Eh, People on their phones can’t be bothered with following plot lines everything has to be telegraphed
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People are on their phones because the slop they are being served is so shallow and meaningless that they can't be bothered to pay attention to it
No, I’m pretty sure social media has seriously hurt the average person’s attention span.
The idea of sitting down and watching a two hour movie is really quite daunting when you’re used to videos that are at most 30 min and often less than one.
Whenever I watch a modern Netflix/Hulu/etc show: I'm on my phone 2 minutes into the show. Half paying attention to both.
Whenever I watch a modern BBC-ish (anything British really) show: I literally can't look away for more than 10 seconds because I will miss something crucial. If someone distracts me, I rewind the show and rewatch the last few minutes.
What's different? The Brits (at least the stuff that makes it into syndication) focus on content you're going to watch. The Americans focus on filling air between commercials.
Product placement counts as commercials for the purpose of this comparison.
This gets repeated ad nauseum, but IMHO people are short on patience, not attention.
Parents probably understand this the most: try to find an 80s movie to show to your kids, you'll have a pass at it first to properly remember what it's about, and it will painfully slow.
Not peaceful or measured, just slow. Scenes that don't need much explanation will be exposed for about for 10 min, dialogues that you digest in 2s get 2 min of lingering on.
Most movies were targeted at a public that would need a lot of time to process info, and we're not that public anymore (despite this very TFA about how writers make their dialogues dumber)
They literally do. Have you ever tried reaching out people NOT on social networks?
> The idea of sitting down and watching a two hour movie is really quite daunting when you’re used to videos that are at most 30 min and often less than one.
Average movie length is increasing every year.
I don't think the reason is "public needed time to process info", more likely both the length and the intensity (of changing sights, not of meaning) were ultimately determined by production costs. Filming two hours is more expensive than one hour. Filling an hour with 60 one-minute cuts is more expensive then 30 two-minute cuts because of all the setup and decorations.
Production is now cheaper thanks to CGI, box offices are larger thanks to higher prices and the global market. You no longer have to be frugal when filming, the protection against sloppy overextended movies is now taste and not money. And taste is scarce.
This people though has been catching up on a century of classic films. There are plenty of lists around on the internet if you wanted to get started. The AFI Top 100 is a gentle introduction to the (American-only) classics. There are deeper cuts when you are ready to saddle up for "1001 Movies" instead. (Warning, you could be starting down a journey that will involve the next eight years of your life.)
It was almost absurd to me not only how bland and drawn out most scenes were, but how absolutely poorly acted it was. If it were not famous(ie didn't exist), and updated to today's vernacular and shot scene for scene, it would absolutely get reamed by critics.
Funny how much changes in just a generation or two.