Why Most Modern Movies Are Terrible

[LilCerberus]

I cut my cable package to just the local channels years ago due to inflation, so I don't know what's big, but I have noticed a few things....

Off the top of my head, no more smoking.....
That means Nick Fury & The Man With No Name are no longer allowed to chomp on their cigars & cigarillos while kicking @$$ anymore....

Another thing, is that everything needs to have a token LGBTQ....
So token, that often, the audience needs to be made aware that they're LGBTQ, with the character getting token scenes & token dialog...

[RCMerchant]

^ I have not seen that happen.
Are you just imagining this will happen?  
Do you smoke? If not, why do you care?
I smoke, pot and tobacco, and if they took Clint smoking a cigar out, gee- I would watch my old vhs, so I could watch him smoke, I guess.  But I don't see Clint making many more  movies, and I don't recall that many Nick Fury movies where he is smoking a cigar. Comic books, yes.
Is all this bulls**t that important? Who gives a f**k?

[LilCerberus]

^ I have not seen that happen.
Are you just imagining this will happen? 

No, I see it on a lot of TV shows based on comic books.........

[RCMerchant]

^ I have not seen that happen.
Are you just imagining this will happen?  

No, I see it on a lot of TV shows based on comic books.........

Well, that explains a lot.  


You said 'no". So you never seen it happen except some  superhero TV shows.
C'mon, man. You can do better than that.

[Gabriel Knight]

I cut my cable package to just the local channels years ago due to inflation, so I don't know what's big, but I have noticed a few things....

Off the top of my head, no more smoking.....
That means Nick Fury & The Man With No Name are no longer allowed to chomp on their cigars & cigarillos while kicking @$$ anymore....

Another thing, is that everything needs to have a token LGBTQ....
So token, that often, the audience needs to be made aware that they're LGBTQ, with the character getting token scenes & token dialog...

Usually in modern movies only "evil" characters smoke, if you pay attention. In my opinion, it's a rather pathetic attempt to discourage the habit, to be honest, but hey, what can you do about it.

[ralfy]

About the Disney Star Wars movies, according to this article, the franchise has made so far $1.8 billion in profits:

https://observer.com/2020/08/star-wars-gross-profit-earnings-disney-box-office/

but the studio spent $4 billion to buy the franchise.

There's another problem:

I think the budgets don't include marketing, which can reach up to $100 billion for each movie. For example, the marketing cost for the first movie was $175 billion.

Second, I think the box office receipts are halved given the cut for distributors and theater owners. There are more details here:

https://stephenfollows.com/how-movies-make-money-hollywood-blockbusters/

That means a movie has to make at least 2.5 times its production budget just to break even. And in this case the profits have to cover more of the $4 billion paid for the franchise until investors start getting a return.

In addition, there appears to be growing dissatisfaction with the franchise as seen in sales, for example, for merchandise for the sequel trilogy characters. And revenues appear to be going through a downward trend for each movie.

This might explain why they are now giving more attention to TV shows, but those appear to face similar issues. For example, I recall that for another franchise, Star Trek, Discovery costs per season as much as a Hollywood tent-pole flick, and I hear that it might be cancelled because fans are also turned off by its emphasis on "wokeness." And viewers tend to subscribe for a few dollars to binge-view one season for a month, and then unsubscribe.

One more thing: it appears that one reason why not just studios but various companies focus on it is not because they believe in the stuff but because it increases their ESG (environmental, social, and governance) scorecard, and thus allows them to attract more investors.

[jimpickens]

Very few are willing to take risks I mean if NC-17 existed in the 70's and 80's quite a few directors would've took advantage of it unlike todays directors.

[zelmo73]

Very few are willing to take risks I mean if NC-17 existed in the 70's and 80's quite a few directors would've took advantage of it unlike todays directors.

They had the X-rating back in those days. For example, Scarface (1983) was going to be an X-rated movie in its original form unless the director Brian DePalma opted to tone down or cut out the bathtub chainsaw scene along with the plethora of F-bombs used in the movie. DePalma cleaned it up a bit and resubmitted the movie to the MPAA a few times, but they still weren't satisfied with the amount of violence and cuss words in the film and retained the X-rating. Finally, DePalma just got fed up and submitted the movie to the MPAA in its original format, and for whatever reason the MPAA approved it for the R-rating that it still has today. Later on, when asked if there would ever be a "director's cut" of the film, DePalma said that the version that we got is the "director's cut" because of the whole MPAA fiasco.  

[RCMerchant]

Because they rely too much on F/X, unreal action scenes, and pretty stars instead of a solid story and good acting.

They feel like fast food. You eat the s**t, it fills you up for awhile, but not a memorable meal.

[bob]

there are modern movies which are awesome

there are older movies which are awesome

there are also modern movies which are terrible

there are also older movies which are terrible

[pacman000]

The question is what proportion of each are awesome & terrible.

And I'm not sure that question really has an answer. What is an awesome film? What makes a movie good? Dramatic conventions change over time; it's possible people who say modern movies are terrible are just pining for old conventions which most others find passé today.

[Alex]

I agree. A lot of the horror groups I am in seem to argue endlessly whether slower paced films like Hereditary and Midsummer are good or crap and the arguments can get quite heated. If you enjoy them, then watch them, if you don't like them, then don't watch 'em. I don't understand the endless debate on them.

[ralfy]

"Why Modern Movies Suck - They're Written By Children"

By Critical Drinker

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQ92cggLMx8

Some points:

In the past, writers could come up with very complex characterization, which when combined with very good dialogue led to excellent storytelling. This has been recently replaced with shouting and fighting.

Characters were also diverse but consistent. This has been replaced by characters acting like teenagers, with diversity that's only superficial.

Finally, it was mentioned briefly here but emphasized in other videos, that spectacle was used only to heighten parts of storytelling, and characterization drove action. Now, it's mostly action (and sometimes senseless) and spectacle, such that too much of both makes movies ironically banal.

The biggest tragedy about all this is that the solution to these problems is also the cheapest: work on better writing.