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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

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.
- afavour 5y ago
  I think the simple answer is that movies tend to reflect the world around them. Not to get too political on HN but I think no matter your political stripes we can agree that the general mood of the country has been not great since at least 2015 or so. You could argue that means we need more escapism, not less, but somehow that doesn't happen.
  - mumblemumble 5y ago
    I think it goes both ways. The stories we tell reflect our thinking, and our thinking is shaped by the stories we tell. The cynic in me thinks that another problem is that fun is bad for business. Fun makes people feel good, and people who feel good aren't as likely to engage in retail therapy, and modern movies make a whole lot of money off of merchandising.
alisonkisk 5y ago
It's so weird to have people say Marvel is getting "so serious" now, when the movies are all using stories from decades old comic series.
- jedberg 5y ago
  They use the old stories and then add walls of serious text and sadness and darkness that weren't there in the original comics.

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.

afavour 5y ago
I think the simple answer is that movies tend to reflect the world around them. Not to get too political on HN but I think no matter your political stripes we can agree that the general mood of the country has been not great since at least 2015 or so. You could argue that means we need more escapism, not less, but somehow that doesn't happen.
- mumblemumble 5y ago
  I think it goes both ways. The stories we tell reflect our thinking, and our thinking is shaped by the stories we tell. The cynic in me thinks that another problem is that fun is bad for business. Fun makes people feel good, and people who feel good aren't as likely to engage in retail therapy, and modern movies make a whole lot of money off of merchandising.

alisonkisk 5y ago

It's so weird to have people say Marvel is getting "so serious" now, when the movies are all using stories from decades old comic series.

jedberg 5y ago
They use the old stories and then add walls of serious text and sadness and darkness that weren't there in the original comics.