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The root cause of this is basically Hollywood (i.e. who makes what gets shown in your local multiplex) has given up on making movies exclusively for American au

The root cause of this is basically Hollywood (i.e. who makes what gets shown in your local multiplex) has given up on making movies exclusively for American audiences. You need a global audience, and you need the potential to get a billion dollars + in revenue. E.G. as he points out comedies have died, that's because comedy is highly localized versus the kids movies + adventure plots which are more universal. End result is everything gets boiled down to its rawest, most accessible elements and everything feels samey.

addflip 5y ago
> End result is everything gets boiled down to its rawest, most accessible elements and everything feels samey. This is basically what is referred to in the industry as "high concept." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_concept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_concept Bob Iger, Ex-CEO of Disney, was a big proponent of high concept movies. You can read more about it in the screenwriting book, Save the Cat. https://www.amazon.com/Save-Last-Book-Screenwriting-Youll/dp/1932907009 https://www.amazon.com/Save-Last-Book-Screenwriting-Youll/dp...
einpoklum 5y ago
... and the root cause of that is the commercial nature of most popular film production. This might sound like a trivial statement, but as we are finding out - the profit motive can take us down a highly problematic and noticeable path. A challenge, though, is figuring out what paths, content-wise, this has already taken us down with us simply having internalized the choices as axiomatic.
- zxzax 5y ago
  I view that as a positive. Like a lot of other things in the US, the film industry has a long and racist past starting with the infamous "Birth of a Nation," which was highly profitable at the time of its production, but you couldn't make a blatant racist propaganda film like that now, which I'd say is for the better. The article mentions "Borat" which is an interesting example because I'd imagine a lot of people just don't get the joke and would also view it as a racist and anti-semitic film.
- kryogen1c 5y ago
  > the profit motive can take us down a highly problematic and noticeable path when i was writing a sibling comment i had this same realization. the fault of capitalism is that its an expression of populism, of the tyranny of the majority. i think the american founders had this correct, at least in principle: there needs to be a system of checks and balances with populism meeting elitism. i wonder how one would go about architecting such an economic system. free market capitalism only for small businesses, no larger than one state? stronger government intervention interstate?
  - theunixbeard 5y ago
    China does this to some degree. Small businesses are free to transact without much intervention but very large companies get influenced/controlled by the small government elite in the Chinese Communist Party.
    - slowmovintarget 5y ago
      In which corruption is among the most pronounced problems.
  - SllX 5y ago
    That’s a misapplication of the principles they sought to apply and why they sought to apply them. To put “checks and balances” in context, the United States was not at the time a “state” in the post-Napoleon sense, it was a Union of States that better fit that model, and what they were trying to create was something in between the completely impotent Congress of the Articles of Confederation and a centralized Congress with carte Blanche authority. We got a Congress that could do more stuff, with theoretically carte Blanche authority, but unable to act with that because Congress cannot speak with one voice, and we gave it a whitelist of powers that it could exercise, later supplemented with a blacklist of powers it was forbidden from exercising. The United States also for the first time had its own Executive authority separate from the militias and armies it paid for and its own courts and revenue separate from the States. The impetus for this by the way was not successfully prosecuting a war of Independence, that made the Constitutional Convention more possible and peaceful than it otherwise might have been, but because Congress, as it existed at the time under the Articles of Confederation where each State had effectively one vote, could not effectively resolve State and marketplace disputes. If Rhode Island’s government was knocked out and taken over by a militia of debtors devoted to the cause of cancelling their own debts, especially their out of State debts, there was not a damn thing Congress could do on its own. No bankruptcy courts, no protections, no courts of any kind flying the American flag and a Massachusetts Court couldn’t effect action beyond the borders of Massachusetts; Massachusetts would have to go to war to effect any action in Rhode Island. Political systems are considered dangerous and hard to manage, in need of those checks and balances, because their powers as seats of authority are a target for ambitious people who seek to control or abuse their fellow men, and those powers range all the way up to cancelling debts, seizing private property and putting people to death. Economies don’t have offices of power because they are not organizations to be managed and controlled: only the results of human activity.
kryogen1c 5y ago
> The root cause of this is basically Hollywood this is what i've started calling the "it takes one to tango" fallacy, where an issue has two responsible parties but only one gets blame. hollywood's not forcing people to spend their money on mass-produced uninspired movies - worse! thats what people pay to go see!
- sethhochberg 5y ago
  Sure, the consumer does have some degree of influence here, but they're still picking from the menu of options the studio makes available. If someone likes movies as recreation, even if they would prefer something different than the action blockbusters, their choices are "don't enjoy yourself to send a message to the studios" or "watch a movie you might enjoy less than something from another genre"... most people who enjoy watching movies are probably gonna chose the route that still lets them enjoy watching a movie. The incentives don't line up. Its like buying McDonalds at an isolated highway rest stop - I don't particularly love McDonalds, but if my choices are a hot meal or whatever I can get from a vending machine or pack with me, I'll take the hot meal every time. Its not an enthusiastic endorsement of globalized fast food chains despite my paying for it.
  - kryogen1c 5y ago
    > The incentives don't line up. this is again "it takes one to tango" - the people create the incentives the studios follow. movies largely make money with sales volume. this is important; tickets arent more expensive for different movies, its strictly a numbers game (ignoring uncommon deals like toys and video games, etc). according to the first link i clicked, marvel's last movie infinity war grossed two BILLION dollars. you are simply wrong if you think some novel, avant-garde sundance indie is going to interest that many people. the world is the way people want it to be. this is the tyranny of the majority. if we want non-incentivized things to exist, we're gonna have to invent new socioeconomic theories in this movie thread : )
    - arrosenberg 5y ago
      You are assuming a fair and competitive market where the consumer is actually in charge. False assumption. The world is the way the people with money want it to be, because it’s the lowest effort, most extractive model they can legally get away with. That’s not to say people didn’t like Endgame, but we all could have done without the last 3 or 4 Transformer movies. There are plenty of examples of trash movies that only get made because the story is watered down enough to pass globally.
pdpi 5y ago
Comedies have most certainly not died. They've just changed in tone. A few highlights from the last decade — Booksmart is a very different take on the teenage buddy comedy. Jojo Rabbit and The Death of Stalin are some of the darkest black comedies I've ever watched, which would never have gotten made in the 90s. Birdman is completely surreal. The Grand Budapest Hotel is one of most joyous films to watch I know of, and The Artist is a comedic love letter to the silent era.
- drivers99 5y ago
  Booksmart was the first thing I thought of too when he said, “since 2012, the only successful comedies have been animations aimed at young children.” (edit: I mean to say, you can still see movies with originality even if they're not "successful" i.e. blockbusters) In 2018 when I originally got AMC A-list subscription, I tried going to 3 movie a week at first, so I went to a lot more movies I was unsure about but they were very original and memorable, but they weren’t super popular (at least I was the only person I personally knew who had seen it). Sorry to Bother You ($18 million) Blackkklansman ($93 million) Eighth Grade ($14 million) Crazy Rich Asians ($238 million)
  - securingsincity 5y ago
    Sorry to Bother You was so interesting, especially how they approached the first 2 acts. It was like a surrealist version of Do the right Thing. the 3rd act is well, it's different and while it doesn't live up to the build up... it's unforgettable .
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - runarberg 5y ago
      I concur. Sorry to Bother You was a really good movie. It is often missed how good this movie actually is. I feel like there needs to be a louder conversation on how brilliant this movie is in so many ways.
  - 5y ago
Sr_developer 5y ago
What? The great American comedies are loved worldwide from the classics like the Three Stooges and Abbot and Costello to the "modern" dumb movies like the Hangover or Superbad. The pull to milquetoast, harmless comedies come from INSIDE the US by the usual suspects. A comedy like Borat can be made because it makes fun of the "right" people, a FSU country, Islam, Roma people, American conservatives, rednecks, etc, so it is New-York-Times readership approved. Keep the same script but change the demographics and you will get pages upon pages of harsh criticism all over the media. Young people need to understand that there is always an ideologically war going and the powerful people push their worldview unto us.
- fullshark 5y ago
  FYI The Hangover came out 12 years ago, Superbad came out 14 years ago. The rest of your post I'm not so interested in discussing, but comedy to me appears to be a genre that has moved to TV, like most genre fare for adults these days.
  - Sr_developer 5y ago
    FYI Bradley Cooper stars in the Hangover, now that we are sharing useless and obvious facts. The point is that those kind of irreverent movies were loved abroad so the current situation is not because the globalization of the audience, a thing which btw is 40 years old at the very least.
    - fullshark 5y ago
      I just found it interesting how you called them modern, they were probably some of the comedies I would call modern, and then I looked and realized they basically predate the founding of Uber. Those movies you mention weren't necessarily made to cater to foreign audiences, Hollywood may have always enjoyed making money from foreign audiences but the balance has largely shifted over the last several years to the point where foreign box offices and audiences come first and determine what films get made and their content, that's a big shift in my opinion.
mc32 5y ago
That’s an interesting. It seems then that French cinema, or European cinema in general is more localized and thus rarely becomes an international blockbuster (with rare exceptions). Mexico tends to export to Latin America (southern cone) altho one could argue that while there are regional differences, in broad strokes mainstream latam culture jives with each other.
psychomugs 5y ago
“Good films get smaller audiences, but more of the viewer.” - Jean-Luc Godard
justshowpost 5y ago
Let me narrow things up... Hollywood's global market is located in Red China. Tailoring for them is the reason why HW's products are so dull so they hardly can compete with high-class TV series.
Keyframe 5y ago
Industry knows that. Netflix did damage to the industry (and ultimately to themselves) according to the actual Hollywood. Lynda Obst talks about it here (how Netflix did damage): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_oHW31jQfg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_oHW31jQfg I recommend watching the full interview, it gets to the bottom of it.
ladyattis 5y ago
It's why we don't see many satirical films in the same vein as Robocop and Starship Troopers anymore. It would be something that the Chinese censors would never allow. Whether it's the over the top violence or the skewering of the state and corporate power structure. Stuff like that annoys the Chinese govt more than most, so Hollywood would just bow out on such a film It's funny how many strange one off films and games are being made online through crowd funding now (not all are good but a few are decent) due to this global pleaser approach to film making.
- refenestrator 5y ago
  Why would Chinese censors have a problem with films making fun of American capitalism and imperialism?
  - ladyattis 5y ago
    I don't think the modern Paul Verhoeven would be poking fun at just America. I think that hypothetical director would be poking fun at China and its attempts to bully other nation states in Africa and the world as well. That enough would throw it in the "not in China" camp of films.
    - refenestrator 5y ago
      Robocop and Starship Troopers were criticizing ideology and norms that are widely yet unconsciously accepted in America. That's why they're good. Anti-rival sniping is comparatively boring and we're all steeped in it all the time, anyways. It's the furthest thing from counterculture.
  - nitwit005 5y ago
    Because people might view it as making fun of Chinese capitalism and imperialism. Avatar was viewed by some as being about problems in China relating to demolishing people's existing homes to build new buildings in their place. There was some discussion at the time that they only allowed it due to being the top grossing movie of all time.
wpietri 5y ago
Hollywood certainly involved, but I think something closer to the root cause is that the number of tickets sold for films in the US peaked in 2007: https://www.the-numbers.com/market/ https://www.the-numbers.com/market/ I think the root cause of the ticket shift is technological: cheaper screens, higher resolutions, better bandwidth. People have lots of entertainment at home. So what does that shift mean? Execs get risk-averse in flat/contracting markets, which alone would account for some of the perceived decline. Artists and execs who are excited for innovation/risk are going to move toward expanding market segments, meaning toward streaming. Also important here is who is buying tickets. 20 years ago I would happily haul my ass out to an art-house theater to see something novel and interesting. Now it's almost all available from my couch; the hard problem is picking something. More educated audiences are more likely to have the money and technology to watch from home, making niche theater-distributed films even riskier. What's still going to work in theaters? Things with mass appeal and audiences, especially ones that take advantage of the kind of sound/video that most people don't have at home. Things where audiences know what they're getting. Of the top 20 films from 2019, 18 were related to existing IP, and the other two were from famous directors: https://www.boxofficemojo.com/year/2019/ https://www.boxofficemojo.com/year/2019/

addflip 5y ago

> End result is everything gets boiled down to its rawest, most accessible elements and everything feels samey. This is basically what is referred to in the industry as "high concept." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_concept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_concept Bob Iger, Ex-CEO of Disney, was a big proponent of high concept movies. You can read more about it in the screenwriting book, Save the Cat. https://www.amazon.com/Save-Last-Book-Screenwriting-Youll/dp/1932907009 https://www.amazon.com/Save-Last-Book-Screenwriting-Youll/dp...

einpoklum 5y ago

... and the root cause of that is the commercial nature of most popular film production. This might sound like a trivial statement, but as we are finding out - the profit motive can take us down a highly problematic and noticeable path. A challenge, though, is figuring out what paths, content-wise, this has already taken us down with us simply having internalized the choices as axiomatic.

zxzax 5y ago
I view that as a positive. Like a lot of other things in the US, the film industry has a long and racist past starting with the infamous "Birth of a Nation," which was highly profitable at the time of its production, but you couldn't make a blatant racist propaganda film like that now, which I'd say is for the better. The article mentions "Borat" which is an interesting example because I'd imagine a lot of people just don't get the joke and would also view it as a racist and anti-semitic film.
kryogen1c 5y ago
> the profit motive can take us down a highly problematic and noticeable path when i was writing a sibling comment i had this same realization. the fault of capitalism is that its an expression of populism, of the tyranny of the majority. i think the american founders had this correct, at least in principle: there needs to be a system of checks and balances with populism meeting elitism. i wonder how one would go about architecting such an economic system. free market capitalism only for small businesses, no larger than one state? stronger government intervention interstate?
- theunixbeard 5y ago
  China does this to some degree. Small businesses are free to transact without much intervention but very large companies get influenced/controlled by the small government elite in the Chinese Communist Party.
  - slowmovintarget 5y ago
    In which corruption is among the most pronounced problems.
- SllX 5y ago
  That’s a misapplication of the principles they sought to apply and why they sought to apply them. To put “checks and balances” in context, the United States was not at the time a “state” in the post-Napoleon sense, it was a Union of States that better fit that model, and what they were trying to create was something in between the completely impotent Congress of the Articles of Confederation and a centralized Congress with carte Blanche authority. We got a Congress that could do more stuff, with theoretically carte Blanche authority, but unable to act with that because Congress cannot speak with one voice, and we gave it a whitelist of powers that it could exercise, later supplemented with a blacklist of powers it was forbidden from exercising. The United States also for the first time had its own Executive authority separate from the militias and armies it paid for and its own courts and revenue separate from the States. The impetus for this by the way was not successfully prosecuting a war of Independence, that made the Constitutional Convention more possible and peaceful than it otherwise might have been, but because Congress, as it existed at the time under the Articles of Confederation where each State had effectively one vote, could not effectively resolve State and marketplace disputes. If Rhode Island’s government was knocked out and taken over by a militia of debtors devoted to the cause of cancelling their own debts, especially their out of State debts, there was not a damn thing Congress could do on its own. No bankruptcy courts, no protections, no courts of any kind flying the American flag and a Massachusetts Court couldn’t effect action beyond the borders of Massachusetts; Massachusetts would have to go to war to effect any action in Rhode Island. Political systems are considered dangerous and hard to manage, in need of those checks and balances, because their powers as seats of authority are a target for ambitious people who seek to control or abuse their fellow men, and those powers range all the way up to cancelling debts, seizing private property and putting people to death. Economies don’t have offices of power because they are not organizations to be managed and controlled: only the results of human activity.

kryogen1c 5y ago

> The root cause of this is basically Hollywood this is what i've started calling the "it takes one to tango" fallacy, where an issue has two responsible parties but only one gets blame. hollywood's not forcing people to spend their money on mass-produced uninspired movies - worse! thats what people pay to go see!

sethhochberg 5y ago
Sure, the consumer does have some degree of influence here, but they're still picking from the menu of options the studio makes available. If someone likes movies as recreation, even if they would prefer something different than the action blockbusters, their choices are "don't enjoy yourself to send a message to the studios" or "watch a movie you might enjoy less than something from another genre"... most people who enjoy watching movies are probably gonna chose the route that still lets them enjoy watching a movie. The incentives don't line up. Its like buying McDonalds at an isolated highway rest stop - I don't particularly love McDonalds, but if my choices are a hot meal or whatever I can get from a vending machine or pack with me, I'll take the hot meal every time. Its not an enthusiastic endorsement of globalized fast food chains despite my paying for it.
- kryogen1c 5y ago
  > The incentives don't line up. this is again "it takes one to tango" - the people create the incentives the studios follow. movies largely make money with sales volume. this is important; tickets arent more expensive for different movies, its strictly a numbers game (ignoring uncommon deals like toys and video games, etc). according to the first link i clicked, marvel's last movie infinity war grossed two BILLION dollars. you are simply wrong if you think some novel, avant-garde sundance indie is going to interest that many people. the world is the way people want it to be. this is the tyranny of the majority. if we want non-incentivized things to exist, we're gonna have to invent new socioeconomic theories in this movie thread : )
  - arrosenberg 5y ago
    You are assuming a fair and competitive market where the consumer is actually in charge. False assumption. The world is the way the people with money want it to be, because it’s the lowest effort, most extractive model they can legally get away with. That’s not to say people didn’t like Endgame, but we all could have done without the last 3 or 4 Transformer movies. There are plenty of examples of trash movies that only get made because the story is watered down enough to pass globally.

pdpi 5y ago

Comedies have most certainly not died. They've just changed in tone. A few highlights from the last decade — Booksmart is a very different take on the teenage buddy comedy. Jojo Rabbit and The Death of Stalin are some of the darkest black comedies I've ever watched, which would never have gotten made in the 90s. Birdman is completely surreal. The Grand Budapest Hotel is one of most joyous films to watch I know of, and The Artist is a comedic love letter to the silent era.

drivers99 5y ago
Booksmart was the first thing I thought of too when he said, “since 2012, the only successful comedies have been animations aimed at young children.” (edit: I mean to say, you can still see movies with originality even if they're not "successful" i.e. blockbusters) In 2018 when I originally got AMC A-list subscription, I tried going to 3 movie a week at first, so I went to a lot more movies I was unsure about but they were very original and memorable, but they weren’t super popular (at least I was the only person I personally knew who had seen it). Sorry to Bother You ($18 million) Blackkklansman ($93 million) Eighth Grade ($14 million) Crazy Rich Asians ($238 million)
- securingsincity 5y ago
  Sorry to Bother You was so interesting, especially how they approached the first 2 acts. It was like a surrealist version of Do the right Thing. the 3rd act is well, it's different and while it doesn't live up to the build up... it's unforgettable .
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - runarberg 5y ago
    I concur. Sorry to Bother You was a really good movie. It is often missed how good this movie actually is. I feel like there needs to be a louder conversation on how brilliant this movie is in so many ways.
- 5y ago

Sr_developer 5y ago

What? The great American comedies are loved worldwide from the classics like the Three Stooges and Abbot and Costello to the "modern" dumb movies like the Hangover or Superbad. The pull to milquetoast, harmless comedies come from INSIDE the US by the usual suspects. A comedy like Borat can be made because it makes fun of the "right" people, a FSU country, Islam, Roma people, American conservatives, rednecks, etc, so it is New-York-Times readership approved. Keep the same script but change the demographics and you will get pages upon pages of harsh criticism all over the media. Young people need to understand that there is always an ideologically war going and the powerful people push their worldview unto us.

fullshark 5y ago
FYI The Hangover came out 12 years ago, Superbad came out 14 years ago. The rest of your post I'm not so interested in discussing, but comedy to me appears to be a genre that has moved to TV, like most genre fare for adults these days.
- Sr_developer 5y ago
  FYI Bradley Cooper stars in the Hangover, now that we are sharing useless and obvious facts. The point is that those kind of irreverent movies were loved abroad so the current situation is not because the globalization of the audience, a thing which btw is 40 years old at the very least.
  - fullshark 5y ago
    I just found it interesting how you called them modern, they were probably some of the comedies I would call modern, and then I looked and realized they basically predate the founding of Uber. Those movies you mention weren't necessarily made to cater to foreign audiences, Hollywood may have always enjoyed making money from foreign audiences but the balance has largely shifted over the last several years to the point where foreign box offices and audiences come first and determine what films get made and their content, that's a big shift in my opinion.

mc32 5y ago

That’s an interesting. It seems then that French cinema, or European cinema in general is more localized and thus rarely becomes an international blockbuster (with rare exceptions). Mexico tends to export to Latin America (southern cone) altho one could argue that while there are regional differences, in broad strokes mainstream latam culture jives with each other.

psychomugs 5y ago

“Good films get smaller audiences, but more of the viewer.” - Jean-Luc Godard

justshowpost 5y ago

Let me narrow things up... Hollywood's global market is located in Red China. Tailoring for them is the reason why HW's products are so dull so they hardly can compete with high-class TV series.

Keyframe 5y ago

Industry knows that. Netflix did damage to the industry (and ultimately to themselves) according to the actual Hollywood. Lynda Obst talks about it here (how Netflix did damage): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_oHW31jQfg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_oHW31jQfg I recommend watching the full interview, it gets to the bottom of it.

ladyattis 5y ago

It's why we don't see many satirical films in the same vein as Robocop and Starship Troopers anymore. It would be something that the Chinese censors would never allow. Whether it's the over the top violence or the skewering of the state and corporate power structure. Stuff like that annoys the Chinese govt more than most, so Hollywood would just bow out on such a film It's funny how many strange one off films and games are being made online through crowd funding now (not all are good but a few are decent) due to this global pleaser approach to film making.

refenestrator 5y ago
Why would Chinese censors have a problem with films making fun of American capitalism and imperialism?
- ladyattis 5y ago
  I don't think the modern Paul Verhoeven would be poking fun at just America. I think that hypothetical director would be poking fun at China and its attempts to bully other nation states in Africa and the world as well. That enough would throw it in the "not in China" camp of films.
  - refenestrator 5y ago
    Robocop and Starship Troopers were criticizing ideology and norms that are widely yet unconsciously accepted in America. That's why they're good. Anti-rival sniping is comparatively boring and we're all steeped in it all the time, anyways. It's the furthest thing from counterculture.
- nitwit005 5y ago
  Because people might view it as making fun of Chinese capitalism and imperialism. Avatar was viewed by some as being about problems in China relating to demolishing people's existing homes to build new buildings in their place. There was some discussion at the time that they only allowed it due to being the top grossing movie of all time.

wpietri 5y ago

Hollywood certainly involved, but I think something closer to the root cause is that the number of tickets sold for films in the US peaked in 2007: https://www.the-numbers.com/market/ https://www.the-numbers.com/market/ I think the root cause of the ticket shift is technological: cheaper screens, higher resolutions, better bandwidth. People have lots of entertainment at home. So what does that shift mean? Execs get risk-averse in flat/contracting markets, which alone would account for some of the perceived decline. Artists and execs who are excited for innovation/risk are going to move toward expanding market segments, meaning toward streaming. Also important here is who is buying tickets. 20 years ago I would happily haul my ass out to an art-house theater to see something novel and interesting. Now it's almost all available from my couch; the hard problem is picking something. More educated audiences are more likely to have the money and technology to watch from home, making niche theater-distributed films even riskier. What's still going to work in theaters? Things with mass appeal and audiences, especially ones that take advantage of the kind of sound/video that most people don't have at home. Things where audiences know what they're getting. Of the top 20 films from 2019, 18 were related to existing IP, and the other two were from famous directors: https://www.boxofficemojo.com/year/2019/ https://www.boxofficemojo.com/year/2019/