Hollywood Is Cranking Out Original Movies. Audiences Aren't Showing Up.

This reporter Ben Fritz has no idea what he is talking about. It's never about the story. It's about known actors, from A to B to C, and then the genre. Then the trailer. Never about original stories.

The recent movies he is talking about are published in the dry season. And 7m box office is great for Drop, with not a single known actor. Who would go there? In these months until the summer blockbusters the studios crank out the cheap loosers and see what sticks. Not a single named title will stick. Everyone knew that before. That's why they got no budget and such a release date.

Hollywood has lost something - the ability to connect with people. In a hundred years, film and cultural studies will look back at this period with fascination. The visual art world (e.g. painting) is the avant garde of culture and we saw this decades ago by the total disconnect from normal people e.g. "I don't get it", the abandonment of beauty "that's messy", the embrace of chaos "my kid could do that" and the priority of individualised isolated views "that's weird". In this meaningless soup the political, radical and critical become a form of stability for artists and so the art becomes a way of transmitting this as it's a) a thing the art can say with some kind of authenticity and b) a thing that art can say with other artists that's in common with each other.

But is it a simply a mirror of our lives now? Are our lives like these films? Do artists just tell it how it is?

Is life meaningless, un-authentic, chaotic, not-connected, isolated, algorithmically determined, ugly, full of negative emotion and a stage for competing political messages? I think there is some truth here, modern life can feel like that but the postmodern viewpoint can actually help us in that we can see that the film makers are being subjective. Their art is the interpretation of Hollywood not the actual world. Hollywood makes bad movies because the film makers view the world as a kind of modern hell, and so, as people live their lives and see that they have love and beauty, a sense of right and wrong and family around them or at least inside them, they cannot actually connect to this view of life. In that I have hope.

Have they tried making good original movies.

Are they making original movies? Most of what I’m seeing are remakes, reboots, and yet another entry in tired old franchises that should never have gone past whatever 3. The creativity just isn’t there.

Maybe "cranking out" is the part that's failing not "original". Like this post cranking out non-news.

I'm not sure what the reporter means by "original". Does "original" now just mean something which isn't "sequels, spin-offs, and adaptations of comic books and toys" (reporter's words)? Or does original mean fresh concepts, new ideas, a different way of looking at things? I haven't watched the movies he has mentioned, only looked at the wikis, but the examples the reporter gives sure don't seem original, they seem to be running on the standard tropes found in most movies, or even worse, something an algorithm would think that people will like.

And anyway, does the reporter expect that just because something isn't a Marvel movie, people will come, watch, and like it? What gave him that impression?

I rarely go to the movies any more. Ticket prices are high even after discounts, it's basically robbery for stale popcorn, and for what? Content that is already neutered by producers, censored by the government du jour and over/underacted by actors which got there only due to nepotism? There used to be a time when I would go to watch an interesting movie alone. That time has long gone now because there's nothing interesting in the cinema - primarily because movie halls know they are dying, are too risk-averse, and in many cases are arm-twisted by distributors to show only the big-budget movies. I'd rather while away a weekend reading a good book or watching a movie or series on a streaming platform. There are plenty of those with original ideas which can be easily found.

“I don't need nonstop gun shootings, 2 1/2 hr movies that could be shown in 90 min, endless duologues, and woke lessons. I need solid movies with the right mix of action, fun, and sophistication.”

A comment I’ll repost.

> Nearly every movie released by a major studio in the past year based on an original script or a little-known book has been a box-office disappointment. Before this weekend’s flops were Warner Bros. Discovery’s “Mickey 17” and “The Alto Knights,” Paramount’s “Novocaine,” Apple’s “Fly Me to the Moon,” Amazon’s “Red One,” and the independently financed “Horizon: An American Saga Chapter 1” and “Megalopolis.”

These were all bad movies (Below 7 on IMDB), including "Drop". Most had a redeeming feature though.

The problem is multiverse that's bad still does OK, "Snow White" hopefully will make a loss but it's still pulled in $181 million so far.

2024 Box Office, hard to find an independent movie too low - https://www.boxofficemojo.com/year/world/2024/

"Juror #2" is probably the worst as a solid movie for the genre and probably Clint Eastwood's last. It was mistreated by Warner Bros.