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Comment by mc32 | Hacker News Reader

And for me, I miss some of that straightforward cinema today. Sometimes you don’t want ambiguities and meandering characters.

Everything is a blockbuster and a franchise.

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Matt Damon said that in the past studios could expect to make half of the money back in DVD sales. Now that DVDs are gone studios are a lot more concerned about funding movies that are _not_ blockbusters/franchises. Sucks!

Can you imagine a studio funding a movie like Fracture (2007) today? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UG1Lxnn8Qa8 - probably not, a movie about a genius man who murders his cheating wife and an egotistical district attorney. But the film is tremendous, can't be made today.

It becomes a 6 episode miniseries.

Exactly. Storytelling format follows the dollars which follows consumer habits. Right now all the dollar is in content made-for-Netflix and franchise movies because most people just want to watch online stuff at home nowadays.

You should hang out around small cinemas and niche festivals, you'd see everything can be and is made. There's a universe beyond studios. I just saw Cronenberg's Futur Crimes (the direct successor to Videodrome and eXistenZ) a few days ago, and Maps to the Stars yesterday. The man is as nuts as ever and he can still get his films made, it just takes producers who do it for fun and inventive financing. Films are the easiest they've ever been to make.

> Sometimes you don’t want ambiguities and meandering characters.

Or antiheroes, or love triangles, or…

You know, ketchup[1] in the right amount can do wonders but slather it everywhere and it’s the delight of a four year old, but it’s really not the way it should be experienced.

[1] pick your condiment of choice.

When a movie has a love story that doesn't involve a love-triangle or infidelity I breath a palpable sigh of relief. Realistic or not, does all romance have to involve competition or deception?

Cinema instead of being a reflection on society is more a mirror of itself. (look at Weinstein/Polanski and people like them in cinema and how they were treated until they could no more --look at their compasses).

I just watched a romance movie where the plot was one was dying of a terminal disease. I watched it because the protagonist was Feynman, otherwise I'd have turned it off because watching people die is not entertaining to me.

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