The sad state of the film industry

This thread is going into ranting territory, so apologies in advance if I come across as a dickhead, but I need to get this off my chest somewhere:

Why has the movie industry turned so absolute crap?

I honestly can't remember the last time I was excited for a movie. Never has there been so little originality and variation, it's just superhero movies, silly comedies and bad popcorn flicks, with the occasional movie that tries something else/new, and gets massively overrated *cough* Gravity *cough* because the competition is just horrible in general. I'm probably just beating on a dead horse, but how did things turn this bad?

Where are the Taxi Drivers, the Blade Runners, the Aliens of this movie generation? Have we seen a movie of that quality for the last 10 years? I want those aesthetically mindblowing movies with storylines that feels larger than life. But where the hell are they?

And the big 'visionaries' like Ridley Scott has obviously just turned into a turd, and that could be said for a number of directors. And there doesn't seem to be any new ones there are particular interesting (with few exceptions of course, Paul Thomas Anderson for example).

I'm just kind of tried of everytime I go to my local cinema's website to see what movies are running, I'm always massively disappointed with the selection.... Guardians of The Galaxy, my god that shit looks silly.

The only reason this annoys me so much is because I used to have a lot of passion for movies. But that has completely disappeared for me. I Basically only watch like 2-3 movies a year at this point.

But maybe I'm just blinded by nostalgia or something... I dunno.

(good thing there are tv-series though)

Edited July 26, 2014 by Npoess

In the same vein as my response to your other post - newer movies are appealing to a different generation, just something you have to adapt or not adapt to.

Edited July 26, 2014 by M360

The movie industry has always been crap in a way, it's just that the flow of time removes the bad films and (for the most part) leaves the good ones. For example, I bet there were all kinds of turds in the flicks at the same time as Taxi Driver, but time has thankfully taken them somewhere else.

I've often though about this. Then I realised I was just getting old and jaded. We've seen most things there are to see. Movies are also becoming an outdated medium imo

Edited July 26, 2014 by Ifeelspace

In the last ten years there's been good films - District 9, A Scanner Darkly, Nymphomaniac, There Will be Blood, Persepolis, Fish Tank, The Dark Knight.. I'm sure there's more

  On 7/26/2014 at 5:54 PM, Ifeelspace said:

I've often though about this. Then I realised I was just getting old and jaded. We've seen most things there are to see. Movies are also becoming an outdated medium imo

 

This is a good point, I could easily see video games completely killing the film industry in a few decades (if that has not already happened), as nerdy as that sounds. But at least you can see the gaming industry moving forward and evolving in a lot of areas. Even though the story telling in video games are not always on par with movies, I think they're getting there (Bioshock, The Last of Us, Red Dead Redemption etc).

Edited July 26, 2014 by Npoess

Most of the movies are either adaptations, remakes or sequels. Very little original stuff and most of it isn't any good.

Drive though. Real human bean movie <3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwB5-ITG_G0

 

here at 7:45

  On 7/26/2014 at 5:58 PM, Npoess said:

 

  On 7/26/2014 at 5:54 PM, Ifeelspace said:

I've often though about this. Then I realised I was just getting old and jaded. We've seen most things there are to see. Movies are also becoming an outdated medium imo

This is a good point, I could easily see video games completely killing the film industry in a few decades (if that has not already happened), as nerdy as that sounds. But at least you can see the gaming industry moving forward and evolving in a lot of areas. Even though the story telling in video games are not always on par with movies, I think they're getting there (Bioshock, The Last of Us, Red Dead Redemption etc).

 

Hasn't the game industry already surpassed the movie industry in how many billions they make?

  On 7/26/2014 at 6:01 PM, Friendly Foil said:

Drive though. Real human bean movie <3

 

Yes, one of the few highlights in recent years.

No, it's not a generational thing. A generational thing would be to say that they don't make films like Back to the Future anymore. But Back to the Future was an irrelevant turd, the three of them.

 

You already know the answer: making a film is ludicrously expensive and there are three kinds of people who can afford it. One is big Hollywood companies who make turds. Another one is "indies", with their petty middle-class concerns (but sometimes good stuff comes out of this.) And the last one is European National Cinema Traditions which are dying nowadays and which besides their value have produced many huge embarrassments too (also the ideological agenda behind it is sometimes pretty embarrassing too: in Spain for example the NATIONAL CINEMAAAAA of the post-Franco age was a part of a larger cultural movement which had the role of creating a new country by exalting the vague post-modern social-democrat right wing of our Labour party, and deactivating revolutionary protest with a mixture of hedonism and grimness. the general message was "we're a first world country, eu eu eu maastricht maastricht, vote labour, vote labour, we're also a backwards country hey tourists torero almodovar macho macho torero tapas barcelona 92 olympics. btw, vote labour. first world backwards torero southern blood first world." at least the neoliberals that came after them gave up on cinema, because that would have been even more horrible.)

 

There is a little space where the Hitchcocks and the David Lynches live, but it's very small and has always been.

Another thing is the cultural avant-garde, besides not existing anymore, isn't concerned with cinema either, so nobody is asking for innovation or meaning there anyway.

Edited July 26, 2014 by poblequadrat

Yeah Drive was awesome. I don't buy many soundtracks but had to nab that one

  On 7/26/2014 at 6:04 PM, azatoth said:

 

  On 7/26/2014 at 5:58 PM, Npoess said:

 

  On 7/26/2014 at 5:54 PM, Ifeelspace said:

I've often though about this. Then I realised I was just getting old and jaded. We've seen most things there are to see. Movies are also becoming an outdated medium imo

This is a good point, I could easily see video games completely killing the film industry in a few decades (if that has not already happened), as nerdy as that sounds. But at least you can see the gaming industry moving forward and evolving in a lot of areas. Even though the story telling in video games are not always on par with movies, I think they're getting there (Bioshock, The Last of Us, Red Dead Redemption etc).

 

Hasn't the game industry already surpassed the movie industry in how many billions they make?

 

 

Yeah, when I think about it, that has probably been the case for some years by now.

 

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/gamesblog/2009/sep/27/videogames-hollywood

 

But as much as I like video games, I still wish the film industry would be like in its golden days, which to me is the 70's/80's, and I wasn't even born then, so maybe it's weird to say I feel nostalgia for them, but the quality just seemed so much better (even though those years probably also had a lot of mediocre crap released on regular basis).

 

 

 

In terms of movies I think that has been really good in recent years, I would say Children of Men, The Wolf of Wall Street and There Will Be Blood. So there are still good movies, but they are a rarity.

Edited July 26, 2014 by Npoess

It's probably just due to amount of films getting released is much greater so the shit to quality ratio is much worse than it used to be.

Have you seen that South Park episode 'You're Getting Old'?

It's not entirely about videogames or new media though, even television has left film in the dust at this point. It's a very odd time for the medium.

 

  On 7/26/2014 at 6:20 PM, spratters said:

It's probably just due to amount of films getting released is much greater so the shit to quality ratio is much worse than it used to be.

 

Major studios are making fewer movies every year: http://variety.com/2013/biz/news/major-film-studios-prosper-on-the-margins-1200376494/

 

Mainly because cinema attendances have been declining for a decade.

Even if modern video games have come a long way in story and narrative, it still borrows heavily from earlier literature and movies and rarely is it something truly original. The AAA games are certainly reheatings of old ideas and narratives. Indie games might have more leeway in making original stuff but both are still within the confines of it still being a video game. The interactive story games such as Dear Ester and the Stanley Parable are interesting and I think still has potential to make some interesting things. Along with VR looking like it's finally going to break through there is a lot of stuff that could change what type of media people consume in the future.

Who can blame people for watching the classics on their home setup.

 

A movie industry crash might wake them up to try more creative things

  On 7/26/2014 at 6:33 PM, M360 said:

Who can blame people for watching the classics on their home setup.

 

A movie industry crash might wake them up to try more creative things

 

Yeah, again to draw parallels to video games, that happened with them in '83, and it was totally for the better. So maybe a film industry crash wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvHcYe2sQ-I

Edited July 26, 2014 by Npoess

  On 7/26/2014 at 5:43 PM, Npoess said:

 

Why has the movie industry turned so absolute crap?

 

 

cause ppl turned into crap. when you watch like movies from the '50 and see those ppl in those movies how 'real' and hard grounded they are... can you identify that kind of ppl on the street today? that 'realness' expired in the '80. i can't remeber how many time i said for those fantastic old movies ''they're not making them like this any more'' and my gf stopped replaying ''they have none to make them for anymore'' and i can only agree with her. todays movies that ppl usually watch are blockbusters for teenagers but the problem is that today teenagers ranges from 13 to 43. i mean it's not a problem for hollywood. it's easier to make money on a shitty blockbuster movie cause it's easier to make it.

have you seen jodorovsky's dune docu? imagine if he made the movie. what could top that. something would but it would make a new standard for hollywood. and that was in the '70!!!

imagine introducing spirituality of that level in hollywood. that would change the world for ever. pop art forever! ppl would become smarter and less sheep-like. they couldnt let that happen. and that's what's going on on all levels of art for the last 30-40 yrs. persistence in the plan of how to makes us more stupid... i know that this sounds like a conspiracy theory but think about this: does art world today really represent our artistic potential? at least 20% of it?

Edited July 26, 2014 by xox

  On 7/26/2014 at 6:33 PM, M360 said:

Who can blame people for watching the classics on their home setup.

 

A movie industry crash might wake them up to try more creative things

The American film industry is crashing in slow motion, but they just continue to double down on nostalgia and comic book adaptations. I get the sense things will get worse before they continue to get worse.

  On 7/26/2014 at 6:29 PM, doublename said:

It's not entirely about videogames or new media though, even television has left film in the dust at this point. It's a very odd time for the medium.

TV has definitely changed and has offered some great stuff the last decade or so. Stuff like The Sopranos, The Wire and Breaking Bad has shown that TV is no longer just schlock and made it respectable. The long form format of a TV show allows much more meat into a story than a 2 hour movie. I couldn't either see something like the Game of Thrones working as a series of films. And the video on demand way of consuming media today has for sure helped TV.

  On 7/26/2014 at 6:26 PM, hoggy said:

Have you seen that South Park episode 'You're Getting Old'?

That's a good one.

The film industry is shit right now, and has been for awhile. There was a point at which almost every movie was a shitty chick flick, a juvenile comedy, or an over-the-top yet simultaneously mega dull action movie. But I actually think the movies are on the upswing now. They're are getting better, and here's my theory why (although admittedly it's little more than an educated guess):

 

As a medium gets easier to produce due to advancing technology, two things happen simultaneously:

1) Big budget companies stop taking monetary and creative risks in the medium because it's cheaper and safer to make the same thing over and over that they know will at least turn them a profit. And,

2) Independent productions thrive, becoming both more prevalent and higher in quality, to the point where they begin to rival the mainstream.

 

Eventually, this myopic attitude of the dominant industry bites them in the ass when average movie-goers actually stop paying for their bullshit, and independent productions start getting attention. The lines between independent and mainstream begin to blur. This forces the industry to reevaluate what it considers to be marketable, and actually start taking creative risks before the independent stuff takes over.

 

I think this definitely happened to music to a degree, with big name artists being dudes in their bedroom, to the point where someone like Macklemore can actually do something entirely independently (as much as I hate his music, I respect him for this). I think this is currently happening to films as well.

 

There's also a natural lull in any medium of art (at least from what I've seen), a cool change happens that makes good stuff, and then over time it becomes less and less original until someone else makes a change. I think this and what I described before are happening simultaneously in the film. edit: and as people have been mentioning, they also have to compete with television, which is fucking awesome right now.

Edited July 26, 2014 by gmanyo