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Comment by nickthemagicman | Hacker News Reader

Nowadays you have: superhero movies, sequels, remakes, empowerment of certain groups that aren't me, movies with a political message, or some sad dour art house movie that makes you walk out feeling bummed out about life.

Compare 1994 or 1999 movie releases to 2021.

Fight club, the matrix, forrest gump, Magnolia, office space, sixth sense, american beauty, clerks, etc.

Nowadays: the father?, Mank?, black messiah, , chicago 7?

It's not about creating magical new worlds with thought provoking ideas anymore.

Maybe I'm explaining it poorly but film seems to have gone the way of the music industry.

Commodified instead of inspired.

I LOVE going to the movies.

I just wish there was something I wanted to see.

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There’s a HN rule against complaining that HN is becoming like Reddit. This comment is in the same genre - it was better in the good ole days.

Spoiler alert - it wasn’t. You’ve cherry picked 5 movies from each era out of thousands. There’s no reason to choose these movies instead of others. While the biggest blockbusters are more likely to be remakes or sequels, there’s no shortage of interesting movies.

Just from last year, original films that weren’t remakes or sequels and blew my mind - Parasite, Knives Out, Soul, The Father, Hamilton, White Tiger.

Best part is, we’re living in a time when you have practically unlimited entertainment a few clicks away at absurdly low prices. It’s easy to find something that suits your particular niche if you just look. That wasn’t the case in previous eras where studios had to pander to the largest audience possible.

> There’s a HN rule against complaining that HN is becoming like Reddit. This comment is in the same genre - it was better in the good ole days.

So called "refiniment culture" is very much a real phenomenom, and is driven by the wave of data sciences injected into all categories of life: https://paulskallas.substack.com/p/refinement-culture

This is why everything seems calculated & homogenic. There is very little room for "happy accidents" today, because the data analysts will tell you how to make the biggest ROI with a given set of circumstances.

That's fascinating. Thanks for the link.

I've noticed the same phenomenon in the music industry and sports as well.

That element of unpredictability that makes things so human is lost.

Focus groups and data science instead of artistic inspiration.

Superhero movies pander to the largest audience possible.

The movies I mentioned were enjoyed by the masses despite being unique creative visions.

Parasite was the same way. But it's a very rare example nowadays.

None of Office Space, Clerks, or Magnolia were enjoyed by masses upon initial release. And some that got acclaim on your list have faded a lot since then (e.g. American Beauty).

You know what was enjoyed by masses from 1999 that you left out? Star Wars Episode 1.

Check back in twenty years to see what movies from the recent past hold up, and how many of them aren't from Marvel...

You’re definitely putting on rose—colored glasses for that era:

https://www.gocomics.com/foxtrot/2001/08/28

You've picked two of the greatest years in history for mass-market cinema, and compared it to the year of Covid19....

I think the main difference has been that films that used to be almost universally relegated to B movie category - action sci-fi - have become very much mainstream, especially thanks to Marvel. The quality improved dramatically compared to 80s and 90s and 00s B movies (though of course they are far below actual good movies in terms of complexity, emotional maturity etc), and they are a sure fire way of getting good revenue. As people get tired of them, we will likely start seeing more interesting experiments

The most unfortunate direction though is that there is massive hostility in the popular culture against complexity and symbolism that is more than skin deep,for which I mostly blame the heavy handed way literature is studied in school. This is often repeated as the joke 'what the author said: the curtains were blue; what the teacher says the author meant: [long lyrical explanation of blue=sad]; what the author meant: the curtains were blue'. This obstinate refusal to look past the surface of a piece of art is a very hostile environment for mass market high art.

I think it has more to do with the audience’s propensity to be more interested in investing long term into world and relationship building.

People want more than a 2 hour connection with a story it seems like. They’d prefer to know Jon Snow for 5 years than for 3 hours.

So it isn’t that the audience is unwilling to invest into deeper stories, it’s just they don’t feel like doing it via short term relationships anymore. I’m sure Nomad Land has a point, but I think audiences are kind of over that now days.

Serial drama is the powerhouse now days, not the epic movie.

A return to the beginnings of cinemas with Republic Serials and the like.

That's a good point as well!

>> The most unfortunate direction though is that there is massive hostility in the popular culture against complexity and symbolism that is more than skin deep,for which I mostly blame the heavy handed way literature is studied in school.

As usual with art, this is a cultural thing. For example, I visit Bologna, in Italy, every summer and in the central square of the old city there's an open-air film festival where they show a different movie for free every night, I think for all three months of summer. I've sat through a couple of them and there's always a lengthy introduction to the movie by some kind of artsy person who gets up on the stage and speaks for half an hour analysing the movie's significance and going into depth in the symbolism of scenes, like the "blue=sad" thing in the joke you quote. I mean, I like artsy fartsy movies (the stuff Hollywood usually tags as "world cinema"... yeah, guess what, the rest of the world also makes movies) but the analysis can get a bit boring and I resent the attempt to direct me to look at particular details that the speaker wants me to pay attention to. I want to notice the details I notice. So much analysis just spoils the movie for me - and the same goes for any work of art. It's not that I can't find something deep in art, but I want to understand what is in my head and in my heart and not be spoon-fed whatever the artistic establishment has chosen I have to notice.

Oh, absolutely - seeing commentary before the movie seems a sure fire way to destroy the authentic emotional experience of the art. And there is absolutely also a tendency to stretch art analysis way past breaking in some academic circles, seeing symbolism in everything, psychoanalyzing the author's choices etc (Michel Foucault had a joke from one of his characters - 'read Freud enough and you'll end up believing that a penis is nothing more than a phallic symbol').

Still, in pop culture and the mass market, I think the scales are tipped well to the side I'm mentioning. One interesting case study has been the movie Annihilation - a very obviously symbollic film, but one which has often been reviewed almost exclusively in terms of it's world (what were the alien's plans? Was that the real Lena at the end?), especially if you look at places like YouTube.

Yeah, I miss the good old days of movies with no political message whatsoever such as The Matrix, Forrest Gump and American Beauty.

There were always political messages, but difference is that in the past emphasis was on story with little political message sprinkled on top. Nowadays story is just a vehicle for the politics.

Eh, depends on the lens you're looking through.

Some would say a movie with a hero named Captain America who is literally wearing a flag is clearly political - even if in terms of plot and message the film is disneyfied and chinese-film-censor-approved.

Lots of iceberg above the water, very little below.

In comparison, Full Metal Jacket doesn't have a hero dressed in a flag - but oooooh boy does it have a message about the experience and nature of war.

Yeah, let's see... superheroes... political...

There was an early superhero who became popular by halting an execution, beating up a man who was disciplining his wife, and terrorizing a corrupt US Senator. In the next few books, he would force an arms dealer to visit a warzone endangered by his weapons and force a mine operator who operated a mine without proper safety precautions to be subjected to a mine collapse. Hell, he even fought against gentrification, which gets him hunted by the military and the police.

The superhero in question?

Superman.

Some people might call it "political."

Others might call it "life."

Siegel and Schuster created a character to fight for the common man, and they used fantastic life experiences in the beginning instead of creating monsters and ghouls to fight. The first super-villain in the book didn't get introduced until year 2.

Little Nemo might have been an acid trip, but Superman at his start was a political power fantasy about helping the little guy.

Captain America is generally about the conflict between patriotism and government loyalty. For a superhero movie, I'd say it's more thematically interesting than most. Government != political though.

I had to analyse Forest gump in my english class. Hell yeah, there is a lot of politcal message in it.

Or better older days that oscar nominated films came straight out of state propaganda offices, eg. Days of Glory, starring Gregory Peck https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036748/ that whitewashes Stalinism because we had to win the war and the Soviets were allies.

I prefer that my propoganda have no whitewashing, and star real American men such as John Wayne:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Green_Berets_(film)

I'm going to assume this was sarcasm.

I honestly don't understand this current hang up on things being 'political'. The movies are largely going to be a reflection of the world we live in at that point in time, tapping into the collective consciousness of the moment.

Things feel more turbulent now, for many people, than in the 90s. Therefore we don't have 90's or early 2000s style movies about boring life or other inane things. Office Space would be a different film if it was written now, and Dude Where's My Car probably wouldn't even exist.

Lots of films were political about Vietnam during that period of time.

Lots of films were political about the war in Iraq, arguably too heavily in the US' favour to keep that support drummed up, after 9/11 happened.

Now it's about things like representation of minorities, nationalism, right wing threats, and so on, and I suppose "it's political" is another way of saying you're against the politics the movie chooses to explore, or represent.

To that end, it's only political if you disagree with it, and that lines up with me feeling that 'political' is being used as a pejorative.

(you as in anyone, not specifically you, the parent)

I feel the same way, but isn't it just us getting old?

Perhaps I merely think RoboCop was better than Superhero Movie #35 because they both target 14-year-olds, and I was only 14 for the first one.

RoboCop was a satirical criticism of consumer capitalism and government corruption. It was steeped in politics.

But in a clever, slightly subtle way. That's the difference between what we have nowadays.

When will we finally get the robocop statue?

You're 100% right. The only thing I'll say is that there are still movies made worth seeing, but you have to look more carefully for them. Without a doubt, most of the box office hits and many of the award winners are overhyped, bland and not worth seeing.

Yeah, movies nowadays largely belong to two groups, with not much in between: (1) the brainless mass-market type (comic/video game adaptation, remake etc.) which (hopefully) make money, but don't stand a chance at the Oscars (except for rare exceptions like 2019's "Joker"), and (2) the "arthouse" type, which feel like an application for an Oscar nomination, but are not really commercially successful.

I agree with your two categories.

Everything in the art house world is like a dour sad soap opera nowadays jamming the problems of the world in your face for 2 hours.

Look at most of the nominees this year. They just looked like sad bleak soap opera type movies that I'm going to walk out of feeling bummed out.

Wasn't Joker supposed to be arthouse? Like a modern version of Taxi Driver.

Some years are better than others. Of course 2021 was going to be shitty, have you been living under a rock and not heard of covid?

2019 was a great year for movies for example.

2019 remakes or sequels: Lion King, Spider Man, Jumanji, Frozen, Avengers, Toy Story, Aladdin, Dr Sleep, Godzilla, Terminator, John Wick, Zombieland.

There were a few good movies in 2019 like every year.

Hollywood overall has become extremely derivative and market focused.

If you went back twenty years one could also compile a similar list (not necessarily remakes, but something of a similarly low quality). Pretty clear you just have an axe to grind.

Your claim is false.

The Wikipedia article for 1999 in film is there for all to see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_in_film#1999_Wide-release...

Between The King and I (Disney animated), Baby Geniuses, Doug's 1st Movie, 10 Things I Hate About You, Wing Commander, The Rage: Carrie 2, My Favorite Martian, and Office Space, I see plenty of sequels, low-effort trash, and remakes. And that's just stuff that came out in the first three months of the year.

edit: We got a remake of Wild Wild West, a remake of Tarzan, a sequel to Austin Powers, a sequel to The Brave Little Toaster, a prequel to Star Wars, and our second Shakespear adapation of the year in months 4-6.

double edit: In 7-9, we got another Muppet movie, an Inspector Gadget remake, The Haunting and The Thomas Crown Affair were both remakes, a Universal Soldier sequel, and a Dudley Do-Right remake.

I have no interest in continuing to analyze this list, thing were just as bad twenty years ago

I appreciate you looking into this and maybe I stand corrected.

This deserves further discussion for sure.

I'll do it at some point in the future on a blog post and will link it here.

Another interesting measure is studio funding of remakes and sequels (adjusted for inflation or as a percentage of total Hollywood's production spending) but that starts getting into blog post territory.

Up until the past decade or so there was always something that was interesting at the movies.

Not so much anymore.

<dander up> Wait, which of sequel, low-effort trash, or remake are you calling Office Space?

Arguably a sequel to the Milton cartoon shorts.

It's a remake or a sequel, depending on how you wanna count that sort of thing (and, imo, it's not very good)

I don't see how it's either. "Milton" was not a movie. You could call it an adaptation. As for not very good, well, de gustibus.

The original "Wild Wild West" was a TV show; there was a 1980 TV movie, but the 1999 film is neither a remake nor a sequel to that 1980 movie. I'm using pretty expansive/liberal definitions of the terms here, I admit, but I think broadly my point stands just fine.

I agree that your overall point is broadly correct, but I think that a good principle in internet discussion is to be "liberal in the evidence you accept, and conservative in the evidence you 'send'".

The overall thrust of the "there's too many sequels and remakes" argument is that recent cinema shows a staleness/creative exhaustion in the industry, which is relying on brand recognition to cover for its failings. One creator expanding on their animated shorts to make a feature film out of them (Office Space) or a filmmaker making a (relatively creative, I think) adaptation of Shakespeare (10 Things I Hate About You), doesn't really demonstrate that, IMO. Many of the other examples you cite do. Certainly people have been complaining about sequelitis in movies for as long as I can remember (30+ years).

My own impression of a big trend in film over recent decades is the decline of comedies, especially in the family comedy/romantic comedy sub-genres. But I don't have hard data on that either.

While everything you say is valid, even subtracting those two examples, that's still a hefty list of films from 1999 that fall into sequel/remake territory, much like the modern day movies that the ancestral post is complaining about.

Go look through a catalog of movies from the 90s and even late 80s, particularly 1999 which was the best year for movies by far in the history of Hollywood.

The quality has gone down substantially.

My favorite original movies of 2019: Parasite, 1917, Once upon a time in hollywood, midsommar, uncut gems, ford v. ferrari, the lighthouse, knives out, jojo rabbit, us, a number of shows that have shifted towards a streamed series format vs. traditional film

I think the film industry is alive and well.

I'd also say that dr. sleep only barely qualifies as a sequel if we're in the mood to complain about hollywood cliches.

Forrest Gump and Fight Club were deeply political. The former is deeply rooted in humanist left-wing ideology, and the latter in exploring the alienation of masculine identity in modern society.

Also, you're listing empowerment of groups other than yourself as a negative?

I must be misinterpreting that because the implication seems to be that you actually don't want to watch movies where anyone but your own demographic (I assume white male) are portrayed in a positive or empowering light. Or maybe you simply don't care for or can't empathize with such portrayals. If so fair enough, but that's your personal taste, not a failure of the movie industry as a whole.

Try mubi.com

(not affiliated)

This is great thanks!

screen writers have apparently forgotten how to write and read, so they must derive inspiration from picture books instead. I look forward to someone making a movie based on board games soon..oh wait, that was done

Movies were never about meritocracy, but somehow every now and then through competition or the stars aligning, something good came out of it.

The formula was changed, forcefully. It's very openly not about 'good' anymore, since that would be oppressive, racist and sexist. 'good' is also expensive.

Enjoy the culture that was. We will never reach the same heights. It will all die off now, deservedly. The people responsible will blame the originators of 'good', turning their shame of the comparison not into growth, as mentally well people would, but digging their heels in even further, as they have always done since, oh, let's say 1867.

Every time you complain about something not being a meritocracy, you should remember the word was invented for a book about how it’s a dumb idea that won’t work.

Which book is that?

_The rise of the Meritocracy_ by Michael Dunlop Young, according to Wikipedia.

So was the word "capitalism", that doesn't mean it's actually a dumb idea that won't work.

They were right, that’s why actually existing systems are mixed economies.

Many good films don't need to be as expensive as blockbusters because they focus on story and acting rather than explosions, special effects, and established A-list actors.

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