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Originality? Hah! Even remaking Frankenstein every 20 years or so brought a new take to it, whether Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi or Robert de Nero, they all brou

Originality? Hah! Even remaking Frankenstein every 20 years or so brought a new take to it, whether Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi or Robert de Nero, they all brought something new. More than any point I can remember before Hollywood now turn every movie and remake into the exact same movie. There was always some degree of fashion, but there's no contrast any more - it's all highlight, so it drags and drags by being boring and samey (but loud). Highlight is now just the dull background. The loudness wars, movie edition. Doesn't matter what it is, a current film (or Netflix high budget, Game of Thrones etc) will have: + An absurdly overblown inspirational speech inspiring the troops (or children, or escapees, or office colleagues)! This will take 5-10 ear-bleeding, cringing minutes. If unlucky, you'll get two or three of these in one show! + An absurdly artificial, but highly 3D friendly chase scene with no production value other than hype. This will take 5-15 minutes. It stopped being interesting after Blues Brothers' piss take of chase scenes! + Ditto, ditto fight scene. Super slow motion. I always think of Adam West's TV Batman, complete with music - Zap! Pow! OWWW! Biff! 300 enemies die, town levelled, 342,000 rounds of ammunition spent, hero hasn't broken sweat. Just about the only recent exceptions I can think of are Deadpool and Sin City. Damn, the sequels were disappointing. + Ditto, ditto villain's death or capture. I wait for them to land on Netflix, then go make tea, tidy the kitchen or watch some paint dry in all those "highlights". Independents with next to no budget can still do original though.

goto11 7y ago
This is getting close to "all the new music is crap and sounds alike, the music when I was young and impressive was much better". Every generation says that, regardless of when they were born. Maybe those older movies just didn't seem so derivative to you because it was new to you then?
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  It was interesting from 50+ years before I was born, through B&W B movies of the 50s, to maybe early 00s. Independent movies don't have the same absurd tendencies, and often still have lots of contrasts. Sure, some of those are just poor too. Independents have changed too, but haven't magically ended up with the same framework every time. Hollywood didn't used to. There were always derivatives, themes, fashions, but without dull homogeneity. Too much chasing what sells, I have no idea why, but it seems to have reached self parody with succession of predictable remakes that add the standards and take away what made the original interesting in the first place. e.g. Total Recall I still regularly find new bands and music. shrug.
  - goto11 7y ago
    You think older movies were better because of the time filter - we remember the classics and forget the crap. You think movies you saw in your youth were great because they were original to you - you hadn't seen all the previous movies and plays they were inspired by or remakes of. This is the same for everybody, which is why people was saying the exact same thing as you do 10, 20, 30 years ago. > Too much chasing what sells, I have no idea why, Hollywood is a business, it exists to make money. It have always been like that.
    - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
      > You think older movies were better because of the time filter - we remember the classics and forget the crap. No you're making excuses. I don't think they were always better, but that they took from a FAR wider selection of production styles. Hollywood has been afraid of variety for decades, inserting the cliche "family values" ending in every movie, or even demanding the neat happy end every time, or some cliche camera technique, whether the Dutch angle, or today's overhead rotating zoom-in. Habits and techniques that run in eras. Those homogenised 5 or 15% of the film, with half of that always the cliche ending. There have been shite movies in every era, but both good and bad provided a far wider variety of production styles. Emphatically not saying that every film became crap - though they often seem tired and boring because even a good or perfectly directed and produced film feels tired when its 5th or 15th in the franchise. Everything feels like it's in the same franchise now at 70-90% homogenised. Maybe you don't see it, but my kids and their friends seem to and regularly take the piss about movies they saw. They can't compare with earlier eras but they can, and do, come back and take the piss about the scene or idea lifted straight from the last movie they went as a group to. Not always - they can rave about some film I thought awful too. :) > Hollywood is a business, it exists to make money. It have always been like that. The point, that I could have expressed better, is that it always existed to make money, but didn't completely sacrifice everything else on that altar. Yet despite scifi, yes even Star Wars, usually being western in space the theme book had more than one page. Maybe there were a dozen or so common, cliched themes and production styles, but clearly more than one. The point I suppose boils down to: every movie now has become a super-hero martial arts movie. A horror film has become a super-hero martial arts movie in a cabin in the woods etc. The book must say that's what encapsulates the perfect movie, so that's the form given to every movie.

goto11 7y ago

This is getting close to "all the new music is crap and sounds alike, the music when I was young and impressive was much better". Every generation says that, regardless of when they were born. Maybe those older movies just didn't seem so derivative to you because it was new to you then?

NeedMoreTea 7y ago
It was interesting from 50+ years before I was born, through B&W B movies of the 50s, to maybe early 00s. Independent movies don't have the same absurd tendencies, and often still have lots of contrasts. Sure, some of those are just poor too. Independents have changed too, but haven't magically ended up with the same framework every time. Hollywood didn't used to. There were always derivatives, themes, fashions, but without dull homogeneity. Too much chasing what sells, I have no idea why, but it seems to have reached self parody with succession of predictable remakes that add the standards and take away what made the original interesting in the first place. e.g. Total Recall I still regularly find new bands and music. shrug.
- goto11 7y ago
  You think older movies were better because of the time filter - we remember the classics and forget the crap. You think movies you saw in your youth were great because they were original to you - you hadn't seen all the previous movies and plays they were inspired by or remakes of. This is the same for everybody, which is why people was saying the exact same thing as you do 10, 20, 30 years ago. > Too much chasing what sells, I have no idea why, Hollywood is a business, it exists to make money. It have always been like that.
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    > You think older movies were better because of the time filter - we remember the classics and forget the crap. No you're making excuses. I don't think they were always better, but that they took from a FAR wider selection of production styles. Hollywood has been afraid of variety for decades, inserting the cliche "family values" ending in every movie, or even demanding the neat happy end every time, or some cliche camera technique, whether the Dutch angle, or today's overhead rotating zoom-in. Habits and techniques that run in eras. Those homogenised 5 or 15% of the film, with half of that always the cliche ending. There have been shite movies in every era, but both good and bad provided a far wider variety of production styles. Emphatically not saying that every film became crap - though they often seem tired and boring because even a good or perfectly directed and produced film feels tired when its 5th or 15th in the franchise. Everything feels like it's in the same franchise now at 70-90% homogenised. Maybe you don't see it, but my kids and their friends seem to and regularly take the piss about movies they saw. They can't compare with earlier eras but they can, and do, come back and take the piss about the scene or idea lifted straight from the last movie they went as a group to. Not always - they can rave about some film I thought awful too. :) > Hollywood is a business, it exists to make money. It have always been like that. The point, that I could have expressed better, is that it always existed to make money, but didn't completely sacrifice everything else on that altar. Yet despite scifi, yes even Star Wars, usually being western in space the theme book had more than one page. Maybe there were a dozen or so common, cliched themes and production styles, but clearly more than one. The point I suppose boils down to: every movie now has become a super-hero martial arts movie. A horror film has become a super-hero martial arts movie in a cabin in the woods etc. The book must say that's what encapsulates the perfect movie, so that's the form given to every movie.