17 ms·
There is plenty of blame to go around. The writing for new shows is predicable and boring. Actors are featureless blobs that all look the same. Movies and sh
by nostromo 3y ago
There is plenty of blame to go around. The writing for new shows is predicable and boring. Actors are featureless blobs that all look the same. Movies and shows seem to be eye-rollingly preachy and talk down to audiences. The whole industry is due for a sharp correction.
- lockhouse 3y agoDon’t forget the terrible sound mixing where the dialogue is inaudible while the sound effects and music are blaring.
- mcpackieh 3y agoThey got it in their minds that inaudible dialogue is more realistic and therefore has more artistic integrity than actors giving proper theatrical performances. A good stage actor can 'whisper' and be clearly heard across the room, but that's not realistic and is out of style. So now they have actors actually whisper and everybody has to watch the show with subtitles on. Actors should never be whispering or mumbling for real. Even an actor pretending to be drunk should be able to clearly enunciate their words while still making themselves sound drunk. I'm sure modern actors can still do this, but they're being given bad direction.
- happymellon 3y agoJonny Depp in the Pirates of the Caribbean, even though he wasn't drunk, is a good example of a drunk character that I could understand. I can't comment on the sequels.
- bombcar 3y agoJackie Chan's Drunken Masters got drunken across even through dubbing.
- spaceman_2020 3y agoI need subtitles for practically every movie these days. Absurd.
- coremoff 3y agodon't forget to insist on seeing Oppenheimer in a cinema with subtitles, if you plan on seeing it; it's a bit harder to find, but hopefully will send a message
- saiya-jin 3y agoAnd I thought its just my ageing coming quicker to ears than rest of the body... same here, as a non-native EN speaker I can understand every word said in person regardless of whether its US bible belt slang, cockney, some Australians or kiwis, heck even fairly well scottish/welsh/irish (but there it depends how hard they try). But watching any US movie and I have to either turn on subtitles or blast it so loud that some action scene will probably crack speakers or the wall, since I hate getting lost in plot.
- mst 3y agoIt was an interesting experience watching David Tennant in his first season of Doctor Who and feeling like he was overacting in a way that I found got on my nerves ... right up until I remembered that most of his acting work previously had been on stage, recalibrated, and was able to enjoy his performance fine from then on.
- quattrofan 3y ago[dead]
- MattPalmer1086 3y agoI keep thinking I'm starting to go deaf. I ask my wife what that character just said, and she admits she couldn't make it out either. Then we rewind, turn the volume up, and we still can't hear what a character is saying.
- danjac 3y agoAlso, what happened to proper lighting? Even in a night scene, we would actually like to see what's going on, otherwise I might as well listen to a podcast drama.
- TeMPOraL 3y agoForget night scenes, what about day scenes? Regular scenes in productions today look darker than night scenes used to be a decade or two ago. And no, this is not a technical limitation: case in point, the new Star Trek shows. We've had three of them produced in parallel, sharing some sets and props, and they go full-spectrum - from "every scene is night scene" Picard, through "everything is underlit" Discovery, to "everything is bright well-lit all the time" Strange New Worlds. The only reasoning I can think of for making what's clearly an artistic choice is that maaaybe it looks better on actual TV. I wouldn't know, who owns a TV these days anyway? But I got one clue - rewatching parts of last season of Picard on a hotel TV, I was suddenly able to make out colors and shapes that I couldn't on a computer screen.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago>I wouldn't know, who owns a TV these days anyway? I am going to guess a majority of people in the US live in a residence that contains a TV, probably even a large TV.
- mcpackieh 3y agoFrom what I understand, there's a current epidemic of dull flat dark lighting in movies that is motivated by SFX considerations; if you have beautiful golden god rays piercing the scene, that becomes a serious burden when it comes time to modify the clip in computers. Also dark scenes are better at hiding low quality effects from the audience.
- lotsoweiners 3y ago> I wouldn't know, who owns a TV these days anyway? I must be odd because I have 6 of them: family room, office, master bedroom, both kids’ bedrooms, and back patio.
- reportgunner 3y agoThe worst is that this is gaslighting non-native english speakers to think their english listening skills are terrible.
- bombcar 3y agoI just assumed I was going deaf as I get older.
- reportgunner 3y agoI had the luck of being able to go abroad and hear that native speakers don't speak like the actors sound in the movies.
- mcmoor 3y agoSo all this time it's not my fault? Damn I feel justified in always needing subtitles.
- afavour 3y agoI disagree with most of those but even if they were true, all of those would still be the fault of the studio bosses. Actors all look the same? You bet they do, we market tested the top five male face shapes and we make sure every actor’s face is modelled on the most popular. Writing derivative? You bet! Our customer surveys said they love that curly haired kid from Stranger Things! That’s why he’ll be the lead character in three separate Stranger Things spin-offs.
- happymellon 3y agoThe number of actors coming out of hollywood that don't act these days is awful. The Chris Pratt school of not acting is strong.
- troupo 3y agoChris Pratt is okay. Joel Kinnaman on the other hand. Why is he repeatedly cast in leading roles?
- coremoff 3y agoI think Joel Kinnamen is fine in the roles he's cast in - maybe he doesn't have much range (I'm not saying he hasn't got range, just that I've not seen him in anything other than things like Altered Carbon or The Suicide Squad); I think Chris Pratt is exactly the same. Joel does stoic tough guys with a dead-pan sense of humor extremely well and doesn't stand out as miscast in the things I see him in.
- happymellon 3y agoChris Pratt is fine doing what he does best, playing Chris Pratt in a variety of different scenarios. In terms of acting, where you adopt someone else's persona, he makes Sylvester Stallone look diverse.
- DharmaPolice 3y agoIsn't this what they used to say about Clint Eastwood - that he's playing himself in most movies?
- bexsella 3y ago>The writing for new shows is predicable and boring. Actors are featureless blobs that all look the same I would argue this is a symptom of the money men exerting too much control over entertainment. Everything has to be safe and neutered, every investment has to be as sure as possible. This isn't down to writers, there's interesting writing going on, you just won't see it come out of the big studios unless it's a smaller subsidiary.
- TazeTSchnitzel 3y agoEventually the money men become so risk-averse that they give up on originality entirely. Hence the endless stream of remakes, adaptations and formulaic additions to existing series.
- kristopolous 3y agoReminds me of a movie from the 1960s, The Fabulous Baron Munchausen, I was watching recently. I couldn't help but notice how the wild artistic risks taken in the movie would likely never happen today unless the artists paid out of pocket for both the production and distribution https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Na1h7ozW9VQ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Na1h7ozW9VQ Putting money behind stuff like this is dead.
- toyg 3y agoActually Munchausen was remade by Terry Gilliam in 1988. The same Gilliam in 2009 made The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, which was also pretty wild. > the wild artistic risks taken in the movie would likely never happen today Tim Burton or Christopher Nolan would disagree. And there are plenty of brave films out there, just not necessarily from big Hollywood studios.
- kristopolous 3y agoYou really see the two versions comparable in execution? Here it is in full if you'd like to compare https://archive.org/details/the-fabulous-baron-munchausen https://archive.org/details/the-fabulous-baron-munchausen
- satvikpendem 3y agoIndeed, it reminds me of the Witcher show, where Cavill left due to the writers literally having disdain for the actual source material and were just using the show's setting as a backdrop to push their own entirely disconnected stories.
- elithrar 3y ago> due to the writers literally having disdain for the actual source material and we're just using the how's setting as a backdrop to push their own entirely disconnected stories. Is this concretely true, or just disinformation to put blame on writers vs. producers? I’m not saying it’s not plausible either way, but this is a common cop out.
- mcpackieh 3y agoIt's all entertainment industry gossip, but one of the writers for the Witcher show said the same thing: > "I've been on shows — namely 'Witcher' — where some of the writers were not or actively disliked the books and games (even actively mocking the source material). It's a recipe for disaster and bad morale," wrote DeMayo. https://www.looper.com/1128621/the-witcher-writer-casually-confirms-that-some-of-the-shows-writers-disliked-the-source-material/ https://www.looper.com/1128621/the-witcher-writer-casually-c... Maybe he's being paid by the producers to lie about that, but that seems like a strange theory to me.
- watwut 3y agoYes it is true and confirmed. Also, this characterinzaction of the Witcher series writing is 100% correct - especially in last season. Going by the comments writer made publicly, she did not even understood events or relationships between characters in books. It is as if she understood adolescents, but had real issue comprehend adults or write about them.
- mcpackieh 3y ago> It is as if she understood adolescents, but had real issue comprehend adults or write about them. This seems like a very common problem in modern American entertainment. I think it's because they're hiring writers who are too young with too little life experience. Characters who should be mature adults seem like immature teenagers. Maybe the writers know how to write mature characters but think this is what audiences want... but I tend to think the writers are nepo hire hacks.
- anticodon 3y agoAlso, something that is forbidden to talk about in "free societies": by forcefully showing in movies something that contradicts everyday life but is aligned with the woke ideology, you don't make movies interesting, you make them shallow and sometimes even loathsome. But it's a zugzwang: impossible to avoid woke ideology in movies, because minorities had become such a powerful entity that they have ability to destroy the company or a life of any person if they don't like what you do or say.
- arrrg 3y agoCare to elaborate with an example? The point you are making seems quite abstract and incomprehensible to me.
- anticodon 3y agoColossal losses of Disney due to "rethinking" of classical plots in a "new ideology" way. People just don't want to watch it. But for some reason it's not possible for Disney to avoid it and continue making movies in a way that was mainstream maybe 20-30 years ago.
- SpiritualGuide 3y agoDisney losses are because of other factors, like a whole world of new content being available... including engaging video games in all platforms and all phone apps and content and remember that any and all entertainment content competes with them. The entire history of art relies on rethinking of classical plots in new ideology.
- mcpackieh 3y agoI don't think Disney can seriously blame competition from video games when they hire a notorious "mystery box" writer to write/direct the first movie of a new trilogy for their most valuable IP, and predictably he sets up ticking time-bombs of unsolvable mysteries that future writers/directors don't know what the hell to do with. People like to slag on Rian Johnson, but it was JJ Abrams that trashed the trilogy and left the mess to Johnson. And none of this has anything to do with video games anyway, Disney executives dropped the ball with bad hiring and that turned the Star Wars fanbase sour to future movies.
- NovaDudely 3y agoThis is why I find it funny when certain shows manage to get through the banal filter. Bojack Horseman and The Good Place are great examples. Both basically went in with a goofy premise but then pivoted as soon as they could into some really decent stuff.
- gonzo41 3y agoYeah the last decade has been suffering a glut, of Marvel, Star Wars, Fast X (how is it at 10!), and not much else.
- hoseja 3y agoOccasionally there is a good show. More often than not on AppleTV or Amazon (entities with more money than God) these days and more often than not completely overlooked.
- ryandrake 3y ago> Actors are featureless blobs that all look the same. I'm glad I'm not the only one to notice this one. There seems to be five or six "allowed looks" for each gender, and many mainstream Hollywood actors and actresses have become almost clones of those archetypes. I thought maybe I'm just old and more familiar with actors from older generations. Show me a random famous Hollywood actor who's under 35 years old and I probably can't tell you who it is. But maybe it's because they all actually do look the same!
- toyg 3y agoIt's not the "allowed looks" as much as the fact that they must be all super-fit and super-beautiful, which inevitably makes it look all samey. The young Al Pacino or Dustin Hoffmann wouldn't get roles today, because they're not conventionally attractive. Tom Cruise is particularly guilty of overcasting beautiful people in his recent movies, but he's hardly the only one doing that. The last leading man that I can remember with non-conventional looks, is Vin Diesel - and he got there by muscling (eh) his way in, not by acting.
- ryandrake 3y agoYep, this was also partially the topic of an article that made the rounds on HN a while back: Everyone Is Beautiful and No One Is Horny[1]. 1: https://bloodknife.com/everyone-beautiful-no-one-horny/ https://bloodknife.com/everyone-beautiful-no-one-horny/
- hef19898 3y agoThat is one good article. And so true, one could sum it up with one word: sterile.
- helpfulmandrill 3y agoSafe for work? (I'm at work)
- mixmastamyk 3y ago
- hdior 3y agoIt’s not just a Hollywood thing; the money men ruined all creative outlets: https://www.escapistmagazine.com/bobby-kotick-wants-to-take-the-fun-out-of-making-games/ https://www.escapistmagazine.com/bobby-kotick-wants-to-take-... Finance is nothing more than rent seeking. The correction required is society wide movement to dethrone finance.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- lotsofpulp 3y agoAll we have to do is vote to drop copyright lengths to 10 years.
- SpiritualGuide 3y ago[flagged]
- watwut 3y agoAd preaching - there is engaging with the thing and there is preaching the thing. Like, yeah, majority of the complains about "diversity" is rooted in sexism, racism or homophobia and it is not even hidden. But then I have characters having mini speech about female equality or power, in a weird situation, while the very same character is not even written to be competent adult woman. That is preaching. They could write competent medieval woman or gay, acting capable and mature within the context they are in. But instead, they make them stereotype and then slap a speech on it. Like, yeah, quite a lot of what people call "neutral past" was conservative preaching and not even hidden. But like, the preaching currently absolutely does happen.
- mcpackieh 3y ago> They could write competent medieval woman or gay, acting capable and mature within the context they are in. Umberto Eco somehow made William of Baskerville, a 14th century christian monk, present enlightenment ideas and values in a way that seems consistent and convincing. But of course most Hollywood writers can't hold a candle to Umberto Eco. From hack writers, such things come out hamfisted.
- INGSOCIALITE 3y agoThey can have as many gay characters as they want in any movie and it wouldn’t matter. Hell it probably wouldn’t even come up. But once it becomes the characters ENTIRE identity and only character trait, it does seem a bit preachy.
- mcpackieh 3y ago> To YOU because you are probably a middle-aged man who is not supposed to have time to watch everything so that all the tropes are familiar to you. Watch less media, focus on other things. Then why is it that when I watch older movies I haven't seen before, they seem fresh to me? Maybe the problem is the writers today think as you do, and have contempt for media-literate people who aren't totally naive to tropes.
- faeriechangling 3y agoActors look more diverse to me than ever.
- arp242 3y agoDepends what metric you use. When was the last time you saw an overweight character in a leading role? Or someone with a distinct accent (e.g. Boston accent, NY accent, southern accent)? You can see this very clearly in US remakes of some UK stuff where they'll add a black guy or whatever and increase diversity by that metric, but typically diversity goes down by almost every other metric. And I'm not against adding black folks, I'm just saying that the US idea of "diversity" is exceptionally narrow, one-dimensional, and overall quite un-diverse.
- saiya-jin 3y agoThat's what you get when its not organic diversity reflecting reality but a forced one, by corporate order #123 to 'be diverse or forget grammy' or whatever triggered this self-censoring direction of past decade. Sad part happens due to rise of situations where certain art (and I still call much of Hollywood product an art, just like white triangle on white canvas can be called one) can't be produced anymore. Think about ie Tropical Thunder, even Downey jr admitted it would be impossible to do such project only a decade later due to exactly this. I guess the conservatives again won, even if within diversity movement. I recall vividly, when doing Aconcagua trip few years ago, one team member was a 2nd or 3rd generation taiwanese immigrant lady from New York. She was so pissed off how diversity movements in US are actually racist towards any other than black race, specifically her own. Try to say anything, ask anything, and you are immediately labeled as another racist, no discussion, no understanding. I guess we all get why its wrong and then somehow on our own come up with ways to adhere to it, and sometimes some folks overdo it just to not be seen as not caring enough. Western Europe is same scheize, especially it seems English folks tend to go that extra mile in this without any actual need for it. Eastern Europe just stares cluelessly, we really don't get this since we have no shameful racist history to work through (plenty of other shameful history to work with though, but we prefer being ignorant and tell ourselves sweet little or big lies to feel good, critical thinking ain't popular here).
- jollofricepeas 3y agoActually. It’s because the market dynamics have changed and we stopped buying DVDs and VHS. Matt Damon talked about this just a few years ago on Hot Ones. https://youtu.be/Jx8F5Imd8A8 https://youtu.be/Jx8F5Imd8A8 “So what happened was the DVD was a huge part of our business, of our revenue stream,” Damon said. “Technology has just made that obsolete, and so the movies that we used to make you could afford to not make all of your money when it played in the theatre because you knew you had the DVD coming behind the release.” Links: https://www.ajc.com/life/why-dont-they-make-movies-like-they-used-to-matt-damon-has-answers/MJ4XJKFOEFGHTN2IV543G6SU7Y/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CTechnology%20has%20just%20made%20that,DVD%20coming%20behind%20the%20release.%E2%80%9D https://www.ajc.com/life/why-dont-they-make-movies-like-they...
- pjc50 3y agoThere's no reason why having the back catalogue in streaming should be different from having it in DVD .. except that streaming has opaque accounting and seemingly pays terrible residuals.
- detourdog 3y agoLicensing is the reason. Licenses are written before the technology is invented. Originally we had radios and record players. Each new medium requires a new license due to the structure of the ownership of the content. Publishers that own images for print can't post them on the web. The problem is the exceptional nature of the contracts. This is why things are so splintered. All the acquisitions of corporations may create even more exceptions to the licenses.
- snide 3y agoThe difference is that DVD collections were mostly created by movie fans. You had a small, but loyal audience of people that would wait every Tuesday for releases similar to movie releases. Getting $20-30 per DVD from this audience was much more lucrative than the cents you get per stream when competing against the algorithm of "what should I watch next". It's a VERY different market now. Smaller stuff just doesn't compete. Once you remove the need to personally curate and review (think also towards the death of the film critic), you introduce a homogenization to the industry. Streaming is fantastic for convenience. It is terrible for variety, despite the illusion that we're overloaded with choice. The modern streaming system hides everything in plain site. It is almost impossible for me to "browse" streaming sites the way I used to in a Blockbuster or Best Buy. Discovery is much harder.
- crashingintoyou 3y ago> Actors are featureless blobs that all look the same I consider this to be mostly a positive. I'm interested in following stories rather than watching the N+1th Actor X movie.