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The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

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231 points frogulis | 3 comments | 15 Jul 25 03:52 UTC | HN request time: 2.614s | source
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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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BurningFrog ◴[15 Jul 25 14:52 UTC] No.44571759[source]▶
Movies had a century as one of the main stages for global culture.

That era is ending, and other things are replacing them, mostly based on computers and internet.

If you love movies this is sad, but movies once replaced other beloved things.

The world spins on and nothing is forever. Enjoy the ride!

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1. mjd ◴[15 Jul 25 15:25 UTC] No.44572154[source]▶
Eben Moglen observed that at one time people were building giant stone pyramids, then the social and technological conditions changed, and people stopped making new ones. That's OK, it's not a sad thing that there are no new pyramids, we still have the old ones and people still find them awesome.

And he says maybe big-budget movies are like that too, something that culture will do for a while and then move on to something different when the conditions change.

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2. lavelganzu ◴[15 Jul 25 21:31 UTC] No.44576021[source]▶
I for one want new giant stone pyramids. :)
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3. mjd ◴[19 Jul 25 08:56 UTC] No.44613772[source]▶
Ecch, you know who would be building them? Mark Andressen.

No thanks.