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> People who complain that nothing good is made anymore must just be looking at what's advertised heavily I can't speak for everyone but I think it's hard to

> People who complain that nothing good is made anymore must just be looking at what's advertised heavily I can't speak for everyone but I think it's hard to find anything 'fun'. The indie films inevitably seem to be deadly serious, whether it's terrible crimes or failing relationships or the inevitably of death. If a viewer wants 'fun' then they're stuck with formulaic superhero blockbusters. It feels different. Spielberg was fun, Lucas was fun, Hitchcock was fun. Perhaps they were the outliers even during their times, but it seems like all that sense of adventure has been sucked into the big franchises and mangled into these lowest-common-dementor films. The international market wants big explosions and 'clever' comebacks.

handrous 5y ago
> I can't speak for everyone but I think it's hard to find anything 'fun'. The indie films inevitably seem to be deadly serious, whether it's terrible crimes or failing relationships or the inevitably of death. If a viewer wants 'fun' then they're stuck with formulaic superhero blockbusters. Yeah, good point. Fun films from the more indie side exist, but they aren't the norm, that's true.
- devonkim 5y ago
  Psycho Goreman is a great example of a mid-budget movie that’s 100% about the fun. The issue really appears to be about movie investors being unwilling to take risks like they used to, which makes sense given investor sentiments as a whole across the past several decades leaning more and more conservative as wealth loss protection is a requirement, which removes a lot of creative room for new IPs.
majormajor 5y ago
That's a broader cultural issue for all sorts of art today, not a movie specific thing. The depressed/angry mood has been building for a couple decades or more, and getting more widespread. Even something intentionally over the top like Fast and Furious or Marvel has more "serious issue" stuff in many of the installments from the last 5 years than previously. It's easier in the news to see all the bad stuff that used to get hidden behind the scenes, so until something happens about that or people just tired of seeing it both in the news and in art, I imagine it'll be here for a little longer.
- nineplay 5y ago
  That's an interesting point. Certainly the zeitgeist among the millennials seems to be that things are bad and they are only going to get worse. Maybe Star Wars seems hopelessly optimistic since civilizations will implode well before they invent hyperdrives.
- Retric 5y ago
  It’s really difficult to make a successful movie nowadays when you need to appeal to multiple different cultures at the same time. The depressed/angry mood is simply easier on the artist because it’s universal by default. It sticks around until people get bored of it and studios move on for a while. Only to circle back in a few year and try again.
- reaperducer 5y ago
  The depressed/angry mood has been building for a couple decades or more, and getting more widespread. You can see this a lot in comedy. Comedy used to be mostly about humor, with occasional social commentary. Now it's largely about anger and shock value. "Comedians" are targeting the same brain patterns as social media. I think that's a reason that people like Jim Gaffigan find such a strong following. There's a good number of people who are just burned out on the outrage industry treadmill.
  - nkohari 5y ago
    This has always been a thing, though: George Carlin, Richard Pryor, etc.
    - reaperducer 5y ago
      Which is why I stated "mostly." Carlin, Pryor, Foxx, Bruce and others were rarities.
- mumblemumble 5y ago
  Tangentially, last night I half-listened to an interesting YouTube video that used the history of Robin Hood movies to describe this trend. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=428ZxrW6jhk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=428ZxrW6jhk It's a slowly escalating 45-minute rant, but I think that this quote from toward the end summarizes it fairly well: "I'm admittedly a little tired of seeing heroes always surrounded by worlds of gray, because, if they're there long enough, they start to feel kind of gray, too." I haven't ever seen the Errol Flynn version of Robin Hood, but I suppose my equivalent is that, as far as I'm concerned, Batman peaked with the TV show in the 1960s. It wasn't just colorful, it was legitimately fun. To the point where even the bad episodes were good. The Tim Burton movies were also a bit like that. They were visually dark, sure, but that was Tim Burton's aesthetics, and it was a package deal that came together with at least a few glimmerings of that same twisted sense of humor that got him fired from Disney for making Frankenweenie. Since then, though? It's a bunch of increasingly sad movies by apparently sad people whose creative drive seems to primarily come from the desire to demonstrate to themselves and everyone else that they are Grown Ups, and who are too busy Taking Their Jobs Seriously to have any fun at work. And so they're working so hard that, even though what they're producing is technically classified as entertainment, the end result is so joyless that watching it ends up feeling, at least to me, like work.
watwut 5y ago
I remember seeing indie comedies and horrors. I dont think indy implies serious, altrough there are also sad indie movies. > . If a viewer wants 'fun' then they're stuck with formulaic superhero blockbusters. I dont think this is true either. The industry producing formulaic is not because it is only way to have fun. If you look at series that came out lately (Money Heist, Westworld ... ) they are not formulaic and are fun.
- johnchristopher 5y ago
  I only watched the first season of Westworld and I found it very formulaic and full of common trope but it's been too long now for me to discuss it. Last série I really appreciated: the OA.
  - jandrese 5y ago
    Westworld tied itself in knots trying to "gotcha" the audience. At the end of the day I think a more straightforward storytelling method probably would have worked better.
    - johnchristopher 5y ago
      Westworld was also more or less my serie fatigue point. I was not a big consumer of TV shows and certainly didn't ever binge but nonetheless it was a tipping point.
- bee_rider 5y ago
  Seems inevitable that streaming services would cannibalize some of that low-invest fun media. The format is just more relaxed and if I want to see something kinda silly and fun, I'd rather just pop on my TV.
- zo1 5y ago
  Take this with a grain of salt and bias on my part. But indie movies from my perspective seem to be stuck on the "weird". They have to be "weird" (or "different") otherwise they're not "indie" but rather low-budget "b-movies" that I think everyone despises to some degree. Unless of course they end up being a hit in which case they're cult-classics.
selimthegrim 5y ago
>lowest-common-dementor Don't give them any ideas about more Potter films, even if Rowling has been canceled
- delecti 5y ago
  It's a bit late for that. There are already 3 more Fantastic Beasts movies in various stages of development.
- skinnymuch 5y ago
  Harry Potter is my favorite book series in terms of personal enjoyment and memories, and one I re read every so often still. Is the author really cancelled if I’ve never heard about it? I’m going to assume Rowling isn’t “cancelled”, but has a strong tiny population very upset at her. That’s usually how it goes for most “cancelled” people who aren’t already pretty old and retired instead of trying to continue in any limelight.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Rowling has been canceled That's probably the prime demonstration of the sillinr ess of cancel culture complaints; yes, people have criticized Rowling's gender essentialist views, but she clearly has not been, in any meaningful sense, “cancelled”.
ryandrake 5y ago
There was a thread[1] earlier in the week lamenting how tough it is to make modern comedies. Between the Twitter mobs scrutinizing anything for insensitivity and the need to appeal to international markets, it's really hard to come up with a universally funny and PC-acceptable comedy anymore. You can't do slapstick or silliness. You can't (even gently) poke fun at "groups" anymore. Best you can do is a cynical "dark comedy" that provides awkward discomfort and doesn't actually make you laugh. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27750565 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27750565
- redisman 5y ago
  If you cater to the international market (“make everyone happy”). The you’ll inevitably end up with cookie cutter inoffensive garbage like we’re spewing out now. Get a few reliable IPs and milk them for all they’re worth. If I think about some indie blockbuster comedies none of them really did anything that would get the Twitter crowd going crazy. Napoleon Dynamite and Super Troopers for example I could see being hits today
- jandrese 5y ago
  Comedies are supposed to be mid-low budget affairs. They are supposed to be able to ignore the international market because they can make a profit on just the domestic audience. This sort of ties in with what a previous poster was saying about the mid-budget movies disappearing because the money flows to the top and the bottom end is full of recently graduated art students trying to out-serious one another.
- smogcutter 5y ago
  This is bizarre, willfully blind take in a world where Always Sunny is one of the longest running comedy series of all time.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    If anything, their point is somewhat made because someone made the decision to remove IASIP episodes from legal streaming options. https://www.reddit.com/r/IASIP/comments/hgbrs8/hulu_has_removed_five_episodes_of_iasip/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IASIP/comments/hgbrs8/hulu_has_remo... And if you are familiar with the show, they are not prejudiced at all. But whoever chose to remove them is doing the "cover your ass" move, so I can certainly see some merit in what ryandrake is saying. 30 rock episodes were removed too: https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/23/entertainment/30-rock-episodes-blackface-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/23/entertainment/30-rock-episode...
Flatcircle 5y ago
it's so true. These days a "fun" movie will be super dark and violent, or insanely cheesy. There's no slick, fun, adventure films anymore.
alisonkisk 5y ago
2019 (pre-covid) movies: Men In Black, Shazam, Charlie's Angels, Jumanji, Murder Mystery, Big Time Adolescence, Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark, Good Boys, Weathering With You, Doom Annihilation...
wozniacki 5y ago
The last good American indie film I've watched was Hereditary (2018) [1] and before that 'Blue Ruin' (2013) [2]. They weren't exceptional but when you're awash in 'swords & sandals', 'comic book' crap and Adam Sandler formula-thons, even middling fare seem great. On the TV front, True Detective Season 2 [3] is sorely underrated. Though fictional, it gives you a glimpse into the many possible dimensions of California graft and corruption that are all too close to real life developments surrounding the recent California High-Speed Rail mismanagement junket [4]. I agree with the sentiment expressed in this thread that well-financed, movies for adults with good casting and talented filmmakers have become very scarce. [1] Hereditary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hereditary_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hereditary_(film) [2] Blue Ruin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ruin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ruin [3] True Detective (season 2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Detective_(season_2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Detective_(season_2) [4] California High-Speed Rail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail
anigbrowl 5y ago
Go back and watch films from the early 70s - the comedies are farcically stupid and the serious films are violent and paranoid, because between Vietnam, Watergate, and other political issues, its was a tough time and people were angry, disillusioned, and pessimistic. Spielberg's first commercial film Duel is a very fine piece of cinema but it's far from being 'fun.' Likewise Lucas' early work like THX1138 or American Graffiti is shot through with anxiety about the future and lost innocence. Hitchcock could do great screwball comedies but he alternated them with nightmarish vortexes on taboo subjects. What you want are optimistic films where people get into trouble but keep their sense of humor and eventually bounce back. That requires a social and cultural environment, and a showbusiness industry, in which people can do the same. Have you heard many stories lately where a talented director goes way over budget or even bombs but makes a great comeback because people are forgiving and want to support a real artist? You have not, because the arts are heavily professionalized these days and computers have made accountants very powerful.
- anigbrowl 5y ago
  vortices Y_Y

handrous 5y ago

> I can't speak for everyone but I think it's hard to find anything 'fun'. The indie films inevitably seem to be deadly serious, whether it's terrible crimes or failing relationships or the inevitably of death. If a viewer wants 'fun' then they're stuck with formulaic superhero blockbusters. Yeah, good point. Fun films from the more indie side exist, but they aren't the norm, that's true.

devonkim 5y ago
Psycho Goreman is a great example of a mid-budget movie that’s 100% about the fun. The issue really appears to be about movie investors being unwilling to take risks like they used to, which makes sense given investor sentiments as a whole across the past several decades leaning more and more conservative as wealth loss protection is a requirement, which removes a lot of creative room for new IPs.

majormajor 5y ago

That's a broader cultural issue for all sorts of art today, not a movie specific thing. The depressed/angry mood has been building for a couple decades or more, and getting more widespread. Even something intentionally over the top like Fast and Furious or Marvel has more "serious issue" stuff in many of the installments from the last 5 years than previously. It's easier in the news to see all the bad stuff that used to get hidden behind the scenes, so until something happens about that or people just tired of seeing it both in the news and in art, I imagine it'll be here for a little longer.

nineplay 5y ago
That's an interesting point. Certainly the zeitgeist among the millennials seems to be that things are bad and they are only going to get worse. Maybe Star Wars seems hopelessly optimistic since civilizations will implode well before they invent hyperdrives.
Retric 5y ago
It’s really difficult to make a successful movie nowadays when you need to appeal to multiple different cultures at the same time. The depressed/angry mood is simply easier on the artist because it’s universal by default. It sticks around until people get bored of it and studios move on for a while. Only to circle back in a few year and try again.
reaperducer 5y ago
The depressed/angry mood has been building for a couple decades or more, and getting more widespread. You can see this a lot in comedy. Comedy used to be mostly about humor, with occasional social commentary. Now it's largely about anger and shock value. "Comedians" are targeting the same brain patterns as social media. I think that's a reason that people like Jim Gaffigan find such a strong following. There's a good number of people who are just burned out on the outrage industry treadmill.
- nkohari 5y ago
  This has always been a thing, though: George Carlin, Richard Pryor, etc.
  - reaperducer 5y ago
    Which is why I stated "mostly." Carlin, Pryor, Foxx, Bruce and others were rarities.
mumblemumble 5y ago
Tangentially, last night I half-listened to an interesting YouTube video that used the history of Robin Hood movies to describe this trend. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=428ZxrW6jhk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=428ZxrW6jhk It's a slowly escalating 45-minute rant, but I think that this quote from toward the end summarizes it fairly well: "I'm admittedly a little tired of seeing heroes always surrounded by worlds of gray, because, if they're there long enough, they start to feel kind of gray, too." I haven't ever seen the Errol Flynn version of Robin Hood, but I suppose my equivalent is that, as far as I'm concerned, Batman peaked with the TV show in the 1960s. It wasn't just colorful, it was legitimately fun. To the point where even the bad episodes were good. The Tim Burton movies were also a bit like that. They were visually dark, sure, but that was Tim Burton's aesthetics, and it was a package deal that came together with at least a few glimmerings of that same twisted sense of humor that got him fired from Disney for making Frankenweenie. Since then, though? It's a bunch of increasingly sad movies by apparently sad people whose creative drive seems to primarily come from the desire to demonstrate to themselves and everyone else that they are Grown Ups, and who are too busy Taking Their Jobs Seriously to have any fun at work. And so they're working so hard that, even though what they're producing is technically classified as entertainment, the end result is so joyless that watching it ends up feeling, at least to me, like work.

watwut 5y ago

I remember seeing indie comedies and horrors. I dont think indy implies serious, altrough there are also sad indie movies. > . If a viewer wants 'fun' then they're stuck with formulaic superhero blockbusters. I dont think this is true either. The industry producing formulaic is not because it is only way to have fun. If you look at series that came out lately (Money Heist, Westworld ... ) they are not formulaic and are fun.

johnchristopher 5y ago
I only watched the first season of Westworld and I found it very formulaic and full of common trope but it's been too long now for me to discuss it. Last série I really appreciated: the OA.
- jandrese 5y ago
  Westworld tied itself in knots trying to "gotcha" the audience. At the end of the day I think a more straightforward storytelling method probably would have worked better.
  - johnchristopher 5y ago
    Westworld was also more or less my serie fatigue point. I was not a big consumer of TV shows and certainly didn't ever binge but nonetheless it was a tipping point.
bee_rider 5y ago
Seems inevitable that streaming services would cannibalize some of that low-invest fun media. The format is just more relaxed and if I want to see something kinda silly and fun, I'd rather just pop on my TV.
zo1 5y ago
Take this with a grain of salt and bias on my part. But indie movies from my perspective seem to be stuck on the "weird". They have to be "weird" (or "different") otherwise they're not "indie" but rather low-budget "b-movies" that I think everyone despises to some degree. Unless of course they end up being a hit in which case they're cult-classics.

selimthegrim 5y ago

>lowest-common-dementor Don't give them any ideas about more Potter films, even if Rowling has been canceled

delecti 5y ago
It's a bit late for that. There are already 3 more Fantastic Beasts movies in various stages of development.
skinnymuch 5y ago
Harry Potter is my favorite book series in terms of personal enjoyment and memories, and one I re read every so often still. Is the author really cancelled if I’ve never heard about it? I’m going to assume Rowling isn’t “cancelled”, but has a strong tiny population very upset at her. That’s usually how it goes for most “cancelled” people who aren’t already pretty old and retired instead of trying to continue in any limelight.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> Rowling has been canceled That's probably the prime demonstration of the sillinr ess of cancel culture complaints; yes, people have criticized Rowling's gender essentialist views, but she clearly has not been, in any meaningful sense, “cancelled”.

ryandrake 5y ago

There was a thread[1] earlier in the week lamenting how tough it is to make modern comedies. Between the Twitter mobs scrutinizing anything for insensitivity and the need to appeal to international markets, it's really hard to come up with a universally funny and PC-acceptable comedy anymore. You can't do slapstick or silliness. You can't (even gently) poke fun at "groups" anymore. Best you can do is a cynical "dark comedy" that provides awkward discomfort and doesn't actually make you laugh. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27750565 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27750565

redisman 5y ago
If you cater to the international market (“make everyone happy”). The you’ll inevitably end up with cookie cutter inoffensive garbage like we’re spewing out now. Get a few reliable IPs and milk them for all they’re worth. If I think about some indie blockbuster comedies none of them really did anything that would get the Twitter crowd going crazy. Napoleon Dynamite and Super Troopers for example I could see being hits today
jandrese 5y ago
Comedies are supposed to be mid-low budget affairs. They are supposed to be able to ignore the international market because they can make a profit on just the domestic audience. This sort of ties in with what a previous poster was saying about the mid-budget movies disappearing because the money flows to the top and the bottom end is full of recently graduated art students trying to out-serious one another.
smogcutter 5y ago
This is bizarre, willfully blind take in a world where Always Sunny is one of the longest running comedy series of all time.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  If anything, their point is somewhat made because someone made the decision to remove IASIP episodes from legal streaming options. https://www.reddit.com/r/IASIP/comments/hgbrs8/hulu_has_removed_five_episodes_of_iasip/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IASIP/comments/hgbrs8/hulu_has_remo... And if you are familiar with the show, they are not prejudiced at all. But whoever chose to remove them is doing the "cover your ass" move, so I can certainly see some merit in what ryandrake is saying. 30 rock episodes were removed too: https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/23/entertainment/30-rock-episodes-blackface-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/23/entertainment/30-rock-episode...

Flatcircle 5y ago

it's so true. These days a "fun" movie will be super dark and violent, or insanely cheesy. There's no slick, fun, adventure films anymore.

alisonkisk 5y ago

2019 (pre-covid) movies: Men In Black, Shazam, Charlie's Angels, Jumanji, Murder Mystery, Big Time Adolescence, Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark, Good Boys, Weathering With You, Doom Annihilation...

wozniacki 5y ago

The last good American indie film I've watched was Hereditary (2018) [1] and before that 'Blue Ruin' (2013) [2]. They weren't exceptional but when you're awash in 'swords & sandals', 'comic book' crap and Adam Sandler formula-thons, even middling fare seem great. On the TV front, True Detective Season 2 [3] is sorely underrated. Though fictional, it gives you a glimpse into the many possible dimensions of California graft and corruption that are all too close to real life developments surrounding the recent California High-Speed Rail mismanagement junket [4]. I agree with the sentiment expressed in this thread that well-financed, movies for adults with good casting and talented filmmakers have become very scarce. [1] Hereditary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hereditary_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hereditary_(film) [2] Blue Ruin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ruin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ruin [3] True Detective (season 2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Detective_(season_2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Detective_(season_2) [4] California High-Speed Rail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail

anigbrowl 5y ago

Go back and watch films from the early 70s - the comedies are farcically stupid and the serious films are violent and paranoid, because between Vietnam, Watergate, and other political issues, its was a tough time and people were angry, disillusioned, and pessimistic. Spielberg's first commercial film Duel is a very fine piece of cinema but it's far from being 'fun.' Likewise Lucas' early work like THX1138 or American Graffiti is shot through with anxiety about the future and lost innocence. Hitchcock could do great screwball comedies but he alternated them with nightmarish vortexes on taboo subjects. What you want are optimistic films where people get into trouble but keep their sense of humor and eventually bounce back. That requires a social and cultural environment, and a showbusiness industry, in which people can do the same. Have you heard many stories lately where a talented director goes way over budget or even bombs but makes a great comeback because people are forgiving and want to support a real artist? You have not, because the arts are heavily professionalized these days and computers have made accountants very powerful.

anigbrowl 5y ago
vortices Y_Y