old you are...) and see if they're as good as you remember.
Re:When were (most) movies good? (Score:3, Interesting)
movies have always sucked (Score:3, Informative)
the reason older movies seem so great, and new movies seem so the suck, is because you're only remembering the Metropolises, the Battleship Potemkins, the Citizen Kanes, the 8 1/2s, the Mon Oncles, the Dr. Strangeloves, the 2001s, the Apocalypse Nows, and so on. you're talking about over a HUNDRED years of filmmaking, and gotta tell you, they certainly wasn't ALL winners. Plenty of chaff in there to pad down the wheat. And seriously, in about 20 years there will definitely be a handful of films that absolutely stand up as classics of the early 21st century.
can't say much about stargate or whatever the fuck, cause that shit's retarded.
money doesn't require it (Score:5, Insightful)
Superman Returns is a case in point. Did you notice how that was simultaneously marketed to evangelicals with "Superman as Jesus figure" and gays with that article "Is Superman Gay?" and liberals with Lex Luthor's "bring it on" statement in the trailers? In reality the movie was none of these things, they just wanted to intrigue as many people as possible to bring them to the theaters.
Bottom line: For people trying to make the "summer blockbuster," it doesn't matter if the movie is good, as long as it sells. You make more money increasing expectations than delivering on those expectations.
This is why niche and indie movies are often better, because the primary goal of the writers, directors and actors is to present their vision. Now, I actually like a fair number of mainstream movies, but certainly not most of them.
Simple Answer... (Score:5, Insightful)
A: Because it's a tired, cliched question/statement.
This year, like every year, has had some great movies and some bad ones. In the past year, we've had Superman Returns, Pirates of the Carribean 2, United 93, Munich, Millions, Crash, Capote, Match Point, Hustle & Flow, Batman Begins, Sin City, Walk the Line, Murderball, The Constant Gardener, A History of Violence, March of the Penguins, Wallace & Grommit...
And that's just to name a few. Is this any better than other year? No, not really. It's just that every year, there's always a lot more trashy art than good art. Any nostalgia for "back then" being better than now is just smoke and mirrors. For every Schindler's List, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Godfather Part II, you got Police Academy 6, Halloween 3, and Monster a Go-Go in those years (or shortly around it, that was just off the top of my head).
I'm sick of all these "movies/books/music/crime rates/teenagers were all better back then" arguments. Baloney. We only remember the best, and today, when every friday we get 3 new mediocre movies and every few weeks a decent one, we forget that there were also new movies every week in the 90s and 80s, and countless 8-track trash music from the 70s, and romance novels have been around since the 40s.
Re:Simple Answer... (Score:3, Interesting)
TV stations routinely get offered deals that include a few blockbuster hits, or really good movies, and 10 pieces of indefensible filler. Sometimes, the contract even spells out that the crappy movies MUST be aired. This is why TV stations will sometimes have 'specials' focussing on a particular actor (or e.g. the entire Police Academy serieS); they had to buy all his movies, just to show the good ones. This is also why you can sometimes see feature films programmed in the middle
The remakes I can understand (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, the suckage is a completely different matter.
It's a trick of perception. (Score:5, Insightful)
When you look at all the old things you have that have lasted 30 years and work great, compared to the things that break easily, you're comparing the worksmanship of the set {things that were built 30+ years ago and are still working} to {things that were built a few years ago}... of course all the older things you see around you are better-made, even if the worksmanship standards haven't actually changed over the years, because of the natural filter that they're still working, or else they wouldn't be around for you to compare.
Similarly, the set {movies I remember from more than a few years ago} will clearly be better than {movies from this year}, simply by virtue of the fact that you remember the better ones and forget the worse. Comparing today's Hollywood crap to yesterday's cream of the crop is unintentional, but it's exactly what's going on everytime someone rehashes this "story" every few months.
It's a killer cycle... (Score:2)
There's also other reasons, however they lie in the major theaters that show the movies:
What would happen if... (Score:2)
Lack of Competition (Score:3, Interesting)
Since there are less than ten major studios like Sony, Paramount, etc. (which is VERY FEW when you consider the overall demand for movies) with massive marketing power, there is plenty of consumer money to be divvy'd up between the studios. Indie film producers and studios have a hard time getting their films into these major chains due to the fact that the (few) major studios have good relationships with the few major chains and effectively shut them out.
These factors along with the fact that big companies do not like to take "creative risks", leave the major studios with little incentive to change from "tried & true" formulas in film creation. This leads to less overall creativity in the long run, and although ticket numbers are down, these companies are still VERY profitable.
Of course, the Internet can change this and one can argue that the Internet has in fact contributed to the growing popularity of Indie films, which can be quite a refreshing change from the formulaic, predictable Major Releases.
This can also be tied to Net neutrality... one of the reasons the major Telcos oppose net neutrality is because they see the potential for lucrative relationships with the Few Big Motion Picture Distributors to deliver their movies at high speed to their customers, while the speed of other content is capped (i.e. really good, creative, cutting-edge Indie Films that have the potential to be hits and compete with the major studios, but obviously lack the $$$ to share with the Telcos).
A little research is all you need (Score:2, Informative)
First of all, video on demand is not the place to begin your search, oh I know its convenient, but chances are you'll only find last years crap that couldn't make back production costs. Best of luck finding something good.
Check out some movie review sites before judging whether a movie is worth your time or not http://www.rottentomatoes.com/ [rottentomatoes.com] has a pretty good t
Did you just turn 35? (Score:5, Insightful)
I submit it's not that the movies have been so bad lately, but rather that your sensibilities have changed.
Here's my take on it... (Score:5, Informative)
Enter the financial folks. They are absolutely necessary any time a business moves beyond being an expensive hobby, but they will strive for efficieny. Efficiency is best gained by homogenizing operations, but that also weeds out the things that tended to make the enterprise truly great in the first place. On top of that, some things (movies in this case) are enormously expensive to make (someone has to pay Industrial Light and Magic for all those special effects), and once the expense goes up, the natural tendency is to minimize risk. But again, minimizing risk keeps you from taking that fresh view and going out on a limb.
Sometimes this isn't really all that bad. If I swing by the supermarket to pick up a gallon of milk I want commodity pricing, and the bean counters excell at building the sort of enterprise that can deliver those commodity prices. You want really good creative stuff? Stay far away from the big guys and shell out extra for the starving artists who live for this sort of thing.
Nothing has changed from '20s till now.... (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason that it just seems like there is a high ratio of crap is because you only remember the GREAT movies of yesteryear. You don't remember the 1000+ cowboy/indian westerns or melodramatic romances because you most likely have never heard of them. You just remember Casablanca/Citizen Kane/etc.
Face it (Score:5, Funny)
Writing (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, I'm not a big fan of the Stargate franchise, but I think you've sort of answered your own question by mentioning them. You like a good story, and Stargate relies mostly on stories to hold its audience. They have to, because, by entertainment industry standards, they're a shoestring operation. Yeah, they do have some fancy special effects. But its cheap stuff. I can't be bothered to look up the figures, but I know that Stargate and Battlestar spend less for a whole season's SFX than a lot of movies (including some non-SF movies!) spend for a couple of hours.
Movies, by contrast, have huge budgets. Even so-called Indies cost tens of millions. And the kind of movie most people go to see costs at least $100 million to make. When you're risking that much money, you don't take chances. You put those millions into name stars, fancy effects, epic scenes — things people can see. You're so busy with that stuff, and with all the politics and ego-soothing, you don't worry about coming up with a good script. And you don't need to — a script doesn't sell a movie. Except, of course, to a tiny few like you and me.
It doesn't make sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Completely uninspiring (Score:3, Interesting)
Bring back the heroic guy - we've had enough wishy-washy characters who always have a major personal flaw. Bring back the fantastic dame who hangs off his arm -- she can be superhuman too, but that doesn't mean she has to take him down a peg at every chance. Bring back the strident and brave adventure, be it action, discovery, business, or voyage -- let the hero make the movie happen instead of being passively bounced about by heavy-handed plot devices. Bring back the unquestionably evil villain and don't fret about whether we understand his horrible childhood. Bring back the black-and-white morality - we like to see bad squashed and good heralded. If the film's going to go deep, don't go deep into the thousandth iteration of Hollywood feel-good stay-between-the-lines PC pop psych preaching... we go to the theater for a momentary escape from that. And for the love of christ, quit talking down to the audience.. It's okay to challenge the viewer once in a while.
I used to wonder just this (Score:3, Insightful)
Today's movies fail in terms of writing, acting, directing, or, in some cases, all of the above. Implausible plots, paper acting, horrible cinematography - none of this is new. But we don't remember "Monster a Go Go" or "Manos: The Hands of Fate". We do remember "Back to the Future".
That said, this year has been particularly weak. There's no Matrix, no Star Wars, no Harry Potter, and no Lord of the Rings. This year seems weak because 2001-2004 were so astoundingly strong. Whether or not you liked "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone", seeing the franchise come to the big screen was a huge deal for many, many people. The "Lord of the Rings" series was one of the most anticipated film adaptations ever. And although the "Star Wars" prequels were generally regarded as weak, the special effects were amazing.
I can name tons of movies that I enjoyed over the past 10 years, from Pixar's films (Incredibles / Nemo / Monsters / Toy Story) to the superhero films that worked (X-Men, Spider-Man, Batman Begins) to the unique and bizzare films (GATTACA, Fight Club, Memento) to great action/suspense films (The Matrix, Collateral) and a lot more.
What bad movies? (Score:5, Insightful)
In just the last few months, I've been dazzled by cool stuff by Michael Haneke (*the* coolest end-of-the-world movie ever made, "Hour of the Wolf," the creepy "Hidden," and the revoltingly subversive "Funny Games") and Takashi Miike (the icy "Black Society" trilogy), the awesome 1976 black comedy "Network," and a pair of superb recent documentaries, "New York Doll" (70s glam rock) and "Why We Fight" (Eisenhower's warning against the military industrial complex). I can't also forget "The Servant," a sinister 60s-era British flick (made by Joseph Losey, the immensely talented film industry outcast from Wisconsin) about a manservant slowly taking over his master's life which has the additional gift of having been adapted by our recent Nobel Laureate in literature, Harold Pinter. Oh, yeah, and two really different, fantastic dramas about the boxing life: "Fat City" (1972) and "The Set-Up" (1949). Hell, I'd watch more, but the week's only so long and I have to make room for possibly the best serial drama ever made, Deadwood--a masterpiece in our time!
See, it's too late in the day to complain about Hollywood. Disappointment and boredom will await you if you depend on the idiot factory. Happily, the rest of the planet hasn't lost its touch. The library of international film is so full of good and even astonishing work that you need a lifetime to watch it all.
Like any subject, you won't get very far without some guidance. The little paragraph in the On Demand section? That isn't going to cut it. Get hold of a good film companion like Halliwell's, and read some of the great movie critics like Andrew Sarris or Pauline Kael. Or if you want to start this instant, then peruse the reliable Roger Ebert's short odes to great films. Start at random, you can hardly go wrong with anything here:
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/secti on?category=REVIEWS08 [suntimes.com]
There are excellent movies (Score:3, Informative)
Where have you been? (Score:3, Funny)
Movies are NOT getting worse (Score:5, Insightful)
Secondly, I ran a simple python script on the IMDB's top 250 movies database and then sorted the titles by year, and then by decade.
below is a table showing the number of movies from a decade that made the IMDB's top 250 movies list.
1920s 5
1930s 15
1940s 23
1950s 39
1960s 31
1970s 25
1980s 29
1990s 41
2000s 41
As you can see, there are plenty of good movies out there. The submitter just needs to get a life.
Re:Movies are NOT getting worse (Score:4, Interesting)
You officially win slashdot, this site will now close.
In all seriousness I blame advertising. Curse this society so capable of advertisement! T.V., radio, billboards, Internet, viral advertising, previews like you wouldn't believe! (That previews guy plays up *every* movie like that, eh?) I would wager that there are roughly equal numbers of "good" movies (good a relative term to the viewer of course) per year since the thirties.
The problem is there are so many more average to bad movies being produced in recent years that it seems like movies are continually getting worse and worse. This is especially so with movies that are advertised as "the next big blockbuster", "the film of the summer/year/decade/century", etc. so we are led to believe we are going to see a good movie but really it's just average. I realized this stuff a few years ago: "Pay it forward", "The Majestic", and "Hart's War" were all advertised that way. "War of the Worlds" and "Red eye" are some recent examples I can think of. Not that they were terrible movies, but they were advertised like they were the film of the year. Since 2000, how many movies (besides LOTR) can you think of that are actually great films? I count only a few out of the top 50 off of that top 250 list at imdb, and some are foreign films I've never heard of. Then think again about how many trailers you've seen in the last few years which talk like their films are shoe-ins for Oscar glory? (And what's the deal with "Snakes on a Plane"?)
Another contributer are sequels which are not designed to be trilogies but are obviously just money grabbers. How about the sequels to "The Matrix", or "Spiderman"? Back to the Future III anyone? Have you met the Fockers? Oceans 12? My sister hated Pirates of the Carribean 2. The sequels were decent but the originals deserved to be stand-alone films. They have watered down the masterpiece that is the original. Of course the advertisers play up the trilogy theme trying to focus our attention on how cool the sequel will be. I'd say watching the original begins with a passive attitude before but finishes with a high. The sequel feeds off of this high as you begin but usually trails off to a passive attitude in the end leaving the entire story wanting.
Case in point: The last two Pictures of the Year were Million Dollar Baby and Crash. I had personally only first heard of these films at Oscar time.
Case in point: I've found that M. Night Shyamalan understands this stuff well. All his films are stand-alone (Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs, The Village, and now Lady in the Water which I haven't seen yet). In interviews he indicated how he didn't want any of these movies to be advertised as "From the director who brought you..." because he wants the movie to do itself justice. The trailers make the audience enter the film with a sense of mystery and leave with a sense of satisfaction. The trailers do not advertise themselves as huge blockbusters, but just as good movies. Nor do they feed off of the success of others, but simply sell themselves because they are good movies.
My advise for finding good movies: pay only minimal attention to the advertising. If you read and hear a ton about it and the commercials seem like the movie will blow you away, it definately won't. Take in only enough information to get an idea for what the movie is about. If you like the idea, you'll like the movie. I usually wait for Oscar time to see which film I never heard of wins big. Those are the ones I like the most. I found "The Pianist", "Crash", and "Hotel Rwanda" that way - all of which were good films.
(I should also mention that another contributer is the advancement of our household technology. People don't need to go to the theater to get a good movie experience when they can get even better at home. Not to mention the proliferation of pirated movies available for free
Re:Movies are NOT getting worse (Score:3, Insightful)