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The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

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231 points frogulis | 6 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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gonzo41 ◴[15 Jul 25 13:43 UTC] No.44571105[source]▶
The main driver IMO is the death of the tight 90 minute, 80 Million decently acted thriller / action / comedy film. Everything is too big, too epic, too simplistic, and too long.
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1. 2muchcoffeeman ◴[15 Jul 25 14:06 UTC] No.44571317[source]▶
I'd be fine with the length if they actually used the time for something good.
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2. AnimalMuppet ◴[15 Jul 25 14:16 UTC] No.44571409[source]▶
If I understand movie theater economics correctly, the studio gets 80 to 95% of the ticket sales, depending on how "first run" the movie is. The theaters actually make their money on selling concessions.

Well, the longer the movie, the more people feel the need of snacks to get through it. So maybe the theaters are pushing longer movies rather than shorter, because they make more money that way.

Just an off-the-cuff hypothesis...

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3. 0cf8612b2e1e ◴[15 Jul 25 15:20 UTC] No.44572087[source]▶
Bit of a tight line to walk. Longer movies mean fewer showings per day. When I saw that Oppenheimer was three hours long -I want to watch that at home so I can take a bathroom break/snacks so a personal pause button is an improvement on the theater.
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4. AlexandrB ◴[15 Jul 25 15:41 UTC] No.44572316{3}[source]▶
If movies are regularly going to be 3 hours long, movie theatres need to bring back intermission breaks.
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5. frameset ◴[15 Jul 25 16:00 UTC] No.44572536{4}[source]▶
I've always thought this would make sense.

Often during a three hour film I've ran out of refreshments and would like to buy a drink or something for the last hour.

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6. ghaff ◴[15 Jul 25 22:21 UTC] No.44576467{5}[source]▶
It used to be fairly common with the big "epic" films. And probably no live theater production is going to go much over 90 minutes without an intermission.