5 ms·

With movies, I find it to be the opposite. I might recognize the old movies as better in many ways, but their pacing is excruciatingly slow compared to modern m

With movies, I find it to be the opposite. I might recognize the old movies as better in many ways, but their pacing is excruciatingly slow compared to modern movies. It takes a layer of appreciation to get through many of them.

acdha 4y ago
There is definitely an element of conditioning here. People have grown accustomed to frenetic action and the studios like it because it’s easier than hiring good writers – especially since they’re hoping for global sales and humor, subtly, and nuance are hard to translate – but that’s a learned preference based on what dominates the market. If different things came back on the market people would get used to them, too.
- SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
  Older movies are full of filler too, but it's generally less exciting filler - looooong shots of a car driving through the countryside or plot beats that could be 1 minute stretching to 10 without having any reason to be as long as they are. Over time movies have learned to cut a lot of fat.
  - cld8483 4y ago
    It's about conveying atmosphere and mood, not conveying plot-points as rapidly as possible. Same reason a book might spend two pages describing a lazy dog laying on a porch swatting flies with his tail, instead of cutting straight to who said/did what.
    - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
      OK, so movies have gotten better at setting the mood without derailing the story's momentum.
      - yamtaddle 4y ago
        A lot of great modern movies have pacing similar to those older ones you don't like. It's not that they "leveled up" into some new form and obsoleted what came before—the other sorts of pacing remain entirely valid and in heavy use.
        SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
        I'm not saying no one uses long shots or takes anymore and they aren't totally ineffective - I just watched Mandy over the weekend and it has plenty and they are used effectively but it's also a move that seems to have people regarding it in extremes - it's really a love or hate because of the choices they make. But what I'm trying to say is there are other tools in the toolbox now - I haven't heard anyone say that Everything Everywhere All At Once was bad, it's a great movie, absolutely full of deliberately chosen mood, and it never has to resort to extremely long shots that take the wind out of the story's sails.
        yamtaddle 4y ago
        Ah, OK—I may not have followed what you meant re: pacing in older movies, then. I can think of a lot of older movies I'd not touch the pacing on. I don't think it'd improve the film. Then again, I admit I've bounced off a couple because of extremely-flat cinematography and slow-as-molasses pacing (the original Oceans Eleven comes to mind—I don't drop many movies that I start, but I'm not sure I even made it to the 20 minute mark on that one). Maybe I'm misjudging what you mean by "old"—I'd kinda assumed you meant "before digital editing", say, 80s and earlier. I don't think films from the '70s tend to feel terribly different from modern ones (we've developed new and more-chaotic ways to assemble very bad action scenes, but that aside, not much different) for example, but would grant that it's probably possible to divide cinema into silent/middle/modern period as far as the feel or what's asked of the viewer, and that the former two do feel pretty different from modern films—but I'd say we were already transitioning out of "middle" and into "modern" in the '60s, so you've got to go pretty old to get into what I'd judge to be notably different. Now, film films do tend to look very different from modern movies, even as recently as the 90s, but that's because easy digital color grading hadn't ruined the artform yet. :-)
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    > Over time movies have learned to cut a lot of fat. Sometimes those scenes are fat. Poorly made movies are certainly not just a modern phenomenon. But sometimes it's critical that those scenes are as they are.
    - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
      I'm not saying it's true 100% of the time, but I've noticed that older movies tend to have more fat and when they do it's more egregious. Throughout this discussion I've realized that this whole conversation is fraught with survivorship bias - we imagine generic marvel movies or the fast and the furious stuff when we think of modern movies, but when we think of the past we really only consider the classics. We haven't yet seen what modern movies will qualify as classic.
      - JohnFen 4y ago
        That is a really good point. The 80/20 rule holds here: 80% of everything is crap. That applies to movies now, and it also applies to movies in the past. There's also the very real thing of changing tastes. Movies are made to appeal to the taste of audiences in the time they're made. Modern tastes are different than the tastes of yesteryear. I think it's not right to say that modern tastes are better or worse than older ones. They're just different -- but it makes sense that the ones aimed at different tastes will be a less popular.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  > especially since they’re hoping for global sales On top of that, a lot of actually interesting content has the potential to cause shitstorms. Like, especially anything LGBT and women's rights won't fly in China, Russia, Arabia and lots of Asian countries. Black lead actors lead to massive shitstorms from the far-right in the USA and parts of Europe [1] - and so, producers leave all that "potentially troubling for sales" content out. Everything "mainstream" is just the same bullshit now, white- and dumbwashed. [1] Black Panther and the 3rd Star Wars trilogy were surrounded by some of the most vile harassment campaigns I've seen, for example
  - cld8483 4y ago
    > [1] Black Panther and the 3rd Star Wars trilogy were surrounded by some of the most vile harassment campaigns I've seen, for example Or, movie studios have exaggerated the impact of (real, but not very numerous) internet trolls to protect their own egos from valid criticisms. The third Star Wars trilogy was an incoherent mess. And for reasons I still don't understand, the end of Black Panther was released in a rough half-rendered state. But the people making these films don't want to hear criticism of their baby, so online critics get dehumanized as "trolls". Rare instances of real trolling from the likes of 4chan get highlighted and blown out of proportion as a defense mechanism.
    - mschuster91 4y ago
      I agree that the SW trilogy was a mess, but that does not excuse Black actors being blasted with n-bombs and other slurs on Twitter and other social media, nor does it excuse the amount of sexist comments against Daisy Ridley. For BP, it was the same. The whine from the far-right about "who wants to see <N-word>s in movies", "we're being ethnically replaced", "this is our future" etc. was unacceptable.
      - cld8483 4y ago
        > but that does not excuse Black actors being blasted with n-bombs and other slurs on Twitter and other social media, I'm not denying, much less excusing that. What I am saying is that such trolls are an irrelevant minority who's voices are amplified by those to whom nutjobs are a convenient excuse for their own failures. Black Panther sold many millions of tickets in America, and had maybe a few thousand 4chan-style trolls complaining about it. Am I really expected to believe those few thousand trolls were the reason the movie got less than flawless glowing reviews from critics, rather than flaws in the movie itself being to blame? And if the Star Wars trilogy failed to perform as Disney expected, it certainly wasn't the fault of trolls. Star Wars fans outnumber trolls a million to one. If the Star Wars trilogy under-performed, it was because the Star Wars trilogy was flawed. Trolls are just a convenient excuse for the people involved in the production who don't want to face the facts about the quality of their product.
NackerHughes 4y ago
That only speaks of how severely the attention span of the average person has plummeted in recent decades. It's impossible to sit through a movie without enough dopamine-inducing distractions or MTV-style jump cuts every few seconds.
- mkaic 4y ago
  Definitely disagree with this take. I'd argue that all it means is that filmmakers have learned to make more exciting films. Cinema is a young art form and hasn't even been around for 200 year, it's no surprise to me that the movies of today are fundamentally different and more engaging than movies from last century.
  - _5uxp 4y ago
    They are more dumb tho, scripts and dialogues are so much simple. They rarely give you the feeling of once a lifetime seeing experience. Most of them have too much CGI and sometimes not even looking rea at all.
    - ssully 4y ago
      Sorry, but you are just generalizing based on the top blockbuster movies. Films have never been more diverse in their style and quality and, in my opinion, offer something for everyone. If you are looking for movies that focus on strong dialogue and character work those movies are still being made and are fantastic.
      - JohnFen 4y ago
        But they all seem to be locked up in streaming services and the like.
      - somenameforme 4y ago
        Mind if I pick your brain? I enjoy compelling era pieces, though some fantasy or sci-fi is also great. I dislike identity politics and infantilizing exposition. By contrast I enjoy subtle metaphor and stories with nuance. My favorite films would include Das Boot, I Claudius, and Seventeen Moments of Spring. For something more contemporary, I also enjoyed The Expanse. Any recommendations? Films or series in any language are okay.
TimMurnaghan 4y ago
Obligatory counterexample, comedies. A quickfire screwball classic like "His Girl Friday" has lots of smart lines per minute where recent Hollywood ones will have two jokes in 90mins that they've had to put into the trailer, and slow build ups so that everybody can get the lame joke.

acdha 4y ago

There is definitely an element of conditioning here. People have grown accustomed to frenetic action and the studios like it because it’s easier than hiring good writers – especially since they’re hoping for global sales and humor, subtly, and nuance are hard to translate – but that’s a learned preference based on what dominates the market. If different things came back on the market people would get used to them, too.

SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
Older movies are full of filler too, but it's generally less exciting filler - looooong shots of a car driving through the countryside or plot beats that could be 1 minute stretching to 10 without having any reason to be as long as they are. Over time movies have learned to cut a lot of fat.
- cld8483 4y ago
  It's about conveying atmosphere and mood, not conveying plot-points as rapidly as possible. Same reason a book might spend two pages describing a lazy dog laying on a porch swatting flies with his tail, instead of cutting straight to who said/did what.
  - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
    OK, so movies have gotten better at setting the mood without derailing the story's momentum.
    - yamtaddle 4y ago
      A lot of great modern movies have pacing similar to those older ones you don't like. It's not that they "leveled up" into some new form and obsoleted what came before—the other sorts of pacing remain entirely valid and in heavy use.
      - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
        I'm not saying no one uses long shots or takes anymore and they aren't totally ineffective - I just watched Mandy over the weekend and it has plenty and they are used effectively but it's also a move that seems to have people regarding it in extremes - it's really a love or hate because of the choices they make. But what I'm trying to say is there are other tools in the toolbox now - I haven't heard anyone say that Everything Everywhere All At Once was bad, it's a great movie, absolutely full of deliberately chosen mood, and it never has to resort to extremely long shots that take the wind out of the story's sails.
        yamtaddle 4y ago
        Ah, OK—I may not have followed what you meant re: pacing in older movies, then. I can think of a lot of older movies I'd not touch the pacing on. I don't think it'd improve the film. Then again, I admit I've bounced off a couple because of extremely-flat cinematography and slow-as-molasses pacing (the original Oceans Eleven comes to mind—I don't drop many movies that I start, but I'm not sure I even made it to the 20 minute mark on that one). Maybe I'm misjudging what you mean by "old"—I'd kinda assumed you meant "before digital editing", say, 80s and earlier. I don't think films from the '70s tend to feel terribly different from modern ones (we've developed new and more-chaotic ways to assemble very bad action scenes, but that aside, not much different) for example, but would grant that it's probably possible to divide cinema into silent/middle/modern period as far as the feel or what's asked of the viewer, and that the former two do feel pretty different from modern films—but I'd say we were already transitioning out of "middle" and into "modern" in the '60s, so you've got to go pretty old to get into what I'd judge to be notably different. Now, film films do tend to look very different from modern movies, even as recently as the 90s, but that's because easy digital color grading hadn't ruined the artform yet. :-)
- JohnFen 4y ago
  > Over time movies have learned to cut a lot of fat. Sometimes those scenes are fat. Poorly made movies are certainly not just a modern phenomenon. But sometimes it's critical that those scenes are as they are.
  - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
    I'm not saying it's true 100% of the time, but I've noticed that older movies tend to have more fat and when they do it's more egregious. Throughout this discussion I've realized that this whole conversation is fraught with survivorship bias - we imagine generic marvel movies or the fast and the furious stuff when we think of modern movies, but when we think of the past we really only consider the classics. We haven't yet seen what modern movies will qualify as classic.
    - JohnFen 4y ago
      That is a really good point. The 80/20 rule holds here: 80% of everything is crap. That applies to movies now, and it also applies to movies in the past. There's also the very real thing of changing tastes. Movies are made to appeal to the taste of audiences in the time they're made. Modern tastes are different than the tastes of yesteryear. I think it's not right to say that modern tastes are better or worse than older ones. They're just different -- but it makes sense that the ones aimed at different tastes will be a less popular.
mschuster91 4y ago
> especially since they’re hoping for global sales On top of that, a lot of actually interesting content has the potential to cause shitstorms. Like, especially anything LGBT and women's rights won't fly in China, Russia, Arabia and lots of Asian countries. Black lead actors lead to massive shitstorms from the far-right in the USA and parts of Europe [1] - and so, producers leave all that "potentially troubling for sales" content out. Everything "mainstream" is just the same bullshit now, white- and dumbwashed. [1] Black Panther and the 3rd Star Wars trilogy were surrounded by some of the most vile harassment campaigns I've seen, for example
- cld8483 4y ago
  > [1] Black Panther and the 3rd Star Wars trilogy were surrounded by some of the most vile harassment campaigns I've seen, for example Or, movie studios have exaggerated the impact of (real, but not very numerous) internet trolls to protect their own egos from valid criticisms. The third Star Wars trilogy was an incoherent mess. And for reasons I still don't understand, the end of Black Panther was released in a rough half-rendered state. But the people making these films don't want to hear criticism of their baby, so online critics get dehumanized as "trolls". Rare instances of real trolling from the likes of 4chan get highlighted and blown out of proportion as a defense mechanism.
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    I agree that the SW trilogy was a mess, but that does not excuse Black actors being blasted with n-bombs and other slurs on Twitter and other social media, nor does it excuse the amount of sexist comments against Daisy Ridley. For BP, it was the same. The whine from the far-right about "who wants to see <N-word>s in movies", "we're being ethnically replaced", "this is our future" etc. was unacceptable.
    - cld8483 4y ago
      > but that does not excuse Black actors being blasted with n-bombs and other slurs on Twitter and other social media, I'm not denying, much less excusing that. What I am saying is that such trolls are an irrelevant minority who's voices are amplified by those to whom nutjobs are a convenient excuse for their own failures. Black Panther sold many millions of tickets in America, and had maybe a few thousand 4chan-style trolls complaining about it. Am I really expected to believe those few thousand trolls were the reason the movie got less than flawless glowing reviews from critics, rather than flaws in the movie itself being to blame? And if the Star Wars trilogy failed to perform as Disney expected, it certainly wasn't the fault of trolls. Star Wars fans outnumber trolls a million to one. If the Star Wars trilogy under-performed, it was because the Star Wars trilogy was flawed. Trolls are just a convenient excuse for the people involved in the production who don't want to face the facts about the quality of their product.

NackerHughes 4y ago

That only speaks of how severely the attention span of the average person has plummeted in recent decades. It's impossible to sit through a movie without enough dopamine-inducing distractions or MTV-style jump cuts every few seconds.

mkaic 4y ago
Definitely disagree with this take. I'd argue that all it means is that filmmakers have learned to make more exciting films. Cinema is a young art form and hasn't even been around for 200 year, it's no surprise to me that the movies of today are fundamentally different and more engaging than movies from last century.
- _5uxp 4y ago
  They are more dumb tho, scripts and dialogues are so much simple. They rarely give you the feeling of once a lifetime seeing experience. Most of them have too much CGI and sometimes not even looking rea at all.
  - ssully 4y ago
    Sorry, but you are just generalizing based on the top blockbuster movies. Films have never been more diverse in their style and quality and, in my opinion, offer something for everyone. If you are looking for movies that focus on strong dialogue and character work those movies are still being made and are fantastic.
    - JohnFen 4y ago
      But they all seem to be locked up in streaming services and the like.
    - somenameforme 4y ago
      Mind if I pick your brain? I enjoy compelling era pieces, though some fantasy or sci-fi is also great. I dislike identity politics and infantilizing exposition. By contrast I enjoy subtle metaphor and stories with nuance. My favorite films would include Das Boot, I Claudius, and Seventeen Moments of Spring. For something more contemporary, I also enjoyed The Expanse. Any recommendations? Films or series in any language are okay.

TimMurnaghan 4y ago

Obligatory counterexample, comedies. A quickfire screwball classic like "His Girl Friday" has lots of smart lines per minute where recent Hollywood ones will have two jokes in 90mins that they've had to put into the trailer, and slow build ups so that everybody can get the lame joke.