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The actual quote (with my emphasis added): > "The movie business as before is finished and will never come back." And I think that's correct. Superhero bloc

The actual quote (with my emphasis added): > "The movie business *as before* is finished and will never come back." And I think that's correct. Superhero blockbusters taking over all box office receipts was one thing, but now those blockbusters are becoming deeply tied to streaming services like Disney+ that's bringing content into people's homes and away from movie theatres. I won't mourn movie theatres (though I hope places emulate the likes of Alamo Drafthouse and do dinner, drinks and let us make an evening out of watching a movie), but I do worry about things like movie financing. It feels the industry has split in two, either making super-expensive superhero blockbusters or super cheap indie films. It makes me feel like a grouch to complain about the uber-popular, widely loved thing but this intertwined superhero universe exhausts me. I don't want to have to watch three previous movies and two TV shows to fully enjoy the movie that's in front of me. So I watch a lot more limited series TV instead... and maybe that's just fine?

klodolph 5y ago
TV shows have also gotten more prestigious, and so the people who would have been telling their stories as movies may be making TV shows instead. The article compares traditional movies to movies from streaming services, and I just think that’s avoiding the elephant in the room. The change started happening slowly in the late 1990s, but at this point I’d say that the change has happened and we’re in a golden age of television. In the 1990s, TV was seen as a step down from movies in terms of cultural prestige, but nowadays we have A-list actors starring in TV shows with budgets over $10M per episode. The formats for TV shows have changed, too, and you’re much more likely to see TV shows written as six-episode or eight-episode seasons. They can be much more like a big, long movie, rather than a short TV show. (Of course, the UK has produced six-episode TV series since forever.) Still, I recently rewatched a few episodes of Siskel and Ebert, and it made me a bit sad to think about just how many movies were coming out every year during the 1990s, and remember being excited to go to the theater. Rewatching some 1990s movies, there are shots that just don’t have the right impact in typical home theaters.
- mbg721 5y ago
  Roots in the 1970s (and The Thorn Birds afterwards) was notable for being a widely-viewed blockbuster miniseries, so the concept was there; without streaming, it was just hard to get an audience to watch every episode at the right time.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    Also Winds of War and others. Yeah, the miniseries had its day but, especially pre-widespread VCR, depending on an audience to watch every episode at a scheduled time was a high bar. It obviously could work but it depended on having a sufficiently big "event" for people to schedule a week or nights on successive weeks around it--in a way few would do today.
- edgyquant 5y ago
  I think Breaking Bad really set the stage for TV shows being good film. Whether you like the show or not it had a clear and defined story and ended after 5 seasons where most shows before would just run until their ratings dropped.
  - jfengel 5y ago
    HBO had been doing it for a few years, with shows like The Wire and Deadwood. But Breaking Bad helped bring it to a wider audience, since AMC is basic cable rather than premium. (AMC had launched into that a year before with Mad Men, which was similarly TV as good film.)
    - Apocryphon 5y ago
      I think the turn of the century start of the prestige drama cable age was The Sopranos, with The West Wing doing something similar on network TV.
      - jfengel 5y ago
        That seems a really good starting point. Oz preceded it, but was never the breakout hit that The Sopranos became.
iamacyborg 5y ago
> It makes me feel like a grouch to complain about the uber-popular, widely loved thing but this intertwined superhero universe exhausts me. I don't want to have to watch three previous movies and two TV shows to fully enjoy the movie that's in front of me. They’ve also just become quite formulaic and as a result, boring.
- ghaff 5y ago
  Reputedly at least in part because of the increased importance of non-English speaking markets, even the better action movies are so dominated by long action sequences that they really detract for me. And to the parent point, on top of that, I'm now expected to understand at least some of the intricacies of a complex movie/TV universe that I don't really care that deeply about.
handrous 5y ago
> I won't mourn movie theatres (though I hope places emulate the likes of Alamo Drafthouse and do dinner, drinks and let us make an evening out of watching a movie), but I do worry about things like movie financing. It feels the industry has split in two, either making super-expensive superhero blockbusters or super cheap indie films. I'm informed by my cinemaphile friend that exactly this phenomenon has been much remarked upon in the last 15-20 years. Mid-budget films, which used to be very common, are mostly dead, leaving a couple kinds of low-budget film (the startup-model where you put out a ton of cheap movies and hope one is the next Blair Witch—and yes, most of this is horror—and the "indie" film kind) and the mega-budget ones that are basically investment vehicles. So, two kinds of films that exist because those models are the best ROI, and then indie films, and that's about it. Meanwhile, there are still tons of good films coming out, but most are (broadly) in the "indie" bucket. People who complain that nothing good is made anymore[0] must just be looking at what's advertised heavily, is all I can figure. Dozens of good-to-great movies come out every year, including a whole bunch from the US. [0] Then there's "it's all remakes now"—but 1) it's not, and 2) Hollywood started churning out tons of remakes about as early in their history as they possibly could, and never stopped.
- roymurdock 5y ago
  Can you recommend some good movies from last/this year? Have been digging into old movies to get my fix recently thinking there wasn't anything good out.
  - DullBlueDot 5y ago
    I highly recommend the In/Frame/Out YouTube channel for dissections of good indie and older classic movies. His year-end lists are always satisfying. The Scottish accent is the cherry on top.
  - handrous 5y ago
    If you watched the film "Happy Death Day" (if not the lesser sequel) and enjoyed its exploration of a kind-of goofy mashup (Ground Hog Day x Teen Slasher), the same director made a film built on, roughly, a similar concept, just called "Freaky". If you already suspect you might like it, don't read anything and just watch, though you may be able to guess the mash-up from the one-word title. It's fun, and well-made. I'm struggling to think of much else that I've personally seen, from last year, that wasn't a little too indie or "genre" for me to recommend it to someone whose tastes I don't know—I didn't get much new watched, and mostly caught up on some reputedly-great stuff I'd missed from the prior five years or so (I keep up with a mix of pop junk food films, which I do like, and the "good" stuff, but usually don't have time to watch anywhere near all of either) aside from some fairly taste-specific newer material I watched. Some other titles I'm seeing, from people I know and trust, for 2020, include: First Cow; The Old Guard; Portrait of a Lady on Fire (technically a 2019 film, but widely available in 2020); Wolfwalkers (animated); Spontaneous; Bacurau; Blow the Man Down. There are lots more, that's just a varied sampling.
sigzero 5y ago
I will mourn movie theaters. Some shows are just 100% better in that environment.
- js8 5y ago
  I won't. I am from Czechia and maybe the culture here was different, but it used to be that movie theaters were somewhat like a normal theater, where you are supposed to be mostly quiet, behave, and not eat and litter during the show. But modern multiplexes have changed that etiquette, and it's hard for me to stand it. And the advertisements...
  - throwaaskjdfh 5y ago
    > ...not eat and litter during the show. Historically in US movie theaters, there's so much popcorn grease and spilled soda on the floor that your shoes actually get stuck to it while you're watching the movie. EDIT: Wow downvotes? It's true! Maybe they mop them now but back when Diller was in the movie business, your shoes actually did get stuck to the floor because of all the spilled snacks. I haven't been to a movie theater in many years, but the grime was an essential part of the experience. Someone should open a throwback 80s theater.
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    Yeah, here in CZ we dressed quite well going to the movie theatre in the early 1990s. These days anything will do.
    - acituan 5y ago
      Indeed, I'd argue a good chunk of the experience came from the respect and reverence the audience had to the occasion. Not unlike in a church, or kind of like a primal gathering around the fire, except this time around the projections of the "magic lantern". But the god of consumption got jealous and demanded we got things (snacks and movies alike) through our system as fast as possible while making him the maximum dime.
- dijit 5y ago
spoonjim 5y ago
> It feels the industry has split in two, either making super-expensive superhero blockbusters or super cheap indie films. The great mid-budget content is now in Streaming TV, but if you’re wedded to the feature film format, try watching anything from A24 films. > It makes me feel like a grouch to complain about the uber-popular, widely loved thing but this intertwined superhero universe exhausts me. I haven’t seen a superhero movie since 1999’s Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Just stop watching them, you won’t become culturally isolated.
ffggvv 5y ago
what if i told you that you can just ignore them. just like you probably don’t listen to taylor swift despite her being popular
spywaregorilla 5y ago
> It makes me feel like a grouch to complain about the uber-popular, widely loved thing but this intertwined superhero universe exhausts me. I don't want to have to watch three previous movies and two TV shows to fully enjoy the movie that's in front of me. So I watch a lot more limited series TV instead... and maybe that's just fine? To me, this is like complaining that you don't want to have to read the Fellowship of the Ring to fully enjoy the Return of the King.
- sidlls 5y ago
  Almost nobody expects their "cotton candy" entertainment to require that level of effort regularly. It's fine if a small handful of things based on prior art ("Return of the King") are around; healthy even. When that's all there is, though, that seems like a problem.
  - spywaregorilla 5y ago
    > Almost nobody expects their "cotton candy" entertainment to require that level of effort regularly. Most people love continuations of prior art. The vast majority of people have no problem watching a few films per year, and consider it a luxury, not an effort. People love seeing their favorite characters reappear and have done so long before film. > When that's all there is, though, that seems like a problem. Well... it's not all there is, so that's good.
    - Apocryphon 5y ago
      Movie serials were also literally at the beginning of the medium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_film https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_film
JKCalhoun 5y ago
Also quote: > "These streaming services have been making something that they call 'movies,' " he said. "They ain't movies. They are some weird algorithmic process that has created things that last 100 minutes or so." Funny. That would be my description of the block buster action films since "Raiders of the Lost Ark".
at_a_remove 5y ago
I soured on the superhero franchise business due to a combination of factors (the out of character Man of Steel, that first boilerplate Thor film, the ghastly Green Lantern, and finally reading Worm made everything else seem shallow by comparison) and have stepped back to look at it as an industry in a kind of spiral of intolerance to risk. They want product, they want it on a pipeline, they want guaranteed returns and they do not want to gamble about it. This has been true for a long time but we're seeing a difference of degree here. Movie production is not merely evolving but speciating -- and I think the new species is going to look like a subscription streaming service (with tie-in product) that releases dopamine-tweaking algorithmic product on the kind of tick-tock schedule for which Intel longs.
- ping_pong 5y ago
  > they want guaranteed returns and they do not want to gamble about it This is how Hollywood is. It's the same as Silicon Valley. They don't want to gamble if they don't have to, they both just want as much money as possible.
elmers-glue 5y ago
> I don't want to have to watch three previous movies and two TV shows to fully enjoy the movie that's in front of me. And then you still won't enjoy it, I promise you.
KingMachiavelli 5y ago
> And I think that's correct. Superhero blockbusters taking over all box office receipts was one thing, but now those blockbusters are becoming deeply tied to streaming services like Disney+ that's bringing content into people's homes and away from movie theatres. What's interesting is that the industry has repeatedly been broken up due to antitrust & anti-competition issues. It will be interesting to see how things stand in 10-15 years; will consolidation eventually bring government action or do we now accept 3-4 major players as being sufficient competition.
quickthrowman 5y ago
> It makes me feel like a grouch to complain about the uber-popular, widely loved thing but this intertwined superhero universe exhausts me. I feel the same way and here is how I approached it: buy a bunch of DIS stock, don’t watch superhero movies.
elliekelly 5y ago
> I don't want to have to watch three previous movies and two TV shows to fully enjoy the movie that's in front of me. I feel like I “missed” the beginning of all the super hero franchises and, even though I’m sure I’d enjoy them, I’m just not interested because getting caught up enough to understand what’s going on in the newer films feels like such a daunting undertaking. At the start of the pandemic I thought maybe I’d finally watch them all only to find out there isn’t even really an agreed upon order they should be watched! It’s an odd and (I think) new phenomenon: that someone can lack the prerequisites to watch a movie. Even worse: no one can quite agree on what exactly those prerequisites are.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  > It’s an odd and (I think) new phenomenon: that someone can lack the prerequisites to watch a movie. There’s nothing new about sequels and movie series. The only difference with Marvel movies might be that they are a lot of films and they tend to be some of the most popular films. > Even worse: no one can quite agree on what exactly those prerequisites are. Fans might enjoy discussing nuances of different viewing orders, but I think it’s pretty undeniable that you can’t go too wrong watching them in the order they were released.
vincentmarle 5y ago
> I don't want to have to watch three previous movies and two TV shows to fully enjoy the movie that's in front of me. I recently started watched Loki on Disney+, 3 episodes in, I still have no idea who Loki is, where he comes from, what his intentions are and what he is capable of... Same problem with WandaVision. I agree, it's exhausting.
- romanhn 5y ago
  Those shows most definitely assume prior knowledge of the universe. That said, having avoided "superhero movies" for years (due to not being impressed with random one-offs that I watched), I finally bit the bullet and watched the whole set in order with my kids and it made a huge difference, with enormous payoff in Infinity War and Endgame. FWIW, I think both WandaVision and Loki are fantastic.
ping_pong 5y ago
When was the last great comedy movie you've seen in the movie theatres? I posed this question to my buddies and we were genuinely stumped. For me it was probably early 2000s, but nothing in the last 15 years that's for sure.
- coolspot 5y ago
  “Parasite”, right before COVID. Earlier - “Nice Guys”.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  When’s the last time your “list of great comedy movies” got a new entry, regardless of whether you saw the new entry in the cinema or even if it was a new film at the time you saw it?
  - ping_pong 5y ago
    Every couple of years? But I do think the frequency of straight up comedies being produced is dwindling, and aren't popular enough to go to a movie theatre for.
    - tshaddox 5y ago
      For me, comedies are so much a matter of personal taste that I’m generally not interested in seeing them in the theater unless it’s with a group of friends or I feel like I have reasonable expectations that I will like the movie a lot. They’re not really like superhero or action movies where I can be pretty good at guessing whether I’ll like the film.
- darren_ 5y ago
  What We Do In The Shadows (disclaimer of bias: NZer)
gamblor956 5y ago
Hollywood's biggest film have always been adaptations of existing material. Some of the most regarded films of all time, like the Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, the Godfather, Lawrence of Arabia, and Chinatown, are themselves merely adaptations of books.
chipotle_coyote 5y ago
> ...though I hope places emulate the likes of Alamo Drafthouse and do dinner, drinks and let us make an evening out of watching a movie... I have a suspicion that this is the direction surviving movie theatre chains will move toward. Something that hasn't been remarked on too much but that I think might be significant is that a long-standing antitrust regulation that prevented movie studios (the "Paramount Decree") from owning their own theatre chains was sunsetted in August 2020, which means that starting in August 2022 studios can start running their own theatres again -- and I think that's very likely to happen. Disney won't just tie their blockbusters to Disney+, they'll tie them Disney-owned theatres that provide theme park like experiences. Other studios will join in on this. > It makes me feel like a grouch to complain about the uber-popular, widely loved thing but this intertwined superhero universe exhausts me. I don't want to have to watch three previous movies and two TV shows to fully enjoy the movie that's in front of me. Despite mostly really enjoying said superhero universe, I've been feeling that recently, too. I can't help but suspect this has a point of diminishing returns; next year we're going to be entering a "phase" of the MCU that's going to build not only on the past twenty-odd movies but now the past Disney+ streaming shows.

The actual quote (with my emphasis added): > "The movie business *as before* is finished and will never come back." And I think that's correct. Superhero bloc

klodolph 5y ago

TV shows have also gotten more prestigious, and so the people who would have been telling their stories as movies may be making TV shows instead. The article compares traditional movies to movies from streaming services, and I just think that’s avoiding the elephant in the room. The change started happening slowly in the late 1990s, but at this point I’d say that the change has happened and we’re in a golden age of television. In the 1990s, TV was seen as a step down from movies in terms of cultural prestige, but nowadays we have A-list actors starring in TV shows with budgets over $10M per episode. The formats for TV shows have changed, too, and you’re much more likely to see TV shows written as six-episode or eight-episode seasons. They can be much more like a big, long movie, rather than a short TV show. (Of course, the UK has produced six-episode TV series since forever.) Still, I recently rewatched a few episodes of Siskel and Ebert, and it made me a bit sad to think about just how many movies were coming out every year during the 1990s, and remember being excited to go to the theater. Rewatching some 1990s movies, there are shots that just don’t have the right impact in typical home theaters.

mbg721 5y ago
Roots in the 1970s (and The Thorn Birds afterwards) was notable for being a widely-viewed blockbuster miniseries, so the concept was there; without streaming, it was just hard to get an audience to watch every episode at the right time.
- ghaff 5y ago
  Also Winds of War and others. Yeah, the miniseries had its day but, especially pre-widespread VCR, depending on an audience to watch every episode at a scheduled time was a high bar. It obviously could work but it depended on having a sufficiently big "event" for people to schedule a week or nights on successive weeks around it--in a way few would do today.
edgyquant 5y ago
I think Breaking Bad really set the stage for TV shows being good film. Whether you like the show or not it had a clear and defined story and ended after 5 seasons where most shows before would just run until their ratings dropped.
- jfengel 5y ago
  HBO had been doing it for a few years, with shows like The Wire and Deadwood. But Breaking Bad helped bring it to a wider audience, since AMC is basic cable rather than premium. (AMC had launched into that a year before with Mad Men, which was similarly TV as good film.)
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
    I think the turn of the century start of the prestige drama cable age was The Sopranos, with The West Wing doing something similar on network TV.
    - jfengel 5y ago
      That seems a really good starting point. Oz preceded it, but was never the breakout hit that The Sopranos became.

iamacyborg 5y ago

ghaff 5y ago
Reputedly at least in part because of the increased importance of non-English speaking markets, even the better action movies are so dominated by long action sequences that they really detract for me. And to the parent point, on top of that, I'm now expected to understand at least some of the intricacies of a complex movie/TV universe that I don't really care that deeply about.

handrous 5y ago

> I won't mourn movie theatres (though I hope places emulate the likes of Alamo Drafthouse and do dinner, drinks and let us make an evening out of watching a movie), but I do worry about things like movie financing. It feels the industry has split in two, either making super-expensive superhero blockbusters or super cheap indie films. I'm informed by my cinemaphile friend that exactly this phenomenon has been much remarked upon in the last 15-20 years. Mid-budget films, which used to be very common, are mostly dead, leaving a couple kinds of low-budget film (the startup-model where you put out a ton of cheap movies and hope one is the next Blair Witch—and yes, most of this is horror—and the "indie" film kind) and the mega-budget ones that are basically investment vehicles. So, two kinds of films that exist because those models are the best ROI, and then indie films, and that's about it. Meanwhile, there are still tons of good films coming out, but most are (broadly) in the "indie" bucket. People who complain that nothing good is made anymore[0] must just be looking at what's advertised heavily, is all I can figure. Dozens of good-to-great movies come out every year, including a whole bunch from the US. [0] Then there's "it's all remakes now"—but 1) it's not, and 2) Hollywood started churning out tons of remakes about as early in their history as they possibly could, and never stopped.

roymurdock 5y ago
Can you recommend some good movies from last/this year? Have been digging into old movies to get my fix recently thinking there wasn't anything good out.
- DullBlueDot 5y ago
  I highly recommend the In/Frame/Out YouTube channel for dissections of good indie and older classic movies. His year-end lists are always satisfying. The Scottish accent is the cherry on top.
- handrous 5y ago
  If you watched the film "Happy Death Day" (if not the lesser sequel) and enjoyed its exploration of a kind-of goofy mashup (Ground Hog Day x Teen Slasher), the same director made a film built on, roughly, a similar concept, just called "Freaky". If you already suspect you might like it, don't read anything and just watch, though you may be able to guess the mash-up from the one-word title. It's fun, and well-made. I'm struggling to think of much else that I've personally seen, from last year, that wasn't a little too indie or "genre" for me to recommend it to someone whose tastes I don't know—I didn't get much new watched, and mostly caught up on some reputedly-great stuff I'd missed from the prior five years or so (I keep up with a mix of pop junk food films, which I do like, and the "good" stuff, but usually don't have time to watch anywhere near all of either) aside from some fairly taste-specific newer material I watched. Some other titles I'm seeing, from people I know and trust, for 2020, include: First Cow; The Old Guard; Portrait of a Lady on Fire (technically a 2019 film, but widely available in 2020); Wolfwalkers (animated); Spontaneous; Bacurau; Blow the Man Down. There are lots more, that's just a varied sampling.

sigzero 5y ago

I will mourn movie theaters. Some shows are just 100% better in that environment.

js8 5y ago
I won't. I am from Czechia and maybe the culture here was different, but it used to be that movie theaters were somewhat like a normal theater, where you are supposed to be mostly quiet, behave, and not eat and litter during the show. But modern multiplexes have changed that etiquette, and it's hard for me to stand it. And the advertisements...
- throwaaskjdfh 5y ago
  > ...not eat and litter during the show. Historically in US movie theaters, there's so much popcorn grease and spilled soda on the floor that your shoes actually get stuck to it while you're watching the movie. EDIT: Wow downvotes? It's true! Maybe they mop them now but back when Diller was in the movie business, your shoes actually did get stuck to the floor because of all the spilled snacks. I haven't been to a movie theater in many years, but the grime was an essential part of the experience. Someone should open a throwback 80s theater.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  Yeah, here in CZ we dressed quite well going to the movie theatre in the early 1990s. These days anything will do.
  - acituan 5y ago
    Indeed, I'd argue a good chunk of the experience came from the respect and reverence the audience had to the occasion. Not unlike in a church, or kind of like a primal gathering around the fire, except this time around the projections of the "magic lantern". But the god of consumption got jealous and demanded we got things (snacks and movies alike) through our system as fast as possible while making him the maximum dime.
dijit 5y ago

spoonjim 5y ago

> It feels the industry has split in two, either making super-expensive superhero blockbusters or super cheap indie films. The great mid-budget content is now in Streaming TV, but if you’re wedded to the feature film format, try watching anything from A24 films. > It makes me feel like a grouch to complain about the uber-popular, widely loved thing but this intertwined superhero universe exhausts me. I haven’t seen a superhero movie since 1999’s Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Just stop watching them, you won’t become culturally isolated.

ffggvv 5y ago

what if i told you that you can just ignore them. just like you probably don’t listen to taylor swift despite her being popular

spywaregorilla 5y ago

> It makes me feel like a grouch to complain about the uber-popular, widely loved thing but this intertwined superhero universe exhausts me. I don't want to have to watch three previous movies and two TV shows to fully enjoy the movie that's in front of me. So I watch a lot more limited series TV instead... and maybe that's just fine? To me, this is like complaining that you don't want to have to read the Fellowship of the Ring to fully enjoy the Return of the King.

sidlls 5y ago
Almost nobody expects their "cotton candy" entertainment to require that level of effort regularly. It's fine if a small handful of things based on prior art ("Return of the King") are around; healthy even. When that's all there is, though, that seems like a problem.
- spywaregorilla 5y ago
  > Almost nobody expects their "cotton candy" entertainment to require that level of effort regularly. Most people love continuations of prior art. The vast majority of people have no problem watching a few films per year, and consider it a luxury, not an effort. People love seeing their favorite characters reappear and have done so long before film. > When that's all there is, though, that seems like a problem. Well... it's not all there is, so that's good.
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
    Movie serials were also literally at the beginning of the medium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_film https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_film

JKCalhoun 5y ago

Also quote: > "These streaming services have been making something that they call 'movies,' " he said. "They ain't movies. They are some weird algorithmic process that has created things that last 100 minutes or so." Funny. That would be my description of the block buster action films since "Raiders of the Lost Ark".

at_a_remove 5y ago

I soured on the superhero franchise business due to a combination of factors (the out of character Man of Steel, that first boilerplate Thor film, the ghastly Green Lantern, and finally reading Worm made everything else seem shallow by comparison) and have stepped back to look at it as an industry in a kind of spiral of intolerance to risk. They want product, they want it on a pipeline, they want guaranteed returns and they do not want to gamble about it. This has been true for a long time but we're seeing a difference of degree here. Movie production is not merely evolving but speciating -- and I think the new species is going to look like a subscription streaming service (with tie-in product) that releases dopamine-tweaking algorithmic product on the kind of tick-tock schedule for which Intel longs.

ping_pong 5y ago
> they want guaranteed returns and they do not want to gamble about it This is how Hollywood is. It's the same as Silicon Valley. They don't want to gamble if they don't have to, they both just want as much money as possible.

elmers-glue 5y ago

> I don't want to have to watch three previous movies and two TV shows to fully enjoy the movie that's in front of me. And then you still won't enjoy it, I promise you.

KingMachiavelli 5y ago

> And I think that's correct. Superhero blockbusters taking over all box office receipts was one thing, but now those blockbusters are becoming deeply tied to streaming services like Disney+ that's bringing content into people's homes and away from movie theatres. What's interesting is that the industry has repeatedly been broken up due to antitrust & anti-competition issues. It will be interesting to see how things stand in 10-15 years; will consolidation eventually bring government action or do we now accept 3-4 major players as being sufficient competition.

quickthrowman 5y ago

> It makes me feel like a grouch to complain about the uber-popular, widely loved thing but this intertwined superhero universe exhausts me. I feel the same way and here is how I approached it: buy a bunch of DIS stock, don’t watch superhero movies.

elliekelly 5y ago

> I don't want to have to watch three previous movies and two TV shows to fully enjoy the movie that's in front of me. I feel like I “missed” the beginning of all the super hero franchises and, even though I’m sure I’d enjoy them, I’m just not interested because getting caught up enough to understand what’s going on in the newer films feels like such a daunting undertaking. At the start of the pandemic I thought maybe I’d finally watch them all only to find out there isn’t even really an agreed upon order they should be watched! It’s an odd and (I think) new phenomenon: that someone can lack the prerequisites to watch a movie. Even worse: no one can quite agree on what exactly those prerequisites are.

tshaddox 5y ago
> It’s an odd and (I think) new phenomenon: that someone can lack the prerequisites to watch a movie. There’s nothing new about sequels and movie series. The only difference with Marvel movies might be that they are a lot of films and they tend to be some of the most popular films. > Even worse: no one can quite agree on what exactly those prerequisites are. Fans might enjoy discussing nuances of different viewing orders, but I think it’s pretty undeniable that you can’t go too wrong watching them in the order they were released.

vincentmarle 5y ago

> I don't want to have to watch three previous movies and two TV shows to fully enjoy the movie that's in front of me. I recently started watched Loki on Disney+, 3 episodes in, I still have no idea who Loki is, where he comes from, what his intentions are and what he is capable of... Same problem with WandaVision. I agree, it's exhausting.

romanhn 5y ago
Those shows most definitely assume prior knowledge of the universe. That said, having avoided "superhero movies" for years (due to not being impressed with random one-offs that I watched), I finally bit the bullet and watched the whole set in order with my kids and it made a huge difference, with enormous payoff in Infinity War and Endgame. FWIW, I think both WandaVision and Loki are fantastic.

ping_pong 5y ago

When was the last great comedy movie you've seen in the movie theatres? I posed this question to my buddies and we were genuinely stumped. For me it was probably early 2000s, but nothing in the last 15 years that's for sure.

coolspot 5y ago
“Parasite”, right before COVID. Earlier - “Nice Guys”.
tshaddox 5y ago
When’s the last time your “list of great comedy movies” got a new entry, regardless of whether you saw the new entry in the cinema or even if it was a new film at the time you saw it?
- ping_pong 5y ago
  Every couple of years? But I do think the frequency of straight up comedies being produced is dwindling, and aren't popular enough to go to a movie theatre for.
  - tshaddox 5y ago
    For me, comedies are so much a matter of personal taste that I’m generally not interested in seeing them in the theater unless it’s with a group of friends or I feel like I have reasonable expectations that I will like the movie a lot. They’re not really like superhero or action movies where I can be pretty good at guessing whether I’ll like the film.
darren_ 5y ago
What We Do In The Shadows (disclaimer of bias: NZer)

gamblor956 5y ago

Hollywood's biggest film have always been adaptations of existing material. Some of the most regarded films of all time, like the Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, the Godfather, Lawrence of Arabia, and Chinatown, are themselves merely adaptations of books.

chipotle_coyote 5y ago

> ...though I hope places emulate the likes of Alamo Drafthouse and do dinner, drinks and let us make an evening out of watching a movie... I have a suspicion that this is the direction surviving movie theatre chains will move toward. Something that hasn't been remarked on too much but that I think might be significant is that a long-standing antitrust regulation that prevented movie studios (the "Paramount Decree") from owning their own theatre chains was sunsetted in August 2020, which means that starting in August 2022 studios can start running their own theatres again -- and I think that's very likely to happen. Disney won't just tie their blockbusters to Disney+, they'll tie them Disney-owned theatres that provide theme park like experiences. Other studios will join in on this. > It makes me feel like a grouch to complain about the uber-popular, widely loved thing but this intertwined superhero universe exhausts me. I don't want to have to watch three previous movies and two TV shows to fully enjoy the movie that's in front of me. Despite mostly really enjoying said superhero universe, I've been feeling that recently, too. I can't help but suspect this has a point of diminishing returns; next year we're going to be entering a "phase" of the MCU that's going to build not only on the past twenty-odd movies but now the past Disney+ streaming shows.