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Box Office 2014: Moviegoing Hits Two-Decade Low
mrspoonsi writes The number of people going to the movies in 2014 in North America slipped to its lowest level in two decades. According to preliminary estimates, roughly 1.26 billion consumers purchased cinema tickets between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31. That's the lowest number since 1.21 billion in 1995. Year-over-year, attendance looks to be off 6 percent from 2013, when admissions clocked in at 1.34 billion. Admissions have fluctuated dramatically over the years, and particularly since the advent of modern-day 3D, which can skew the average ticket price. Movie going in North America hit an all-time high in 2002, when 1.57 billion consumers lined up, thanks in part to Spider-Man, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
less than $30 i can buy a blu ray with a digital copy redeemable on itunes or ultraviolet
vs
$30 to see a movie once in a crowded theater and with crappy 3D unless i'm lucky enough to get a middle seat and then it's a big PITA to go to the bathroom after drinking a gallon of coke in the first hour
When you keep releasing a slew of poorly written movies, yet continue to demand unreasonable fees, this is the result. People aren't willing to shell out the bucks to see a B grade movie. It's just not worth it anymore.
I'm not some movie-snob either. Most of the movies released have no replay-ability or just left a bad taste in ones mouth (Ender's Game).
I can't really speak for the US but I imagine we get most of their movies in the UK too and I haven't seen much worth going to see in the last 12 months. Cinema tickets are expensive and with modern big-ass TVs and pretty decent home surround-sound systems I see little point in going out to watch a movie.
So movie attendance was at its peak at the height of easy money and is in a local 20-year valley at the bottom of a 60-year workforce participation chart.
Therefore, it must be the Pirate Bay's fault. Q.E.D.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I don't go out to movies because of noise.
I'm sick of hearing people yelling at the TV, parents who won't take the screaming kid out, etc. No thanks, I'll watch it at home on my 60 inch TV with 7.1 sound.
No, it can't be. It can't be that going to the movies has become some endeavor you have to financially plan before setting out on it (with parking, food and all you'd be lucky to get out below 20 bucks per person). Let alone that people have less money in a depression as well and movies is one of the FIRST things to cut back at (seriously, if your choice is to eat tomorrow or to see a movie tonight...). It can't be that we don't want to "enjoy" our movie in the presence of people who grew up in a barn. It can't be that we get headaches from the "invisible" flickering and whatnot introduced to keep us from using our cellphones to record the movie. It can't be that the script of the average movie fits on a legal page and the renarration of the content fits easily on a post-it.
It must be due to sharing platforms. Yeah, that's why.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
1. Stop producing part 4,5,6 movies. How about something ORIGINAL 2. CGI & special effects won't negate a POOR SCRIPT. 3. Why would I want to pay that much in a theater (or theatre) for something I can watch on Netflix, Hulu, Redbox a month or two later for almost nothing. 4. With the advent of home theaters (or theatres), I can download/buy/torrent/rent the movie, pop my own popcorn, drink whatever I want, not have to drive to see it. Maybe if the movie "industry" would try to fix 1 & 2, more people would go to see what they produce.
I stopped going to the cinema because of people talking to their mates (usually in any language but English) either because they were bored or couldn't understand what was going on. The second reason was people checking Facebook or something on their phone and causing a distraction.
That said, some movies simply don't work as well on the small screen. I watched Guardians Of The Galaxy a couple of days ago and wished I'd watched it in the cinema instead. The climatic battle at the end didn't feel as epic as it should have.
Provided it gets good reviews, I'll watch the new Star Wars film in the cinema, but as for everything else, I'll rent it off whatever streaming service hosts it.
Summation 2
No I think it has to do more with the shitty overpriced movies.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
In the various documentaries I have seen regarding the First Great Depression, the movies were regarded as an inexpensive form of entertainment. Admission for a nickel ($.05). Granted, those were the days before television, so if you wanted to watch something, you had to go to the theaters. During the Second Great Depression, folks can stay at home to get a similar level of entertainment.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
Don't forget the rude people in the crowd who can't pull themselves away from their smartphones or keep their mouth shut.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
These last few of years I was signed up for Lovefilm (DVD Delivery) and then Netflix. After a while the convenience was beat by the limited offering and the annoyance of Netflix UK trying quite hard to hide away what's available and what films will be on in the future. Last month, for the first time in years I watched 3 movies at the cinema and this year I'll sign up for a Cineworld £16/month subscription. There's a couple of months in 2015 that won't have very appealing releases but from the list I saw so far, there will be 2 worthwhile films every month, plus those that I will watch now and wouldn't if I had to pay extra. Yes, there will be road traffic to get there and noise from others eating popcorn but I'll be watching current films.
A loaf of bread cost 5-10 cents during the depression, so 5 cents for a movie ticket was inexpensive. If movie tickets still cost the same as a loaf of bread today, theater attendance rates would be much better.
Why would I go to the theater?
Gee, let's see ... I can go to a place where my feet stick to the floor, where I have limited leg room, and the annoying teenager in front of me is texting the whole time.
Or I can buy the Blu Ray, watch it in the comfort of my own basement, which has a reasonable size screen, surround sound, recliners, and the availability of beer.
The home theater experience is now much better in a lot of ways. I used to only go to watch the really big block buster films ... now I just wait 3-4 months until I can buy it and watch it at home. By the time you buy the tickets and the over-priced concession food ... it's not even cost effective any more.
Watching a movie in the cinema these days is no longer an enjoyable experience. Precisely because it isn't as comfortable and under my control as in my own home.
Nobody should be surprised at this ... because in the last 10 years almost everybody has a big screen TV and surround sound. Precisely because the cinema experience is expensive and can be annoying.
I haven't watched a movie in the cinema in several years now, and that's unlikely to change soon.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I am frequent movie-goer, and I am not happy with a quality of service your typical movie theater offers. First, there are endless commercials - easily 15 minutes of my time wasted by pure advertising and pointless splash screens. If you add previews, this can easily end up with 40 minutes wasted. Second, food is hugely expensive and massively unhealthy. On top of that, alcohol is generally not available. Third, seats seems to be suffering from the airlines syndrome - uncomfortable and cramped.
About the only exception to this is Alamo Drafthouse Cinema. Sadly, they are not available outside of Texas.
I read somewhere that if the games industry had developed with the same protectionism as films then we wouldn't be able to buy games to play at home before they had had a 6 month exclusivity in the arcades...
People still want to see films, but forcing all films through the cinema is just backwards. The infrastructure currrently exists to release all films for home rental immediately! Big films that benefit from it will still play in cinema, but we simply don't need to push every single film through a centralised viewing venue anymore. Cinemas will still exist but they will be fewer, and for special occasions rather than the only route.
Once you've bought into the idea of watching recordings, it doesn't matter so much whether you watch them on an enormous screen in a theater or on a computer screen at home. Price and convenience then favor the computer screen.
If you want to put the "human" back in humanities, try live theater. I never used to like live theater because the only options I thought I had were productions in high schools (which are sometimes pretty good but often not as good as films) and fancy travelling productions with hundred-dollar tickets in intimidatingly fancy theaters (which are good, but hardly as casual as a movie). Then I discovered the Shakespeare Tavern in Midtown Atlanta, which is a professional group that has cheap ($20!) tickets on Thursdays. Atlanta isn't an especially cultured city overall; if we have something like this, I suspect most other cities will, too.
I've seen six distinct plays at the local theater (and rewatched all of them at least once) and films in movie theaters are no longer the same. Sure, I enjoyed Interstellar---that movie's attitude towards science would go over well on Slashdot---but it tends to use dramatic [manipulative!] music to make you care about the characters. But when you're watching a live production, you care about the characters because they're people---live people. not a hundred feet away! The exchange works both ways; the actors are more animated because they're presenting to a live audience instead of a camera. I tried watching three film versions of Twelfth Night after repeatedly watching it live; none of the film versions even came close to the live one. (Of minor note is that the theater in *my* town doesn't alter or remove anything from the original Shakespeare scripts; your town's troupe may do things differently.)
This post isn't meant as an endorsement of Shakespeare in particular so much as live theater in general. Don't assume that live theater is either too expensive or poorly-done; in Atlanta, at least, you can watch professional actors for the price of two movie tickets. I would encourage everyone to take a look at what their cities have to offer.
The last time I went to see a movie, I spent considerably more for my regular movie ticket, a popcorn, and a coke than I did for a 5th-row seat on Metallica's "And Justice For All" tour 25 years ago. There is something very wrong with that (aside from the fact that Metallica has since went to shit).
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
1. A lot of the movies that are showing are crap (and that is being kind).
2. The cost of my going to a movie and wife along with some munchies, well, I can buy the DVD in a few months for less money.
3. We can pause the movie at any time and take a break or grab some munchies (and not the over-priced crap in the theatre).
4. Did I mention most of the movies are crap?
5. We can skip the various 'ads' at the start of the movie. I want to see the movie, not pay to see advertising.
6. I don't have to put up with people talking about the 'good stuff' coming up and spoiling it for me.
7. I don't have to put up with the cell phones going off.
8. Did I mention most of the movies are crap?
We have very comfortable chairs at home and there is no line up to get food, drinks or when we go to the bathroom.
I wait a few months until the DVDs or Blue Ray versions come out. I then wait until friends and family give their feedback and then I may buy a copy, but, I usually wait a few more months and the video store discounts the movie. I have hundreds of videos, but, over 95% I have not paid more than $10 for. There are exceptions, but, they are for movies in a series that I (or my wife) love and want to see the next one quickly.
Again, did I mention most of the movies are crap?
Panic now, beat the rush!
To build off of that, from what I have read, the 2 main factors are:
1. Quality of the movies – or lack there off. If there are 10 quality movies in a year, people will go out and see 10 movies. If there are 2 quality movies, people will go out and see 2. Entertainment dollars are flexible.
2. Improved quality of home theaters, Video On Demand, and TV / cable shows. Why spend $10 to watch a romcom on the big screen when you can spend less to watch it at home. Some films demand to be seen on the big screen. Others not so much. Plus some long format TV shows are doing things that film can't do. Game of Thrones is a popular example.
For myself, I go to 2 or 3 full price films each year – and only because I think the film benefits from seeing it in IMAX, 3D, so something along those lines. I will see another 5 to 10 films at the local cheap seats theater, where my wife and I can see a movie and have pop and popcorn for under $10. And that is more of an excuse to get out of the house rather than anything else. Everything else is on the home theater.
Depends on what movies you are after, surely?
I enjoyed the final Hobbit film, but aside from that both the Alan Turing and the Stephen Hawking films were ones I would recommend to friends.
IMHO, ticket sales are tanking due to the cost of tickets and the movie going experience. I'd pretty much stopped going to see movies in the theater because I was sick of paying a lot of money for a terrible experience at my local Regal. Starting with the supposed show time, you'd get about 15-20 minutes of commercials, the MPAA PSA that accuses you of being a thief, a couple of trailers, and finally, a half hour after it was supposed to start, the movie. Then, during the movie, half the audience would be jabbering away, cell phones going off all the time, and even people shining laser pointers at the screen. And the theater wouldn't do anything to try to stop it.
Now that I have an Alamo, I'm starting to go to movies again because it's completely different. Tickets for regular showings are cheaper than the matinee showings were at Regal and the experience is FAR better. Add to that good food and drink, and it's wins all around.
End of line..
Hollywood doesn't seem to be able to come up with new stuffs
I keep hearing it over and over again, but it's just not true - It's that people don't want to go watch 'new stuffs.'
Go to http://www.rottentomatoes.com/ and look at new movies movies & new DVDs that were 'certified fresh' for 2014. Tons and tons of new stuff, all rated as good.
Lol
It still fits, especially when you consider that, instead of putting the blame where it rightly belongs (mostly folks watching movies at home via PPV/Netflix/iTMS/etc), you just know the fsckers are going to shout the "P" word and demand that BitTorrent be made illegal or somesuch.
Personally, I think it has to do with a lot of factors, even outside of the Netflix effect; chief among them is that most movies sucked pretty hard this year, with very few good ones coming out. The same old formulaic bullshit just isn't going to pull in the ducats, you know?
To top that off, I noticed something else: There are some damned good (and compelling) shows coming out of television these days. It used to be that TV had crappy SFX and production values, while the movies had the best-of-breed in SFX, acting, production, etc. Nowadays, you can rarely tell the difference in many cases - when you have masterful series coming out of the networks which have nearly the same cinematic and production quality of the studios, then why bother with whatever the studios have to offer? There's still the adverts in most cases (outside of HBO/Cinemax/etc), but there are a zillion technologies which can neatly get around that, so...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
What, you mean you don't want to see "Iron Man vs. Ant Man vs. The Fantastic Four While Spiderman Wacks Off In a Corner 2: Rise of the Who-Gives-A-Fuck"?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
In the various documentaries I have seen regarding the First Great Depression, the movies were regarded as an inexpensive form of entertainment. Admission for a nickel ($.05). Granted, those were the days before television, so if you wanted to watch something, you had to go to the theaters. During the Second Great Depression, folks can stay at home to get a similar level of entertainment.
Agreed. Back then, only the middle-class or better had radios, and TV didn't exist. Also consider that with no competition and even in good times, going to the movies used to be a massive social event. Folks would dress up in their best for a Friday-night premiere showing, much like the upper crust did when they went to the opera, ballet, etc. Also consider that back then, going to the movies was very similar to what their grandparents did when they in turn went to a vaudeville show. You went to see and be seen, as much as you went to the movie itself. It was just as important to BS in the lobby with friends and neighbors while smoking during intermission (...don't know what those were? Rent an old cinematic-length movie sometime, e.g. Dr Zhivago) as it was to see the latest bit of entertainment.
Society has changed in more ways than that now: increased societal isolation, coupled with a massive network of entertainment in all conceivable varieties being funneled into individual homes (or with the smartphone, in your pocket). Yeah, why bother going to a big, dark room with a bunch of half-mannered strangers you don't know or care about?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
In fact Alamo a few years back threw out a seemingly drunk individual for texting and turned it into a pre-movie PSA.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Actually, $0.05 in 1930 would be $0.70 today.
Even calculating from 1985 when prices were around $4/ticket inflation should have only brought them to $8.78 - the last movie ticket I bought was $19.99 to watch the Hobbit on New Years (horribly disappointing). Funny thing about it though - the audience was smaller than the $6 tickets to see It's a Wonderful Life which was nearly sold out.
My wife and I stopped going to the cinemas a year or so ago because every movie we wanted to see, there was no option within a 45 minute drive to see these movies in anything but 3D.
I'm not sure what it is and maybe it's not the same everywhere else, but on both our Cineplex Odeon and Landmark Cinemas screens at three theatres, the action on a 3D movie is blurry and not at all as enjoyably clear as the normal version. It took weeks for Guardians of the Galaxy to have a non-3D release at our closest (15 away) location and by that point all the excitement was minimized to the point where we figured we'd just wait to watch it at home since it was downgraded to a smaller cinema room with no 3D and lesser quality audio. If we have 60" TV at home and 5.1 audio, why watch the movie at the higher price for a lesser experience when I could buy the blu ray for the cost of 2 tickets?
We also have AVX options from time to time and I actually prefer this and prefer the option to pick a preferential seat but this higher cost option may not be on par with what people want to experience.
So in summary, if you want more people heading to the movies, drop all the gimmicky BS and just give people the movies or at the very least, get rid of 2 x 3D screenings and have 1 x 3D and 1 x normal big screen with good audio.
Make better movies. Yep, that's it. Imagine. Better movies. I was standing in the cold in front of a Redbox just yesterday. I've not seen a movie in months & there was still nothing that I wanted to see. Just crap movies. They even had sequels of crap movies!
Good thing there are still writers writing new good books to read. Kina makes me wonder why we still have good writers & good actors, but they can't seem to make good movies.
SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT
I think another major factor is that people no longer consume content according to the strict and narrow release windows that content producers prefer.
DVD, DVR, on-demand streaming, binge watching, etc have immunized us against the hype industry that got people to line up for the midnight showings of new blockbuster releases.
As soon as we got comfortable with "we'll see it... whenever", well, game over.
Log in or piss off.
Where I live there are 3 choices for movies: 1: Market Square. This is a 2nd run movie theater, with tickets that cost $2.50 - $3.00 per person. I typically see films here if I missed them in the first run theaters, or if I don't think the movie isn't worth full ticket price. My standards are a lot lower when I'm only spending $3. 2: Main theaters. First run. Tickets are ~ $10 per person. Your typical modern movie hell. Lots of ads, crowds, etc. It's rare that I make it to one of these theaters. I think the last time was for a special Rifftrax showing of Godzilla. 3: Sundance. First run arthouse, with a few mainstream releases. Tickets are ~ $12, but seats are reserved, and there are no ads. Also the concession stand sells good beer. Movies actually start when advertised. If I'm going to spend the money to see a movie, this is where I go. The gist of this is if you want me to go to a movie, either make the tickets much cheaper, or make the experience much better.
> The same old formulaic bullshit just isn't going to pull in the ducats, you know?
It is going to get worse. Hollywood makes more money from overseas sales than they do domestic sales. The problem with that is sophisticated concepts are very hard to translate into another languages, especially the ones that depend on cultural literacy in the original cultural. So Hollywood has, by and large, taken the easy way out - they've dumbed it down. The result is that the money goes into stupid movies that are stories built around "boobs and bombs" -- e.g. practically everything that Michael Bay has ever made -- because that language is universal.
These box-office results won't be enough to make Hollywood realize the error of their ways. They are so fucking risk-averse that instead of changing, they will double down. They will see these numbers as proof that they need to make their movies even more translation-friendly so as to chase even more foreign sales and the result will be even stupider scripts. It is a feedback loop.
The best we can hope for is that eventually they start making entirely foreign productions - a movie made in Mandarin can be dubbed in Cantonese and have a potential audience of nearly a billion without having to be dumbed down.
Also, the quality of your home theater is pretty damn good these days. When I was a kid we had a 24-inch low-def tube with two front-facing speakers. There's a huge difference in the experience between watching that little thing and seeing Jurassic Park in the theater. But today? Everybody's got a 50-inch HD flat panel and 5.1 (or better) surround. Nobody can argue the 24-inch tube was a "better experience" than the theater. But today...eh. For an awful lot of things I'd prefer to watch it at home anyway. Plus my couch is more comfortable than the theater seats, I can pause it when I need to use the bathroom, rewind if I missed something, have a beer, and popcorn costs $0.25 instead of $8.
And it's not like you have to wait that long. Used to be you had to wait a year or more after it left theaters for something to show up at Blockbuster. But these days? Biggest movie of the year was Guardians of the Galaxy. Theater release: August 21. Digital download available November 18th. Blu-ray December 9th. There isn't that feeling that, "hmmm, I'd like to see this movie, and if I don't go to the theater it's going to be a year before I can..." Today, if you miss it in theaters you'll see it at home in 3 months.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
This friend speaks my words. I found very little worthwhile to go to, with the exception of some very specialized documentaries such as 'We Were There', which is a documentary on AIDS in San Francisco in the 1980's.
Most Respectfully Yours Mark Allyn Bellingham, Washington
I'm retired and pirated movies are not worth the time it takes to download them. If I had downloaded pirated movies, the last one would have been a few years ago when something came out before it was released in theatres but with only mocked up special effects so that would have been very interesting.
But shakey cam with poor sound vs $4.25 for a comfortable seat in a mostly empty theatre on a monday night is no comparison. And certainly no match for a packed excited audience of similarly minded people for particular films (can't duplicate the emotions of the crowd).
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I loved going to theaters back when tickets were the cost of a loaf of bread. I had one growing up.
Back in Fargo, ND in the mid-to-late 1990's, there was a business owner who built the Fargo Cinema Grill. Tickets were $1.50. You went in, sat down, ordered food before movie started (or after if you arrived late), got it about 15-30 minutes into the show, and enjoyed a great meal with your movie. They served all your standard bar & grill food...pizza, burgers, fries, wings, popcorn...plus tall sodas and beer. There was plenty of space to eat, sit and relax. The community loved it, and, for a while, it was a viable business. Unfortunately, the local commercial theaters in town that were owned by CEC Theaters had some kind of monopoly rights on movie showings with the big studios and wouldn't let the CG show a film until after CEC dropped it in their theaters. CG couldn't get enough customers to watch movies in their theater when the movies were already out on DVD. They closed up shop in '99.
While they were open, we always had a reason to want to go to the theater. It was a restaurant and theater in one. In fact, when you think of it as a restaurant instead of a theater, people go out to eat all the time, so why not enjoy a movie while you eat? I wish the idea caught would have caught on with CEC, but they said once in a newspaper article, "That's just not our business model."
The kids went to the Saturday Matene, which was another big event.
Most Respectfully Yours Mark Allyn Bellingham, Washington
All that plus, when you watch at home, you see it on your schedule without waiting in line, you don't have to listen to other people talking to each other, you don't have to be disturbed by someone else's cell phone, you don't have to listen to crying babies or whining kids, you don't have to have the quiet parts in your movie interrupted by thunderous booms from the theater next door, you aren't going to get stuck behind a tall person blocking your view, no parking problems, the floor isn't all sticky.
I haven't gone to a movie in several years because the experience is so awful in every respect while at home, it is about as comfortable as can be. About the only thing that would make me want to go to a theater, would be to travel back in time to my teenager-living-at-home self who didn't really have any good make-out options. Barring that sort of technology, theaters probably ought to think of ways to make the experience of going out to the movies better than staying home, because things that are expensive and worse than the alternatives, don't have great longevity.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
There certainly have evolved some rather sad trends. Average shot length in Hollywood films has plunged to the point that some films seem more like a jumble of barely coherent vignettes. I watch a Hitchcock film from the 1950s or a Sergio Leone film, and you see these incredibly long takes. I'm thinking specifically of the final standoff at the graveyard in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, or the even more drawn out opening railway station scene from Once Upon A Time In The West. Men like Hitchcock and Leone were bold directors who made highly commercial films that challenged the viewer, and they weren't the only ones. Can you imagine The Godfather, or even moreso The Godfather II being made today?
You're right. Filmmakers, from the writers to the directors to the cinematographers to the editors and other post-production teams have become incredibly lazy, despite having budgets in some cases that would made the great filmmakers of past generations spin. A movie like Psycho, for instance, was made with Hitchcock's TV crew, and not his usual movie team. The awful remake probably cost, in adjusted dollars, ten times as much, and, apart from any other flaws, the actual quality of the filmwork was dreadful.
Good movies are still being made, some on budgets so low that a shoestring would be an improvement, but mainstream Hollywood is just turning into one homogeneous steaming pile of dreck.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I watched Seven Brides For Seven Brothers recently. What a wonderful film; the technicolor cinematography so warm, the dancing sequences, particularly the fight at the barnraising, just absolutely astonishing. No CGI needed there, just lots of rehearsal and some stunning choreography.
Is it just me or did some of those Technicolor musicals just some of the most beautiful films ever made? Even if you don't like the songs and dancing, just the look of the films is extraordinary.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
That's pretty much the premise of the article.
It's hard to put my finger on it, but something seems to be missing from that argument.
I think if you replace "Everybody" with "The people who still care to see movies in theatres", it clarifies the problem. Yes, there does appear to be an interesting trend in that demographic which concentrates opening earnings to a much narrower time window.
But... I dunno. It's like the article (and the industry as a whole) can't look much outside that narrow time window of box office revenues.
Log in or piss off.
A friend and I watch movies from the 1940s. They often have more content in 70 minutes than modern movies do in 150 minutes.
The feel is different as a result.
Modern movies like to show you something cool looking and then give you 30 seconds to react to it and play stereotypical musical chords to falsely evoke emotions and tell you how to feel. There's a lot more reaction shots and shots of people acting emotionally but not saying anything. And, of course, long pointless action scenes that might have taken 30 seconds to portray in the older movies.
The problem is-- CGI scenes don't evoke the same emotions as real scenes. I'm not impressed by a CGI version of a guy leaping 50 feet over a 1000' deep canyon while I might be very impressed with a 25' jump by Jackie Chan over a 30' drop between two buildings.
So CGI should serve the story- not try to impress you because you know it's fake so you are not impressed.
It's the difference between being impressed that a real human did something really impressive and a computer model of a real person was rendered doing something that looks impressive.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
it's just you
And millions like him, in his age group. The movies are different; the thing that stays the same is that old people have always, and will always, say that "it was better back in my day!" or even the days before they were kids.
You can call this point of view flamebait or trolling if you want, as some old mod did earlier today, but the fact is this: the stalest cliche on the planet is that old people don't like what young people are listening to or watching on a screen, whatever the size of that screen happens to be, and they can't remember that when they were young, the old people of that time didn't like what THEY were enjoying.
PS, there was plenty of crap in movies back when you were a kid too. You just don't remember it as well as you remember the good movies - because the crap was crap, and you didn't bother watching it more than once.
I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.