The Decline in Movie Making

[AnorexicBatman]

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.194270-I-paid-for-this-The-decline-in-movie-making

How many agree?

 

[Addendum]

I rarely go to the theater anymore. If I do, it's only for a couple movies if there are any I want to see.

No blame applies to me.

 

[Timstuff]

It seemed like a lot of complaining to me. And no, I did not agree with it.

 

[Apollo]

I've heard this argument many times. especially in the x-men forums and transformers forums. It's just something we have to live with. t:

I loved Citizen Kane and Avatar!

Didn't really care for The hurt locker.

Saw films and transformers 2 were garbage. I haven't seen the twilight films. since they don't interest me at all.

Its all a matter of point of view really. There are thousands of good movies already made to select from, so be thankful for them. No need to worry and fear for crappy future films. Just don't see them, and cherish the gems that have already been made.

 

[Laderlappen]

There are fantastic films today, and there has always been crappy ones. Even back in the 40's.

 

[Keyser Soze]

I always find this kind of argument rather shoddy and baseless. Have dumb, crappy movies been released in recent years? Sure. But there have also been plenty of modern classics over the past decade. And here's the big secret critics like this don't want you to know: there have ALWAYS been dumb, crappy movies.

The year Citizen Kane came out, I'm sure a whole lot of crud was also released, and has now been forgotten. The 1970s are seen as the great decade of cinematic change, but it was also the decade when Bond films were at their campiest and the Carry On series continued to be in vogue. For every classic film that has been released, there were another dozen rubbish films released that same year. But critics look back on the "good old days" with rose-tinted glasses, and they remember all the good films that have stood the test of time over the decades. They don't recall all the crap because it's been largely forgotten.

 

[Watchman]

I do agree with him on comedies and romances but filmmaking is far from dead. There are still a great amount of very talented filmmakers out there. Twenty years from now when Transformers 2 and Avatar are gathering dust for having out-of-date special effects, people will still watch something like There Will Be Blood for what it is, a great film.

I do detest test audience for having any power of an artist vision, though.

 

[:eek:]

The thing is that most movies are made for a young audience, so is it really any wonder if you feel that movies gets worse year by year when you at the same time grow older? Sure, there are too many sequels and remakes today, no doubt about it. But I think if you search hard you can find as many really good movies any year nowadays as you can any year of past decades. Remember that Hollywood releases far more movies today than they did in the past, and you definitely get more bad movies for every good movie today.

 

[BlackLantern]

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.194270-I-paid-for-this-The-decline-in-movie-making

How many agree?

I half agree...I believe there is room for both, the author of the piece seems more upset that the movies he favors don't get the attention that bigger, less intelligent films get as opposed to the films themselves

I believe if a movie is truly phenomenal (as The Hurt Locker is) it will get the attention it should

 

[baerrtt]

I recall Roger Ebert saying the exact same thing......back in 1985. Simply put unless they're crowd pleasing in some shape or form general audiences have always ignored great, genuinely risk taking films in every single decade.

If there's a problem nowadays it's that we're getting franchise overload every single damn month and not just the summer, remake/reboot overload in general and not just once in every moon as was once the case (in the 80s anyway), the romantic comedy genre which once produced genuinely great films for both sexes now generally nothing more than stereotypical 'chick flicks' which come across as genuinely insulting to women etc.

The result being that any movie that comes along nowadays that tries to be genuinely challenging dies on it's ass because the constant bombardment and erosion of all I've mentioned above helps kill the taste of the public at large.

 

[BlackLantern]

I remember seeing "Best In Show" in a damn near empty theater

 

[nite-owl]

Meh, this kind of elitist attitude has always bothered me would I like more people to see stuff like There Will Be Blood. Of course I would but I never want to tell people what they can and can't watch and plus you all know in ten twenty years time we will all be say the same thing.

 

[Commodore Schmidlapp]

That was just a bunch of baseless complaining to me. I would content that there were just as many classic films made in the last decade as any other decade, some are just too fresh to be realized as classics yet.

 

[BlackLantern]

like I said, the author seems to be more upset with the attention the big blockbusters receive, as opposed to the actual films

 

[Octoberist]

is it me, or is there an article like this every year? Yeah, there's always crap but there's also great movies out there. For example, I thought last year was a bad year for big blockbusters but a good year for the smaller films.

 

[Thundarr]

I agree that there are just as many good films being made now as there were yesteryear. There are unfortunately just as many, if not more, crap films being spewed out by Hollywood today as there were yesteryear as well. For every genuinely good piece of cinema that we get every year, there are at least ten stinkbombs that are released at the same time. Twenty years from now, nobody is going to remember the crappy movies but the good ones will stand the test of time.

The article does make a good point about Hollywood being more concerned with making profitable merchandising tie ins and such rather than making good movies that people genuinely will want to see. It reminds me of this TV commercial for a soft drink (I think it was Mountain Dew, or maybe 7-Up), where a bunch of Hollywood exectutives were discussing their next big action blockbuster. It came out in '98 or '99, shortly after that God awful Godzilla reimagining.

"So what do you have for me?"
"Giant lizards are out, giant slugs are in."
"I like it. What do we have by way of merchandising."
"Slug lunchboxes."
"I like it."
"Slug bookbags."
"I like it."
"Slug slippers."
"Slug slurpy."
"Slug on a stick"
"Slug taco. Put salt on it, and it shrinks"
"Slime slug. Throw it at the wall, and it leaves a trail of slime."
"I like it. So how's the script?"
"We don't have one yet, but we can get one hammered out by Monday."
"I like it."

Sad to say, but that's exactly what a Hollywood meeting is like in this day and age.

 

[dark_b]

the world is not perfect. and no matter how many good movies are made there is no way that everyone would like them all.

a good movie to me could be the worst movie to my friend. so who is right now?

plus this kind of articles are almost allways about hollywood blockbuster movies. blockbuster movie are made for the money.for the millions.....billions.

in europe and asia you have fantastic low budget complex and intelligent movies. in summer they of course realese simple,easy and dumb movies for the masses.

 

[Octoberist]

but I can see what Thundarr is saying because the studio system has changed over the past two decades. Look at the remakes and comic book adaptations we're getting. It's just different now.

 

[dark_b]

what i find interesting is that everytime a movie makes a lot of money and gets good reviews......then its overrated. but when a movie makes a lot of money and its dumb then noone says that its overrated.why is Avatar overrated but TF2 is not overrated?

why is it wrong that girls spend so much money on the Twilight movie? i am seriosu here. who the f... cares if they spend so much money.its their money. you think the Twilist series will change something?

 

[BlackLantern]

slug taco

ewwwwww

Thundarr does make a great point and I agree

 

[Watchman]

[YT]
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[/YT]

Where the real money from the movie is made.

 

[8wid]

Can't take any blame. I plan not to see film until they can prove their aesthetic worth to me. Plus most of the films that have this never end up becoming blockbusters like he complains about, but they make up the majority of the market still.

 

[Crook]

The only valid portion of this stupid claim is that the mainstream hits of today are largely flimsy pieces of work with no meat to the material. Compare that to Hollywood of old, the blockbusters and crowd favorites of that day were the same films critically lauded and nabbed prestigious awards. You simply do not get that these days.

Otherwise, the quality of products turned out on a yearly basis has remained the same. It's the audiences who have changed dramatically.

 

[Asteroid-Man]

Are you ****ting me?! The only reason why quotes today aren't as widely ...quoted is because a) movies today have not been out as long and b) there are more good movies now that its hard to keep track of specific quotes. Seriously, we have lots of good movies out, people just refuse to look at them. Here's my top ten list. Notice how many of those came out in the past 20 years? 8 of them. How many in the past 10 years? 6. How many in the past 5 years? 2. Seriously those are good numbers. And don't say "you haven't been exposed to older films" because I have and they're just lower down the list.

• The Lion King
• The Dark Knight
• Gladiator
• Batman Begins
• The Godfather: Part II
• Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
• The Count of Monte Cristo
• The Prestige
• The Prince of Egypt
• The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Seriously, enough of this "good 'ol days" ********. The movie industry is stronger than ever.

 

[Octoberist]

though if you want legit argument for the 'good ol days' the 1970s had the best in American film in Hollywood. They greenlit ANYTHING BACK THEN and that's the era when we have auteurs of the modern cinema came from. Ford Coppola. Scorsese. Kurbrick. Lucas. Speilberg.