Worst decade for movies?

[miсhel]

Is it me or during the late 00's movies (not only movies, but also music and other things, except tech.) got worse? I mean, most of the movies during 2005-2010 were/are either based on old things like toys for example (Transformers), remakes or complete rip-offs (unofficial remakes?). Not only are movies getting worse, but most current bad movies are boring. In the previous decades there were loads of bad movies, but they were at least slightly enjoyable. Even movies from the early 00's look better than most of today's movies. I still like a couple of them. I hope the things will change in the 2010's.

[Rev. Powell]

Current times almost always look bad compared to the past.  We tend to remember only the best stuff from the past and forget all the crap.  I remember growing up in my teens and 20s in the 1980s, I thought pop culture could never possibly have been any worse at any time in the past.  Culture Club, hair metal, Rambo, Miami Vice, valley girls... God, I thought the decade was Hell. Things from the 60s and 70s were so much cooler.  Now, I'm absolutely shocked to see people in their teens and 20s look back on the 1980s as a "cool" decade.  And now, with the passage of time, I'm able to see the cool things about the 80s that won't ever be repeated, especially great B-movies like RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, RE-ANIMATOR and so forth.   

Now, as for current movies, I think on balance things aren't much better or worse than they ever were.  But the environment has changed.  Hollywood is making fewer movies than before, and therefore taking less chances.  Remakes and toy adaptations are guaranteed moneymakers; there is no incentive to be original or take chances with these movies.  We also have fewer theatrical choices now; we don't have that alternative cinema that came from the grindhouses and drive-ins.  Much of the stuff that would have played there gets sent straight to DVD, where it's harder to find a common audience through word of mouth. 

There are still plenty of good and original movies being made, but you have to look harder for them.  The independents and national cinemas from outside the US are where most of the action is these days.  Heck, think of horror movies; Hollywood is only responsible for at most a dozen of the hundreds of horror movies that appear each year.  Independents and foreign cinema delivers the rest, and that's where the innovation will be.

Looking at the list I just posted of my best movies of the decade, I see 4 from outside the US, 2 independents, 2 from the larger independents (Lions Gate and Focus), and only 2 that came from major Hollywood studios.  That's 80% of the good movies coming from outside the Hollywood studio system.  Yet, studio product takes up 90-95% of the available screens. 

[JaseSF]

I agree with the 00s personally too. But Rev. does make some good points. There is great stuff still out there, you just have to search a bit harder through all the muck that Hollywood and a lot of the media/advertising tries to shove down our throats. To me, many of the best Horror films these days come from overseas. A lot of the films that get nominated for Oscars (but certainly not all) that you probably never heard of very well could be quite good too. Sometimes film festivals show and celebrate some great films that get little noticed elsewhere.

[mich3l]

Rev. Powell, I'm sorry but you're not completely right!
I will never forget how stupid was the music from the late 90's. And most late 90's movies sucked then and now they suck even more. They are just overrated crap. I mean '10 things I hate about you' is plain awful. Even 'Titanic' is nothing more than a hyped movie. The thing is the late 00's/2010 are like the late 90's/2000 - we have crappy music and crappy movies. The early 00's were good because stupid late 90's trends went away. I don't really miss the late 90's and the bland year of 2000, but I love 2001-2005. The only bad thing about those years was 9/11, everything else was better than now and the overrated 90's. In 2001 junk music like Spice Girls and Backstreet Boys was old fashioned. I think the late 90's are way overrated, because people fear to say they prefer the early 00's more. And you want know the reason why? 9/11. I don't feel bad about liking 2001 over 1995-2000 though, because it was a better year for me personally and pop culture was better. People should try to separate disasters like 9/11 and pop culture. Yeah, 9/11 was and still is a terrible thing. However, 2001 movies and music were a lot better than nowadays music and movies. In 2001 I didn't see Lady GaGa's ugly face everywhere and Miley's teeth on every TV channel. I hope that from 2011 onward things will be similar to how 2001-2005 were, except 9/11 of course. I'm talking about pop culture-wise, not about disasters. 2010 sucks because it's like 2000 - it's too similar to the second half of the previous decade.

As for the 80's, I'm 21 and I generally think the late 80's were over-the-top and the early 80's were better.

[Rev. Powell]

Eh, I can't analyze it that much.  I'd have to go through various 5 year periods and count up how much stuff I liked and how much I hated.  Were the Backstreet Boys and Spice Girls really worse than Lady Gaga and the Jonas Brothers?  When I look back over pop culture of any era, it looks to me like it shakes out about 90-95% crap and 5-10% decent stuff.  That's my story, and I'm sticking to it. 

[feiyen]

I think every era has something people don't like.  I mean after 2010s past someone else will come along and say oh the 2010s where terrible I hope 2020s will be more like the 90s. I tend to look at it as ya there are some bad stuff out there. Be it music or movies whatever you fancy, but you dig deep enough there are some diamonds in the rough. Whatever is happening in that time it may as well have influence that great thing even if most people miss it. Those who saw it have something great to remember about that yesteryear.

[Skull]

The worst decade for movies is the 1960's.

Thats when a movie storage building when up in flames and a good number of films (like London after Midnight) are forever lost.



As for finding a decade of bad movies... 2000 to 2009... Why? one word... REMAKES.

[mich3l]

In my opinion the 80's, the 90's and the 00's are alike because the earlier parts of them are better than the second part. Maybe except years like 1980, 1990 and 2000 that are transitional. So if the things repeat, the real 2010's culture will start in mid 2011. 2010 sucks because it's like 2006-2009.

[Jack]

I think that whatever time we "came of age" will always be remembered as the best.  Back in the '80s I could turn on the TV any weekend and it was a bad movie extravaganza.  If I was my current age back then, I'd probably realize that most of it was crap.  But back then it was NEW crap.  Not in the sense that it was a recent release, but in the sense that this whole world of bad movies was brand new to me.  All these genres I'd never even knew existed before. 

I think there's still quite a quantity of good stuff coming out.  I have my personal tastes, and if I search hard enough, I can find what I'm looking for.  Doing the looking is half the fun actually. 

[mich3l]

For me it's just the opposite - in the early 00's like 2001-2005  used to listen to Vh1's So 80s' because I thought that the then-current music was crap. However, since 2005, when music gradually changed I understood how good early 00's music was. It's the same situation with movies, cars and even fashion, although I'm not the most fashion-conscious person.

[Flick James]

There seems to be a lot of continuity amongst threads lately. The Clash of the Titans thread, the anti-remake thread, and this one are all complaing about the same thing. Rev. Powell's valid points aside, that says something. It says that people are tired of the crap. I just posted something in the Clash thread that I'll reitterate here. Something I don't understand is that I will hear someone tell me they are going to see a movie that they have read is bad, that they know is going to be bad, yet they're gonna go see it anyway. Then they tell me afterwards how terrible it was and to save my money. This happens more than I can possibly understand. Perhaps it is because there are no options at the local multiplex, as Rev. said. That makes some sense. I still don't get it. Even members here, who by and large strike me as above the status-quo when it comes to movie appreciation will post similar comments, when they practically announce that they know something is going to be crap but that they're going to spend their money on it anyway.

By the way, I went to high school in the 80's and I still have the same mixed appreciation now that I had for them then.

[mich3l]

Rev., I agree that Britney and the Backstreet Boys were better than Lady GaGa and The Jonas Brothers. But Britney, Jessica Simpson and the likes from the late 90's were way worse than Avril Lavigne when she was cool. I'm talking about the 'old' Avril, not the sell-out she became in the late 00's. "Complicated" is far better than "Baby One More Time" imo.

[Ozzymandias]

Ozzymandias speaks: To kind of go along with Rev's post, there is always a shake-out effect when we look back. The bad stuff falls out of the bucket while the good stuff sticks to the sides.

I've been working in my spare time on a novel that takes place in the 50's. When I go back and look at old TV listings and the movie ads in the local newspapers, I always find that the stuff with staying power had to vie for attention with stuff you never heard of.

The movies that have heavy promotion are usually films that I have never heard of. I occasionally find some of these on TCM or Fox Film. It becomes obvious why they are not fondly remembered. They are boring. Several bad remakes of 30's films were made in the 50s. The films I'm familiar with are usually at a Saturday matinee or drive-in. Also the major movies that have been remembered from that era are kind of subversive compared to what had heavy promotion.

TV suffered at that time from a practice of local stations pre-empting the network shows for syndicated shows like Dick Sinclair's Polka Party ("It is fun for the whole family") or local programs.

Ozzymandias has spoken!!!

[Psycho Circus]

80s ruled! 80s ruled, 90s sucked s**t and the 00s belong on mars man! 

[joejoeherron]

To me, if it (music, movies, fashion, ect ) came out after the mid 90's, I don't follow it. There are a few exceptions to this of course.  I suffer from head in the sand syndrome, but it works for me