17 ms·

Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis

170 points by RickJWagner 7mo ago

PaulHoule 7mo ago
The Oscars are the heart of the problem. One definition of “celebrity” is “person who is celebrated” Hollywood is so used to getting high on its own supply that it really thinks we want to see an AI slop video of Brad Pitt fighting Tom Cruise. People there just don’t have any information at all about what anybody outside their bubble thinks so of course they make samey big budget pictures and samey small budget pictures. Unless they shut down their communications channels and disperse geographically they are going to keep doing the same thing over and over again and be wondering why they keep getting the same results. And that gets us to why they will never reform, they know their numbers are terrible but think this is (1) cyclical and (2) due to technological changes so they’ll never get it that running ads that make it sound like somebody else cares about Tom Cruise doesn’t really make people care about Tom Cruise, it just makes them ignore advertising messages.
- hackyhacky 7mo ago
  > AI slop video of Brad Pitt fighting Tom Cruise The video you are referring to was not produced by Hollywood, it was created by Irish director Ruairi Robinson, basically as a test of the new Seedance AI. I'm not saying that Hollywood isn't out of touch, I'm just saying that nothing about Hollywood can be inferred from that video.
- fullshark 7mo ago
  I think it's the opposite problem, they have too much information and data, which means they aren't making lots of gambles on new/different scripts anymore but making very safe bets because everyone is terrified of losing their cool high paying jobs.
- add-sub-mul-div 7mo ago
  "Hollywood" thinks we want AI slop in the way that hackers think we want video with unskippable ads.
chuckadams 7mo ago
I put more stock in the the Sundance and Cannes jury prizes: even if they're comprised of the elites who can afford to go to these festivals, they've still got far more artistic sense than the ossified corporate board that the Academy has always been.
- rurban 7mo ago
  Cannes is free to attend for film professionals. Always was. You only have to find a hotel. At Sundance you could stay in Salt Lake City or Heber City and have fun. Free busses. Oscars are not about the arts, nor about quality. Never was.
- arrrg 7mo ago
  Berlinale screenings are open to the public and tickets cost between 15 € and 20 €. You have to be quick when ticket sales open every day but when I did that one year I watched about four films every day and could get tickets for nearly all the films I wanted, even if some were in large but truly soulless venues (“Uber Eats Music Hall“, the name alone is disgustingly dystopian). Though I also attended some film premieres with Q&As and all at the great Zoo Palast cinema. There is also an audience award and you can vote for your favorites – but also obviously a jury prize. But juries can be hit and miss and also always idiosyncratic. Unpredictable. And I think that’s beautiful. Including being annoyed about your favorite film not winning. As always with any kind of film festival you are exposed to the bleeding edge - so yeah, you are going to see some bad films. That’s part of it. Though I noticed that even bad films – especially well made ones that I think are totally misguided in the ideas they express – help me broaden my horizons, understand myself better and maybe also understand the world better. So yeah, long story short, I don’t think film as an art form is dead and it also won’t be in the next century or so. Maybe certain films won’t be made in the future – I’m currently mostly sad about practically no mid-budget films being made – but I’m totally certain that there will always be great films.
thefounder 7mo ago
The main issue was the content the movie industry produced which looked like a lot like some AI slop. I think the DEI lecturing was another nail in the coffin. Unless that changes and they magically add something new to the cinema experience I think they will keep diving into irrelevance because now everybody can produce AI slop.
- raw_anon_1111 7mo ago
  Yes they should never had a Black lady playing an orange alien from Tamarin on the Titan TV series. It just wasn’t realistic. We should just have all White males leading movies
  - the__alchemist 7mo ago
    Could you please explain this? I'm having a hard time following. Ty.
    - raw_anon_1111 7mo ago
      https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-44966851 https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-44966851 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfire_(Teen_Titans) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfire_(Teen_Titans)
  - thefounder 7mo ago
    Why can’t we have original stories(I.e Sinners, Black Panther, White Lotus) and instead try to make White Snow black or whatever and paint people racist? I get that people want to make these stories more inclusive but the characters are just too powerful to change them and not expect a backlash. People prefer new characters or “staying true to the original story/character” instead of lazy remixes. Or you can create your own remix with AI now. Feed the movie and make the characters as you want. The result may seem a bit weird(i.e like a Snow White being a fat black gay male) for a fan of the movie/character but for you as an activist it will check the marks you are looking for. Just don’t invoke racism if people won’t like your AI slop.
woeirua 7mo ago
$100 to go to the movies for a family of four. No thanks. There’s no mystery why the movies are dying. They’ve priced themselves out and then they give away the product on streaming several months later anyways. If they want theaters to come back then they’ll have to put movies behind a paywall again.
- lotsofpulp 7mo ago
  I doubt increasing the price of their goods will work when the supply of alternative ways to spend time at almost zero cost is near infinite.
  - xp84 7mo ago
    You’re probably right. Big franchises would survive, a bunch of people would pay modestly for each new Marvel movie if it were never coming to streaming. But the films that do still exist that have no marketing, would probably do even worse without having any streaming release.
- johnnyApplePRNG 7mo ago
  So do you want to pay more, or less? I am confused.
  - delecti 7mo ago
    I think it's more about being unwilling to pay so much when a free version is just a few months away. Streaming is too good and too cheap compared to the theatrical release.
    - righthand 7mo ago
      “Free” but you pay a monthly subscription. No one seems to know what free means anymore.
      - delecti 7mo ago
morkalork 7mo ago
Is this article a weird cut-paste of older content? This passage makes no sense in the rest of the context, the tense is all wrong. >Starting in 2029, the Oscars will also be streamed globally on YouTube, which the academy hopes will attract new audiences and reinvigorate the ceremony’s popularity after years of declining viewership. Edit: I read 2019 not.. 2029. That's actually incredible. Are they going to get in on tiktok for 2039 next?
- stavros 7mo ago
  Hm, what's wrong with it?
- embedding-shape 7mo ago
  What exactly doesn't make sense? The Oscars are moving to streaming the event globally on YouTube (bunch of TV channels has said they'll stop broadcasting it in 2029), and the viewership of the Oscars has been declining for years. I'm not sure I see what's wrong in there.
mpalmer 7mo ago
Another victim of the efficiency of the market. Market forces know no culture except what consumers pay for. Absent real care, stewardship and focused investment, the product will always get cheaper. And of course consumers' tastes are under attack from another direction: their attention spans. Some load-bearing pillars of human culture are weakening.
- meta_gunslinger 7mo ago
  More like a victim of woke propagandizing not being very popular with the average viewer.
awongh 7mo ago
The cultural relevance of movies, and American made movies isn't going anywhere anytime soon, but I think the economics of streaming is finally playing out in the loss of the geographical concentration of power in Hollywood and California. This is the endgame of the feedback loop of streamers causing industry consolidation... the direct connection of dollars people spend to sit in a theatre seat was slowly declining, but now I think it's gotten so small that it no longer matters- and once the whole box-office feedback loop disappears a lot of the economics of how films are produced are being forced to change. One of the reasons that people have loved to make fun of Hollywood for literally it's entire existence (besides the fact that the meta talk is self-indulgent artist stuff) is that making movies with so much money and waste is fundamentally ridiculous. The optimistic viewpoint is that maybe new AI production tools will trigger a re-democratization of creative movies in the next wave, like in the 70s and the 90s indies.
- sbarre 7mo ago
  As much as I support unions and labour rights, the last SAG-AFTRA strike mostly just helped the big studios realize they could do more with less. Hollywood is a factory town at the end of the day, and we all know what happened to most factory towns in America. This one is just getting there a few decades after the others.
  - awongh 7mo ago
    This is definitely another case where a union could either understand where the bigger economic forces are headed (in this case globalization, IP licensing, residuals that no longer make sense, attention economy fracturing the marketplace etc) and adapt to how people will consume content in the future, or double down on an economic model that is one generation behind. In theory the union is the only org capable of standing up to the streamers' buying power, but it has to make sense within a business model where consumers pay one monthly fee for content. I'm not even sure what that really looks like in the end. Maybe it's also that the FTC allowed all this monopolization to happen, and turns out that having three media companies in the US is bad.
    - 7mo ago
rdtsc 7mo ago
There just aren’t as many good new movies. Most movies we watch at home are from decades ago. If we didn’t have streaming maybe we’d go to the movies more often, but it’s hard to say. A few movies we watched are not worth the money. To stay afloat they have to raise ticket prices, but if we’re paying so much, the movie better be absolutely outstanding, and the are just not usually, so we stopped going.
- embedding-shape 7mo ago
  > To stay afloat they have to raise ticket prices, but if we’re paying so much What are you paying when you go to the cinema? Just went to the cinema today to see Hoppers, and was slightly surprised that the tickets were only 8 EUR per person, then we spent maybe 5-10 EUR per person on snacks too, so ended up paying maybe ~15 EUR per person overall. This was outside a metropolitan city in South-Western Europe, maybe that's why, or I've just lost track of what's expensive/cheap.
  - soared 7mo ago
    Just checked AMC - $18.50 in the app for a normal adult ticket. ($16 + $2.50 fee for using the app). An icee and popcorn would be ballpark $18 as well.
    - xp84 7mo ago
      About the same where I am. A matinee used to be cheap, now it’s the price you said, and more like 20 for the full price show. You don’t have to pay the app “convenience fee” but they added assigned seats to pressure you to do so. If you wait till the day of and buy on the big kiosk in the lobby, what if all the good seats are gone? (Hint: they won’t be, the theaters are always mostly empty)
      - garbawarb 7mo ago
        Not even good seats, but if you're in a group you may not be all able to sit together. Or if you get your tickets and someone wants to join you later, there could be nothing left near you. I'm not a fan of assigned seating for those reasons.
pkorzeniewski 7mo ago
I haven't been in cinema in the past ~10 years and to be honest I wouldn't care if no more movies were ever made, simply because there are hundreds, if not thousands, amazing movies made since the beginning of the cinema that I didn't watch. Most of the new movies are crap anyways, so why waste time and money when I can watch a classic movie instead which has a much higher probability of me enyjoing it.
- SamuelAdams 7mo ago
  The same argument could be made for the book industry, where there are centuries of content available. And yet, people still read new books.
  - bombcar 7mo ago
    IIRC the book merger lawsuits, they don’t really read many new books. Many are published few are bought.
  - edgyquant 7mo ago
    It often is made, an the vast majority of new books are slop
  - PaulDavisThe1st 7mo ago
    I think book sales are significantly down compared to most periods in the last 50-100 years? Still a culturally significant thing, but economically not what they used to be ...
- Larrikin 7mo ago
  This is a boring opinion. It's the equivalent of what happens to many older adults when it comes to music. All of the best songs came out in their teens to about 30 so what's the point of listening to anything new? It assumes there is no innovation and the person just traps themselves in the past. You could say there hasn't been any good new music since 1970 and humans have been making music for thousands of year. Or you could try out the many new genres and eventually find something new and exciting. it just seems like a very boring way to live out your life.
artyom 7mo ago
Nobody else to blame but themselves. Of course, Hollywood is full of narcissists so they'll blame everyone else, e.g. streaming, prices, etc. but the reality is of the last 10-15 years of mainstream US cinema is: - Scripts that sound more like an HR meeting than a good story. - Blockbuster superhero movies that are all the same movie. - Lots of remakes that added modern CGI flare and destroyed the artistic value of the original. - As consolidation of studios happens, way more "safe" stories that aim to not offend anyone. I think the only one able to get away with it right now is Tarantino. Prices, streaming, theaters, etc. -- they're all accessory to the problem. People went to the movies for enjoyment, why would they go to endure them? There's no cultural collective experience anymore in the sense of going to see Lord of the Rings or Matrix with your friends for the first time. Also this is happening throughout all media. Music and video games have the same kind of discussions.
- pclmulqdq 7mo ago
  Hollywood seems to have never realized that the point of works like LotR and Star Wars was to take the ridiculous extremely seriously. The bad CGI didn't matter because every actor took it seriously. A marvel-ized star wars with great CGI is still a bad movie because nobody on screen takes it seriously despite how realistic the graphics are.
iammjm 7mo ago
Actors being this wealthy and famous has always been a mystery to me. Oh so you are a good looking person that recites other people's words for money while faking emotions? And you can take as many takes as you can and your fuckups will be corrected in post-production anyway? Well I guess the work you do totally merits the hundreds of millions of dollars you've amassed. Like even kicking a ball or whatever makes more sense to me because there is an objective measurement of what it means to do it well, while with actors its mostly about sympathy or preference
- paulryanrogers 7mo ago
  It's celebrity. People want to imagine themselves like these icons they've built, even if only through the laziest of efforts. I wonder if it's an innate human trait to aspire to be like those we admire.
- ndsipa_pomu 7mo ago
  There's certainly a lot of actors that seem to just phone in a performance and are mainly hired due to their looks and high profiles, but don't forget about the actors that can elevate just about any role that they're in due to their skills and artistry.
- worksonmine 7mo ago
  I don't want fame, but if I did I would want a lot of money to give up my freedom to be chased by paparazzi for the rest of my life.
- miki123211 7mo ago
  Actors have a kind of legally-enforced monopoly. They're not employees you hire, they're products you buy. If you want to make a movie staring Nicole Kidman, you have to pay whatever Nicole Kidman wants you to pay. You're legally forbidden from hiring an "off-brand" person and making her look indistinguishable from Kidman. If you want to hire a Scala programmer, there's plenty of easily-replaceable people willing and able to do that job. No single person dictates how much money Scala programmers make. Famous actors are basically a category that they're the only member of, and so they can set their prices. You can switch to a different category )(just as you can switch from Scala to Typescript) if one becomes too expensive, but that too carries some expense. Franchises have a similar problem. If all your friends are watching Game of Thrones, you too want to watch Game of Thrones, even if there are other shows which are just as good. This means the Makers of GoT can dictate GoT prices, because the government gives them a legal monopoly on GoT distribution.
philwelch 7mo ago
They have no one to blame but themselves, judging by the quality of Hollywood movies in recent years.
the__alchemist 7mo ago
My 2c: They should stop concentrating on appealing to the broadest audience. Formulaic heros' journeys, franchises, predictable characters acted by the same narrow set of the the most-attractive people etc. Safety and mass-market appeal over creativity. For contrast: Books, non-AAA video games, and movies from smaller studios still produce high-quality, creative efforts I continue to be excited about. Big-budget movies (and games), and Netflix shows are mostly bottom-feeder stuff.
- cyanydeez 7mo ago
  not appealing to the masses is DEI; perfect robotic formula are just common sense. Obviously.
  - groundzeros2015 7mo ago
    Are you sure? I thought DEI is making a movie for everyone with one representative from each major ethnic group and then saying only safe non-cultural things. Oh and then localizing for china.
- xp84 7mo ago
  I think it’s the finance people. They have decided every creative movie made represents resources and time that can’t be used for a “sure-thing” franchise schlock movie.
  - embedding-shape 7mo ago
    "Data-driven" decisions seems to drive out any sort of creativity, seems to happen in all industries where metrics and numbers become more important that someone's vision. Same in software too really.
- echelon 7mo ago
  - Theatrical releases are how movies make most of their money, not giving them away for free on streaming. Box office margins are huge, but renting licenses to streamers is limited and fungible with all the other mountains of content they license. - Box office optimizes for novelty, streamers optimize for "don't churn" - very different criteria for investment. - Disney cannibalized the box office with Marvel Star Wars, which killed the mid market and killed innovation. This is your point. Disney's success and tentpole successes in general killed innovation and diversity and made the market more winner-takes-all. Comedy movies barely exist anymore. There are few $50-75M films now. Little original content. Now films are engineered for maximum audience penetration and maximum box office revenue. This changes how films are written and who they are written for. The answer is "everyone", and that means "safe", "predictable", and "repeatable". No gambles. Everything else has to fight for table scraps. - End of ZIRP puts us back in 2000. Money used to be free. Now it's expensive. It's not as easy to underwrite productions anymore. Less innovation. - Dopamine machines fit into your pocket and suck up time and attention. Gaming is also huge now. Less people going to the movies because plenty of alternatives exist. - The $400 80'' plus Netflix versus the expensive theater, concessions, and rude people have made theaters unattractive. Theaters are where film margins come from. Without that revenue, expensive movies will be scaled back. - Labor costs less in Europe and Asia, even with ample tax subsidy. The LA and American jobs and infrastructure are drying up. These are lifelong careers that are ending. - Global audiences want global stories. American culture isn't local, and local talent can now make high quality productions. Asia is turning out banger after banger. - Youth want youth mediums. Movies feel slow and boring. TikTok is where it's at. - AI is now a thing. All of the fundamentals have changed. I will debate one point you raised: > most-attractive people Most people prefer to look at attractive people. It's an almost universal preference. Tried and tested throughout time. In film, those attractive people also need charisma.
gogasca 7mo ago
[dead]
eitau_1 7mo ago
Here's a great video-essay on adjacent topic: Why The Movies Don't Feel The Same Anymore https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoldOz5YyAw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoldOz5YyAw
jt2190 7mo ago
Original: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-13/hollywood-s-economic-strain-can-t-be-hidden-at-the-oscars https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-13/hollywood...
kmfrk 7mo ago
A few years ago, someone on Twitter had a really cool proposal for how to revamp the entire format of the Oscars, even taking the importance of commercials into account, but I can't for the life of me find it anymore.
willmeyers 7mo ago
I mean when you have Larry Ellison and other goons pledging investments in these major studios, it's no wonder people who actually enjoy watching movies don't want to give their money+time to watch some dumbed down bottom of the barrel slime that AI has decided people will sit through. Thankfully, filmmaking is becoming more and more independent. It's never been easier and cheaper to make a movie and share it to millions of people on YouTube or Vimeo. Why go through Hollywood, investors, or give money to festivals for a chance at success when you can just upload the thing and see what happens?
delichon 7mo ago
The little dinosaurs are ignoring the great big elephants in the room: gaming. The article doesn't mention it. The market for video games in 2024 was around $225B, compared to movies at around $33B. Hollywood has worked very hard not to realize that their industry has become niche and have succeeded. My last week may be an indicator. I've watched zero TV or movies but have spent about 40 hours helping a small colony of scrappy hard working beavers survive on post apocalyptic earth. Steam got my money, Hollywood didn't.
- the__alchemist 7mo ago
  Of note here too: There's been a lot of (social media at least) backlash against AAA studios lately. Anecdote: 2025 had a number of great (High quality, popular, award winners/nominees etc), and they weren't from big studios. There seems to be a niche middle-budget level that produces wonders. Just to limit scope to 2025: KCD2, Expedition 33, and Blue Prince were all incredible games. Expedition 33 has my favorite sound track (Or album in general?) of all time. Death Stranding 2 is another great one. By a big studio, but let a creative person run wild with it. I suspect the problem with AAA games is the same one movie studios face; mass-market appeal and profit-driven-design degrades the experience.
  - zdc1 7mo ago
    There's definitely been an enslopification of both. Endless sequels. "Franchises" with meaningless stories and common tropes. Maybe it's survivor bias when I think back on older works, but nothing just seems that exciting these days.
    - the__alchemist 7mo ago
      Right, but you can ignore them, as they don't stifle the good stuff. You can ignore Ubisoft, Bethesda etc and still have a nice selection.
  - no_wizard 7mo ago
    The difference between games and movies is how easy it is for entrants comparatively. Indie / small studios have an infinitely easier time going to market than one would with making a film or especially a TV series. You just make an account on a platform, sometimes submitting some additional information and paying a small fee, and that’s it. You may not even need actors like for text based games (Shovel Knight, Balatro etc) Movies is so much more. And the cost of production is higher. Also, the other big thing to realize is by far what games many people play is dominated by a handful of highly successful live service games. I have friends who only play Fortnite and have for a long time. They don’t play much else other than a few casual games when they take small breaks from Fortnite. It’s not universal but there is a reason they’re always top of charts for revenue. Millions play every day. The one other thing I’ll say is that seemingly unlike other media there is enough sufficient customer diversity that one business model doesn’t completely choke off all other types. Look at Expedition 33 for example
jimbo808 7mo ago
Maybe I'm insane or it's my age, but I can't watch new movies/shows without just seeing propaganda agendas at every turn. Really kills it for me.
- zimpenfish 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  - x3n0ph3n3 7mo ago
    You can see it in Tyler Sheridan's tv shows as well. It's not just "the message."
- m-hodges 7mo ago
  Should art not of a point of view?
  - gzread 7mo ago
    Some is reasonable and then some is obviously just what rich people want you to think. Like America paid Hollywood a lot to always show the US armies being macho and always on the right side of wars.
  - dmitrygr 7mo ago
    > Should art not of a point of view? It can, sure. However, I will not pay to be lectured to on topics I have no interest getting lectured on. I'll keep my money, they can keep the sermon. Let's see who has more to gain from listening to the other. If they want my money, what I want to hear/see matters a whole lot more than what they want to preach to me. They simply forgot the golden rule: he who has the gold -- makes the rules. Let them rediscover it.
  - ludicrousdispla 7mo ago
    Should a sentence have a verb?
    - 7mo ago
WarmWash 7mo ago
My fiance mentioned we haven't gone to see a movie in theaters in years and it would be fun to go. I checked what was playing and: 2 tickets, 2 sodas, 1 popcorn. $86 dollars. Don't know if I'll ever go to a conventional movie theater again.
- stackedinserter 7mo ago
  And out of 2 hours experience, 30 min is ads.
- ctkhn 7mo ago
  What theater is that at? Sounds like a mega chain like AMC or Regal. The local indie theater we go to in one of the 5 largest American cities has never been over $15 per ticket and adding popcorn and a drink is maybe $10 more on top.
  - SoftTalker 7mo ago
    Do they get first-run releases? Around here AMC has some sort of exclusive on that. And their theatres are disgusting. Sticky floors, dirty seats, just gross. I haven't been to a movie in a theater in at least 10 years.
    - tuna74 7mo ago
      If you are expressing your judgement based on experiences from more than 10 years ago you are not really contributing to the discussion.
      - SoftTalker 7mo ago
        Admittedly, it was a while ago. But from what I've heard from friends who've been recently, it's no better, possibly worse.
- femiagbabiaka 7mo ago
  Support small theatres, you won’t get charged like this.
rishabhaiover 7mo ago
So many more products are competing for finite attention now. And the solution to that problem is not to productize your commodity imo, art created for the sake of selling is not art.
- gzread 7mo ago
  If you don't productize something you won't make money and then you'll starve and die.
  - beedeebeedee 7mo ago
    Then UBI. This is a failure of our economy, which creates perverse incentives. Clean air, clean water, good food, plentiful housing, and opportunities for sport, contemplation and art are the things we need, but our economy incentivizes people to pollute, sell slop, restrict housing, and exploit ourselves and others.
    - MagicMoonlight 7mo ago
      We’re not going to pay you to sit at home and wank while the rest of us keep the lights on. It’s not happening. The day people like you can do that is the day society collapses.
      - cindyllm 7mo ago
        [dead]
      - gzread 7mo ago
        What will happen instead? Massive population collapse until everyone has work?
      - beedeebeedee 7mo ago
        Interesting that you equate having time for sport, contemplation and art as wanking off. I suppose you have your priorities.
t1234s 7mo ago
Most recent in theater movie I was was "F1" because I thought the audio experience would be worth the ticket price. While the audio was good, seat quality was sub par, popcorn stale and soda was from a Freestyle machine (YUK!)
bdz 7mo ago
I watch a film every single day since Covid. There are great films everywhere every year. I'm not american but the sooner you ignore the american cultural imperialism is the better (or at least the films that don't premiere at competition festivals). There is a whole world outside of America.
- HelloUsername 7mo ago
  Can you tell me your top 3 of every year since Covid?
- boca_honey 7mo ago
  When compared to the nascent asian cultural imperialism, I'd rather have american media, to be honest. Over here in the global south, Hollywood was a pretty good influence compared with what I see around the anime/Kpop crew. There is a whole world inside America. You can say that about every single country on Earth, but not every country on Earth produced The Godfather, Citizen Kane and Toy Story 2.
rimbo789 7mo ago
Good riddance. It won’t be missed. Very little of Hollywood benefited humanity - it was mostly a tool of the rich and governments to propagandize. It was just an another opiate for masses. It was built on ruthless exploitation of labour and consumers.
- boca_honey 7mo ago
  Hollywood produced some of the most influential pieces of art of the last century and it permeated global culture in a way only comparable to Renaissance-era Florence. Even if your simplistic take stained by marxist propaganda is true, you shouldn't just casually dismiss the labor of hundreds of thousands of artists and technicians over a century simply because you've become jaded by Marvel slop.
  - taftster 7mo ago
    Agreed. To say "good riddance" to Hollywood scares me. Like we are giving up and accepting generated slop and influencers from now on. There's a lot of bad movies, but just as you said, very few mediums have thusly pierced through across cultures and societies quite like Hollywood.
    - bdz 7mo ago
      >To say "good riddance" to Hollywood scares me It should only scare you if you are ignorant. >very few mediums have thusly pierced through across cultures and societies quite like Hollywood This is laughable if you look at video games and music EVEN if you ignore everything american. Not mention Asia from Bollywood to Kpop to anime to HK cinema.
      - taftster 7mo ago
        The modern age of video games, that's probably correct. And you're right, music probably compares at some level, especially given that it predates cinema. I wonder if ancient theater (Shakespeare, et al) would qualify. Probably. I did, for the record, say "very few mediums", so as to allow room for music or video games, perhaps. I still stand by the overall statement that losing Hollywood would mark some sort of tragedy (but maybe not universally). Also, I wouldn't go as far to say that losing what we know of in current celebrity status by certain actors would be missed. Though influencers are probably more grotesque to some (including myself).
ks2048 7mo ago
Everyone is complaining about movie theater prices. But, I'll also complain about streaming prices. I want to watch The Secret Agent and it's $9.99 to rent on Apple TV. It doesn't seem to make sense in comparison to month all-you-can-watch subscription prices.
- dredmorbius 7mo ago
  Presumably, the business goal is to steer you toward (recurring) subscription rather than (one-off) pay-to-watch activities.
- cloche 7mo ago
  This is one thing I really despise about the streaming world. When rental stores were a thing you could grab older movies from the bargain bin to rest for $1 or less. Now all movies are the same price no matter if it's new or 30 years old.
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
- vivzkestrel 7mo ago
  never brought a streaming subscription to anything in my life and never will. been torrenting all my life from 2000s
cubefox 7mo ago
The most interesting part: > North Americans are going to the movies about half as often as they used to a decade ago, based on the number of tickets sold at cinemas in the US and Canada. 50% down in just 10 years is massive.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
everybodyknows 7mo ago
> ... California doubled the annual assistance it gives to film and TV productions to $750 million to stop them from fleeing the state. 750M/38.9M = $19.28 per resident Why can't we call a taxpayer subsidy by its right name?
SadErn 7mo ago
[dead]
socalgal2 7mo ago
If Sinners and One Battle After Another are up for movie of the year then it's no wonder no one is going. One is a fun but ultimately forgettable horror action movie. The other is a movie that just based on its major theme would attract less then half the country and even in those remaining is a very polarizing movie. It's up for best picture because to preach, not because it's actually good.
- Apocryphon 7mo ago
  F1 is also nominated what’s your explanation for that picture
  - ascagnel_ 7mo ago
    Two organizations that love money (Apple & F1) collaborating to make a ton more money. The tech for in-cockpit capture and presentation of the races themselves was great, but the dialogue and basically everything off-track was boring or rote.
- jmugan 7mo ago
  I just didn't think that either of them were very good. Sinners was okay, and One Battle After Another was just kind of silly, I think regardless of your political views.
- crabkin 7mo ago
  The obvious political stance of One Battle After Another notwithstanding, given how much the film succeeds as an exercise in using the language of cinema to tell a compelling story, it comes across (ironically) as idealogically motivated to say the movie isnt nominated in part for its merits with regard to craft and construction. No doubt it appeals to people at the Academy in its persuasion, but if we were to strip it down to film technical aspects it would no doubt still be a frontrunner for film of the year.
  - hitekker 7mo ago
    Your first sentence is confusingly worded. Do you mean the GP is ideological for saying the movie is unpopular? Or that he's ideological for saying the movie isn't good? I haven't seen the movie in question but it looks like it underperformed pretty badly (-$90M) at the box office.
chairmansteve 7mo ago
There was a bubble when all the new streaming services started making content, now there's a bust. Attendance drops at movie theatres is irrelevant. Most people have watched movies and tv shows at home for years. Hollywood will be fine.
throwaway81523 7mo ago
I can hardly wait for "vibe cinema". Type in a prompt and a 2 hour epic AI slop film comes out. Not much different from Hollywood is now making the hard way.
- bdcravens 7mo ago
  We're already seeing that in the format of short-form serials on TikTok.
xyzelement 7mo ago
I started watching 1960s era movies with my kids and I understand why Hollywood had the power at the time. Entertainment and solid values crafted into a "picture". I can imagine back then eagerly awaiting a new release. Now, who cares. Some depressing trauma story of someone I can't relate to or rehashed superhero flick. Yawn.
Animats 7mo ago
One new problem for theaters is that entertainment now comes in other time formats than the 1-3 hour movie or the hour-long TV show. Netflix is not constrained by the need to push groups of people through a movie theater.
Apocryphon 7mo ago
Every time there’s an article about the “good ol’ days of Hollywood” I like to trot out this comic strip- looks like last time I posted it was five years ago: https://web.archive.org/web/20201112024059/https://www.gocomics.com/foxtrot/2001/08/28 https://web.archive.org/web/20201112024059/https://www.gocom... Hollywood has been a franchise and licensed IP sequel/remake/reboot farm since the ‘80s, since Star Wars and Jaws blockbusters killed off the experimental period of New Hollywood. And even before that it was Cecil B. DeMille bombastic productions and westerns and musicals everywhere. The movie industry has always been characterized by crowd pleasers.
bryan0 7mo ago
The only reason I like going to the theater now is to see movies in "4dx". It's a ridiculous format where the seats move and there are other special effects including air, water, and smoke which are custom edited for each chosen movie. It's like a combination between a movie and one of those amusement park rides. I think most people hate it, but my kids and I enjoy it. Tickets are ~$30 each though. Otherwise I would just rather watch a movie on the couch at home. They come to streaming so quickly there's no problem waiting for it.
righthand 7mo ago
The promise er sorry propaganda used to be “attend the big blockbuster movies so they can spend the extra money on riskier indie films”. Essentially trickle down for the movie business. Here we are.
farceSpherule 7mo ago
[dead]
beepbooptheory 7mo ago
One small thing I noticed. The best movie of this year, a film called Sirāt, was in part funded by a grant from Spain's Institute of Cinematography and Audiovisual Arts [1]. Another incredible one this past year, a Brazilian film called The Secret Agent, was funded by various grants and institutes as well [2]. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir%C4%81t https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir%C4%81t 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Agent_(2025_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Agent_(2025_film)
Firehawke 7mo ago
I was already complaining about the price when it was only $30 for two tickets, two drinks, and popcorn. To think it's more than double that now! Add in the fact most anyone can have access to a pretty good quality 60" display. It's not as large as the theater, but it's pretty good-sized, has better color reproduction than a lot of older (read: less-maintained) theaters' gear, and you don't have to deal with people using their phones or talking over the movie. Lastly, let's just consider that for most people the number of movies you'd actually want to watch on a yearly basis has probably decreased in general while the cost of actually producing those movies has skyrocketed-- it's the same problem with AAA gaming. Your costs are so high that if a movie/game isn't an immediate massive hit, you're doomed. Yeah, the bottom has dropped out of that market entirely. Gaming will be saved by indie and AA games, but I'm not sure if there's anything like that for movies; sure, smaller films exist but distribution, etc. doesn't really have anything like Steam.
- ravenstine 7mo ago
  This is something I already knew, but I realized it even more upon seeing the film Wendy and Lucy. Yes, it's an arthouse flick. No, it won't be everyone's cup of tea. No, it's not blockbuster material. But, what it does show is how filmmakers can do a lot with very little. It's a simple story with a bittersweet ending and no VFX. I'm certain it cost relatively nothing to make. And it's unfortunate that we don't get anything like it in mainstream theaters. Hollywood has been pricing itself out of existence but they still have the surprised Pikachu face while things decline. I had a conversation with a bunch of Hollywood people last year. Some were writers, actors, etc. A handful of film personnel. They were all quabbling about what was going to win at the Academy Awards, who was getting good and bad attention from the Hollywood Reporter, and so on. Simultaneously, they were lamenting about how bad things were in their industry. I then asked the group if the industry had thought about making a good movie for a change instead of giving a shit what the Hollywood Reporter has to say. They were dumbstruck, probably due to a combination of my rudeness and not having a good counterargument. If people are losing their jobs and not making money then it's hard to deny how self-congratulatory the entertainment industry is.
  - 7mo ago
tonetegeatinst 7mo ago
Iv had some movies I wanted to see but had to wait for them to appear online via youtube, apple, PBS, or DVD. Niche films / indie films don't get shown everywhere and unless your sometimes willing to drive over 150+ miles you just have to wait.
danpalmer 7mo ago
People like to point at prices and bad audience behaviour for the downfall of cinemas, but I'd suggest that it also comes down to availability and home experience. When I was growing up we went to the cinema regularly, but the only options for watching a film were VHS rentals and the cinema, both of which required going out. Films were rare. Sometimes there would be a film on TV, but it would have ads every 20 minutes, and our TV was a relatively small CRT. Now I have nearly every film made available to me to watch within minutes on a huge screen, in a quiet room, that doesn't smell, with no ads, at the time I want, without going out, and I can pause it to go to the toilet or get a drink rather than having to hope I don't miss anything. And I don't have a home cinema setup, I have a <$1k TV and <$200 speakers, no surround sound, very basic, very accessible. The only time I go to the cinema now is for IMAX because that passes the bar of better than I have at home as a whole package. Cinemas just suck.
- JKCalhoun 7mo ago
  And yet I have no interest in watching any of the current few decades of superhero crap that Hollywood has been grinding out—at home or anywhere else. Maybe movies also suck these days.
  - danpalmer 7mo ago
    I think it has always been true in most media that the mainstream is boring and devoid of artistic value while the fringes are interesting and valuable. There are plenty of excellent films around at the moment.
- bitwank 7mo ago
  I totally get how much more convenient home viewing is, but there’s something about going out and watching something in a group that is special, like we do with opera or theater, sporting events or concerts.
  - danpalmer 7mo ago
    I'm not sure I agree. If I'm there to enjoy the film I don't want to notice the audience, much like at the opera or theatre. If I've seen the film before and want to enjoy the atmosphere (like a concert or sport) then a cinema would often be a bad place for that (I've had that experience once in my life).
dwd 7mo ago
As a kid I often went to the drive-in with my family. Completely different experience to a theatre, but one that I remember fondly. The sound was always tinny and in mono from the small speaker you hooked on the window, but it was fun and very cheap.
cadamsdotcom 7mo ago
What if all the good stories have been told? I conjecture Hollywood is out of ideas but there’s plenty new if you look elsewhere. Recently watched a fantastic Chinese movie: Upstream (2024) - a dramatized view of a culture driven by algorithms where everyone is plugged in but opportunity does exist if you work hard. Optimistic and pessimistic, with an underdog you want to see win, and a bunch of beautiful human and touching moments. Highly recommended. Hollywood will keep going maybe in a smaller form. It’s ok for industries to change or run out of steam, and it’s ok for new to replace told. It’s ok for a place to run out of stories to tell, because new stories will get told by others in other places.
- mianos 7mo ago
  I feel something like this. All the popular movies are very similar, like all cars look the same. They have optimised it for efficiency to the lowest common buying denominator. I have started watch movies and series in foreign languages, particularly Korean and some Thai that have very novel story lines.
- groundzeros2015 7mo ago
  Maybe run of out stories that fit the criteria for mass marketing.
dinkumthinkum 7mo ago
Hollywood has been going through a similar cultural problem that gaming has. They have been extremely woke, and I'm sorry that people won't like that, and they have made movies to make far left critics happy instead of audiences. Not all are like this but this has dominated the industry. There have been some big moneymakers in recent years an the industry could try to make movies for audiences again but they have gotten into this space where they have to make the Academy happy. There was those Danish filmmakers at a press conference talking about their movie set in the 1700s, or something like that, and the press were whining about the lack of diversity in a historical Nordic film. I think if they decide to make movies people want to see and stop using Millennial vernacular in all script writing, they will see people wanting to watch movies again.
ideashower 7mo ago
I went to the recent re-screenings of the Lord of the Rings movies -- and maybe 30 minutes into the first film, I realized I'd never actually seen it in a theater before. It was glorious. There seems to be a lot of gloating in this thread from people who haven't been to a theater in many, many years -- lots of disgust at the idea of a movie ever being a communal, social experience. I get the annoyance of other moviegoers talking or otherwise disturbing the movie, but you have no idea what we're missing when big films don't have big individualized social moments to match. We can't go two hours without picking up our phones. We don't deserve the great experiences movie theaters once gave us.
- the_af 7mo ago
  I fully agree that, when it works, the cinema is a wonderful experience. It's amazing, very different from watching something on a home screen. Yes, it can get ruined by obnoxious movie goers, but wow...when it works it's amazing. My main criticism is mostly aimed at the kind of movies that do reach the big screen where I live (big theater franchises, small arthouse cinemas are dying and almost completely gone, and their screens and sound were never good to begin with). I don't even complain about the price of the ticket. And the food, who on earth needs popcorn and soda to watch a movie? Go eat after, or before.
  - ideashower 7mo ago
    Yeah. I feel like I recall Matt Damon or some similarly famous actor saying that the reason there's been such a shift is largely due to the loss of physical media. It would give every movie a second "push" with reach and sales. Related (a little): I recommend everyone go to a film festival at least once in their lives. Doesn't have to be a huge one, something regional works. It's a great opportunity to experience some of what I'm describing.
bananamogul 7mo ago
As if the world needs more video content. There's already enough movies and TV shows to keep me busy for the rest of my life. If they stopped making movies and TV shows tomorrow, I wouldn't get through everything I would be interested in watching before I died. And neither would you.
niemandhier 7mo ago
Hollywood moved into the “exploitation” phase of its optimisation problem: Sequels, prequels, spinoffs, remakes. If a movie costs O(Billion) to make, you need to be sure to at least earn back 1.x times the investment, the only way to do this is to play it safe.
andrewstuart 7mo ago
It’s because most movies are shit and boring - to be blunt.
fuzzfactor 7mo ago
The red carpet wasn't even as red as it was during legendary times.

170 points by RickJWagner 7mo ago

The Oscars are the heart of the problem. One definition of “celebrity” is “person who is celebrated” Hollywood is so used to getting high on its own supply that it really thinks we want to see an AI slop video of Brad Pitt fighting Tom Cruise. People there just don’t have any information at all about what anybody outside their bubble thinks so of course they make samey big budget pictures and samey small budget pictures. Unless they shut down their communications channels and disperse geographically they are going to keep doing the same thing over and over again and be wondering why they keep getting the same results. And that gets us to why they will never reform, they know their numbers are terrible but think this is (1) cyclical and (2) due to technological changes so they’ll never get it that running ads that make it sound like somebody else cares about Tom Cruise doesn’t really make people care about Tom Cruise, it just makes them ignore advertising messages.

hackyhacky 7mo ago
> AI slop video of Brad Pitt fighting Tom Cruise The video you are referring to was not produced by Hollywood, it was created by Irish director Ruairi Robinson, basically as a test of the new Seedance AI. I'm not saying that Hollywood isn't out of touch, I'm just saying that nothing about Hollywood can be inferred from that video.
fullshark 7mo ago
I think it's the opposite problem, they have too much information and data, which means they aren't making lots of gambles on new/different scripts anymore but making very safe bets because everyone is terrified of losing their cool high paying jobs.
add-sub-mul-div 7mo ago
"Hollywood" thinks we want AI slop in the way that hackers think we want video with unskippable ads.

chuckadams 7mo ago

I put more stock in the the Sundance and Cannes jury prizes: even if they're comprised of the elites who can afford to go to these festivals, they've still got far more artistic sense than the ossified corporate board that the Academy has always been.

rurban 7mo ago
Cannes is free to attend for film professionals. Always was. You only have to find a hotel. At Sundance you could stay in Salt Lake City or Heber City and have fun. Free busses. Oscars are not about the arts, nor about quality. Never was.
arrrg 7mo ago
Berlinale screenings are open to the public and tickets cost between 15 € and 20 €. You have to be quick when ticket sales open every day but when I did that one year I watched about four films every day and could get tickets for nearly all the films I wanted, even if some were in large but truly soulless venues (“Uber Eats Music Hall“, the name alone is disgustingly dystopian). Though I also attended some film premieres with Q&As and all at the great Zoo Palast cinema. There is also an audience award and you can vote for your favorites – but also obviously a jury prize. But juries can be hit and miss and also always idiosyncratic. Unpredictable. And I think that’s beautiful. Including being annoyed about your favorite film not winning. As always with any kind of film festival you are exposed to the bleeding edge - so yeah, you are going to see some bad films. That’s part of it. Though I noticed that even bad films – especially well made ones that I think are totally misguided in the ideas they express – help me broaden my horizons, understand myself better and maybe also understand the world better. So yeah, long story short, I don’t think film as an art form is dead and it also won’t be in the next century or so. Maybe certain films won’t be made in the future – I’m currently mostly sad about practically no mid-budget films being made – but I’m totally certain that there will always be great films.

thefounder 7mo ago

The main issue was the content the movie industry produced which looked like a lot like some AI slop. I think the DEI lecturing was another nail in the coffin. Unless that changes and they magically add something new to the cinema experience I think they will keep diving into irrelevance because now everybody can produce AI slop.

raw_anon_1111 7mo ago
Yes they should never had a Black lady playing an orange alien from Tamarin on the Titan TV series. It just wasn’t realistic. We should just have all White males leading movies
- the__alchemist 7mo ago
  Could you please explain this? I'm having a hard time following. Ty.
  - raw_anon_1111 7mo ago
    https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-44966851 https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-44966851 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfire_(Teen_Titans) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfire_(Teen_Titans)
- thefounder 7mo ago
  Why can’t we have original stories(I.e Sinners, Black Panther, White Lotus) and instead try to make White Snow black or whatever and paint people racist? I get that people want to make these stories more inclusive but the characters are just too powerful to change them and not expect a backlash. People prefer new characters or “staying true to the original story/character” instead of lazy remixes. Or you can create your own remix with AI now. Feed the movie and make the characters as you want. The result may seem a bit weird(i.e like a Snow White being a fat black gay male) for a fan of the movie/character but for you as an activist it will check the marks you are looking for. Just don’t invoke racism if people won’t like your AI slop.

woeirua 7mo ago

$100 to go to the movies for a family of four. No thanks. There’s no mystery why the movies are dying. They’ve priced themselves out and then they give away the product on streaming several months later anyways. If they want theaters to come back then they’ll have to put movies behind a paywall again.

lotsofpulp 7mo ago
I doubt increasing the price of their goods will work when the supply of alternative ways to spend time at almost zero cost is near infinite.
- xp84 7mo ago
  You’re probably right. Big franchises would survive, a bunch of people would pay modestly for each new Marvel movie if it were never coming to streaming. But the films that do still exist that have no marketing, would probably do even worse without having any streaming release.
johnnyApplePRNG 7mo ago
So do you want to pay more, or less? I am confused.
- delecti 7mo ago
  I think it's more about being unwilling to pay so much when a free version is just a few months away. Streaming is too good and too cheap compared to the theatrical release.
  - righthand 7mo ago
    “Free” but you pay a monthly subscription. No one seems to know what free means anymore.
    - delecti 7mo ago

morkalork 7mo ago

Is this article a weird cut-paste of older content? This passage makes no sense in the rest of the context, the tense is all wrong. >Starting in 2029, the Oscars will also be streamed globally on YouTube, which the academy hopes will attract new audiences and reinvigorate the ceremony’s popularity after years of declining viewership. Edit: I read 2019 not.. 2029. That's actually incredible. Are they going to get in on tiktok for 2039 next?

stavros 7mo ago
Hm, what's wrong with it?
embedding-shape 7mo ago
What exactly doesn't make sense? The Oscars are moving to streaming the event globally on YouTube (bunch of TV channels has said they'll stop broadcasting it in 2029), and the viewership of the Oscars has been declining for years. I'm not sure I see what's wrong in there.

mpalmer 7mo ago

Another victim of the efficiency of the market. Market forces know no culture except what consumers pay for. Absent real care, stewardship and focused investment, the product will always get cheaper. And of course consumers' tastes are under attack from another direction: their attention spans. Some load-bearing pillars of human culture are weakening.

meta_gunslinger 7mo ago
More like a victim of woke propagandizing not being very popular with the average viewer.

awongh 7mo ago

The cultural relevance of movies, and American made movies isn't going anywhere anytime soon, but I think the economics of streaming is finally playing out in the loss of the geographical concentration of power in Hollywood and California. This is the endgame of the feedback loop of streamers causing industry consolidation... the direct connection of dollars people spend to sit in a theatre seat was slowly declining, but now I think it's gotten so small that it no longer matters- and once the whole box-office feedback loop disappears a lot of the economics of how films are produced are being forced to change. One of the reasons that people have loved to make fun of Hollywood for literally it's entire existence (besides the fact that the meta talk is self-indulgent artist stuff) is that making movies with so much money and waste is fundamentally ridiculous. The optimistic viewpoint is that maybe new AI production tools will trigger a re-democratization of creative movies in the next wave, like in the 70s and the 90s indies.

sbarre 7mo ago
As much as I support unions and labour rights, the last SAG-AFTRA strike mostly just helped the big studios realize they could do more with less. Hollywood is a factory town at the end of the day, and we all know what happened to most factory towns in America. This one is just getting there a few decades after the others.
- awongh 7mo ago
  This is definitely another case where a union could either understand where the bigger economic forces are headed (in this case globalization, IP licensing, residuals that no longer make sense, attention economy fracturing the marketplace etc) and adapt to how people will consume content in the future, or double down on an economic model that is one generation behind. In theory the union is the only org capable of standing up to the streamers' buying power, but it has to make sense within a business model where consumers pay one monthly fee for content. I'm not even sure what that really looks like in the end. Maybe it's also that the FTC allowed all this monopolization to happen, and turns out that having three media companies in the US is bad.
  - 7mo ago

rdtsc 7mo ago

There just aren’t as many good new movies. Most movies we watch at home are from decades ago. If we didn’t have streaming maybe we’d go to the movies more often, but it’s hard to say. A few movies we watched are not worth the money. To stay afloat they have to raise ticket prices, but if we’re paying so much, the movie better be absolutely outstanding, and the are just not usually, so we stopped going.

embedding-shape 7mo ago
> To stay afloat they have to raise ticket prices, but if we’re paying so much What are you paying when you go to the cinema? Just went to the cinema today to see Hoppers, and was slightly surprised that the tickets were only 8 EUR per person, then we spent maybe 5-10 EUR per person on snacks too, so ended up paying maybe ~15 EUR per person overall. This was outside a metropolitan city in South-Western Europe, maybe that's why, or I've just lost track of what's expensive/cheap.
- soared 7mo ago
  Just checked AMC - $18.50 in the app for a normal adult ticket. ($16 + $2.50 fee for using the app). An icee and popcorn would be ballpark $18 as well.
  - xp84 7mo ago
    About the same where I am. A matinee used to be cheap, now it’s the price you said, and more like 20 for the full price show. You don’t have to pay the app “convenience fee” but they added assigned seats to pressure you to do so. If you wait till the day of and buy on the big kiosk in the lobby, what if all the good seats are gone? (Hint: they won’t be, the theaters are always mostly empty)
    - garbawarb 7mo ago
      Not even good seats, but if you're in a group you may not be all able to sit together. Or if you get your tickets and someone wants to join you later, there could be nothing left near you. I'm not a fan of assigned seating for those reasons.

pkorzeniewski 7mo ago

I haven't been in cinema in the past ~10 years and to be honest I wouldn't care if no more movies were ever made, simply because there are hundreds, if not thousands, amazing movies made since the beginning of the cinema that I didn't watch. Most of the new movies are crap anyways, so why waste time and money when I can watch a classic movie instead which has a much higher probability of me enyjoing it.

SamuelAdams 7mo ago
The same argument could be made for the book industry, where there are centuries of content available. And yet, people still read new books.
- bombcar 7mo ago
  IIRC the book merger lawsuits, they don’t really read many new books. Many are published few are bought.
- edgyquant 7mo ago
  It often is made, an the vast majority of new books are slop
- PaulDavisThe1st 7mo ago
  I think book sales are significantly down compared to most periods in the last 50-100 years? Still a culturally significant thing, but economically not what they used to be ...
Larrikin 7mo ago
This is a boring opinion. It's the equivalent of what happens to many older adults when it comes to music. All of the best songs came out in their teens to about 30 so what's the point of listening to anything new? It assumes there is no innovation and the person just traps themselves in the past. You could say there hasn't been any good new music since 1970 and humans have been making music for thousands of year. Or you could try out the many new genres and eventually find something new and exciting. it just seems like a very boring way to live out your life.

artyom 7mo ago

Nobody else to blame but themselves. Of course, Hollywood is full of narcissists so they'll blame everyone else, e.g. streaming, prices, etc. but the reality is of the last 10-15 years of mainstream US cinema is: - Scripts that sound more like an HR meeting than a good story. - Blockbuster superhero movies that are all the same movie. - Lots of remakes that added modern CGI flare and destroyed the artistic value of the original. - As consolidation of studios happens, way more "safe" stories that aim to not offend anyone. I think the only one able to get away with it right now is Tarantino. Prices, streaming, theaters, etc. -- they're all accessory to the problem. People went to the movies for enjoyment, why would they go to endure them? There's no cultural collective experience anymore in the sense of going to see Lord of the Rings or Matrix with your friends for the first time. Also this is happening throughout all media. Music and video games have the same kind of discussions.

pclmulqdq 7mo ago
Hollywood seems to have never realized that the point of works like LotR and Star Wars was to take the ridiculous extremely seriously. The bad CGI didn't matter because every actor took it seriously. A marvel-ized star wars with great CGI is still a bad movie because nobody on screen takes it seriously despite how realistic the graphics are.

iammjm 7mo ago

Actors being this wealthy and famous has always been a mystery to me. Oh so you are a good looking person that recites other people's words for money while faking emotions? And you can take as many takes as you can and your fuckups will be corrected in post-production anyway? Well I guess the work you do totally merits the hundreds of millions of dollars you've amassed. Like even kicking a ball or whatever makes more sense to me because there is an objective measurement of what it means to do it well, while with actors its mostly about sympathy or preference

paulryanrogers 7mo ago
It's celebrity. People want to imagine themselves like these icons they've built, even if only through the laziest of efforts. I wonder if it's an innate human trait to aspire to be like those we admire.
ndsipa_pomu 7mo ago
There's certainly a lot of actors that seem to just phone in a performance and are mainly hired due to their looks and high profiles, but don't forget about the actors that can elevate just about any role that they're in due to their skills and artistry.
worksonmine 7mo ago
I don't want fame, but if I did I would want a lot of money to give up my freedom to be chased by paparazzi for the rest of my life.
miki123211 7mo ago
Actors have a kind of legally-enforced monopoly. They're not employees you hire, they're products you buy. If you want to make a movie staring Nicole Kidman, you have to pay whatever Nicole Kidman wants you to pay. You're legally forbidden from hiring an "off-brand" person and making her look indistinguishable from Kidman. If you want to hire a Scala programmer, there's plenty of easily-replaceable people willing and able to do that job. No single person dictates how much money Scala programmers make. Famous actors are basically a category that they're the only member of, and so they can set their prices. You can switch to a different category )(just as you can switch from Scala to Typescript) if one becomes too expensive, but that too carries some expense. Franchises have a similar problem. If all your friends are watching Game of Thrones, you too want to watch Game of Thrones, even if there are other shows which are just as good. This means the Makers of GoT can dictate GoT prices, because the government gives them a legal monopoly on GoT distribution.

philwelch 7mo ago

They have no one to blame but themselves, judging by the quality of Hollywood movies in recent years.

the__alchemist 7mo ago

My 2c: They should stop concentrating on appealing to the broadest audience. Formulaic heros' journeys, franchises, predictable characters acted by the same narrow set of the the most-attractive people etc. Safety and mass-market appeal over creativity. For contrast: Books, non-AAA video games, and movies from smaller studios still produce high-quality, creative efforts I continue to be excited about. Big-budget movies (and games), and Netflix shows are mostly bottom-feeder stuff.

cyanydeez 7mo ago
not appealing to the masses is DEI; perfect robotic formula are just common sense. Obviously.
- groundzeros2015 7mo ago
  Are you sure? I thought DEI is making a movie for everyone with one representative from each major ethnic group and then saying only safe non-cultural things. Oh and then localizing for china.
xp84 7mo ago
I think it’s the finance people. They have decided every creative movie made represents resources and time that can’t be used for a “sure-thing” franchise schlock movie.
- embedding-shape 7mo ago
  "Data-driven" decisions seems to drive out any sort of creativity, seems to happen in all industries where metrics and numbers become more important that someone's vision. Same in software too really.
echelon 7mo ago
- Theatrical releases are how movies make most of their money, not giving them away for free on streaming. Box office margins are huge, but renting licenses to streamers is limited and fungible with all the other mountains of content they license. - Box office optimizes for novelty, streamers optimize for "don't churn" - very different criteria for investment. - Disney cannibalized the box office with Marvel Star Wars, which killed the mid market and killed innovation. This is your point. Disney's success and tentpole successes in general killed innovation and diversity and made the market more winner-takes-all. Comedy movies barely exist anymore. There are few $50-75M films now. Little original content. Now films are engineered for maximum audience penetration and maximum box office revenue. This changes how films are written and who they are written for. The answer is "everyone", and that means "safe", "predictable", and "repeatable". No gambles. Everything else has to fight for table scraps. - End of ZIRP puts us back in 2000. Money used to be free. Now it's expensive. It's not as easy to underwrite productions anymore. Less innovation. - Dopamine machines fit into your pocket and suck up time and attention. Gaming is also huge now. Less people going to the movies because plenty of alternatives exist. - The $400 80'' plus Netflix versus the expensive theater, concessions, and rude people have made theaters unattractive. Theaters are where film margins come from. Without that revenue, expensive movies will be scaled back. - Labor costs less in Europe and Asia, even with ample tax subsidy. The LA and American jobs and infrastructure are drying up. These are lifelong careers that are ending. - Global audiences want global stories. American culture isn't local, and local talent can now make high quality productions. Asia is turning out banger after banger. - Youth want youth mediums. Movies feel slow and boring. TikTok is where it's at. - AI is now a thing. All of the fundamentals have changed. I will debate one point you raised: > most-attractive people Most people prefer to look at attractive people. It's an almost universal preference. Tried and tested throughout time. In film, those attractive people also need charisma.

gogasca 7mo ago

[dead]

eitau_1 7mo ago

Here's a great video-essay on adjacent topic: Why The Movies Don't Feel The Same Anymore https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoldOz5YyAw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoldOz5YyAw

jt2190 7mo ago

Original: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-13/hollywood-s-economic-strain-can-t-be-hidden-at-the-oscars https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-13/hollywood...

kmfrk 7mo ago

A few years ago, someone on Twitter had a really cool proposal for how to revamp the entire format of the Oscars, even taking the importance of commercials into account, but I can't for the life of me find it anymore.

willmeyers 7mo ago

I mean when you have Larry Ellison and other goons pledging investments in these major studios, it's no wonder people who actually enjoy watching movies don't want to give their money+time to watch some dumbed down bottom of the barrel slime that AI has decided people will sit through. Thankfully, filmmaking is becoming more and more independent. It's never been easier and cheaper to make a movie and share it to millions of people on YouTube or Vimeo. Why go through Hollywood, investors, or give money to festivals for a chance at success when you can just upload the thing and see what happens?

delichon 7mo ago

The little dinosaurs are ignoring the great big elephants in the room: gaming. The article doesn't mention it. The market for video games in 2024 was around $225B, compared to movies at around $33B. Hollywood has worked very hard not to realize that their industry has become niche and have succeeded. My last week may be an indicator. I've watched zero TV or movies but have spent about 40 hours helping a small colony of scrappy hard working beavers survive on post apocalyptic earth. Steam got my money, Hollywood didn't.

the__alchemist 7mo ago
Of note here too: There's been a lot of (social media at least) backlash against AAA studios lately. Anecdote: 2025 had a number of great (High quality, popular, award winners/nominees etc), and they weren't from big studios. There seems to be a niche middle-budget level that produces wonders. Just to limit scope to 2025: KCD2, Expedition 33, and Blue Prince were all incredible games. Expedition 33 has my favorite sound track (Or album in general?) of all time. Death Stranding 2 is another great one. By a big studio, but let a creative person run wild with it. I suspect the problem with AAA games is the same one movie studios face; mass-market appeal and profit-driven-design degrades the experience.
- zdc1 7mo ago
  There's definitely been an enslopification of both. Endless sequels. "Franchises" with meaningless stories and common tropes. Maybe it's survivor bias when I think back on older works, but nothing just seems that exciting these days.
  - the__alchemist 7mo ago
    Right, but you can ignore them, as they don't stifle the good stuff. You can ignore Ubisoft, Bethesda etc and still have a nice selection.
- no_wizard 7mo ago
  The difference between games and movies is how easy it is for entrants comparatively. Indie / small studios have an infinitely easier time going to market than one would with making a film or especially a TV series. You just make an account on a platform, sometimes submitting some additional information and paying a small fee, and that’s it. You may not even need actors like for text based games (Shovel Knight, Balatro etc) Movies is so much more. And the cost of production is higher. Also, the other big thing to realize is by far what games many people play is dominated by a handful of highly successful live service games. I have friends who only play Fortnite and have for a long time. They don’t play much else other than a few casual games when they take small breaks from Fortnite. It’s not universal but there is a reason they’re always top of charts for revenue. Millions play every day. The one other thing I’ll say is that seemingly unlike other media there is enough sufficient customer diversity that one business model doesn’t completely choke off all other types. Look at Expedition 33 for example

jimbo808 7mo ago

Maybe I'm insane or it's my age, but I can't watch new movies/shows without just seeing propaganda agendas at every turn. Really kills it for me.

zimpenfish 7mo ago
[flagged]
- x3n0ph3n3 7mo ago
  You can see it in Tyler Sheridan's tv shows as well. It's not just "the message."
m-hodges 7mo ago
Should art not of a point of view?
- gzread 7mo ago
  Some is reasonable and then some is obviously just what rich people want you to think. Like America paid Hollywood a lot to always show the US armies being macho and always on the right side of wars.
- dmitrygr 7mo ago
  > Should art not of a point of view? It can, sure. However, I will not pay to be lectured to on topics I have no interest getting lectured on. I'll keep my money, they can keep the sermon. Let's see who has more to gain from listening to the other. If they want my money, what I want to hear/see matters a whole lot more than what they want to preach to me. They simply forgot the golden rule: he who has the gold -- makes the rules. Let them rediscover it.
- ludicrousdispla 7mo ago
  Should a sentence have a verb?
  - 7mo ago

WarmWash 7mo ago

My fiance mentioned we haven't gone to see a movie in theaters in years and it would be fun to go. I checked what was playing and: 2 tickets, 2 sodas, 1 popcorn. $86 dollars. Don't know if I'll ever go to a conventional movie theater again.

stackedinserter 7mo ago
And out of 2 hours experience, 30 min is ads.
ctkhn 7mo ago
What theater is that at? Sounds like a mega chain like AMC or Regal. The local indie theater we go to in one of the 5 largest American cities has never been over $15 per ticket and adding popcorn and a drink is maybe $10 more on top.
- SoftTalker 7mo ago
  Do they get first-run releases? Around here AMC has some sort of exclusive on that. And their theatres are disgusting. Sticky floors, dirty seats, just gross. I haven't been to a movie in a theater in at least 10 years.
  - tuna74 7mo ago
    If you are expressing your judgement based on experiences from more than 10 years ago you are not really contributing to the discussion.
    - SoftTalker 7mo ago
      Admittedly, it was a while ago. But from what I've heard from friends who've been recently, it's no better, possibly worse.
femiagbabiaka 7mo ago
Support small theatres, you won’t get charged like this.

rishabhaiover 7mo ago

So many more products are competing for finite attention now. And the solution to that problem is not to productize your commodity imo, art created for the sake of selling is not art.

gzread 7mo ago
If you don't productize something you won't make money and then you'll starve and die.
- beedeebeedee 7mo ago
  Then UBI. This is a failure of our economy, which creates perverse incentives. Clean air, clean water, good food, plentiful housing, and opportunities for sport, contemplation and art are the things we need, but our economy incentivizes people to pollute, sell slop, restrict housing, and exploit ourselves and others.
  - MagicMoonlight 7mo ago
    We’re not going to pay you to sit at home and wank while the rest of us keep the lights on. It’s not happening. The day people like you can do that is the day society collapses.
    - cindyllm 7mo ago
      [dead]
    - gzread 7mo ago
      What will happen instead? Massive population collapse until everyone has work?
    - beedeebeedee 7mo ago
      Interesting that you equate having time for sport, contemplation and art as wanking off. I suppose you have your priorities.

t1234s 7mo ago

Most recent in theater movie I was was "F1" because I thought the audio experience would be worth the ticket price. While the audio was good, seat quality was sub par, popcorn stale and soda was from a Freestyle machine (YUK!)

bdz 7mo ago

I watch a film every single day since Covid. There are great films everywhere every year. I'm not american but the sooner you ignore the american cultural imperialism is the better (or at least the films that don't premiere at competition festivals). There is a whole world outside of America.

HelloUsername 7mo ago
Can you tell me your top 3 of every year since Covid?
boca_honey 7mo ago
When compared to the nascent asian cultural imperialism, I'd rather have american media, to be honest. Over here in the global south, Hollywood was a pretty good influence compared with what I see around the anime/Kpop crew. There is a whole world inside America. You can say that about every single country on Earth, but not every country on Earth produced The Godfather, Citizen Kane and Toy Story 2.

rimbo789 7mo ago

Good riddance. It won’t be missed. Very little of Hollywood benefited humanity - it was mostly a tool of the rich and governments to propagandize. It was just an another opiate for masses. It was built on ruthless exploitation of labour and consumers.

boca_honey 7mo ago
Hollywood produced some of the most influential pieces of art of the last century and it permeated global culture in a way only comparable to Renaissance-era Florence. Even if your simplistic take stained by marxist propaganda is true, you shouldn't just casually dismiss the labor of hundreds of thousands of artists and technicians over a century simply because you've become jaded by Marvel slop.
- taftster 7mo ago
  Agreed. To say "good riddance" to Hollywood scares me. Like we are giving up and accepting generated slop and influencers from now on. There's a lot of bad movies, but just as you said, very few mediums have thusly pierced through across cultures and societies quite like Hollywood.
  - bdz 7mo ago
    >To say "good riddance" to Hollywood scares me It should only scare you if you are ignorant. >very few mediums have thusly pierced through across cultures and societies quite like Hollywood This is laughable if you look at video games and music EVEN if you ignore everything american. Not mention Asia from Bollywood to Kpop to anime to HK cinema.
    - taftster 7mo ago
      The modern age of video games, that's probably correct. And you're right, music probably compares at some level, especially given that it predates cinema. I wonder if ancient theater (Shakespeare, et al) would qualify. Probably. I did, for the record, say "very few mediums", so as to allow room for music or video games, perhaps. I still stand by the overall statement that losing Hollywood would mark some sort of tragedy (but maybe not universally). Also, I wouldn't go as far to say that losing what we know of in current celebrity status by certain actors would be missed. Though influencers are probably more grotesque to some (including myself).

ks2048 7mo ago

Everyone is complaining about movie theater prices. But, I'll also complain about streaming prices. I want to watch The Secret Agent and it's $9.99 to rent on Apple TV. It doesn't seem to make sense in comparison to month all-you-can-watch subscription prices.

dredmorbius 7mo ago
Presumably, the business goal is to steer you toward (recurring) subscription rather than (one-off) pay-to-watch activities.
cloche 7mo ago
This is one thing I really despise about the streaming world. When rental stores were a thing you could grab older movies from the bargain bin to rest for $1 or less. Now all movies are the same price no matter if it's new or 30 years old.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
vivzkestrel 7mo ago
never brought a streaming subscription to anything in my life and never will. been torrenting all my life from 2000s

cubefox 7mo ago

The most interesting part: > North Americans are going to the movies about half as often as they used to a decade ago, based on the number of tickets sold at cinemas in the US and Canada. 50% down in just 10 years is massive.

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

everybodyknows 7mo ago

> ... California doubled the annual assistance it gives to film and TV productions to $750 million to stop them from fleeing the state. 750M/38.9M = $19.28 per resident Why can't we call a taxpayer subsidy by its right name?

SadErn 7mo ago

[dead]

socalgal2 7mo ago

If Sinners and One Battle After Another are up for movie of the year then it's no wonder no one is going. One is a fun but ultimately forgettable horror action movie. The other is a movie that just based on its major theme would attract less then half the country and even in those remaining is a very polarizing movie. It's up for best picture because to preach, not because it's actually good.

Apocryphon 7mo ago
F1 is also nominated what’s your explanation for that picture
- ascagnel_ 7mo ago
  Two organizations that love money (Apple & F1) collaborating to make a ton more money. The tech for in-cockpit capture and presentation of the races themselves was great, but the dialogue and basically everything off-track was boring or rote.
jmugan 7mo ago
I just didn't think that either of them were very good. Sinners was okay, and One Battle After Another was just kind of silly, I think regardless of your political views.
crabkin 7mo ago
The obvious political stance of One Battle After Another notwithstanding, given how much the film succeeds as an exercise in using the language of cinema to tell a compelling story, it comes across (ironically) as idealogically motivated to say the movie isnt nominated in part for its merits with regard to craft and construction. No doubt it appeals to people at the Academy in its persuasion, but if we were to strip it down to film technical aspects it would no doubt still be a frontrunner for film of the year.
- hitekker 7mo ago
  Your first sentence is confusingly worded. Do you mean the GP is ideological for saying the movie is unpopular? Or that he's ideological for saying the movie isn't good? I haven't seen the movie in question but it looks like it underperformed pretty badly (-$90M) at the box office.

chairmansteve 7mo ago

There was a bubble when all the new streaming services started making content, now there's a bust. Attendance drops at movie theatres is irrelevant. Most people have watched movies and tv shows at home for years. Hollywood will be fine.

throwaway81523 7mo ago

I can hardly wait for "vibe cinema". Type in a prompt and a 2 hour epic AI slop film comes out. Not much different from Hollywood is now making the hard way.

bdcravens 7mo ago
We're already seeing that in the format of short-form serials on TikTok.

xyzelement 7mo ago

I started watching 1960s era movies with my kids and I understand why Hollywood had the power at the time. Entertainment and solid values crafted into a "picture". I can imagine back then eagerly awaiting a new release. Now, who cares. Some depressing trauma story of someone I can't relate to or rehashed superhero flick. Yawn.

Animats 7mo ago

One new problem for theaters is that entertainment now comes in other time formats than the 1-3 hour movie or the hour-long TV show. Netflix is not constrained by the need to push groups of people through a movie theater.

Apocryphon 7mo ago

Every time there’s an article about the “good ol’ days of Hollywood” I like to trot out this comic strip- looks like last time I posted it was five years ago: https://web.archive.org/web/20201112024059/https://www.gocomics.com/foxtrot/2001/08/28 https://web.archive.org/web/20201112024059/https://www.gocom... Hollywood has been a franchise and licensed IP sequel/remake/reboot farm since the ‘80s, since Star Wars and Jaws blockbusters killed off the experimental period of New Hollywood. And even before that it was Cecil B. DeMille bombastic productions and westerns and musicals everywhere. The movie industry has always been characterized by crowd pleasers.

bryan0 7mo ago

The only reason I like going to the theater now is to see movies in "4dx". It's a ridiculous format where the seats move and there are other special effects including air, water, and smoke which are custom edited for each chosen movie. It's like a combination between a movie and one of those amusement park rides. I think most people hate it, but my kids and I enjoy it. Tickets are ~$30 each though. Otherwise I would just rather watch a movie on the couch at home. They come to streaming so quickly there's no problem waiting for it.

righthand 7mo ago

The promise er sorry propaganda used to be “attend the big blockbuster movies so they can spend the extra money on riskier indie films”. Essentially trickle down for the movie business. Here we are.

farceSpherule 7mo ago

[dead]

beepbooptheory 7mo ago

One small thing I noticed. The best movie of this year, a film called Sirāt, was in part funded by a grant from Spain's Institute of Cinematography and Audiovisual Arts [1]. Another incredible one this past year, a Brazilian film called The Secret Agent, was funded by various grants and institutes as well [2]. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir%C4%81t https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir%C4%81t 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Agent_(2025_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Agent_(2025_film)

Firehawke 7mo ago

I was already complaining about the price when it was only $30 for two tickets, two drinks, and popcorn. To think it's more than double that now! Add in the fact most anyone can have access to a pretty good quality 60" display. It's not as large as the theater, but it's pretty good-sized, has better color reproduction than a lot of older (read: less-maintained) theaters' gear, and you don't have to deal with people using their phones or talking over the movie. Lastly, let's just consider that for most people the number of movies you'd actually want to watch on a yearly basis has probably decreased in general while the cost of actually producing those movies has skyrocketed-- it's the same problem with AAA gaming. Your costs are so high that if a movie/game isn't an immediate massive hit, you're doomed. Yeah, the bottom has dropped out of that market entirely. Gaming will be saved by indie and AA games, but I'm not sure if there's anything like that for movies; sure, smaller films exist but distribution, etc. doesn't really have anything like Steam.

ravenstine 7mo ago
This is something I already knew, but I realized it even more upon seeing the film Wendy and Lucy. Yes, it's an arthouse flick. No, it won't be everyone's cup of tea. No, it's not blockbuster material. But, what it does show is how filmmakers can do a lot with very little. It's a simple story with a bittersweet ending and no VFX. I'm certain it cost relatively nothing to make. And it's unfortunate that we don't get anything like it in mainstream theaters. Hollywood has been pricing itself out of existence but they still have the surprised Pikachu face while things decline. I had a conversation with a bunch of Hollywood people last year. Some were writers, actors, etc. A handful of film personnel. They were all quabbling about what was going to win at the Academy Awards, who was getting good and bad attention from the Hollywood Reporter, and so on. Simultaneously, they were lamenting about how bad things were in their industry. I then asked the group if the industry had thought about making a good movie for a change instead of giving a shit what the Hollywood Reporter has to say. They were dumbstruck, probably due to a combination of my rudeness and not having a good counterargument. If people are losing their jobs and not making money then it's hard to deny how self-congratulatory the entertainment industry is.
- 7mo ago

tonetegeatinst 7mo ago

Iv had some movies I wanted to see but had to wait for them to appear online via youtube, apple, PBS, or DVD. Niche films / indie films don't get shown everywhere and unless your sometimes willing to drive over 150+ miles you just have to wait.

danpalmer 7mo ago

People like to point at prices and bad audience behaviour for the downfall of cinemas, but I'd suggest that it also comes down to availability and home experience. When I was growing up we went to the cinema regularly, but the only options for watching a film were VHS rentals and the cinema, both of which required going out. Films were rare. Sometimes there would be a film on TV, but it would have ads every 20 minutes, and our TV was a relatively small CRT. Now I have nearly every film made available to me to watch within minutes on a huge screen, in a quiet room, that doesn't smell, with no ads, at the time I want, without going out, and I can pause it to go to the toilet or get a drink rather than having to hope I don't miss anything. And I don't have a home cinema setup, I have a <$1k TV and <$200 speakers, no surround sound, very basic, very accessible. The only time I go to the cinema now is for IMAX because that passes the bar of better than I have at home as a whole package. Cinemas just suck.

JKCalhoun 7mo ago
And yet I have no interest in watching any of the current few decades of superhero crap that Hollywood has been grinding out—at home or anywhere else. Maybe movies also suck these days.
- danpalmer 7mo ago
  I think it has always been true in most media that the mainstream is boring and devoid of artistic value while the fringes are interesting and valuable. There are plenty of excellent films around at the moment.
bitwank 7mo ago
I totally get how much more convenient home viewing is, but there’s something about going out and watching something in a group that is special, like we do with opera or theater, sporting events or concerts.
- danpalmer 7mo ago
  I'm not sure I agree. If I'm there to enjoy the film I don't want to notice the audience, much like at the opera or theatre. If I've seen the film before and want to enjoy the atmosphere (like a concert or sport) then a cinema would often be a bad place for that (I've had that experience once in my life).

dwd 7mo ago

As a kid I often went to the drive-in with my family. Completely different experience to a theatre, but one that I remember fondly. The sound was always tinny and in mono from the small speaker you hooked on the window, but it was fun and very cheap.

cadamsdotcom 7mo ago

What if all the good stories have been told? I conjecture Hollywood is out of ideas but there’s plenty new if you look elsewhere. Recently watched a fantastic Chinese movie: Upstream (2024) - a dramatized view of a culture driven by algorithms where everyone is plugged in but opportunity does exist if you work hard. Optimistic and pessimistic, with an underdog you want to see win, and a bunch of beautiful human and touching moments. Highly recommended. Hollywood will keep going maybe in a smaller form. It’s ok for industries to change or run out of steam, and it’s ok for new to replace told. It’s ok for a place to run out of stories to tell, because new stories will get told by others in other places.

mianos 7mo ago
I feel something like this. All the popular movies are very similar, like all cars look the same. They have optimised it for efficiency to the lowest common buying denominator. I have started watch movies and series in foreign languages, particularly Korean and some Thai that have very novel story lines.
groundzeros2015 7mo ago
Maybe run of out stories that fit the criteria for mass marketing.

dinkumthinkum 7mo ago

Hollywood has been going through a similar cultural problem that gaming has. They have been extremely woke, and I'm sorry that people won't like that, and they have made movies to make far left critics happy instead of audiences. Not all are like this but this has dominated the industry. There have been some big moneymakers in recent years an the industry could try to make movies for audiences again but they have gotten into this space where they have to make the Academy happy. There was those Danish filmmakers at a press conference talking about their movie set in the 1700s, or something like that, and the press were whining about the lack of diversity in a historical Nordic film. I think if they decide to make movies people want to see and stop using Millennial vernacular in all script writing, they will see people wanting to watch movies again.

ideashower 7mo ago

I went to the recent re-screenings of the Lord of the Rings movies -- and maybe 30 minutes into the first film, I realized I'd never actually seen it in a theater before. It was glorious. There seems to be a lot of gloating in this thread from people who haven't been to a theater in many, many years -- lots of disgust at the idea of a movie ever being a communal, social experience. I get the annoyance of other moviegoers talking or otherwise disturbing the movie, but you have no idea what we're missing when big films don't have big individualized social moments to match. We can't go two hours without picking up our phones. We don't deserve the great experiences movie theaters once gave us.

the_af 7mo ago
I fully agree that, when it works, the cinema is a wonderful experience. It's amazing, very different from watching something on a home screen. Yes, it can get ruined by obnoxious movie goers, but wow...when it works it's amazing. My main criticism is mostly aimed at the kind of movies that do reach the big screen where I live (big theater franchises, small arthouse cinemas are dying and almost completely gone, and their screens and sound were never good to begin with). I don't even complain about the price of the ticket. And the food, who on earth needs popcorn and soda to watch a movie? Go eat after, or before.
- ideashower 7mo ago
  Yeah. I feel like I recall Matt Damon or some similarly famous actor saying that the reason there's been such a shift is largely due to the loss of physical media. It would give every movie a second "push" with reach and sales. Related (a little): I recommend everyone go to a film festival at least once in their lives. Doesn't have to be a huge one, something regional works. It's a great opportunity to experience some of what I'm describing.

bananamogul 7mo ago

As if the world needs more video content. There's already enough movies and TV shows to keep me busy for the rest of my life. If they stopped making movies and TV shows tomorrow, I wouldn't get through everything I would be interested in watching before I died. And neither would you.

niemandhier 7mo ago

Hollywood moved into the “exploitation” phase of its optimisation problem: Sequels, prequels, spinoffs, remakes. If a movie costs O(Billion) to make, you need to be sure to at least earn back 1.x times the investment, the only way to do this is to play it safe.

andrewstuart 7mo ago

It’s because most movies are shit and boring - to be blunt.

fuzzfactor 7mo ago

The red carpet wasn't even as red as it was during legendary times.