5 ms·

I don't agree that choosing a new format and upping ticket prices again is going to get people going to the movies again. Hollywood (and Hollywood commentators)

I don't agree that choosing a new format and upping ticket prices again is going to get people going to the movies again. Hollywood (and Hollywood commentators) are obsessed with the idea that films should be these huge spectacles, but is that all that audiences want? A lot of people I know are bored with movies. Spending $30 to go to another remake or superhero movie just isn't very attractive. I don't know anyone, other than boring film critics, who thinks the problem is a lack of spectacle. If anything, the problem is _too much_ spectacle--the kinds of movies made are limited to these goofy would-be epics. Everything has to go up to 11. It's really limiting when every movie has to appeal to the sensibility of a 14-year-old boy.

ashark 9y ago
In general there's an increasing problem of a glut of excellent entertainment. Movies are in a bit of a slump, but there are still several good films a year. TV's probably the best it's ever been—it's nuts how good it is. Video games are excellent and relatively cheap. There's an ongoing board gaming renaissance. Good or great music for almost every taste comes out every year. Then there's the fact that it's all hyper-available, including much of the back catalogue for all of human recorded/written entertainment. Almost no wait. Just press a button or three and enjoy. You can find a credible top-ten (or top-1000...) for almost any kind of thing you care to and the only impediment to experiencing at least 80-90% of them will be time. The hard part now isn't identifying and gaining access to great entertainment, it's figuring out which great entertainment you skip in favor of other great entertainment. If you remember what the world was like pre-Internet, this is a really weird situation. That film isn't exactly having a golden age right now makes it easy (nearly necessary, given how good everything else is) to largely avoid it, even if it isn't terrible, especially since cinema-going is one of the more expensive options for mass entertainment. Of course they continue to sell plenty of tickets, so maybe this post is just a bunch of crap.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  I mean, what's the appeal of going to the theater at this point, unless you're a teenager going on a date? I'd rather watch a movie in the comfort of my own home.
  - rifung 9y ago
    Im assuming you're asking genuinely. If not please disregard. I like seeing movies with friends but don't want to own furniture to accommodate guests since I have a small apartment. Of course maybe the theater is overkill for this but right now there's no middle ground as far as I know.
    - emodendroket 9y ago
      Fair enough; it's rare that I see movies with anyone other than my wife.
- PhasmaFelis 9y ago
  I realize this sounds like "in my day we had to walk five miles in the snow, uphill, both ways," but lately I've felt like I honestly don't appreciate music and video games as much as I used to, precisely because they're so available. It used to be that I would really sink myself into media, listening to an album over and over, or learning every trick of a game, because I only had a few and I needed to get the most of them. Now, the moment something loses its brand-new sheen, I'm off to something else to try to recapture that initial excitement. On the surface it seems like I've got everything teenage-me ever wanted, but I don't really love anything like he did. I've got over a hundred unplayed games on Steam, and none of them excite me.
  - ashark 9y ago
    Entire subcultures, now examined in detail by various Internet personalities, are built around how hard it was to find good media in the "old days", and how easy it was to end up with crap as your only novel option. See: The Angry Video Game Nerd, various programs on RedLetterMedia, and a few hundred others. It'll be interesting to see what happens to these subcultures now that what they're built on is basically gone, and they're trucking in nostalgia for not just old media but old ways of experiencing media and review availability more than anything else. The percentage of time kids spend, say, playing a truly bad video game because it's the only one they have access to that they haven't already played to death, or re-watching a half-dozen VHS tapes because they're the only kids' movies your family owns so when you don't have a rental out that's it[0], or putting up with some terrible VHS rental from Family Video you grabbed on strength of the cover because damnit that's what you have for the night, has got to be much lower than it used to be. The effects of this on culture, especially things like b-movie culture, will be interesting to observe. Already many kinds of knowledge—film synopses/ratings/trivia, game tips/secrets—have been driven to near-zero social value, which has surely changed kids' society in ways I don't have good insight into (yet—my kids are too young) [0] Kids still do the obsessive watching-the-same-thing-over-and-over thing, but it's different because they never do it because there's no other option anymore. [EDIT] also: > I've got over a hundred unplayed games on Steam, and none of them excite me. LOL, lightweight. I've got like 500 total games (just on Steam) and I've only given maybe half a fair shake, let alone played them all the way through, including many that I played pre-Steam. Those stupid package deals they do and Humble Bundles really add up over the years. I'm kinda slowly bowing out of PC gaming despite knowing there's a ton of excellent stuff on my to-play list, because I'm running up against that having-to-choose-great-things-to-not-experience problem I mentioned in my post upthread. I just don't have enough entertainment hours for it anymore, plus TV, plus catching up on the hundreds of excellent films I haven't seen and the several great ones that come out each year despite the slump, plus OMG so much great TV is coming out now, plus the hundreds of books I want to read, and man there are some comics I'd like to get into but I just can't even with all this other stuff. It's kinda stressful, actually. Like, I can enjoy the very best (or close to) of anything I care to, so I should be. I waste a lot more time on meta-media and reviews and such than I used to, chasing that best-of-the-best sliver of the pie. Meanwhile I grew up with an NES my only console (from early in its lifespan through freshman year of college!) and a few VHS tapes and Saturday Morning Cartoons, a few DVDs later on when I had a job... and I'm not sure my childhood would have actually been any better with this mountain of hyper-available, high-quality entertainment we have today. Worse, maybe. Quite possibly (probably...) my current quality of life would be better without it.
- spectrum1234 9y ago
  This is an excellent post. This is talked about often, yet rarely without some kind of agenda. I would love to see more honest discussion regarding precisely how the post-internet era will affect us.
humanrebar 9y ago
...or they could go the other way and lower the cost (and convenience) of admission so people wouldn't mind going to an offbeat or strange film on a lark.
- maldusiecle 9y ago
  Convenience is already improved thanks to the internet. It takes a couple minutes to check what's showing in every theater in town, and you can watch trailers and reserve tickets on your phone. Cheaper admissions would definitely be a benefit. The trend in Hollywood of eliminating mid-budget cinema and only making super expensive, lavish productions works against that as well.

ashark 9y ago

In general there's an increasing problem of a glut of excellent entertainment. Movies are in a bit of a slump, but there are still several good films a year. TV's probably the best it's ever been—it's nuts how good it is. Video games are excellent and relatively cheap. There's an ongoing board gaming renaissance. Good or great music for almost every taste comes out every year. Then there's the fact that it's all hyper-available, including much of the back catalogue for all of human recorded/written entertainment. Almost no wait. Just press a button or three and enjoy. You can find a credible top-ten (or top-1000...) for almost any kind of thing you care to and the only impediment to experiencing at least 80-90% of them will be time. The hard part now isn't identifying and gaining access to great entertainment, it's figuring out which great entertainment you skip in favor of other great entertainment. If you remember what the world was like pre-Internet, this is a really weird situation. That film isn't exactly having a golden age right now makes it easy (nearly necessary, given how good everything else is) to largely avoid it, even if it isn't terrible, especially since cinema-going is one of the more expensive options for mass entertainment. Of course they continue to sell plenty of tickets, so maybe this post is just a bunch of crap.

emodendroket 9y ago
I mean, what's the appeal of going to the theater at this point, unless you're a teenager going on a date? I'd rather watch a movie in the comfort of my own home.
- rifung 9y ago
  Im assuming you're asking genuinely. If not please disregard. I like seeing movies with friends but don't want to own furniture to accommodate guests since I have a small apartment. Of course maybe the theater is overkill for this but right now there's no middle ground as far as I know.
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    Fair enough; it's rare that I see movies with anyone other than my wife.
PhasmaFelis 9y ago
I realize this sounds like "in my day we had to walk five miles in the snow, uphill, both ways," but lately I've felt like I honestly don't appreciate music and video games as much as I used to, precisely because they're so available. It used to be that I would really sink myself into media, listening to an album over and over, or learning every trick of a game, because I only had a few and I needed to get the most of them. Now, the moment something loses its brand-new sheen, I'm off to something else to try to recapture that initial excitement. On the surface it seems like I've got everything teenage-me ever wanted, but I don't really love anything like he did. I've got over a hundred unplayed games on Steam, and none of them excite me.
- ashark 9y ago
  Entire subcultures, now examined in detail by various Internet personalities, are built around how hard it was to find good media in the "old days", and how easy it was to end up with crap as your only novel option. See: The Angry Video Game Nerd, various programs on RedLetterMedia, and a few hundred others. It'll be interesting to see what happens to these subcultures now that what they're built on is basically gone, and they're trucking in nostalgia for not just old media but old ways of experiencing media and review availability more than anything else. The percentage of time kids spend, say, playing a truly bad video game because it's the only one they have access to that they haven't already played to death, or re-watching a half-dozen VHS tapes because they're the only kids' movies your family owns so when you don't have a rental out that's it[0], or putting up with some terrible VHS rental from Family Video you grabbed on strength of the cover because damnit that's what you have for the night, has got to be much lower than it used to be. The effects of this on culture, especially things like b-movie culture, will be interesting to observe. Already many kinds of knowledge—film synopses/ratings/trivia, game tips/secrets—have been driven to near-zero social value, which has surely changed kids' society in ways I don't have good insight into (yet—my kids are too young) [0] Kids still do the obsessive watching-the-same-thing-over-and-over thing, but it's different because they never do it because there's no other option anymore. [EDIT] also: > I've got over a hundred unplayed games on Steam, and none of them excite me. LOL, lightweight. I've got like 500 total games (just on Steam) and I've only given maybe half a fair shake, let alone played them all the way through, including many that I played pre-Steam. Those stupid package deals they do and Humble Bundles really add up over the years. I'm kinda slowly bowing out of PC gaming despite knowing there's a ton of excellent stuff on my to-play list, because I'm running up against that having-to-choose-great-things-to-not-experience problem I mentioned in my post upthread. I just don't have enough entertainment hours for it anymore, plus TV, plus catching up on the hundreds of excellent films I haven't seen and the several great ones that come out each year despite the slump, plus OMG so much great TV is coming out now, plus the hundreds of books I want to read, and man there are some comics I'd like to get into but I just can't even with all this other stuff. It's kinda stressful, actually. Like, I can enjoy the very best (or close to) of anything I care to, so I should be. I waste a lot more time on meta-media and reviews and such than I used to, chasing that best-of-the-best sliver of the pie. Meanwhile I grew up with an NES my only console (from early in its lifespan through freshman year of college!) and a few VHS tapes and Saturday Morning Cartoons, a few DVDs later on when I had a job... and I'm not sure my childhood would have actually been any better with this mountain of hyper-available, high-quality entertainment we have today. Worse, maybe. Quite possibly (probably...) my current quality of life would be better without it.
spectrum1234 9y ago
This is an excellent post. This is talked about often, yet rarely without some kind of agenda. I would love to see more honest discussion regarding precisely how the post-internet era will affect us.

humanrebar 9y ago

...or they could go the other way and lower the cost (and convenience) of admission so people wouldn't mind going to an offbeat or strange film on a lark.

maldusiecle 9y ago
Convenience is already improved thanks to the internet. It takes a couple minutes to check what's showing in every theater in town, and you can watch trailers and reserve tickets on your phone. Cheaper admissions would definitely be a benefit. The trend in Hollywood of eliminating mid-budget cinema and only making super expensive, lavish productions works against that as well.