It’s definitely a drop in quality. Just look at what is out in movie theaters these days. 90% of the movies are either sequels, marvel movies, or live action remakes of films that were already made. The amount of original storytelling or unique content has dropped rapidly in the past 5 years. As someone who grew up loving going to the movie theater, it makes me so sad, and I rarely go anymore.
Whether you like or hate Barbie or Oppenheimer, they were pretty much some of the only completely brand new high production value movies that came out in the last year, which I believe is part of why they were so popular. People are craving originality, even if a lot of them don’t realize it
A24 is a shining beacon in these dark times. They are pumping out some really weird movies and I love them for it.
While I don’t disagree on the main points of your post, I’d like to counter by saying I think we are back on the rise. We see eastern movies more frequently make it to our cinemas (at least where I live), and a decline in interest when it comes to superhero stuff. We had a Norwegian movie outsell Aquaman the past weekend and that’s wild. (I know, Aquaman isn’t at the top of people’s hype-list).
I myself also decided to make the choice to go and see more indepent films, attend screenings/festivals in my city and stop going to the marvel shows. It’s been a blast and I’m loving going to the movies more than ever as a result!
It is possible we’re back on the rise. Schafrillas Productions made a great video on youtube discussing how Disney+ is basically shooting themselves in the foot by overextending their brand and fewer people are seeing Disney movies in theaters because you can just wait to see it at home anyways.
But I do think high budget films will never go back to the times of well-intentioned competition where every movie is trying to earn audiences’ hearts. From now on, they will always make movies with less risk and higher profit margins regardless of whether it could be a huge hit or not, because guaranteed money will always win over creative filmmaking
Yeah, no I think you are spot on in that last sentence. We, as viewers, enthusiasts and consumers can only vote with our wallets. I have spent a lot more effort trying to bring people to independent showing and movies that aren’t the highest grossing/budget films.
But while that may be true, I definitely also went and saw Oppenheimer, Barbie and across the spider-verse.
But I think the whale, tar, Banshees of Inisherin, everything everywhere all at once, triangle of Sadness - all did fairly well at the movies, and despite being far from low budget indiemovies, I think that gives me a lot of confidence that cinema is alive and thriving!
I think it has to do with how corporate and formulaic content as become.
There are fewer risks being taken, studios take what they know and refuse to learn something new.
This means that the content they produce is very generic and safe.
The rise of PG-13 killed a lot of interesting projects.
Add to that an ever evolving media market by creators, they might not be able to compete on scale yet, but it is comming.
Documentaries and video essays are really great now on youtube, I mean we have hbomberguy, wendover productions, Peter Dibble, Calum, Side Note, Barely Sociable, Map Men, Mustard, Paper Will, Retro Bytes, TheEpicNate315 and Tom Scott, just to name a few, that are producing brilliant content that in many cases is more interesting than generic post apocalyptic show 537 that just started on Netflix this week.
There are fewer risks being taken, studios take what they know and refuse to learn something new.
I used to LOVE Kdrama. Watched it exclusively for more than 10 years, mostly because it was so different than anything I could see in western media. Then it took off and Netflix got involved in production, and now it’s just the same crap just with an all-Asian cast. Kdrama is a prime example of what you’re talking about. They had a great opportunity to figure out why it was popular and learn from it. But they just can’t.
Don’t get me wrong, it was always “bad” in lots of ways, but often in ways that were easy to overlook. Because underneath the cheap production values, repetitive tropes, and outlandish framing devices, there were engaging stories about people relating to each other. (Especially around toxic masculinity. Western TV has refused to touch that since Luke raped Laura and they fell in love and got married. I wonder if we’d have as much problem with incels if we could have more realistic portrayals of what men and women put up with from each other just to get through the day. --But I digress.) They had a story arc with a definite end. Now it’s all just serial-killer murder mysteries and Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman set in Joseon.
What. Western media touches toxic masculinity regularly. Barbie and The Last Of US, One of the most successful movies and One of the most successful shows of this past year had major sub-themes about toxic masculinity.
I can’t speak to The Last of Us, but Barbie only discussed toxic masculinity at a high level, systemically, not on a personal, one-on-one level. Not in a “Her boyfriend just raped her. Does that mean he loves her or not?” sort of way. We’re all socially adept enough to sit back and say, “Of course not,” from the outside. But it’s never that easy or clear-cut from inside a relationship. THAT’s what western media won’t touch. There’s a post on the front page about a politician apologizing for joking about spiking his wife’s drink with a date-rape drug. What does that kind of relationship look like? Where is something like that explored in western media? If you can name some I’d be glad to hear it, and interested in watching.
Some of the best movies/TV I’ve seen have come out in the last 10 years. I’ve watched a lot of movies and TV too. So I always find these takes funny because y’all are ignoring the 80% shit that came out in decades past like they don’t count but the 80% shit that comes out now counts more.
Seriously. Plenty of original stories out there. Looking at laaf year’s Oscar nominees for Best Picture, there were a ton of interesting new stories being told. This year, Barbie and Killers of the Flower Moon are probably gonna get a ton of nominations. And Oppenheimer, which I was generally just OK with, but still doesn’t fit the criticisms in this thread. I’ve heard great things about some of the other likely nominees, but haven’t personally seen them.
And maybe Spiderverse or Barbie are technically established IPs, but they also show that there can be good movies told using existing IPs.
Looking solely at box office, you’ll still see that there’s interesting risk taking going on. A24 obviously deserves credit for making interesting, risky stuff.
The whole “everything is just sequels and remakes” complaint has been around for so long. The ironic thing is that it’s just as original of a critique as the movies they’re complaining about.
This is fairly easy to disprove as I can think of in say, video games, a company releasing 5-6 remakes of games they made 30 years ago. So… 30 years ago, the games they released that year were the originals. This year, it’s 6 remakes. Someone on reddit analyzed this, though it’s kind of vague as there are no units for the vertical axis. I suppose it does show proportions by year.
Quality drop resulting from devotion to “safe” and “cheap”.
I’m not sure it even is a devotion to cheap. I think a lot of major media projects now play everything so safe specifically because they’re so expensive and therefore cannot afford to fail
Which costs more, a decent writer given the time to write a good script or 70 hours of reshoots? The cost is A: to hide the skimming off the top by the studio heads. and B: because the folks calling the shots are so completely out of touch with reality.
You don’t need to invoke corruption or reshoots to explain the costs of these big-budget blockbusters though. They have thousands of people working on them, and… Yeah, hiring thousands of professionals for years of work is going to cost a fucktonne of money. It won’t necessarily make a good film, but it will definitely cost a lot.
Watch the south park special that perfectly summarised why movies are declining. Pandering means watered down no risk projects that frankly are just a bit ass for everyone.
