Hollywood's Millennial Problem | Hacker News Reader

Hollywood's Millennial Problem

theatlantic.com

29 pointsSonicSoul53 comments

> But in the last six months, the sequel strategy seems to be deflating. Several follow-ups—including Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, Zoolander 2, The Huntsman: Winter’s War, Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising, The Divergent Series: Allegiant, Barbershop: The Next Cut, and Alice Through the Looking Glass—have “disappointed or flopped outright,”

Not surprising, they're all crap films.

EDIT: but of course, Millennials get the blame.

You got there before me :)

The fact that people using the internet is a more informed might have something to play in there.

Or it might just be that Hollywood are producing crap and crap again for some unknown reason. One could argue that they should be more informed these days, using what i stated above.

Hollywood has been making crap movies for a long time. Why is the last six months special?

Even their trailers look crappy.

The Marvel Universe is wearing out, too. Avoid "Captain America - Civil War". The writers are running out of ideas. It's a heel-face turn, always a bad sign.

Now what? Movies from video games? "Warcraft" and "Angry Birds" are in theaters now. Disney did Kipling's Jungle Book, which is a CG demo reel for animal animation. We're almost to the other side of the uncanny valley. But it takes thousands of animators to drive the tools.

This article is confusing an industry with its primary distribution method. The movie industry isn't yet in trouble, it is the theater industry that is in trouble.

When people talk about the impending death of cable TV, no one equates it with the death of the television industry as a whole. This is because the future of TV has become clear with the Netflixs, Amazons, Hulus, and HBOs of the world. The question is will the movie industry follow down that path of embracing a new distribution model or will it impede progress at every turn and face a fate similar to the music industry.

Spot on. 10% of [theater-goers] buying 50% of all cinema tickets ought to be a wake-up call. If they simultaneously released to streaming services (at a palatable, yet-undetermined price point), studios could make a killing at the expense of the theater industry.

Anecdotally, as a 18-34 year-old, peer pressure and fear-of-missing-out contributes to which movies I'll go see. If I could watch them on my own time, from my house, as it's being released, I'd spend more on movies, and would be more adventurous with my movie-watching choices.

> peer pressure and fear-of-missing-out

What? It's just commercial entertainment ffs...

Culture.

Missing out on /culture/. Also if you want to avoid spoilers you can't participate in normal discussion venues because there's always going to be that one user that just can't behave.

> Culture.

The article is about big-budget Hollywood movies.

Also, you're seriously saying you avoid certain places/people out of fear of movie spoilers?

I suspect he means online. And yes, I do that, too, if it's something I'm very interested in.

I second 'culture'. Commercial entertainment can be a shared interest. If I were to completely recuse myself from commercial entertainment, my relationships with my friends would suffer.

But I have a limited budget, so I prioritize movies I think I'd like and movies I think my friends would enjoy talking about; I have less incentive (and money) to see lesser-known or less popular movies at full ticket price.

I think the issue is that no one wants the same old, formulaic, big media any more. It's funny how many of the old fixtures of the American economy develop this rent-taking attitude toward their businesses, as though they have a right to continue reaping profits simply because they were so good at doing it before. Maybe, if they actually kept pace with innovation in technology and content delivery the way that today's audience demands, they wouldn't be having this problem.

In defense of big-budget productions, look at the Marvel franchise. Those movies, which are all sequels of each other, do very well. They are massive CGI exercises but they are well written and executed. They are movies for movie fans, full of jokes and themes you have to work at understanding. Millennials may tweet hatred, but they show up at the theaters.

On the other side are horrific CGI messes like the latest Fantastic Four. Everyone knows will flop because they see the overly focused-grouped "reboot" coming. Fans tolerate new political or religious themes (Batman) but you cannot rewrite an established backstory (Catwoman) or belittle a character's cartoon origins (Ninga Turtles). The Marvel franchise does well because respects its fans.

Yes they did very well until now, but how long can this go on? Sequel after sequel after sequel... even fans are going to get tired at some point.

How long have the comic books lasted? The Avengers may have seen their time come and go, but it's a big universe.

Another related phenomenon, not the same one as is described by the article, but certainly contributing the same thing is what Patton Oswalt calls ETEWAF. [0]

ETEWAF stands for Everything That Ever Was, Available Forever. Basically, Oswalt argues that having massive easily-accessible archives of media going back decades is actually hurting the entertainment industry, because every time something new comes out, it's compared to the best of the best right away. Not only does it contribute to the "everything _must_ be part of an established franchise" attitude as described in the article, but it also hobbles new entrants in franchises by setting impossible-to-beat standards. It hurts new entrants in franchises because people treat new movies with the expectation that if it's not better than the best movie in the entire history of the franchise, it's not worth watching. And, getting back to the article's argument, it hurts non-franchise works because if something doesn't tie in to an existing decades-old pop-culture saga that everyone's archive binged on, it's not worth bothering with because it won't have the emotional connection that something in a franchise has. It's a double bind.

Another consequence is that you can't do anything unironically anymore. Every new entry into a genre has to make fun of and subvert genre tropes. They have to have characters snark "Oh, this isn't like the movies, [creature]s in the real world don't work that way!". You can't just do a straight-up action-adventure movie now because they all have to be half-comedies where the cast mocks the genre tropes as they unfold.

As much as I love being able to do huge archive binges of my favorite things, it's ultimately going to kill the ability to produce anything new. Honestly, I just want some straightforward pulpy entertainment where nobody cares about either fitting in with past material or defying past material.

[0] http://www.wired.com/2010/12/ff_angrynerd_geekculture/

If what you're making now doesn't compare favorably to the oceans of stuff already made, why make it? It made sense before video/DVD/oceans-of-zero-cost-digital-distribution to constantly make repetitive pastiche of what came before, but what does that mean when we can watch everything that came before just as easily (or more easily) as we can watch what just came out?

I think it's good that the audience for pointless new expression is increasingly limited. Why should culture spin its wheels forever, remaking Batman? [edit: even worse, earnestly remaking Batman?]

(also, I upvoted you; my disagreement with the concept isn't the aggressive kind, thanks for pointing it out.)

Gwern covered ETEWA about a year earlier than Oswalt, but with a different stance. Why should we need or want new media when we already have enough classics to keep us occupied for the rest of our lives?

http://www.gwern.net/Culture%20is%20not%20about%20Esthetics

EDIT:

Also, as of now, you're the only one with anything profound to say in here. Good job.

I think there are cultural trends that shift to and fro. Once people get sick of the self-conscious bantering in Joss Whedon Marvel superhero mega-blockbusters, they'll start embracing straight pulp adventures again. I'm hoping that the upcoming Universal Monsters cinematic universe is unironic, earnest fun.

Stop spending so much money creating movies. They sink so much money into big action packed CGI pieces of rubbish when they could make 10 movies which have a decent story and longer shelf life for the same budget. I was on a flight recently and it was fortunate to have most new releases. I had to spend 20 mins searching to find one that I thought would actually be good. It was a long flight so I watched one or two of the recent 'blockbusters' too. While slightly entertaining I will never watch them again. If you want me to buy a movie or rent it multiple times create something with a good story. We don't need anymore superhero vs superhero movies or reboots.

foreign production companies have difficulties competing with the budgets, so their strategy has always been produce big budget movies for global ticket sales.

But I dont know why it has to be mutually exclusive

> They sink so much money into big action packed CGI pieces of rubbish when they could make 10 movies which have a decent story and longer shelf life for the same budget.

10? More like 100. With high quality video, it's become cheaper than ever to make a movie; the major expense could be the talent (but instead, it's the marketing, special effects, and graft.)

As far as I can tell, the largest single cost in producing a movie is still the cast.

However, I agree with the general idea of this thread, that the cost of production is the driving force causing studios studios to play it extra safe, and make crappy movies that they think will be broadly appealing, because each one is such a gamble.

But the justification of the money that goes to the cast is marketing. You get a star to sell a particular movie.

Main problem is that Hollywood's media strategy is simply not reaching millenials anymore.

Media consumption is split 60:40 on internet<>linear TV in the relevant target group, but media buying is split 40:60, quickly falling apart further.

And where it's digital, it's still mostly old school CPM and "premium" brand traffic that's extremely inefficient and reaching just a fraction of the users. Trailers of relevant films often simply aren't reaching potential moviegoers anymore.

Disclaimer: Currently building a company fixing this for Hollywood.

>> Trailers of relevant films often simply aren't reaching potential moviegoers anymore.

Have you been to a movie theater recently? Trailers are everywhere. They make up the first 20 minutes of the movie. They are playing on screen outside. I think we movie goers are suffering from trailer fatigue.

Most of the movies I like to watch would never be made by Hollywood today. I watch AMC and TCM and Grit, pretty much all old movies from the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. I would bet that most of them were made for a million dollars, or less, frequently with the studio's stable of contracted actors. They could throw out a lot of different concepts, when every movie didn't have to make a billion dollars to break even.

That's actually true. In that era, studios would make a wide variety of movies on lower budgets, with the expectation that some would hit and some would flop. When you accept that, it's easier to bet on bold, risky movies.

The worst thing that can happen isn't that a big budget film flops; it's that the audience ceases to pay attention to what's being made at all because so little of it feels fresh and none of it blows their minds. Why spend $25 on tickets to see something that's probably mediocre at best?

Other the other hand, there are plenty of TV shows trying to be original, and nobody ever seems to stop talking about it.

Of course it helped that they forced theaters to pay for all those films if they wanted to get the latest Bogart.

Yet another issue is the actual price of a ticket at a theater.

I'm willing to spend more for something that I trust will have been made to the standards that I desire. This doesn't mean FX standards, it means a film that I can actually enjoy watching.

The current price of movie tickets means that I'm only willing to go to the theater for a really good movie. Marvel has become a brand that I associate with (in recent years) producing films that are of the archetype I expect (from the ads) when I go in, and that also have enough embellishment to the core story that I enjoy watching the film.

If it cost me 3-5 of today's dollars instead of 15 to see lesser films I might still go to some of them even if they are the usual Hollywood crap; instead of the premium product they want to trick me in to thinking they've made.

I was curious if it was simply inflation which made you perceive that a movie ticket was more expensive.

And it looks like, mainly, yes it is. Using industry data http://www.natoonline.org/data/ticket-price/, and adjusting for inflation, the average price of a movie ticket in America has not meaningfully changed in the past 50 years.

1967 (in 2016 money): 8.74

Average price in 2015: 8.51

I will say that prices appeared ot peak in the 70's, with 1.65 in 1971 being 9.75 in 2016 dollars.

I have to ask, are you just going to see a matinee, or are you signing up for prime time ULTRA 3D FX EXPERIENCE (+7$) and buying $20 in popcorn or something?

Year - Price - $2016

2015 $8.43 8.51

2010 $7.89 8.66

2000 $5.39 7.49

1990 $4.22 7.73

1980 $2.69 7.81

1971 $1.65 9.75

1967 $1.22 8.74

1958 $0.68 5.63

1948 $0.36 4.86

The price around 2000 looks accurate, however in today's dollars I'm used to a /single ticket/ being much more like 12-15 USD (depends on time and theater; approximately double if counting dollars using your inflation scaling source).

The actual validity of that scaling data can be questioned as the model used and variables it tracked can result in much different outcomes.

Source: I remember it being not difficult to see a movie for slightly over 5 USD around ~15 years ago.

When did $1 cinemas come into existence (might just be local, but I'm thinking mid-90s)? That could potentially drive down the average (in the referenced data, there is a small dip in the early 90's).

TL;DR

> The more young people’s attention is fragmented, the more expensive it is to create an audience for each film, the more desperate studios are to find franchises that birth many fruitful sequels, the more it makes sense to create fewer films and conserve production and advertising budgets for a handful of them.

Very sad...

It's also a problem of cash: when I was maybe 12 years old, a ticket cost 5€, and add another 5€ for soda and popcorn. Easily affordable, especially if you're disciplined enough to skip eating junkfood for two hours.

Now, I'm 24, and a movie ticket costs 13€ + 7€ for soda and popcorn.

If I want to go to the cinema with my girlfriend, together with public transport tickets I'm out 50€ for maybe two hours (which, thanks to the insane rents in Munich, is 1/6th of my disposable income!).

Eh, no thanks, I rather pay the same amount for Sky Entertainment (pay TV) + Netflix and my projector. Added bonus: no idiots on their cellphone, no queues, no one who farts right in front of my seat. Oh, and there's no money wasted when we decide that there are more important things to do than watching a movie ;)

The article's title is misleading in that it implies millennials are the source of the movie industry's problems. But the content of the article is correct in that there's other sources of entertainment these days that capture millennials' attention far more.

What's the article didn't mention was the role of copyright law in all these sequels. The length of time a copyright can be held on any IP has been continuously lengthened over the past 20 years, making sequels a more tenable venture for movie studios.

> The length of time a copyright can be held on any IP has been continuously lengthened over the past 20 years, making sequels a more tenable venture for movie studios.

Strictly speaking, it was lengthened once, 18 years ago, with the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act

I don't know if copyright law is really all the important. The Mickey Mouse Protection Act extended corporate ownership from 75 to 95 years, but no one is making an Iron Man movie or not based on what they think revenue for it will be in 2091, much less 2111. Economics alone means that the NPV of 2091 revenue will be ~$0.

I find much more compelling the argument that it's an attempt to de-risk an increasingly capital-intensive and high variance business.

Good correction -- shame on me for not looking up the exact times that copyright terms were extended. For some reason, I thought most of them happened in the past 20 years :P

I agree, extending copyright another 20 years is a marginal, if not a more theoretical benefit. I doubt any company thinks 50, let alone 95 years ahead.

Maybe they should make better movies, instead of endless sequels to movies made when "millennials" either weren't born yet or were too young to care.

> The problem for Hollywood isn’t that audiences are ignoring sequels. The problem for Hollywood is that audiences are ignoring everything that isn’t a sequel, adaptation, or reboot.

I prefer original films over sequels. With few exceptions most sequels I've seen were so bad that nowadays I rarely consider them.

If Hollywood think that X-Men 11 is the answer they problems beyond those mentioned in the article.

> Americans buy only four movie tickets a year [..]

Four a year? Really? Sunday matinee tickets are super cheap, I go to the movies 2-3 times a month!

I probably average less than one per year. Before Star Wars VII, I can't tell you what the last movie I saw in theaters was.

Why is that? I can't help myself, I love going to the movies. When November/December hits, and the Oscar contenders start coming out, I'm in the theater 1-2 times a week.

There's so much good stuff I can watch on Netflix and YouTube that it's not worth it to me to spend the time and effort going to a movie theater, buying a ticket, then watching a movie. Besides, I'm pretty patient, and I can usually wait until a movie I want to see is available for streaming or download.

I make exceptions for cultural phenomenons like Star Wars, where I think that there's a social advantage to being able to talk about it when everyone else is talking about it.

There is a lot wrong with movies today. I'll go with my 2 biggest gripes:

First and foremost, i want to go to the movies for entertainment. I find myself bashed over the head with liberal views. so yeah, alienating 50% of the US population, there's that.

2ndly, movies want to squeeze out money from the under age crowd. that I dont get, they dont buy a whole lot of tickets anyways, so you make a zombie movie PG 13? really?

Interesting. I haven't noticed movies bashing me over the head with liberal views, but I'm not conservative so I might just be oblivious to it. Do you have any examples?

One example is the spate of "humans are warming the globe" movies that came out a few years ago, many centering their plots around penguins and their lost habitat.

The message worked, my wife was teaching 10 year olds at the time, and those kids were literally afraid of it getting too hot to go outside for recess if they didn't recycle.

I happen to think that's a good thing, but if you're one of those conservatives who believes that yes the planet is warming but no it has nothing to do with humans, than those movies will piss you off (as it did to some of the more conservative parents in our area).

That is terrifying. Propaganda for any cause should not be that easy. This makes me even more worried about Trump.

I think the ratings are targeted there more because of advertising restrictions, rather than any real desire to get younger $$

It doesn't matter how much the under 18 crowd spend. It's whether their parents will take them to it and spend money.

Believe it or not, some under 18s actually have their own money and can buy their own tickets.

But a lot rely on mom and dad for that. Especially the under 16 crowd that somehow manage to show up at every movie I'm at. Dropped off by their parents or with their parents.

There is also the liberal/feminist influence that has women/mothers always wearing the pants or being the voice of reason in any on-screen interactions while men/dads are portrayed as bumbling incompetent fools. American movies have been like that for decades, and only American movies too.

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