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Comment by TheUndead96 | Hacker News Reader

I have increasingly become disinterested in CGI-heavy movies. I have taken to watching more foreign-language films, which seem to still be more interpersonal and grounded in reality. I say this as a person who would usually prefer sci-fi and fantasy over other genres, which are the genres which are historically the most heavy in CGI and VFX.

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I have increasingly become disinterested in CGI-heavy movies.

Most of the writing talent for Hollywood has moved on to writing for TV. There's more money, more scope, and they can write things that don't need to be 'spectacular' enough to get people to pay $20 to see. They have enough scope to actually build plots and give characters interesting lives rather than the 2.5 hours a film affords them. TV shows are getting better at the same pace that films are getting worse.

The problem I have with TV is that most of these stories with interesting characters drag on until they get cancelled, depriving me of my favourite part of any story: the ending. Most movies on the other hand have an ending, even if it's open.

Yeah, that’s a problem now a days.

I’ve pretty much taken to waiting for a series to end and then binge watching because too many I’ve been interested in just get canceled in the middle of the story.

Probably part of the problem since I don’t show up in the weekly viewing stats but, oh well.

The production quality of TV has exploded. The writing quality, on the other hand, has taken a notable nosedive in the last decade. A notable recent example are things like the newest Lord of the Rings show, or the Foundations series. Incredible production values hampered by awful writing. Dialogue in the last years, in particular, has been awful in 90% of TV. Basic dialogue rules (like don't say exactly what the character is thinking or feeling) are broken for the sake of expediency and simplifying for the lowest denominator. The golden age of TV was a fairly distinct moment in prestige television making where a showrunner and some writers had enormous control over the show's direction and tone. Nowadays, most shows, like most hollywood movies, have a stupid amount of producers and the writing feels like a committee of YA-book authors put together the season's scripts in a weekend. A lot of modern TV is the sausage meat in the content factory of streaming services.

TLoU, Severence, Succession all quite wonderful. Even stuff like Peacemaker. There are a lot of nuggets with great writing, it's just that is is just SO MUCH content now, that there is bound to be more crap than good stuff out there.

These are all non-episodic TV shows which have yet to conclude. I reserve judgement until they have concluded as to whether the writing will hold up. For the vast majority of these shows, writing is great for a few seasons, then nosedives because they can't figure out how to conclude it or the plot becomes an ever expanding fractal of loose ends.

The reason for this is simple. Due to the nature of how studios are run now, you gotta keep making the popular stuff until it ceases to be. Even if it was better to just leave it at one or two seasons. Everything has to be renewed to make evn more money and to offset the endless treadmill of cancelled-after-one-season garbage that Netflix and HBO etc are pumping out.

I love Succession, but I hope this 4th season is the last one.

EDIT: named the wrong season.

The upcoming Succession season is the 4th one and HBO as well as the show runners have confirmed that it will be the last and conclude.

Oh it's the 4th, not the 3rd, my bad.

Good.

>The reason for this is simple. Due to the nature of how studios are run now, you gotta keep making the popular stuff until it ceases to be. Even if it was better to just leave it at one or two seasons. Everything has to be renewed to make evn more money and to offset the endless treadmill of cancelled-after-one-season garbage that Netflix and HBO etc are pumping out.

Getting back to video games, this is what I fear about the talk of The Last of Us Part III; that story is told, move on.

The thing is, as I understand it, CGI are everywhere now, even in movies that are "grounded in reality". It saves money over building props, it can be "fixed in post", etc... Unless the film makes a statement of not using CGI, and it is often an expensive choice, you can assume there is plenty of it. Crowds, wild animals, mirrors, dust, etc... are often added digitally, because it is so much cheaper and convenient.

Edit: Here an example for the movie "Parasite" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3tfIem4ckE

Well, that's ok. Well-done CGI should be "invisible". I don't really care if the set is a set in the physical world or in a computer for as long as it looks good and doesn't fall into the uncanny valley.

It makes me think of "fury road", which I regard as one of the finest films of our generation, a stupid film, but masterfully done.

Anyway, the legend is the the film uses very little cgi, but that is not true, it is full of cgi, the masterful part is that the cgi is invisible. you can't tell it is there. and that is a sign of great cgi.

Note: the film is also full of great practical effects, which I think helps ground and make invisible the computer effects.

> one of the finest films of our generation

I agree with this, but I think that's a pretty strong condemnation of movies these days.

On the subject of foreign language films. I have a hard time watching most modern films, it is the dialog, the dialog just sounds bad (do people actually talk like this??). But I will happily watch a film in a language I don't understand.

My theory is that the dialog is just as bad if not worse in foreign films, If I could understand it I would still hate it. It is actually a case of reading rather than listening to the dialog, in consuming it it written form, rather than audio form, my brain fills in the gaps, covers up the inadequacies, the audio is only there to convey tone, I suspect that this forced quick reading covers up many sins of the spoken word.

Sometimes I am tempted to try and find foreign dubs and native subtitles for native films.

> I have a hard time watching most modern films, it is the dialog, the dialog just sounds bad

I read somewhere that the problem is the trend of actors whispering their lines or talking under their breath for dramatic effect, and that the audio has to be heavily amplified to make it audible, but in that process, fidelity is lost and so the dialog is hard to understand.

I know I'm not the only person who watches movies and TV with subtitles on these days. Watching a movie at a theater is awful because the difficult to understand audio is made worse by being in a large room.

> (do people actually talk like this??).

No.

> I read somewhere that the problem is the trend of actors whispering their lines or talking under their breath for dramatic effect

Isn't that the sort of thing the director is supposed to correct?

Most modern day blockbusters also seem to have transparently obvious CGI. All these Marvel movies aren't even trying to hide that the visuals on-screen are all CGI. The post Infinity Wars movies are particularly egregious.

There are movies like the Mission Impossible series that use plenty of CGI but most of the time you won't even catch it.

MI has the bonus that the 'meat' of the stunts are actually being performed by real people, and the CGI is dressing around it. A big draw, in my opinion. Superhero movies where the majority of the action is CGI? Eh.

Game of Thrones used tons of CGI too. But they did it right. They built out parts of the set, then did the rest in CG. This allowed them to create something which looked real(for the most part).

Problem with these Marvel "films" is there is so much CGI there's nothing left to ground them in reality, and then it looks fake no matter how many millions they poured into it.

> I have increasingly become disinterested in CGI-heavy movies.

I honestly think that CGI has ruined most movies.

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