20 ms·

The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

• qgin 1y ago
  It’s kind of disingenuous to lead with an example from Megalopolis like it represents something about the culture.
• krukah 1y ago
  https://archive.ph/ZVQvK https://archive.ph/ZVQvK
• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• AIorNot 1y ago
  Eh, People on their phones can’t be bothered with following plot lines everything has to be telegraphed
  • bluefirebrand 1y ago
    I think it is just as likely the other way around People are on their phones because the slop they are being served is so shallow and meaningless that they can't be bothered to pay attention to it
    • brokencode 1y ago
      If that were the case, people would watch classic movies, read novels, etc. No, I’m pretty sure social media has seriously hurt the average person’s attention span. The idea of sitting down and watching a two hour movie is really quite daunting when you’re used to videos that are at most 30 min and often less than one.
      • decimalenough 1y ago
        Observe somebody browsing Tiktok/Instagram/YouTube Shorts. People compulsively swipe on to the next reel if the one they're watching doesn't hook them in within the first second.
        • BobaFloutist 1y ago
          Right, because the much vaunted Tik-Tok algorithm starts a stopwatch when the clip begins in order to determine whether or not to serve you more content like it.
      • Swizec 1y ago
        > The idea of sitting down and watching a two hour movie is really quite daunting when you’re used to videos that are at most 30 min and often less than one. Whenever I watch a modern Netflix/Hulu/etc show: I'm on my phone 2 minutes into the show. Half paying attention to both. Whenever I watch a modern BBC-ish (anything British really) show: I literally can't look away for more than 10 seconds because I will miss something crucial. If someone distracts me, I rewind the show and rewatch the last few minutes. What's different? The Brits (at least the stuff that makes it into syndication) focus on content you're going to watch. The Americans focus on filling air between commercials. Product placement counts as commercials for the purpose of this comparison.
      • makeitdouble 1y ago
        > attention span. This gets repeated ad nauseum, but IMHO people are short on patience, not attention. Parents probably understand this the most: try to find an 80s movie to show to your kids, you'll have a pass at it first to properly remember what it's about, and it will painfully slow. Not peaceful or measured, just slow. Scenes that don't need much explanation will be exposed for about for 10 min, dialogues that you digest in 2s get 2 min of lingering on. Most movies were targeted at a public that would need a lot of time to process info, and we're not that public anymore (despite this very TFA about how writers make their dialogues dumber)
        • alexey-salmin 1y ago
          Old movies are kind of slow but I'm much less frustrated because they are short: an hour, at most two. That's more than enough to tell a story. Modern movies are two hours at minimum with some crossing over three with absolutely nothing to tell (e.g Babylon 2022, completely pissed me off). I don't think the reason is "public needed time to process info", more likely both the length and the intensity (of changing sights, not of meaning) were ultimately determined by production costs. Filming two hours is more expensive than one hour. Filling an hour with 60 one-minute cuts is more expensive then 30 two-minute cuts because of all the setup and decorations. Production is now cheaper thanks to CGI, box offices are larger thanks to higher prices and the global market. You no longer have to be frugal when filming, the protection against sloppy overextended movies is now taste and not money. And taste is scarce.
        • silisili 1y ago
          I noticed this recently when I decided to watch Hitchcock's 'The Birds.' It was almost absurd to me not only how bland and drawn out most scenes were, but how absolutely poorly acted it was. If it were not famous(ie didn't exist), and updated to today's vernacular and shot scene for scene, it would absolutely get reamed by critics. Funny how much changes in just a generation or two.
      • wiseowise 1y ago
        > If that were the case, people would watch classic movies, read novels, etc. They literally do. Have you ever tried reaching out people NOT on social networks? > The idea of sitting down and watching a two hour movie is really quite daunting when you’re used to videos that are at most 30 min and often less than one. Average movie length is increasing every year.
      • JKCalhoun 1y ago
        I don't think people know about classic movies, or know that they have access to classic movies (hint: libraries). This people though has been catching up on a century of classic films. There are plenty of lists around on the internet if you wanted to get started. The AFI Top 100 is a gentle introduction to the (American-only) classics. There are deeper cuts when you are ready to saddle up for "1001 Movies" instead. (Warning, you could be starting down a journey that will involve the next eight years of your life.)
    • jll29 1y ago
      Go to a restaurant and watch any "romantic" couple, what they do. Pay attention to each other, talk? Nah, stare at their own screens, and every two minutes or so show each other a cute cat video and go "awww!"; pathetic.
  • anonymousab 1y ago
    > everything has to be telegraphed Or, in the case of recent Netflix executive missives, everything happening must be literally spoken and explained aloud, moment to moment.
    • magicalhippo 1y ago
      Not that I was lacking reasons to nit resubscribe to Netflix but wow...
  • bawolff 1y ago
    Or, people who want complex plots dont watch blockbuster films; they watch indie movies. The same way that if you want a literary novel, you aren't reading the latest YA best seller. The super mainstream stuff is always going to go for broad appeal. There is nothing wrong with that, but the people who want something different are going to have to step outside the bestseller box the way they always had to.
    • icecreamscoop 1y ago
      Fry: Clever things make people feel stupid, and unexpected things make them feel scared. Futurama nailed it.
    • JKCalhoun 1y ago
      It's a shame, because in an era when One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest and Annie Hall were winning Best Picture the blockbuster film and "indie" film were harder to differentiate.
  • hosh 1y ago
    I am confused by the use of the term, telegraphed or signpost. I am not even sure I understand what this literalism is about. Coming from a martial art background, telegraph means reading the subtle signs that comes before an action in order to anticipate, intercept, and counter it within the same tempo. It can also mean exaggeration of the signs, letting slip one’s intentions as an error in execution, or deceiving someone by falsely telegraphing intentions. They all come before the action, whereas the examples in this article seems to talk about things coming after the action.
    • phyzome 1y ago
      "Telegraph" is a bit of an unfortunate word because when used metaphorically it has come to have two almost diametrically opposed meanings. I think that's what's tripping you up.
      • hosh 1y ago
        Ok, given that then I think the next thing that is tripping me up is that the author of the New Yorker article is writing in a way that is itself being very literalist. I read through the whole article looking for something that is insightful, but it feels as if the author is beating a dead horse the way the examples does the same. Maybe experiencing that is the point, but I can't help but thinking it was all a waste of time.
• zoklet-enjoyer 1y ago
  Most movies are pretty bad. Always have been. I feel like I got scammed for paying to see 28 Years Later.
  • plantwallshoe 1y ago
    The threequel zombie movie lacked too much subtlety for you?
    • senectus1 1y ago
      Quadquel? There is another (and supposedly final) in January 2026.
      • IAmBroom 1y ago
        It's actually a sort of standing joke that trilogies are sometimes 4-fold. Trivial Pursuit used that answer as one of their copyright test questions (if your game replicates our bad answer, you stole our product).
  • jowday 1y ago
    Weird, I thought it was one of the best movies I've seen in the last few years. Wasn't at all what I expected to see, but was incredibly memorable and impactful. F1 on the other hand was maybe the worst offender as far as literalism is concerned.
    • wiseowise 1y ago
      > F1 Let me guess, an old man Brad Pitt enters the movie screen and says something like: “I’m gonna, I’m gonna… I’m gonna WROOOM! I’m WROOMING!!”?
    • AlexandrB 1y ago
      Yeah, F1 was extremely literal - characters would often describe what's going on in Brad Pitt's head while he's driving. On the other hand, it's a "big, dumb action movie" and at least it took itself seriously and didn't wink at the audience like so many modern blockbusters do.
• muglug 1y ago
  Calling the literalism "new" implies it wasn't present in older pics. You can go back to 1997 when Good Will Hunting won 8 Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Pretty much everything was telegraphed, and that’s ok — the story resonated with millions of moviegoers and made a lot of money. Other movies of the era (e.g. Being John Malkovich) didn’t telegraph stuff. That movie didn't win any Oscars and sold roughly 10x fewer tickets.
  • aspenmayer 1y ago
    > Other movies of the era (e.g. Being John Malkovich) didn’t telegraph stuff. That movie didn't win any Oscars and sold roughly 10x fewer tickets. 1999 was a bumper year for film in general. There were too many good picks that many had to be passed over. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind came out in 2004 to acclaim, and covered similar themes, so it can be done. The casting of Being John Malkovich also made it a long shot for awards, as all of the actors in it are fantastic, but there aren’t any standout roles because everyone in it is so good already, and none of the characters are redeeming in any way, so it’s a hard watch for most folks. Spike Jonze did get an Oscar nomination for Being John Malkovich, and it was his feature film directing debut. The writer, also in his respective feature film debut (for writing), Charlie Kaufman, also wrote Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Ticket sales are the wrong metric for artsy stuff like that, imo. Ebert said it best: > Roger Ebert awarded the film a full four stars, writing: "What an endlessly inventive movie this is! Charlie Kaufman, the writer of Being John Malkovich, supplies a dazzling stream of inventions, twists, and wicked paradoxes. And the director, Spike Jonze, doesn't pounce on each one like fresh prey, but unveils it slyly, as if there's more where that came from... The movie has ideas enough for half a dozen films, but Jonze and his cast handle them so surely that we never feel hard-pressed; we're enchanted by one development after the next". He concluded: "Every once in a long, long while a movie comes along that is unlike any other. A movie that creates a new world for us and uses it to produce wonderful things. Forrest Gump was a movie like that, and so in different ways were M*A*S*H, This Is Spinal Tap, After Hours, Babe and There's Something About Mary. What do such films have in common? Nothing. That's the point. Each one stakes out a completely new place and colonizes it with limitless imagination. Either Being John Malkovich gets nominated for best picture, or the members of the Academy need portals into their brains." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Being_John_Malkovich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Being_John_Malkovich
• decimalenough 1y ago
  I'm surprised they call out the Conclave as an example of a good movie. It's not a bad movie, but the final twist (I'm not going to spoil it) is way over the top and almost absurdly Hollywood.
  • jeffbee 1y ago
    I see few Americans in the credits. Did you mean absurdly following in the Hollywood style, or are the handful of Americans involved in that film enough to make it "Hollywood"? Genuinely asking. Is Hollywood a place, a process, or a result?
    • zdragnar 1y ago
      Very little of "Hollywood" is about the place today. Movies are often filmed outside of it for tax purposes. Referencing it is almost always about either the style or the clique of people who engender the style.
  • TimorousBestie 1y ago
    Without spoiling the twist, I question whether it’s “over the top.” The specific kind of anxiety alluded to by Conclave about popes is almost a thousand years old and has resurged several times.
    • boredhedgehog 1y ago
      The guy is actually way too unspecific about the details there to make much sense of the canonical relevance, which renders the resulting anxiety rather comical.
      • sillyfluke 1y ago
        This spoiler-dogeing (pun intended) makes this comment too unspecific to respond to unfortunately, as it's not clear what you found unspecific. It's understood enough by the person he's telling it to, and it makes sense to be beating-around-bush about a topic that could get the person who's telling it in trouble.
• wnevets 1y ago
  I'm convinced it has to do with the increased importance of the overseas markets, these movies now must make it past Chinese censors and make sense for people that don't natively speak English or understands its nuances. Showing a flashback scene and swapping in the government approved voice over is a better business decision than not releasing the movie in insert country here. Unrelated movie trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRqxyqjpOHs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRqxyqjpOHs
  • eviks 1y ago
    How are language/nuances relevant to the sword/trump tower label examples? And the second example makes it harder by referencing a bell and an exchange
  • burnt-resistor 1y ago
    The bean counters ruin everything with product placement, taking out bits that "offend" certain censors, and explaining jokes. Let them have their own edited versions that suck.
    • mvieira38 1y ago
      Hard agree. In what other art forms are people expected to produce for "global appeal"? A lot of my enjoyment of books and music IS the fact that I "don't get it", and slowly learning the cultural references is fun and good for personal development
      • BobaFloutist 1y ago
        Part of it is that modern mainstream movies are so expensive to make. They need to be global to recoup their expenses. Much like videogames, the answer seems to be to look for indie and foreign works with less pressure on them to be easily consumable.
        • lupire 1y ago
          If they were good they wouldn't have to be so expensive.
• somenameforme 1y ago
  Fun fact: movie sales, in terms of tickets sold, peaked in 2002. [1] All the 'box office records' since then are the result of charging way more to a continually plummeting audience size. And this is highly relevant for things like this. People often argue that if movies were so bad then people would stop watching them, unaware that people actually have stopped watching them! Even for individual movies. For all the men-in-spandex movies, the best selling movie (by tickets sold) in modern times is Titanic, 27 years ago. [1] - https://www.the-numbers.com/market/ https://www.the-numbers.com/market/
  • 3eb7988a1663 1y ago
    I assumed those box office records were also dependent upon global ticket sales vs domestic. Still, surprising statistics.
  • vasco 1y ago
    Movies are still great, just not the main circuit. If you live in a large city most often you have access to indie movies or secondary rotation of festival movies instead of 3 marvels, one remake and one romantic like in the big box places.
    • somenameforme 1y ago
      I think they simply did what AAA video games did. They found what sold best at one moment in time and then obsessively tried to work to copy that. But the problem is that people don't want to play 40 different Call of Duties, or watch 30 different Batmen. It's just that Batman or Call of Duty were the 'meet in the middle' of a variety of different tastes. But when those other tastes aren't accounted for, it becomes nauseating. It's like how most of everybody really likes cake icing, but eating nothing but cake icing is quite a repulsive concept. I think things like Dune, Interstellar, and other such films emphasize that there's a gaping hole in the market for things besides men in spandex, but it's just not being filled. And there's even extensive social commentary in Dune (as in the book) but it's done through metaphor rather than shoving it down your throat. And the movie is also rather slow paced with some 3 key events playing out in a 155 minute film, yet it continues to do extremely well. On the other hand those Fremen suits are kind of spandexy...
• oDot 1y ago
  There's a disconnect somewhere in the industry, because as I writer I can guarantee you one of the things readers get most annoyed with is on the nose dialogue. My screenplays are heavily influenced by Japanese Anime (which I have researched to a great degree[0]). Some animes have _a lot_ of that kind of dialogue. Sometimes it's just bad writing, but other times it is actually extremely useful. The times where it is useful are crucial to make a film or show, especially live-action, feel like anime. Thought processes like those presented in the article make it seem like all on-the-nose dialogue is bad and in turn, make my job much harder. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igz7TmsE1Mk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igz7TmsE1Mk
  • gamblor956 1y ago
    Readers actually enjoy "on the nose" dialogue...depending on the genre. A drama? Biography? Subtlety is desired. Action? Comedy? Streaming? On the nose dialog is not only enjoyed, but in many cases required. (For non-prestige shows and movies, Netflix strongly encourages the character dialog state the actions/emotions the actors are visually portraying on screen, with the understanding that much of their lower-tier content is watched in the background while people are doing something else.)
    • burnt-resistor 1y ago
      > watched in the background while people are doing something else. There are these devices called "radios"* and this stuff called "music." There's no point to "watching" a show if it's not being watched, it sort of ruins the whole purpose of it. Dividing attention lessens almost everything. It's like "reading" a book while moving your eyes over the words faster than you can read them. SMH. It's kind of like the cliché of the Banksy couple staring into their screens across from each other, or people who have intercourse while staring at their phones. * That have been replaced with apps like Spotify and Tidal.
      • wat10000 1y ago
        It's a bit odd to declare that there's no point in doing something a lot of people do, especially if it involves entertainment where the only possible point is the enjoyment of the person doing it, and not any sort of objective outcome.
• inky-solver 1y ago
  Oh nooooooo sincerity bad. Got it. (Counterexample: "Sorry, Baby", which literally just came out.)
  • icecreamscoop 1y ago
    What do you mean by "sincerity"?
    • npteljes 1y ago
      I think literal meaning here is misinterpreted as sincerity by OP. Which is a misconception, literal things can be untruthful and abstract things can be truthful as well, being abstract, or going in a roundabout way is not necessarily about being dishonest.
      • icecreamscoop 1y ago
        I think the OP is pointing out the lack of depth in the writing. Sincerity isn't about using language at or below 2nd grade, sincerity can be expressed with any level of verbosity. I think the trend of dialog being over-simplified to the point of literal noun-verb-noun with no metaphor just makes everything taste like plain white bread and velveeta. That's great: if your tastes are pedestrian, but there's nothing elitist or insincere about wanting greater depth from art. Ironically the screenwriters that utilize this richness of language are rarely blockbusters or award winners.
• Duanemclemore 1y ago
  I don't know if calling it a "New Literalism" is helpful. I just don't know that a penchant for literalism ever went away. Now, what IS relatively new is the "ruined punchline" phenomena that they identify (without naming) on the movie recap podcast Kill James Bond, which is that contemporary movies always ruin jokes by telling one, say... "x" and then having another character chime in with "Did you just say 'x' !?" I think there's a fear of losing attention because you're asking people to think about something other than the eyewash happening right in front of them by inviting them to have to -think- about a movie. Anyway, to close: "No one in this world ... has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people..." - HL Mencken
  • justanotherjoe 1y ago
    Can you describe more about the "ruined punchline" thing? Cause that sounds natural to me. Like in Jurassic Park, Alan Grant hears "We clocked the t-rex at 32 mph" and he goes "Did you just say 't-rex'?". Actually they repeat it like 3 times more to really lean into it. And I guess my point is that Jurassic Park doesn't feel modern or clumsy in this particular execution.
    • Duanemclemore 1y ago
      Having never seen Jurassic Park (yeah, right?) I'm guessing the preposterousness to an unaware onlooker is played for effect. This is a more recent phenomenon. This is literally just repeating a punchline so that it tells the audience - "that was the punchline, you can laugh now." I've seen plenty but I can't give any specific examples. I mention Kill James Bond [0] because they specifically point it out in the movies they watch. Although they don't watch any Whedon movies, in talking about it in movies where it happens a lot they cite Whedon as particularly guilty of this. [0] https://killjamesbond.com/ https://killjamesbond.com/
      • emsy 1y ago
        The T-Rex bit is not a joke, the line is said seriously. Also, watch Jurassic Park. Good movie.
• icecreamscoop 1y ago
  I read the first three paragraphs and thought it was an homage to McSweeny's Internet Tendency. But apparently those are real scenes. While writing this reply I kept coming up with examples from decades past, but realized I was confusing obvious subtext with literalism. Hard to avoid. I'm willing to embrace this as a new art form challenge: how LITTLE metaphor can a writer use until the final composition it inverts itself and becomes something completely new? Like Dogme95 but for the text: no tense, no adjectives, no indirect objetcts. I mean, the writing is the equivalent of first-grade reading texts (See Jane Run), but can that many artists really avoid generating something meaningful behind the text? I'm drunkenly optimistic this evening.
• phendrenad2 1y ago
  I think there's a combination of causes for this: People looking at their phones and only half-watching most of the movie, "streamlining" the English in movies to make translator's lives easier, a big smile from Mr. 10tril AUM for making it accessible, and of course good-old "enshittification" (if everyone becomes accustomed to lazy plots, they won't notice as they get even lazier)
• satvikpendem 1y ago
  Somewhat related, there have been cases where Netflix executives chastised their movie and show writers for "not being second screen enough [0]; that is, since many people put on a show as essentially white noise in the background while they scroll on their phones, the content cannot be too cerebral and require dedicated attention. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/jan/17/not-second-screen-enough-is-netflix-deliberately-dumbing-down-tv-so-people-can-watch-while-scrolling https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/jan/17/not-sec...
• WalterBright 1y ago
  I just wish they'd cease using the two-strip Technicolor orange-and-blue.
• renewiltord 1y ago
  Haha, the real reason is that people can’t get a joke. One classic I saw is that pg made some comment about philosophy and some other guy went “Looks like you had a bad philosophy class” to which pg replied “I’ve had many”. Well, that’s funny in a classic pub humour way. Except the guy didn’t get it (and neither did many others) who went on to say “Many bad philosophy classes you mean” Like, dudes, what did you think that was? Except the whole internet is full of this. Even the slightest of puns needs a second character arriving afterwards who repeats the punch line but with some obviousness baked in. It’s just that people aren’t literate. And I’ve got to be honest, a lot of such casual wordplay is just beyond Americans (who are generally superior to the British in every other way). They kind of need to be looking at a guy with a microphone to pick up on the joke. Probably the Germanic influence.
  • Doxin 1y ago
    People just don't have any media literacy anymore it seems. Every now and then you get some indie project that doesn't treat the audience as stupid, but then the discourse around it demonstrates that the audience in fact may very well be stupid. A recentish example I've run into is a song from Hazbin Hotel: Poison. They lyrics go on about how bad it is: > 'Cause I know you're poison > You're feedin' me poison > Addicted to this feelin', I can't help but swallow > Up your poison The visuals are largely about the protagonist putting on a brave face under sexual assault. This song isn't putting on any kid gloves. But it's also a catchy pop song. The incongruity is the point. You're supposed to feel weird about liking this song. But I guess a lot of people can't separate format and content so the discussion in the fandom is about how messed up it is for the authors to "glamorize assault".
    • anal_reactor 1y ago
      1. People are indeed stupid. I don't understand why there's so much belief in human intelligence while there's so much proof of the contrary 2. Sometimes intelligent people don't want to engage with the media. Attention is a finite resource, and when I'm tired after 8 hours of work, 30 minutes of recommended daily exercise, two hours of house chores and one hour of depressive thoughts, I just don't have the energy to engage with your song about a topic that's completely irrelevant to my daily life. 3. Quite often media that's supposed to be good is actually quite shitty. Good media should have layers: surface-level literal fun catches your attention, then you discover there's some depth to it, and then you start digging and you realize it's actually very complex and interesting. The problem is that lots of media either just grab my attention for nothing, or start right from the beginning with difficult topics, and then it's "woo the audience is stupid because they won't engage with my media" no bro, I just think your media is boring.
• riffraff 1y ago
  Yesterday, I showed my kids the original Planet of the Apes. It literally ends with the main character going "oh no humanity you killed yourself may you be cursed for eternity". It's a fantastic movie, and it's as literal as it can be, so I'm not sure this complaints about movies being literal now makes much sense. We always had more literal and more abstract movies. To stick to classic SF: Barbarella, Quintet, Zardoz, 2001, They Live.. they all exist on the same "literal-abstract" continuum, they are just placed at different points.
  • litter41 1y ago
    Well I think that movie is great for reasons other than being abstract.
• seydor 1y ago
  Somewhere in the 2000s a lot was lost, after all the best selling movies at the time were literally children's tales.
  • JKCalhoun 1y ago
    I would put the downward trend beginning with Raiders of the Lost Ark.
• bentt 1y ago
  I wonder how much of the problem is the massive influx of streaming platform money to occupy talented directors, writers, and other people who make films. Why risk a Hollywood release when you can get prepaid for your work?
  • chrisweekly 1y ago
    This. Also, long-form high-budget "tv" on streaming services is a better way to tell longer, more interesting stories. See eg "The Expanse" (based on the phenomenal novels by James SA Corey).
  • JKCalhoun 1y ago
    Are the streaming films without "Literalism"?
• gooseus 1y ago
  Gonna take this opportunity to recommend Sovereign. Imho it's the best of the movie of the year, and one big reason is because it is NOT this.
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
• ogurechny 1y ago
  You don't really need a critic to see that it has spread everywhere. People not just adore, they demand to be given a three paragraph summary and a moral of the story for everything, no matter which era, which genre, or how much magnificent embroidery was presented to them. So-called Web 2.0 review platforms have succumbed under the weight of people complaining about not being given clear instructions by the authors, and people trying to invent those clear instructions on “understanding” the work themselves. It seems that the simple truth that the whole point of work of art is how it starts processes in your very own head is a secret which is well hidden from those who expect that others can do thinking in their stead, and just state the “results”. Of course, from that perspective, modern society hasn't changed much for centuries, they just had different excuses back in the days. However, it doesn't happen by itself; the construct of the presumed movie-goer (or reader, or listener) affects the public. When author has high expectations of a recipient, many of them can find themselves growing to that level, when the lowest common denominator is targeted, everyone's average drops. Writing by committee and directing by committee inevitably results in watching by committee, when no one cares because there is enough ways to find out which opinion you “should” have about the movie, and the only thing left is to check the box for visiting the cinema (the obvious democratisation of an old cliche of rich nobles being bored at the opera). A lot of auxiliary apologetic nonsense is written about “pop culture” today — its “consumers” need to be told how to look at themselves. A vaccine against that would be finding something so bright and delicate that it can't be stuffed into one of predefined expected reactions. A lot of much stronger criticism have already been written, too. One might point to such “hits” as Vladimir Nabokov's “Strong Opinions” and lectures on literature, although the suit of renowned writer and lecturer was perhaps a bit too bronzy, while in reviews read by a small circle of Russian-speaking emigrants in Europe (collected in “Think, Write, Speak...”) or in satirical passages in fictional works he was a bit more open.
• jerf 1y ago
  The industry should be so lucky as to be plagued with something as well-defined as "literalism". Right now the industry is plagued with writers who would fail Writing 101. Which I mean fully literally. Failing grade, please retake the class, no credit. And don't give me "oh, they know their craft so completely that they're breaking the rules they deeply understand". No. Hollywood is not putting out a whole bunch of Memento-caliber movies. They're putting out movies written by writers who would instantly experience a jump in quality if someone gave them an all-expenses paid trip to Los Angeles Community College for them to take Writing 101. That said, I don't entirely blame the writers. I do blame them, because they really are terrible. But the real blame lies at the executive level. For decades Hollywood executives have used the terrible metrics we all made fun of them for, like thinking all we care about is which actor is in a movie or thinking that we like a legitimately good film because it was full of explosions or something. But the executives tended to get away with it, because sitting under them, however uncomfortably, was a studio system that still respected talent, and good talent could get good movies out even so. The executives could say "Give us lots of explosions and use Will Smith!" and the talent could at least sometimes make good movies under those constraints. But the executives despised that system, failed to understand it, have now successfully disassembled that system, and what's left is disintegrating rapidly. It boggles my mind to see them pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into movies with catastrophically broken scripts, then pouring hundreds of millions more into reshoots, when any halfway decent TA grader from the aforementioned Writing 101 could have given a decent set of notes about the deficiencies of the original script. The execs seem to give no attention to the scripts, when they are by any measure one of the most foundational elements of a movie. It's not literalism. The writers aren't good enough to be pursuing "literalism". It's just terrible writing, and executives too out-of-touch and ignorant to realize that's the problem, and if they did, too out-of-touch and ignorant to have any clue how to fix it.
• neuroelectron 1y ago
  New Yorker is plagued by shallow snobbery. A kind of assumed elitism based on geographic location and a specific demographic. What makes their opinions so correct? Rich people agree with them. Of course, we have a term for this, luxury beliefs.
  • mpalmer 1y ago
    "I don't have to read or argue with this, it's automatically bad because uh elitism" Now that's what I call a luxury belief!
    • neuroelectron 1y ago
      [flagged]
      • phyzome 1y ago
        Keep your AI slop to yourself, please.
        • neuroelectron 1y ago
          Sorry I'm not going to retype myself what has been common knowledge for decades.
  • antognini 1y ago
    That's not exactly what is meant by luxury beliefs. Luxury beliefs aren't simply beliefs that rich people hold. It more refers to social opinions which would (allegedly) impose high costs on the poor, but from which the wealthy would be insulated from the consequences. Something like "defund the police" is usually pointed to as an example of a luxury belief. The poor, who live in high crime areas, would see crime go up and bear the brunt of the consequences. Whereas the rich, who live in pricey, low crime neighborhoods, wouldn't see much of a change and would be able to afford private security anyhow if they did.
    • 1y ago
• dfxm12 1y ago
  I think some films, especially movies that aspire to win academy awards, are meant to be played to the world wide lowest common denominator. Movies are made for USA and Chinese audiences first, but they are also made to be easily sold in Europe. This isn't to say that Hollywood thinks everyone is dumb, but they recognize that all these different people who grew up in different places aren't going to understand the same idioms, or may miss subtle, cultural clues. The director has to spell things out. This explains a lot of what the author coins New Literalism.
  • JKCalhoun 1y ago
    Not disagreeing with the economics behind it, but this movie-goer walked away decades ago when the "super hero" genre became Hollywood's focus. Even before that though otherwise decent movies were starting to play heavy handed and treating their audiences for children that need lecturing — need "The Moral of the Story" spelled out for them. I disliked the "book-ending" that was popular when Titanic, Saving Private Ryan (and even Schindler's List) were released. Music in film too has, for some time now, been telling us how to feel much too often. In romps or swashbuckling films it's probably an expected part of the genre. I just wish there were more quiet films where we are left to feel for ourselves. Billy's death in The Last Picture Show (and as metaphor for the death of the town) is an excellent example of old-school film making where you just let the film do the talking. And then it is us, the viewers, who are left talking about it, thinking about it afterward. Maybe the biggest tragedy of heavy-handed film making is it leaves nothing to really even ponder afterward. I kind of like films that leave you thinking about them much, much later. While I remember seeing great films like Cool Hand Luke, Summer of '42 and The Last Picture Show, working through the "1001 Movies to See Before You Die" has been a real eye-opener to how much film can be art and how far we fallen from anything close to that. Perhaps we'll get another "New Wave" of young filmmakers to break the corporate log-jam.
  • parodysbird 1y ago
    > movies that aspire to win academy awards, are meant to be played to the world wide lowest common denominator That's not the kind of films that tend to win the major Oscar awards. Those tend to be either a bit artsy (e.g. Anora this year) or "serious" biopics/history movies (e.g. Oppenheimer last year).
• api 1y ago
  Special case of bad writing, which is what really plagues today's movies. I often blame comic book films but I'm not sure that's the explanation. I don't know what the explanation is. Literalism is bad writing. A movie that feels like it's punching you in the face with its moral themes is bad writing. "Ruined by woke" where it feels like minority characters are shoehorned in is actually just bad writing. Plots that don't make sense or are full of holes are bad writing. And so on. I've been reading more books for the past several years. Of course books have the opposite problem to movies: oversupply. Writing a book is, like software or music, not capital-intensive, though doing it well is time-intensive. There's a lot of good books but they can be hard to find in the sea of mediocrity and now often AI-generated slop.
  • JKCalhoun 1y ago
    I suspect the writers are doing exactly what they're being paid to do.
• monkeyelite 1y ago
  Most of this writers points are ideas recently circulating around twitter.
  • phyzome 1y ago
    It's almost as if when one person is reacting to a trend, other people are also reacting to it!
    • monkeyelite 1y ago
      Then one would hope they have a new point to make. I don’t need them to read twitter for me
• aqme28 1y ago
  Is this "new" literalism, or just storytelling as it has always been in movies? I've been on a Billy Wilder kick lately, and there are still a lot of scenes in these 70 year old movies where the subtext gets spoken out loud.
• buildingsramen 1y ago
  Hollywood has always been a little bit dumb, a little bit over-written. It's hard to have both artistic individualism and a reliable business. This is not a new trend. The examples are not very good. I would take Gladiator II, but Megalopolis was a self-funded project which is completely out of left field, and The Apprentice... I'm not sure what it's an example of. Many more titles are dismissed with a couple words. They really lose me when it comes to Anora. That's quite possibly the worst take I've heard about that film yet, and I've read some Letterboxd reviews. > What feels new is the expectation, on the part of both makers and audiences, that there is such a thing as knowing definitively what a work of art means or stands for, aesthetically and politically. Before rushing to judge today's movies, shall we remind ourselves what popular movies 20 years ago were? There were some real stinkers there, too, and they were not more smartly written in this regard. They just weren't. > The point is not to be lifelike or fact-based but familiar and formulaic—in a word, predictable. Has this person forgotten Titanic, one of the best-selling movies of all time? It's extremely formulaic, predictable, and intentionally so. It's basically opera, not really a new genre.
  • Barrin92 1y ago
    >but Megalopolis was a self-funded project which is completely out of left field sure, but it was self-funded and it was completely panned by the audiences which I think was undeserved, from a lot of people because they found it "weird" or incomprehensible. Which it wasn't in the grand scheme of things. I can't remember whose blog it was on but someone recently compared audience and critic ratings in the 70s/80s and today, and in the past there was a lot of overlap. Today completely divorced. And it's honestly because the audience, not the critics, just can't take anything unconventional. Creators that had mainstream appeal, Kubrick, Tarkovsky were out there by today's standard. You could not put the opening scene of 2001 in front of a modern audience without half of the people playing subway surfers on their phones. Or take Lynch, he wasn't just niche, people made an effort to understand that stuff. I noticed this in other media too. I saw reviews for Kojima's Death Stranding 2 and every five seconds someone went it's so weird as if that's almost an offense, from the guy who made the Metal Gear universe. You make something like Evangelion today, the biggest mainstream anime franchise at the time, you'd probably have people on social media cancelling it for some of the more Freudian stuff in it, and complain because there's not enough plot in it.
• trosi 1y ago
  Audiences are increasingly distracted when watching movies and TV shows: the scripts have to be literal.
  • mrkeen 1y ago
    It could be the other way around. There may not be anything worth paying attention to.
• hanlonsrazor 1y ago
  I have definitely noticed the same occurring in North American cinema, but I do not think this is a new phenomenon. Rather, it's just a symptom of the increased commercialization of indie cinema - commercialization requiring film for all to understand. If one is to broaden their horizons, overseas cinema is still devoid of this literalism. European cinema, Korean cinema, and the famously show not tell Japanese cinema still produce ambiguous stories that compete for awards - just look at recent pictures in Anatomy of a Fall, Zone of Interest, Drive my Car, Decision to Leave.
  • mpol 1y ago
    > a symptom of the increased commercialization If it's about what people want to see, could it be that people cannot deal with insecurity anymore? We cannot deal with not knowing. We have to know for sure, so we can feel secure.
    • BobaFloutist 1y ago
      I can't speak for others, but I have a pretty limited tolerance for very explicit, heavy depictions of violence, for bad things happening to animals, or for downer endings. I fully recognize that these don't make for bad cinema. I also recognize that they're often more effective as surprises. But they are going to dramatically cut into how much I enjoy a movie. And movies aren't like books, where if the tone isn't quite what you're in the mood for you just stop reading, they're more immediately confrontational, and backing out is a bigger deal (and almost a faux pas, walking out of a movie is seen as commentary on its quality). Previews are also going to avoid spoiling twists or dramatic moments, which, again, makes sense, but makes them poor tools for assessing tone. This means I'm often tempted to read the plot summary before watching, which feels silly, but if I want to challenge myself and watch things not quite to my taste and things that aren't just kid's movies without just sometimes paying for the pleasure of having a bad time, I'm not sure how else to approach it. It also feels like other people have almost the opposite perspective, where of a movie doesn't have something really emotionally heavy or challenging to watch they can't take it seriously. I'm not sure what makes sense here, and maybe my tastes are just the problem, but it feels bad to spend fifteen dollars and two hours of my time to be in a space that's too loud, has only very expensive food, and leave depressed by what feels to be to be an overly cynical or myopic message or an artistic vision obsessively depicting the many ways human beings can be physically harmed, in as much detail as possible. Again, I don't think it's bad or wrong, I certainly don't want it to be banned or require disclosure, I just struggle to decide where I fit in the market, and I worry that my purchasing patterns support a narrative that leads to less of what I want.
• s28l 1y ago
  I find this article rather underwhelming because it spends so much time calling out bad examples and so little time highlighting examples of subtlety (in any era). Without positive examples, I don’t think they make the case that this is a new phenomenon or even a phenomenon at all: all the author has done is identify a lens to criticize through. It may be the case that this is a recent phenomenon (though some other commentators disagree), but without providing detail on what movies the author feels avoid this pattern, they make their argument impossible to refute or engage with. (It also insulates the author’s tastes from criticism, which I suspect is part of the motivation)
  • wahnfrieden 1y ago
    It ends with one
  • dfxm12 1y ago
    Yeah, I can see where the author is coming from, but it's kinda effortless to dismiss a ~2hr movie with a five sentence critique of a few scenes or lines of dialog. I'd much rather see the author go deep on one movie than shallowly take on a bunch.
    • int_19h 1y ago
      For Gladiator II specifically, you might enjoy this: https://acoup.blog/2024/12/06/collections-nitpicking-gladiator-ii-part-i/ https://acoup.blog/2024/12/06/collections-nitpicking-gladiat... https://acoup.blog/2024/12/13/collections-nitpicking-gladiator-ii-part-ii/ https://acoup.blog/2024/12/13/collections-nitpicking-gladiat...
  • istjohn 1y ago
    A couple examples the author gave sounded plausible--though I hadn't seen the movies in question--but then I felt the author was beginning to reach. It's a bit of a humble brag to complain that movies are too obvious, isn't it? Serpell invites us to pat ourselves on the back for our sophistication as we turn up our noses at art that the uneducated rabble can comprehend. Yes, there is a tradition in the arts of weaving subtle elements into a work that will reward the savvy observer. Arguably, it began when scribes and storytellers became no longer satisfied to merely repeat ancient texts, and set out their own commentary and interpretation, no doubt with some frequency constructing theories that never were conscious in the mind of the long-dead author. This literary game is wonderful for arts colleges who happily charge young adults a handsome fee to play at this game that arose in a time when eligible aristocrats scrambled after every affectation that might provide an honest signal of their ponderous amounts of free time, wealth, and sexual fitness. Like tonsils, these vestigial organs have their defenders. No doubt Serpell holds the skills she honed first at Yale and then at Harvard in great esteem. I imagine she derives much satisfaction at her ability to write hundreds of pages expounding on the literary equivalent of atonal noise. But while I'm happy for her to share her preferences, I'm not sure why those preferences should hold any great weight when it comes to popular culture. Unsaid--and of course it is unsaid, it would be gauche to speak directly--is the claim that great art cannot be direct, clear, or obvious. The purpose of art is not to speak to us, but to sieve society into gradations of fineness. If any coarse, unimproved grit passes through the sieve, the sieve is defective. After all, if this rough grit can pass through the sieve, who will pay Serpell to laboriously grind the sediment into a fluffy, airy, rarefied powder at Harvard.
• tomasphan 1y ago
  I agree, its for the same reason that trailers now have little trailers in the beginning. I mean really, a trailer for a trailer? Apparently its required to keep retention up because even adults are now children that need to be spoon fed.
  • immibis 1y ago
    That sounds like a different issue. With low quality "information" thrust at people from all sides, you have to immediately prove that you're not just AI slop video #63547, because I'm seeing your video on a platform that mostly delivers AI slop that I will scroll past within 3 seconds. Why am I on a platform that mostly delivers slop? That's a trillion dollar question. The advertising industry won. Also because if I was on a non-slop platform, it wouldn't be showing me your ad because ads are slop.
• shayway 1y ago
  Ah, a New Yorker article on media. I think I got bingo! - Identify some problem pervading modern pop media? Check - Cherry pick examples? Check - Misrepresent or misunderstand an example that actually supports the opposite claim? Check - Paint a vague picture of how much better it was before [trend], without making any real statement? Check - Don't use any actual data or evidence? Check - Draw a line from dumb blockbuster trends to Trump/Nazis/[insert hot-button political issue]? Check You either come into the article ready to believe movies are getting worse or you don't. You come away feeling vindicated, or angry. There is nothing of substance here.
• dkarl 1y ago
  I think what this means is that the movies now care whether the least-common-denominator viewers get their "point." Because of this, they have to have a single easily articulated point, and they have to beat the audience over the head with it. Prior to this, I doubt whether directors, writers, or studios much cared if an unsophisticated viewer walked out of a movie with the "wrong" idea of what it "meant." The ability to attach multiple meanings, even multiple conflicting meanings, was seen as an inevitable aspect of art that should be embraced and engaged with. It was accepted that people would see a different movie depending on their background, their personal history, and their awareness of cinematic language. Supporting multiple readings was seen as a sign of depth and complexity, not necessarily a weakness. Now the movies take a pragmatic, engineered approach to delivering a message. Ambiguity must be squashed. Viewer differences must be made irrelevant. The message takes precedence over art. I think the interesting question is, why does the message now take precedence over everything else? What has changed? I see two possible answers. First possibility, the audience demands a message. If the least-common-denominator viewer demands a message, and you are in the business of servicing that demand, you have to make sure you avoid any possible mishaps or misunderstandings in the delivery. Second possibility, the makers of movies derive some personal satisfaction or social gain from broadcasting a message to the masses. They see the movies as propaganda rather than art. (Or perhaps a less active motivation: the makers of movies are afraid that there might be blowback from viewers attaching an unsavory meaning to a movie. They want to make sure that their movie doesn't become like Fight Club, a proudly embraced symbol of what it was meant to critique.) Either of these would explain why movies are now engineered to deliver a single, unmistakable message at the expense of art and enjoyability. Or maybe there's another explanation. I'm just spitballing. I'd love to read more by somebody close enough to actually know what they're talking about.
  • ctoth 1y ago
    Might it be as simple as: before, the LCD viewer who didn't get it had no platform, now they do? Responsiveness to Rotten Tomatoes instead of Roger Ebert?
  • AlexandrB 1y ago
    One interesting example here is Joker. It seems like the filmmakers did not like the audience they attracted with the first film, nor the messages that this audience took away. So the sequel seems like it was intentionally designed to piss that audience off.
• snozolli 1y ago
  There are a lot of things that bother me in recent movies. I feel like there's a "yay, we're making a movie!" attitude, where people are more concerned with proving that they're part of a culture rather than simply doing their job to the best of their ability. The most egregious example is the amount of Wilhelm Screams I've heard, absolutely crammed into media. It's a proclamation of, "I'm a sound editor, and I'm in on the joke!" but all it does is pull me out of the story completely. Another sound editor example is the amount of ice clinking in glasses and sloshing sounds of drinks, as if the protagonist's long-neck beer bottle is a half-empty jug being jerked around. Impressive stunts are virtually non-existent now. Instead, they drive a custom-built, tubular-frame car, swerving wildly, while the camera jerks around on a crane. Everything is reskinned using CGI, and the end result is the desired car being driven by an apparent maniac who chooses a profoundly sub-optimal path through traffic. Writers have to point out their cleverness in order to announce to the audience how clever they're being. It reminds me of eye-rollingly clever newspaper headlines. Everything has been turned up to 11, but in the lamest way possible.
  • cal85 1y ago
    > more concerned with proving that they're part of a culture So true! This feeling is everywhere in movies now.
• CyberDildonics 1y ago
  Pretentious nonsense is plaguing the newyorker.
• dmix 1y ago
  I found the thesis of this article difficult to nail down, the examples were all over the place.
  • kikokikokiko 1y ago
    It's a NewYorker article, what did you expect? I personally find anything writen there basically unreadable.
  • frogulis 1y ago
    > I found the thesis of this article difficult to nail down By the sounds of it, the author would be okay with that!
• jihadjihad 1y ago
  Mainstream films (or works of art writ large) rarely trust their audience. Artists imbue their work with a lot of handholding for the audience's sake; if it's a need or a want on the audience's part, conscious or unwitting, who can say. I don't particularly enjoy having my hand held through a narrative, but I know plenty of people who don't mind, don't care, or don't know. It's easier to "participate" as an audience by passively consuming the art than to engage with it actively, and no doubt such art is easier to produce. Many people seemingly desire a contract to be enforced between artist and audience, where the artist constructs a narrative that is sensible and palatable and neat and tidy. Look at the reviews for Birdman (2014), for example. Plenty of people couldn't tolerate the ending, even if it thematically and tonally made sense. Gone with the Wind (Mitchell, 1936) upholds such a contract; Light in August (Faulkner, 1932) does not. With no slight against the former, the latter could be used as an example of a work with a radical trust of its audience.
  • kikokikokiko 1y ago
    Birdman's ending is atrocious, but the main problem ain't even there. The movie is just a giant pile of pretentious nothingness, I can't even remember what was the point of it. Hollywood movies from the last 2 decades or so are just disposable.
    • Induane 1y ago
      Hey, I kinda enjoyed Birdman!
• dartharva 1y ago
  The kind of criticism this author is imposing, I honestly feel like it could be applied to every movie ever if you were nitpicky enough.
• the_af 1y ago
  I agree with some of the sentiment in TFA, but I think the author goes way overboard and ends up disliking some of the movies "just because". I do agree that the dialogue from Gladiator II is awful, but what did we expect? The movie shouldn't have been made at all, Gladiator didn't need a sequel. As for literalism: it's always been there in mainstream movies, I think. That we got so many (non-auteur) movies that are not so literal is surprising, actually.
• whycome 1y ago
  Here’s the thing. For all the movies that have tired tropes and blatant literalism, there’s a new movie watcher that hasn’t experienced it before. They have the same right to watching a new movie with a tired trop — because to them, it’s not yet tired.
• RiverCrochet 1y ago
  Given these three things: - There really isn't anything like a united "popular culture" anymore except in the very ephemeral sense of the latest memes on social networks. The cycle here is faster than anything before. Strong meme fads can coalesce and dissipate within weeks or days. - Media production of all types continues to become cheaper, as far as the actual process of production. Visual effects, photography, and editing are all easier with modern tech and I would say cheaper as well. - Economic factors: The disposable income of average people continues to become less over time, and property rents where theaters and such exist continue to increase over time. it's not surprising that new movies and other corporate entertainment have to follow a quicker cycle, including making things easier to consume. Entertainment media is more disposable than it has ever been at any point. It will be interesting to see if social media bans for minors will have an impact on this and maybe slow it down a bit, but I don't think it'll alter the underlying economic factors mentioned above, so it'll be interesting. I don't know if theaters still receive hard drives of the movies they are playing, but it seems like something that could probably be replaced by a local storage solution and an Internet connection by now, so maybe in the next 10 years we'll see theaters show movies produced and released on quicker but lower-quality schedules. Something like TV shows - a new one each week for a low price. But at that point why even leave your house?
• Matthyze 1y ago
  There are movie critics that go on a rollercoaster ride and then complain about a lack of subtext
• rezmason 1y ago
  This phenomenon isn't exclusive to film or even fiction. A year or two ago, YouTube flicked a short at me where a Gen-Z fan of some personality shared their feelings of heartbreak after he announced his departure from the platform. A montage of the channel's videos had the fan's voiceover (I'm paraphrasing): "This YouTube channel has been a part of my life, my childhood, since I was like a little kid, and I never imagined one day it would end." And then, jarringly: "This is me right now." And a still photo of their tear-streaked face. "This is me right now," not in the emotional or confused tone of someone navigating a personal tragedy, but the straight conveyance of a sentiment that has social currency. A sentence they knew others would know how to digest. Because they've seen others use it enough times to be literate in whatever transaction it represents. I understand their choice to include their emotional reaction, and that shows some real vulnerability that I truly appreciate, but what is "This is me right now"? Maybe it springs from the social media they grew up in— where the vast majority of posts and comments are either a status or a reaction, and discourse has been strained and reduced into signals of acknowledgement. That's what I think this "literalism" is. It's the misshapen MICR-font metadata stamped in cultural things, so that they can be parsed by a machine— and the machine is the set of heuristics younger generations have adopted to sift through mountains of low signal-to-noise content that platforms are pushing on them.
• temptemptemp111 1y ago
  [dead]
• thiht 1y ago
  > Buzzy films from “Anora” to “The Substance” are undone by a relentless signposting of meaning and intent. Can’t read the article because of paywall, but citing The Substance here from all possible movies is… weird? I agree with the title, and although there’s some literalism in The Substance, there’s also tons of subtext in it, so that’s a pretty terrible example. I’m guessing the rest of the article is extremely elitist, and no movie is good enough for the author except for obscure Eastern Europe movies from the 60s?
• wonderwonder 1y ago
  It seems at least to me that they don't really make very good movies anymore. The last time I remember watching a movie and thinking "That was pretty good" was the Dune films. Before that I can't even remember. I watched Thunderbolts and remember I thought it was the first Marvel movie that wasn't just terrible since End Game and that was primarily due to the Russian guy as a comedy source.
  • haunter 1y ago
    >It seems at least to me that they don't really make very good movies anymore There are plenty of good films out there. Ignore Hollyood, broaden your horizon
    • wonderwonder 1y ago
      I'm open to suggestions...
      • haunter 1y ago
        So personally I like films that makes me feel something without that feeling being explicitly forced upon me. This is an incredible thing to achieve that only a select few directors can do. Not “baiting” the viewers into emotions but also not being cold at the same time. Just by showing and how do they show it. Like the case of “a picture is worth a thousand words”. It’s a razor thin line but that makes these films I enjoy special and sincere. (I'll only mentions stuff from the 21st century because otherwise I'd sit here for days) I love japanese cinema so I'm very biased towards films from there. - The Taste of Tea (2004) from Katsuhito Ishii - Nobody Knows (2004) from Hirokazu Kore-eda - Tony Takitani (2004) from Jun Ichikawa - Memories of Matsuko (2006) from Tetsuya Nakashima - Departures (2008) from Yojiro Takita - Still Walking (2008) from Hirokazu Kore-eda - Tokyo Sonata (2008) from Kiyoshi Kurosawa - One Million Yen Girl (2008) from Yuki Tanada - Haru’s Journey (2010) from Masahiro Kobayashi - Story of Yonosuke (2013) from Shuichi Okita - Shoplifters (2018) from Hirokazu Kore-eda - Drive My Car (2021) from Ryūsuke Hamaguchi Two korean film I've really liked - The Handmaiden (2016) from Park Chan-wook - Pieta (2012) from Kim Ki-duk A chinese film I've seen recently and it was pretty good - Black Coal, Thin Ice (2014) from Diao Yi-nan Iranian films are incredibly good and crazy what they could make despite the situation there - A Separation (2011) from Asghar Farhadi - Taxi (2015) from Jafar Panahi - The Salesman (2016) from Asghar Farhadi - There Is No Evil (2020) from Mohammad Rasoulof - My Favourite Cake (2024) from Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha Some european films I've enjoyed - Enter the Void (2009) from Gaspar Noé - Leviathan (2014) from Andrey Zvyagintsev - Alcarràs (2022) from Carla Simón - Fallen Leaves (2023) from Aki Kaurismäki And last but not least some actual Hollywood films that I think are pretty good - The Tree of Life (2011) from Terrence Malick - Cloud Atlas (2012) from Lilly Wachowski and Lana Wachowski - First Reformed (2017) from Paul Schrader - Nickel Boys (2024) from RaMell Ross
• Flatcircle 1y ago
  That article felt eerily like AI writing. Lots of words and few ideas, and the ideas they had were poorly explained... Bizarre.
  • watwut 1y ago
    The most fascinating achievement of AI is that so many people became convinced that humans were flawless creators just 3 years ago.
• Flatcircle 1y ago
  This article is not professionally written. Somebody get this writer an editor
• Lerc 1y ago
  The Wachowski's once commented that the Red Pill movement was a message to them telling them to never be subtle again. Another data point. Most people seem to think that replicants are detected because they are unemotional. I would prefer filmmakers not assume the least of their audiences, but I would also rather that audiences not give them reason to.
  • smt88 1y ago
    The creator of The Boys has also said he needs to beat people over the head so he doesn't have a similar situation to Mad Men or Breaking Bad, where people think the main character is a hero to emulate
    • Lerc 1y ago
      Yeah, I guess The same problem exists with The Watchmen and Fight Club. I found it fascinating how the term snowflake was changed because the character that people admired told their proxies that they were not snowflakes. The meaning at the time was that they were homogenous and unremarkable. Snowflakes represented the opposite where each individual snowflake has a unique pattern. That viewpoint was not empowering so they took the metaphor to be about the fragility of snowflakes.
    • rbanffy 1y ago
      It was hilarious when the far-right noticed, IIRC on season 3 of The Boys, that they were being mocked. And just look at all Star Wars fans cosplaying as stormtroopers. It even says “evil empire” in the first movie intro. You can’t get much more obvious than George Lucas.
      • int_19h 1y ago
        People have been consciously cosplaying as villains for decades because pretending to be evil can be fun as hell; I'm not sure what that's supposed to illustrate, really.
        • 1y ago
• jtwoodhouse 1y ago
  This is nothing new. Critics wanna be challenged. Audiences don’t.
• rpdillon 1y ago
  > Rather than aiming for the unique, which might pierce our haze of distraction, art has succumbed to marketable generalities: stock music on Spotify, soporific streams of Netflix content. Fashion capitalizes on a long tail of generic looks: we all wear Doc Martens but no one is actually goth. Image generators churn out ersatz versions of da Vinci and van Gogh. And, in every case, banal commentary is slowly occluding the art, seeping into it in boldface titles or explainers that speak over the sound or cover the image. It's the degradation of our media, in the sense that it's factory-produced, which is in stark contrast to the media folks were consuming 40 years ago. I'm not dogmatic that it's fundamentally worse (despite my framing), but it does lack the depth of older media, IMO.
• popalchemist 1y ago
  I've spent 20 years working in Hollywood. This is definitely not anything new, but we are in an up-cycle. Ambiguity is hard to tolerate, in life, in general. Ambiguity is also where personal meaning can arise. However in hard times (economically, culturally, politically, existentially... we're currently in all 4), market forces drive things away from ambiguity and toward one-pointedness. This is reflected in the world of trailers even more clearly than in the world of films - the trailers often specifically highlight exactly the kinds of moments this writer is critiquing, as if the purpose of film is to trade in such moments; the underlying conceit is something like "populist memes are a commodity." This is what is currently driving pop culture; the commodification of the meme. Movies aspire to be memes - the dominant means of expression and the atomic unit of culture in the present moment. They used to aspire to be themselves (movies, for their own sake). IMO that ended around 2008. The Dark Knight was the end and Iron Man was the beginning of a new Hollywood cycle; defined by the movie's ability to trade in this currency - memes - which stand alone, isolated, traded out of context of an entire narrative. Further reading for whoever is interested: Society of the Spectacle by Debord (re: the degradation of being into having, having into mere appearing, as a universal and ubiquitous byproduct of the core function of capital which is commodification)... and Man and His Symbols (re: the difference between a symbol, which is universal and carries a wealth of meaning, and a sign, which is contextual/temporary and carries a fixed meaning).
• yndoendo 1y ago
  Would the void of physical medium like VHS and DVD be part of the issue? Younger me would go to Blockbuster Video and search the new release section for non-blockbuster movies. "Ghost World" was found this way with other cult films. With the decline of purchasing physical media it makes it hard to bring in revenue to produce obscure art. Even big blockbuster movies that failed in theatres would often be uplifted from media sales.
• ragazzina 1y ago
  I had not seen a recent movie in quite some time. Recently I went to watch Sinners (2025, critically acclaimed). The movie starts with a voiceover saying: "There are legends of people born with the gift of making music so true, it can pierce the veil between life and death; conjuring spirits from the past and the future..." Not even an hour passes, and the same exact voiceover repeats word for word that music can conjure spirits from the past and the future, while the scene on screen literally shows music conjuring spirits from the past and the future. It threw me off a little. Many commenters in this thread point out that on-the-nose-ness in Hollywood movies isn’t new. Personally, I can’t recall a voiceover being repeated verbatim, especially not during the very scene it originally seemed to foreshadow.
• red-iron-pine 1y ago
  > There is a meme going around from a “Family Guy” episode in which Peter, the animated comedy’s paterfamilias, confesses to his family that he never cared for “The Godfather.” Why not? “It insists upon itself,” he says with a shrug. A lot of recent productions deserve this scorn—literally. It’s gotten so bad that, lately, the highest compliment I can muster for even the best of them is: “Well, at least it’s a movie.” man never thought I'd see that meme continue to live on, or get cited in the New Yorker
• Sebastian_09 1y ago
  Quite a bad piece, the end note is ironic: the author doesn’t seem to be paying a lot of attention for a film critic apparently interested in litteralicity. > An earlier version of this article incorrectly described the ending of “A Complete Unknown.” I cannot see any common denominator in the multiple examples that the author gives and cannot relate to them (what point is there to put on an equal footing a micro analysis of a dialogue in Megalopolis -voluntarily grotesque- and the choice of film format in The Architect?). Maybe there’s an intuition here, but I feel it is not well illustrated. The author probably hopes that she will be remembered for coining this wishy washy concept.
• doka_smoka 1y ago
  As someone forced to sit through "substance" while the recommender was "yass queening" the whole time, I can confirm that the movie thinks you have an IQ of 75. "Oooh ooh! Men bad! Male gaze only reason women try look sexy! Yes queen slay, Grug owe you attention for living! Western pedo town all problem caused by men look no further"
• justaj 1y ago
  PSA: Beginning of the article contains spoilers.
• jjk166 1y ago
  Pretty sure for all the examples given at the beginning, these can easily be explained as natural parts of the writing process. The Gladiator II example is just lampshading. If you just wrote "the prisoner grabbed the weapon the guard brought in to the cell, and then killed the guard with it" the very first thing someone's going to ask is "well why did the guard bring a weapon in?" and then the writer says "oh well he didn't consider it a usable weapon" and then "but clearly it is, so that doesn't really solve anything" and rather than coming up with a better escape method the writer just leans into the absurdity of it - the on the nose dispensing of folksy wisdom establishes that the guard is just an idiot rather than leaving the audience to contemplate the contrived situation. For Megalopolis, “What do you think of this boner I got?” [he shoots her] isn't exactly a compelling scene when reading it. It makes a lot of sense to punctuate the scene with some emotion to make it make some sort of sense. Can this emotion be shown on film without dialogue? Possibly, but the writer can't be sure how it'll actually look, and they need to convey to both the actor and director what emotion needs to be conveyed. It sounds like placeholder dialogue which could be cut or changed as needed. For the Apprentice, again the writer likely doesn't know exactly how the scene is going to turn out. Is "Trump Tower" going to be clearly legible on the model as the scene is shot? Do you even want to spoil it by showing the name on the model? The point is this is supposed to be a reveal. In all three cases, these lines very well could be great with proper setup and delivery, or perhaps could have been reworked into great lines. The issue is just these are mediocre films. None made any serious attempt to polish their scripts. It's not a deliberate tactic to dumb down movies or deal with poor attention spans, it's just the makers of the movie saying "eh, good enough."
• sandy_coyote 1y ago
  I appreciate nuance and depth in art, but I've also become addicted to YouTube explainer channels like Heavy Spoilers. I've concurrently watched multiple explainer channels for all the memorable TV shows I've watched lately, and... I really enjoy this new media age. I still silently and slowly read novels, but as of now, that's a different media experience. Its slow pace is also enjoyable in a different way.