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Comment by lamontcg | Hacker News Reader

I feel like the mass of people are ossifying around the familiar.

People like re-watching the same stuff that they've already watched, they're comfortable these days watching reboots of the same superhero movies. They like big budgets and flashy special effects. They don't like being challenged by anything.

Even when it comes to something like online forums, something like reddit is mostly a wasteland of the same 50 or so jokes endlessly recycled, with people desperately trying to be clever, but not too clever, to hit that sweet spot of mediocrity that gains piles of "updoots".

I don't know if its always been this way and I'm just more annoyed with it lately.

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>They don't like being challenged by anything.

"Challenging" is such a bullshit term. It implies there's something meaty for your brain to chew on, but 9/10 times it's a pretentious way to write off people who don't like hamfisted righteousness that fits squarely into run-of-the-mill positions and ideas that are Hollywood-safe.

Those movies are pablum just as much as marvel franchises or 90 minutes of fart and dick jokes.

Look wider. I think you can find plenty that would be described as challenging, that is a legitimate artistic exploration or funny/dramatic/frightening in a new way. Foreign films are a relatively easy way to explore this now. If you are concerned about escaping a filter bubble of foreign directors palatable in your country, start with a country that interests you, then search for their top films by decade or their most admired directors' imdb or wiki pages.

Keep in mind that most of the foreign films that you can find with subtitles tend to be among the best films the country has ever produced, or the ones that fit their cultural climate the best.

You're not getting the direct filmgoer experience of that culture, just the best fruits, and that's perfectly fine because if you like their best you may find more in their second-best that you will also absolutely enjoy, just like in Westernized media.

Excellent point. It can be rewarding to find someone and watch all of their films, for better or worse. And then branch off from an actor, writer or production role (editor, etc) to explore more you won’t necessarily find in a listicle.

Just like books, I guess. :)

> Keep in mind that most of the foreign films that you can find with subtitles tend to be among the best films the country has ever produced, or the ones that fit their cultural climate the best.

This is really not true from what I can see. European films are routinely subtitled for other languages. (They used to be dubbed instead).

And even cheap and cheerful Bollywood and Chinese movies find a distributor and a bad translation.

Perhaps this is more of a problem on US streaming services. You do have to want to find these things, to some extent. But almost all cinema is produced with a global audience in mind.

I tend to mischievously misapply the word "Challenging" to movies I think shouldn't have been made because they expose the bigotry of their audience.

Like all the Taken movies, or A Boy And His Dog, or anything Steven Seagal made after he discovered Russian money.

> "they're comfortable these days watching reboots of the same superhero movies"

This in particular. I don't mind the odd superhero movie, but they seem wildly overrepresented in big budget movies.

It feels it's also frequently a retelling of Spiderman or Batman. I don't think I can stand another Spidey or Batman origin story, or another "...and the next villain is hinted at to be the Joker!". Occasionally there's a "superhero team" (usually the Avengers, but sometimes a more obscure team) or some other lone hero. Even with less known superheroes, the story beats and plot structure is always a familiar one.

I'm sure there are exceptions, and I'm sure my mind is playing tricks on me (as I get older, I tend to consider a "recent reboot" something that actually happened 10 years ago!), but still...

Sony literally cannot stop making spiderman movies. Part of the deal when they bought the rights from Disney in 1998 was they have to make at least one spiderman movie every 5.75 years, or the rights are forfeit. https://www.octalcomics.com/when-does-sonys-spiderman-rights...

You're saying disney hat the rights to Marvels spider-man in 1998?

Innocent mistake on OPs part I assume. Marvel sold the rights of X-men and Fantastic Four to Fox and Spider-Man to Sony. Paramount made a big mistake not doing anything except being the distributor for set periods of time.

Batman currently is the only profitable DC franchise...

For example there was an article making rounds about how of the Top40 most sold DC comics recently, Batman is in 37 of them.

Basically, Batman sells, other DC properties, not so much. Even Superman is struggling.

I have no idea why is that, but I suspect that is because most DC characters require too much skill to write well (for example superman is literally invincible and indestructible, the only conflict you can have in his stories are psychological, ethical, etc... ones. But instead crappier writers kept relying on the stupid kryptonite, because that is the only way to force Superman to have a not-boring action sequence if there are no psychological, ethical, sociological, etc... restraints).

Interesting.

I liked Watchmen's take on a Superman-like character. Morally gray stuff like Dr. Manhattan being used to win the Vietnam War (as an analogue of nuclear weapons) and him becoming so powerful he becomes detached from mankind. Why would Superman care about us, when we are like ants to him?

There's also Red Son, a truly interesting take on... commie Superman.

But there's so many times you can tell those stories, I guess. Superman is a really boring character.

I think it has always been this way. I worked in a video rental store in the 90's, and every movie was either a military story (Vietnam: bad, Russians: bad, current US military: good), courtroom drama, divorce drama, or high school / college comedy. A few decent psychological thrillers and campy horror flicks too. Basically a never-ending stream of the same movie with different actors. Hollywood has never been accused of being creative or daring.

At least in the 90's, most movies were around 90 minutes. Nowadays, if it's less than 2.5 hours, it's a minor miracle.

All that said, I'm still a sucker for mindless entertainment. Even if movie night has become a bladder endurance contest.

I think the '90s had a bit more variety than the '10s and (for now) '20s. E.g. we seem to have lost good legal procedurals, thrillers, weird fiction, and "small scale" sci-fi.

Fo example, what are the'10s equivalents of "A Few Good Men", "Seven", "Dark City" and "The 13th Floor"?

There is _some_ stuff, but less than before, replaced by a massive amount of super hero movies or long-running franchises.

As a support clue, I invite you to consider the winners of the MTV Movie Awards, which are more "popular" than other Awards:

   92 Terminator 2: Judgment Day
   93 A Few Good Men
   94 Menace II Society
   95 Pulp Fiction
   96 Seven
   97 Scream
   98 Titanic
   99 There's Something About Mary
   00 The Matrix (bonus: not 90s)

compare with the 10s

   10 The Twilight Saga: New Moon
   11 The Twilight Saga: Eclipse
   12 The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1
   13 Marvel's The Avengers
   14 The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
   15 The Fault In Our Stars
   16 Star Wars: The Force Awakens
   17 Beauty and the Beast
   18 Black Panther
   19 Avengers: Endgame

I have the feeling most "risky" movies, for lack of a better word, have moved to streaming services.

The 90s also coincides with the end of the theater business. It trickled into the 00s a bit, but not by much.

You could have a first run movie in a movie theater that cost less than a few millions to make, and it had a shot of finding an audience. Movies could hang around for more than a couple of weeks because it didn't cost three digits to take a family to the theater and have a box of popcorn.

Now, if the movie doesn't make $900 billion by the end of the opening credits, it's yanked. Movie makers can't compete with major studios with tent pole IP for screen space, so they've taken their talents to streaming services like Neflix, or even YouTube.

There's also a communal aspect of movies in the US that's gone. Cultural touchstones aren't made in the movie theater anymore. It's all divided and subdivided by algorithms so the geeks and jocks (or greasers and socs, or Jets and Sharks) never have to mingle unless they make an effort. These days you can mix in a constant stream of ethnic and racial grievances about who is represented or not, or how much, or all the other social justice palaver that makes our current world so very lovely and livable.

> At least in the 90's, most movies were around 90 minutes. Nowadays, if it's less than 2.5 hours, it's a minor miracle.

I didn't even notice this inflation in movie length until I went back to try to watch older 90 minute movies. They feel short now, almost unfulfilling. Gladiator (2000) at 2h35m feels like the right pace.

I think after Game of Thrones (ex the last 2 seasons), I'm used to more drawn out scenes and development

I think it has more to do with directors not planning effectively for runtime and no longer being constrained by the cost of shooting on film.

My theory is that: You make a massively appealing thing by removing what people don’t like, not by adding something they do. The truly mass market media is devoid of substance because of that.

Hence why I feel that the most interesting things are those which are polarizing.

> "Hence why I feel that the most interesting things are those which are polarizing."

I strongly agree with this. To me it's impossible for something characterful and powerful not to generate equally strong dislikes. The only way absolutely everyone will like a movie is if it's so bland and inoffensive it cannot motivate anyone enough to dislike it.

I frequently enjoy "weird" movies that audiences tend not to like. But there have been plenty of movies that audiences and critics both enjoy despite a lack of high-brow or polarizing content. I'm thinking of (e.g.) The Godfather, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, The Sound of Music, Contact, Disney's animated Beauty and the Beast, Jurassic Park, Terminator 2, Alien, the original Ghostbusters, most Pixar movies...

I feel like there is something pretty blah about most big-budget movies today, but I don't think that it can be explained by saying that filmmakers are progressively removing polarizing elements. Now that I consider it, most big-budget action movies in the past were blah too. The action movies that first come to mind are the ones that I have enjoyed enough to re-watch, but the 1990s had plenty of blah action movies. Maybe the problem is just too many big-budget action movies.

I think critics always value novelty more than the average person. It makes sense. They probably watch so many movies that anything derivative gets old fast. If I've seen the same trope ten times any critic has probably seen it a hundred times, and it's going to bother them in a way it doesn't bother me.

Maybe that is why they prescreen with the general public not critics (also GP will do it for free, for the movie ticket and the bragging rights)

I find weird how is always assumed the popular movies or shows are "for stupid" and "bland".

What has happened recently? Is that "popular" movies/shows ARE much better and in MORE quantity than before.

Just tackling the usual suspect (Marvel), it pretty clear that the bar is raised from the past.

And then, the "artsy" movie/show has a greater problem to be above the median, because the median is higher.

And to bot: the blockbusters of today is ALSO more fun!

When it comes to movies, I think it's because high concept stuff gets focus grouped to the point where it is recognizable for average audiences.

Many movies you can see there is a grain of some great idea for something new or interesting, but you can almost see exactly where studio execs said "no that's too complicated dumb it down for the audience"

And the weird indie auteur stuff is almost universally horror films these days it seems. Which means I personally am super not interested.

    I don't know who needs to hear this
    X is fine until it's not
    kick the can down the road
    in the tank for
    let's normalize Y
    Is it just me or 
    Anyone with an opinion other than mine about trans is transphobic
    I'm calling you out

Ugh, that's just off the top of my head. I'm having a hard time with it as well. My theory is "monkey see, monkey do" is actually true and people learn how to communicate in groups by mimicing others.

> They don't like being challenged by anything

I got in trouble yesterday on Twitter after making a simple suggestion about video techniques, got called a douche, all their friends jumped on me and I got blocked. It was bizarre. Afterwards I came up with this:

Ignorant people will attack and ignore you if you try to give them information they lack. That's why they're ignorant. From Latin ignorantia "want of knowledge". Ignoration (1832) has been used in the sense "act of ignoring."

I'm abandoning social media more and more these days because so few people have the ability to think critically. It's mostly emotional reasoning and it's the same old tropes over and over again, endlessly.

I get the sense that it's cyclical. In rock music, there was the stadium rock of the 80s that gave way to more punk influenced music in the early 90s, which became fairly commercial and same-y by the time the 00s arrived.

There's probably already some movement in film that is new and different that most people don't know about, but 20 years ago everybody will claim to have already been into "back in '22."

I am sure that is also true, but on the other extreme I use IMDB ratings to suggest new movies to myself as within the genres I can watch (i.e. anything where the character doesn't wear a cape and doesn't lecture me about social justice), I find a high correlation between my taste and imdb ratings (and low correlation with most film critics).

A few examples of recent movies that I would have never thought watching but came my way thanks to imbd ratings:

Donny's Bar Mitzvah (too vulgar for its own sake, but very funny)

Last Night in Soho (nice british movie about London of the 60s)

Never look away (biopic of some german painter I never heard of)

>Last Night in Soho (nice british movie about London of the 60s)

Someone else mentioning my favorite director and best movie of 2021?

Sir you have just made my day.

Used to work, not so sure now. 7.5+ rating and <10k votes. That filters out the Marvels.

Mining high ratings <1K votes yields a lot of gems as long as you don’t hate subtitles.

"These Days" in particular('Rona Season), I feel like a lot is/has been getting produced to keep up with increased demand. More people spending time indoors, means more people sitting on the couch looking for things to watch.

From this, I think it's safe to assume that the lowest common denominator is growing fastest. Why put in original thought when you can use an internal plot-point checklist or AI/ML to guess at what the focus groups would say anyways?

It's not like the big production companies wouldn't move towards that model on their own.

Just as a tangent: let's start with the AI/ML produced movies already. I honestly think they would be hilarious

I feel like AI/ML and some pre-rigged models could be used to build a web-hosted sitcom. It would take a lot of technical work, and a lot of writing chops to make it watchable, but it could be done.

Look at Space Ghost: Coast to Coast, a show that was made by reusing old animations. If someone writes a script (use humans for now), then the AI/ML can stitch together the animation.

Once there's a corpus of material, start letting the AI determine plot points, and have humans vet and write it. Over time, let the AI take more and more control over the direction of the show, making sure to introduce new characters or events as needed.

It is just a short but "Today is spaceship day" is weirdly hilarious.

Yes this is what I want

What beauty, thank you

> that sweet spot of mediocrity that gains piles of "updoots"

Being truly excellent does not mean maximizing popularity. It’s a trap. But it also means a lot of smart people learn this early and can’t deal with modern self-marketing. I think this dynamic negatively affects culture. The solution, I think, is smaller communities.

How about 2000ish people?

Add more and people start seeing each other as strangers instead of neighbors (IMO).

> People like re-watching the same stuff that they've already watched, they're comfortable these days watching reboots of the same superhero movies. They like big budgets and flashy special effects. They don't like being challenged by anything.

Weird, why would mass of people try to escape reality instead of watching more documentaries and getting inspired to change the world for better? This truly is a conundrum.

What could be the common denominator, causing the mental health crisis, mishandled epidemic, ecological crisis, political crisis and economical crisis all at the same time? Shouldn't we be all like seeing it like every day?

It surely wouldn't be something trivial. Like a constant stress from universal competition. /irony

I don’t think the OP was suggesting more documentaries, just more varied drama. It’s indisputable that we’re watching the same superheroes get rebooted in a way we previously weren’t.

“ Weird, why would mass of people try to escape reality instead of watching more documentaries and getting inspired to change the world for better? This truly is a conundrum.”

it’s more that this shit gets shoved down people’s throats intentionally because it’s a way to prevent people from organizing to improve their lives and stop being exploited. if all anyone has ever seen is capeshit, they’re going to be less mentally capable to deal with the complexity of real life. same reason why china bans blood in video games: so you don’t have a language to even express what is happening to you, so you can’t even start to do anything about it. think about why the movie idiocracy got shat on. they didn’t market the movie bc they wanted it to fail bc they don’t want people to see it bc they don’t want them to be self aware bc they want them to be stupid because it’s easier to control people that way. it’s the same reason why the NPC meme was banned from twitter: because it’s too accurate and too problematic for the people who know all to well how accurate it is and whose full time job is manipulating braindead npc-like morons that use twitter.

I thought the reboots were in order to retain property rights, and that with 2-3 years between reboots aimed at teens, there are a new batch of teens. So it seems like a win-win: renew property rights and lure in the new batch of teens.

That's specifically true only for Spiderman I think. Reportedly[1] Sony loses the rights if they go too long without producing a Spiderman film.

1: This is treated as fact in many places, but was very hard for me to source. The most definitive statement I could find was contemporary with the MGM/Sony dispute being resolved:

> The Marvel-Sony contract requires the studio to begin production of a Spider-Man feature quickly; the actual deadline could not be obtained. It also places Columbia on a short leash in scheduling sequels, requiring in some cases that financing for a sequel be arranged within months of the release of the previous feature[2].

2: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-mar-02-fi-13115...

You're writing this just as "Everything Everywhere All at Once" is doing awesome in theatres.

Perhaps you are simply getting older.

You’ve already read the “fifty or so jokes.” And, you’ve already had your fill of big-budget special effects. It now seems tiresome and dull…

In short, perhaps you are just becoming a grumpy old man. ;)

removed

Appreciate the time you took to type it out!

Can I TL;DR this into "shhhh.... Let people have fun."?

If you never engage with anything that’s bizarre, intellectual, or can be more polarizing to the audience then you’re never really stressed out by the tension of learning or confronting new ideas. It has always been the case that humans select for comfort, and that when something is commonly adopted they’ll make it simpler, more streamlined and less exciting.

Movies, the internet, television, video games, and then whatever technological terror we can conceive of next will also subsume to the same fate.

Personally I believe it’s because that Intelligence at extremes leads to a fixed or absolute worldview, where ideas are somewhat crystallized and remain fixed, changed only by the most drastic personal occurrences. Intelligence in the middle of the bell curve is more related to shared experience rather than personal experience, and as such, having a collective experience of the unknown actually does and can change both the personality and mind state of the persons consuming the media. (They’ll watch James Bond and feel like a secret agent) because merely having the sensory experience is intellectually the same as being the other person. I suppose it’s an inability to filter or perceive which experiences come from the self vs. the world, which either one would need to be stupid and not care about the world (left side of the bell curve) or considers the world from a perspective of being in relationship to the self.

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