5 ms·

Part of satisfaction is completing something, and fewer things end anymore. You can't watch a really good movie with a satisfying conclusion, they are all writ

by BMc2020 4y ago

Part of satisfaction is completing something, and fewer things end anymore. You can't watch a really good movie with a satisfying conclusion, they are all written for a sequel. You don't just buy things, you have to subscribe to them. You take a vacation, but also 3000 pictures. Relationships don't end, they have long lingering deaths of less and less a contact on social media. You never get the moments of walking away from prison a free man, it's just an endless series of half way houses.

starkd 4y ago
I've noticed a lot of DIY kits for sale for what was once routine things, like making a gourmet dinner where all the ingredients come neatly packed in one box. No need to think beyond the actual assembly steps. It's sort of like satisfaction in a box. A whole market has sprung up to recreate the experience without the hassle.
pavlov 4y ago
> “You can't watch a really good movie with a satisfying conclusion, they are all written for a sequel.” This only applies to the Disneyfied mega-blockbusters that represent a large share of production dollars but a small share of movies created overall. It’s never been easier to find and access good movies, new and old. No matter if they’re from Iowa or France or Korea, practically anything is available on streaming a few clicks away. The problem is really the overwhelming abundance of choice. Given the choice of “The Batman” and “The Northman”, people will default to the familiar title and then complain that it’s derivative and anticipates a sequel.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  Yeah, this is like how you often see complaints about movies all being the same and shitty these days, or how horror movies all suck now, or whatever. In fact, there are hundreds of movies made every year and many are very good. Enough that it's kinda hard to watch all the good ones, unless you spend a whole lot more time than most people do watching new-release movies. All I can figure is people come to this conclusion because they're just looking at the blockbusters and what they see advertised everywhere, and figuring those are the only movies that exist.
  - conductr 4y ago
    > All I can figure is people come to this conclusion because they're just looking at the blockbusters and what they see advertised everywhere, and figuring those are the only movies that exist. This might be my age showing but movies used to be both blockbuster hits and completely unique storylines. Those things somehow became mutually exclusive and people never figured out how to explore the underground movie scene. When I was younger, even now to some extent, I sought out underground music as my interests were not popular. Yet, I have no idea how to do that for movies; it's just not a skill I ever acquired. When something new and "indie" shows up on my radar, I feel I am more likely to default to a feeling that it's a waste of time than something special I should invest some time on. Perhaps also due to run time differences, it's easier to "check out" some new music than a new movie.
    - yamtaddle 4y ago
      Mmm, kinda. I think some of that's a bit of an illusion—I suspect there's a tendency to remember the dozen great original blockbuster movies that came out in a decade, and forget the hundred sequels, cookie-cutter genre movies, and other crap that was most of what was coming out. Even now we get something good that's also a big highly-promoted spectacle movie maybe once a year, but we do get ten or more mediocre-to-terrible ones for every one of those. Music's a lot easier to check out quickly than movies, so yeah, it's just easier to keep up with, especially these days with Spotify and such. I've found TV easier to get into lately because there are sharp cut-off points pretty regularly—I hate having to leave a movie unfinished and return to it. Fortunately, there's been a ton of great TV in the last couple decades. I've also been really appreciating when I can find a tight 90-minute film instead of a 2+hr monster, which is way more common outside blockbuster-film territory. Finding a critic with taste similar to yours, who writes frequently enough to cover plenty of non-blockbuster films, helps with discovery. I've personally also had luck watching basically anything A24 puts out. Very rarely been sad I watched one of their pictures. However, it is the case that some aspects of big blockbuster movies are simply worse now, more often than not. The original musical score situation in particular is notably dire, as has been much-commented-on and the causes analyzed in great detail by film-nerd Youtube. So-so directors and editors have arguably too many knobs they can cheaply and easily fiddle with now, leading to things like heavy-handed and poorly-motivated color grading that looks like crap. A lot of CG still kinda sucks, including cases when it's replacing relatively-simple practical effects and not doing something that would have been nigh-impossible otherwise. And Disney discovering the sweet spot of just-bad-enough-to-save-a-lot-of-money, but just-good-enough-to-sell-well with their films has probably been a bad thing overall, especially since they own half of popular culture now.
- vczf 4y ago
  The media that bucks this trend always stands out to me, especially in series. The classic animated series "Avatar" rarely splits stories over multiple episodes, so that each episode ends in a satisfying way. Another example in a totally different genre is "Atlanta" (2016) which has a similar focused structure.
  - huehehue 4y ago
    Episodic (vs serial) television has its own problems. It can be done well, but the path of least resistance is to make episodes low-stakes, formulaic, and mindless. Law & Order, The X-Files, The Simpsons et al have vague arcs but are approachable by design, which I see as "convenient but less satisfying".
    - autoexec 4y ago
      In the case of Avatar, it was a bit of both. Most episodes did have a satisfying conclusion, but it was nothing like the Simpsons or X-files. The show was a serial and it had a story arc that played out over three seasons with each season having a theme. It had been planned out that way very early. I love shows like that where the creator has a beginning, middle, and ending in mind from that start and so it can't just be stretched out forever until they've run out of ideas or the audience gets bored and ratings drop off. It's just better storytelling to have a compete story. In TV animation that sort of storytelling isn't as common here as it is in anime which helped Avatar stand out, especially compared to what other shows were airing on the channel at the time
- Der_Einzige 4y ago
  Uhh, no. It was easier to find better movies to watch before all the streaming services balkanized. This is why piracy almost died out, and why it's now back.
  - pavlov 4y ago
    The total selection of movies available on streaming services is certainly much better now than it was ten years ago. For example the Criterion Channel is only four years old.
    - squeaky-clean 4y ago
      I think their point is that the selection is much better if you're willing to pay for 5-6 subscriptions. In it's heyday Netflix didn't have everything, but it had more than any current service has and for $12/mo

starkd 4y ago

I've noticed a lot of DIY kits for sale for what was once routine things, like making a gourmet dinner where all the ingredients come neatly packed in one box. No need to think beyond the actual assembly steps. It's sort of like satisfaction in a box. A whole market has sprung up to recreate the experience without the hassle.

pavlov 4y ago

> “You can't watch a really good movie with a satisfying conclusion, they are all written for a sequel.” This only applies to the Disneyfied mega-blockbusters that represent a large share of production dollars but a small share of movies created overall. It’s never been easier to find and access good movies, new and old. No matter if they’re from Iowa or France or Korea, practically anything is available on streaming a few clicks away. The problem is really the overwhelming abundance of choice. Given the choice of “The Batman” and “The Northman”, people will default to the familiar title and then complain that it’s derivative and anticipates a sequel.

yamtaddle 4y ago
Yeah, this is like how you often see complaints about movies all being the same and shitty these days, or how horror movies all suck now, or whatever. In fact, there are hundreds of movies made every year and many are very good. Enough that it's kinda hard to watch all the good ones, unless you spend a whole lot more time than most people do watching new-release movies. All I can figure is people come to this conclusion because they're just looking at the blockbusters and what they see advertised everywhere, and figuring those are the only movies that exist.
- conductr 4y ago
  > All I can figure is people come to this conclusion because they're just looking at the blockbusters and what they see advertised everywhere, and figuring those are the only movies that exist. This might be my age showing but movies used to be both blockbuster hits and completely unique storylines. Those things somehow became mutually exclusive and people never figured out how to explore the underground movie scene. When I was younger, even now to some extent, I sought out underground music as my interests were not popular. Yet, I have no idea how to do that for movies; it's just not a skill I ever acquired. When something new and "indie" shows up on my radar, I feel I am more likely to default to a feeling that it's a waste of time than something special I should invest some time on. Perhaps also due to run time differences, it's easier to "check out" some new music than a new movie.
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    Mmm, kinda. I think some of that's a bit of an illusion—I suspect there's a tendency to remember the dozen great original blockbuster movies that came out in a decade, and forget the hundred sequels, cookie-cutter genre movies, and other crap that was most of what was coming out. Even now we get something good that's also a big highly-promoted spectacle movie maybe once a year, but we do get ten or more mediocre-to-terrible ones for every one of those. Music's a lot easier to check out quickly than movies, so yeah, it's just easier to keep up with, especially these days with Spotify and such. I've found TV easier to get into lately because there are sharp cut-off points pretty regularly—I hate having to leave a movie unfinished and return to it. Fortunately, there's been a ton of great TV in the last couple decades. I've also been really appreciating when I can find a tight 90-minute film instead of a 2+hr monster, which is way more common outside blockbuster-film territory. Finding a critic with taste similar to yours, who writes frequently enough to cover plenty of non-blockbuster films, helps with discovery. I've personally also had luck watching basically anything A24 puts out. Very rarely been sad I watched one of their pictures. However, it is the case that some aspects of big blockbuster movies are simply worse now, more often than not. The original musical score situation in particular is notably dire, as has been much-commented-on and the causes analyzed in great detail by film-nerd Youtube. So-so directors and editors have arguably too many knobs they can cheaply and easily fiddle with now, leading to things like heavy-handed and poorly-motivated color grading that looks like crap. A lot of CG still kinda sucks, including cases when it's replacing relatively-simple practical effects and not doing something that would have been nigh-impossible otherwise. And Disney discovering the sweet spot of just-bad-enough-to-save-a-lot-of-money, but just-good-enough-to-sell-well with their films has probably been a bad thing overall, especially since they own half of popular culture now.
vczf 4y ago
The media that bucks this trend always stands out to me, especially in series. The classic animated series "Avatar" rarely splits stories over multiple episodes, so that each episode ends in a satisfying way. Another example in a totally different genre is "Atlanta" (2016) which has a similar focused structure.
- huehehue 4y ago
  Episodic (vs serial) television has its own problems. It can be done well, but the path of least resistance is to make episodes low-stakes, formulaic, and mindless. Law & Order, The X-Files, The Simpsons et al have vague arcs but are approachable by design, which I see as "convenient but less satisfying".
  - autoexec 4y ago
    In the case of Avatar, it was a bit of both. Most episodes did have a satisfying conclusion, but it was nothing like the Simpsons or X-files. The show was a serial and it had a story arc that played out over three seasons with each season having a theme. It had been planned out that way very early. I love shows like that where the creator has a beginning, middle, and ending in mind from that start and so it can't just be stretched out forever until they've run out of ideas or the audience gets bored and ratings drop off. It's just better storytelling to have a compete story. In TV animation that sort of storytelling isn't as common here as it is in anime which helped Avatar stand out, especially compared to what other shows were airing on the channel at the time
Der_Einzige 4y ago
Uhh, no. It was easier to find better movies to watch before all the streaming services balkanized. This is why piracy almost died out, and why it's now back.
- pavlov 4y ago
  The total selection of movies available on streaming services is certainly much better now than it was ten years ago. For example the Criterion Channel is only four years old.
  - squeaky-clean 4y ago
    I think their point is that the selection is much better if you're willing to pay for 5-6 subscriptions. In it's heyday Netflix didn't have everything, but it had more than any current service has and for $12/mo