3 ms·

> 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 thos

> 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.
- jimbokun 4y ago
  No, there really are more sequels today: https://www.radiotimes.com/movies/hollywood-sequels-remakes/ https://www.radiotimes.com/movies/hollywood-sequels-remakes/ Key chart: https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2019/09/Screen-Shot-2019-09-18-at-17.34.17-df1decb.png?quality=90&webp=true&fit=1760,1094 https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2...
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    Eh, top-20 grossing only and starts in the early 80s. There are lots of remakes and sequels (and some "cinematic universes"!) in the 1900-1950 range—not infrequently, one of the remakes is far better-known or better-regarded now than the original. [EDIT] I've actually looked into this before and if you have better data on it I'd genuinely love to see it—I couldn't find any. [EDIT EDIT] What I was most interested in was seeing whether there was a major change in this in the 60s-80s when director-as-auteur trend took over after the Studio System was broken up—arguably we're kinda trending back toward a Studio System sort of arrangement, so it'd be interesting to see if a ~century-long graph that includes wider-ranging data looks U-shaped.
  - muffinman26 4y ago
    There are a lot of movies in the 30s and 40s that a cursory analysis wouldn't notice are remakes, but totally are. For example, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movies are all nominally unique characters, but most of them have identical pacing.

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.

jimbokun 4y ago
No, there really are more sequels today: https://www.radiotimes.com/movies/hollywood-sequels-remakes/ https://www.radiotimes.com/movies/hollywood-sequels-remakes/ Key chart: https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2019/09/Screen-Shot-2019-09-18-at-17.34.17-df1decb.png?quality=90&webp=true&fit=1760,1094 https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2...
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  Eh, top-20 grossing only and starts in the early 80s. There are lots of remakes and sequels (and some "cinematic universes"!) in the 1900-1950 range—not infrequently, one of the remakes is far better-known or better-regarded now than the original. [EDIT] I've actually looked into this before and if you have better data on it I'd genuinely love to see it—I couldn't find any. [EDIT EDIT] What I was most interested in was seeing whether there was a major change in this in the 60s-80s when director-as-auteur trend took over after the Studio System was broken up—arguably we're kinda trending back toward a Studio System sort of arrangement, so it'd be interesting to see if a ~century-long graph that includes wider-ranging data looks U-shaped.
- muffinman26 4y ago
  There are a lot of movies in the 30s and 40s that a cursory analysis wouldn't notice are remakes, but totally are. For example, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movies are all nominally unique characters, but most of them have identical pacing.