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Why Have Movies Been So Bad Lately?
mikesd81 asks: "Why have movies and shows been so bad lately? I find myself looking on my Video on Demand service from my cable company or flipping channels and just nothing seems to have any depth any more. But on the other hand, I happened to watch Stargate Atlantis and there was an incredible scene that just caught the emotion and emergency. So is it the directing? The writing? The acting? It seems more and more movies just aren't worth anything. Let alone paying $20 to go to a movie." Let's not forget the recent number of Hollywood remakes and the amount of "reality TV" being pumped out by the networks.
where I asked this exact question.
About Slashdot stories.
"I happened to watch Stargate Atlantis and there was an incredible scene that just caught the emotion and emergency."
After reading that, I must seriously question your ability to judge any film or video work.
It is simple, the art and passion which existed in making movies and entertaining people has been replaced by hunger for making money by thrusting whatever junk they create, called "art and entertainment", into people's throats. That is why some independent movies do well, not all but some, because only some people decide to make a movie because either they want to entertain people or just tell a story for the sake of telling a story and not "selling" a story. That is why sequels suck and will always suck.
The reason why movies suck is very simple.
In the "golden age" of movies (whenever you consider that to be) movies were made by writers, directors, and actors who considered it an art form. Today, the studios are run by people who consider it a profit-oriented business.
Sure, the studios always wanted to make money. But technology has improved and now it is extremely expensive to produce a movie to modern technological standards, so budgets have skyrocketed. No studio will take risks when they're spending $100 million MINIMUM to make a movie. Unfortunately, art is all about taking risks.
I'm just getting into filmmaking right now. (I've only made one short film, which has been in 11 film festivals so far.) The problem that I see with most films (both Hollywood and indie) is the writing. In general, the technical work in movies is the best it's ever been. Acting is competent, at worst. The problems are in story construction and other aspects of writing. If you have a bad script, it doesn't matter how good your actors or photography or special effects are. Writing has been getting steadily worse for about 40 years. It has to do, IMO, with movie execs who are ignorant and illiterate. They don't know good writing -- as the great producers of the past did.
David
Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crap.
I don't think movies are getting worse - they're just as crap as they always have been.
henry -- the human evolution news relay
Increasing seasonality.
Summertime 'popcorn' movies are usually the least fulfilling for intellectual people.
The best original stories are increasingly backended towards the time of year when studios and tabloids focus on awards.
Hollywood doesn't squeeze any new decent TV out this time of year when people are taking their kids on vacation and stuff.
In the meantime, start with the IMDB top 250 and see what you haven't.
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
Movie productions are actually investor-led enterprises, despite the fact that they are also an art form. While there are a lot of movies whose directors and actors really care about communicating an important vision or message, there are also a lot of movies that are designed solely to appeal to as many people as possible. They fill the movie with cliches and implications designed to please as many people as possible, but in appealing to everybody enough to get them to see the movie, they appeal to very few people enough to get them to actually like it.
Superman Returns is a case in point. Did you notice how that was simultaneously marketed to evangelicals with "Superman as Jesus figure" and gays with that article "Is Superman Gay?" and liberals with Lex Luthor's "bring it on" statement in the trailers? In reality the movie was none of these things, they just wanted to intrigue as many people as possible to bring them to the theaters.
Bottom line: For people trying to make the "summer blockbuster," it doesn't matter if the movie is good, as long as it sells. You make more money increasing expectations than delivering on those expectations.
This is why niche and indie movies are often better, because the primary goal of the writers, directors and actors is to present their vision. Now, I actually like a fair number of mainstream movies, but certainly not most of them.
A: Because it's a tired, cliched question/statement.
This year, like every year, has had some great movies and some bad ones. In the past year, we've had Superman Returns, Pirates of the Carribean 2, United 93, Munich, Millions, Crash, Capote, Match Point, Hustle & Flow, Batman Begins, Sin City, Walk the Line, Murderball, The Constant Gardener, A History of Violence, March of the Penguins, Wallace & Grommit...
And that's just to name a few. Is this any better than other year? No, not really. It's just that every year, there's always a lot more trashy art than good art. Any nostalgia for "back then" being better than now is just smoke and mirrors. For every Schindler's List, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Godfather Part II, you got Police Academy 6, Halloween 3, and Monster a Go-Go in those years (or shortly around it, that was just off the top of my head).
I'm sick of all these "movies/books/music/crime rates/teenagers were all better back then" arguments. Baloney. We only remember the best, and today, when every friday we get 3 new mediocre movies and every few weeks a decent one, we forget that there were also new movies every week in the 90s and 80s, and countless 8-track trash music from the 70s, and romance novels have been around since the 40s.
Have you ever heard someone say the following: "Look at this really old [thing]! It's still in great condition, whereas my new [thing] broke already! They sure don't make things like they used to..."
When you look at all the old things you have that have lasted 30 years and work great, compared to the things that break easily, you're comparing the worksmanship of the set {things that were built 30+ years ago and are still working} to {things that were built a few years ago}... of course all the older things you see around you are better-made, even if the worksmanship standards haven't actually changed over the years, because of the natural filter that they're still working, or else they wouldn't be around for you to compare.
Similarly, the set {movies I remember from more than a few years ago} will clearly be better than {movies from this year}, simply by virtue of the fact that you remember the better ones and forget the worse. Comparing today's Hollywood crap to yesterday's cream of the crop is unintentional, but it's exactly what's going on everytime someone rehashes this "story" every few months.
First off, there have ALWAYS been bad movies.
Secondly, I ran a simple python script on the IMDB's top 250 movies database and then sorted the titles by year, and then by decade.
below is a table showing the number of movies from a decade that made the IMDB's top 250 movies list.
1920s 5
1930s 15
1940s 23
1950s 39
1960s 31
1970s 25
1980s 29
1990s 41
2000s 41
As you can see, there are plenty of good movies out there. The submitter just needs to get a life.
I was thinking of converting to paganism, but where the hell can you find sacrificial virgins these days?
Did you just turn 35? It seems like movies are pitched at the demographic from teenagers to mid-thirties. By 35, you've seen every trick in the Hollywood book, so nothing seems fresh. Everything strikes you as a copy of something you've already seen.
I submit it's not that the movies have been so bad lately, but rather that your sensibilities have changed.
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SG-1 is on Season 10 right now (this weekend was the second ep of the season). I agree completely that the sunset of RDA's tenure was painful - he simply didn't take his character seriously enough most of the time, which is unfortunate because even during the start of his decline (season six), he had some stellar performances in episodes like Abyss (where he was captured by Baal) and The Changeling (although Chris Judge was really the star of that episode). RDA achieved balance during the earlier seasons, combining a great sense of humor with a knack for powerful performance, and it was a shame to see him tarnish that legacy with so many mediocre appearances just before he left.
Michael Shanks is their anchor now, and he still has the balance between humor and drama that he honed working with RDA in the earlier seasons. Of course, now he's stuck playing that balance off of Claudia Black, who, while she can give a great performance, often doesn't get the chance because her character is two steps away from comic relief. Amanda Tapping and Chris Judge are also very talented, but for some reason they don't get nearly enough chances these days to go beyond their caricatured roles of nerdy physicist and stoic warrior.
Atlantis, on the other hand, lacks plot direction. It amounts to "flail blindly against the ravages of the Wraith", without any sort of clue as to what the team's plan is or where they're going. I think this is partly due to the Wraith being a faceless horde of nobodies, while the enemies with real personality never seem to pose more than a transient threat. The acting is good (David Hewlett shows the most potential, in my opinion, but any growth his character shows always seems to disappear by the next episode), the directing is good, and the design and effects are top-notch. The writers just need to figure out where this boat is going and clue us in the tiniest bit.
Having just watched Serenity and all the episodes of Firefly I've come to the conclusion that nobody cares about entertainment that's meaningful, because if the opposite were true then Firefly would still be on TV and nobody would give a shit about American Idol.