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The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

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231 points frogulis | 7 comments | 15 Jul 25 03:52 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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somenameforme ◴[15 Jul 25 04:23 UTC] No.44567805[source]▶
Fun fact: movie sales, in terms of tickets sold, peaked in 2002. [1] All the 'box office records' since then are the result of charging way more to a continually plummeting audience size.

And this is highly relevant for things like this. People often argue that if movies were so bad then people would stop watching them, unaware that people actually have stopped watching them!

Even for individual movies. For all the men-in-spandex movies, the best selling movie (by tickets sold) in modern times is Titanic, 27 years ago.

[1] - https://www.the-numbers.com/market/

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vasco ◴[15 Jul 25 05:03 UTC] No.44567968[source]▶
Movies are still great, just not the main circuit. If you live in a large city most often you have access to indie movies or secondary rotation of festival movies instead of 3 marvels, one remake and one romantic like in the big box places.
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somenameforme ◴[15 Jul 25 06:35 UTC] No.44568457[source]▶
I think they simply did what AAA video games did. They found what sold best at one moment in time and then obsessively tried to work to copy that.

But the problem is that people don't want to play 40 different Call of Duties, or watch 30 different Batmen. It's just that Batman or Call of Duty were the 'meet in the middle' of a variety of different tastes. But when those other tastes aren't accounted for, it becomes nauseating. It's like how most of everybody really likes cake icing, but eating nothing but cake icing is quite a repulsive concept.

I think things like Dune, Interstellar, and other such films emphasize that there's a gaping hole in the market for things besides men in spandex, but it's just not being filled. And there's even extensive social commentary in Dune (as in the book) but it's done through metaphor rather than shoving it down your throat. And the movie is also rather slow paced with some 3 key events playing out in a 155 minute film, yet it continues to do extremely well. On the other hand those Fremen suits are kind of spandexy...

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1. IAmBroom ◴[15 Jul 25 12:34 UTC] No.44570486[source]▶
Not sure that pointing out the success of sci fi franchises is proof audiences want diversity.

The VAST majority of movies that have been made in the past (when the real indicator, % of population going to movies, peaked) deal with ordinary, realistic human stories. Murders are incredibly popular, of course, but so are fraught romances, coming-of-age, and grounded hero-quest movies (which even Bachelorette Party borrows from).

But your point is otherwise completely valid. They found out everyone likes cake, and converted their buffet restaurant to all-cake all-day!

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2. vasco ◴[15 Jul 25 12:40 UTC] No.44570532[source]▶
They didn't that was my point. But if people just go to the food court at the mall and complain there's 90% fast food...

Go to a smaller movie theater, go to movie festivals that happen every year in most big cities, you'll see the majority of movies have nothing to do with the few major Hollywood block busters. And comparing Dune, a major block busters to other ones makes no sense when the point was that you need to go outside the main circuit.

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3. PaulHoule ◴[15 Jul 25 13:30 UTC] No.44570954[source]▶
My take is that the movies you see at the arthouse cinema aren't any better than the big movies, they just have a smaller budget. They come out of the same system and would be just as self-indulgent if they had the resources to be.
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4. actionfromafar ◴[15 Jul 25 14:57 UTC] No.44571824{3}[source]▶
They don't come out of the same system. A nice chunk of them are self-funded and driven by a passion to tell the story.
5. watwut ◴[15 Jul 25 15:02 UTC] No.44571866[source]▶
> Not sure that pointing out the success of sci fi franchises is proof audiences want diversity.

The thing is, when AAA games or movie studios start to focus on that one thing that "sells best at one moment" everyone else checks out.

I did checked out of games when I realized they are just not made for me anymore, that stuff I liked is looked down at in the industry and they focus on stuff I do not care about. It was similar process with major movies, at some point too little appealed to me, so I stopped caring entirely.

> The VAST majority of movies that have been made in the past (when the real indicator, % of population going to movies, peaked) deal with ordinary, realistic human stories.

Sure. I like to watch those and I do, on Netflix or whatever. I just do not expect realistic human story or something new from a major Hollywood movie. They are not about any of that.

6. vasco ◴[15 Jul 25 16:08 UTC] No.44572636{3}[source]▶
It shows you don't watch them, you can obviously find Hollywood-without-the-budget cause the people that work in Hollywood come from somewhere, but you also have things that are completely outside. Some documentary about a Georgian truck driver who goes across the country side selling supplies from the city to the villages with long, no dialog shots that go for several minutes, has nothing to do with Hollywood productions and there's a million fractal things like this that would be way too "boring" for mass consumption.
7. freejazz ◴[15 Jul 25 21:32 UTC] No.44576026{3}[source]▶
What on earth??