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The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

(www.newyorker.com)
231 points frogulis | 15 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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zamadatix ◴[15 Jul 25 14:38 UTC] No.44571608[source]▶
In 2002, watching a movie at home for most people meant flinging a low quality VHS or DVD onto a ~27" tube TV (with a resolution so worthless it might as well be labeled "new years") using a 4:3 aspect ratio pan & scan of the actual movie. Getting anything recent meant going out to the Blockbuster anyways. In 2022, watching a movie meant streaming something on your 50+" 16:9 4k smart TV by pressing a button from your couch.

Box office ticket sales say people go to the theatre less often, not that people watch movies less often. Unless you specifically want "the movie theater experience" or you absolutely have to see a certain movie at launch you're not going to the theatre to watch a movie. The number of movie views per person may well be down (or up), but box office ticket sale counts don't really answer that question.

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shaky-carrousel ◴[15 Jul 25 19:24 UTC] No.44574881[source]▶
Nah, I don't buy this. In 2002 your "low quality DVD" was peak quality for us. Same way the blocky renders of PS1 was peak video-gaming for us. It only looks low quality when compared with today. For us at the time, it was magnificent.
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1. gretch ◴[15 Jul 25 19:37 UTC] No.44575005{3}[source]▶
> For us at the time, it was magnificent.

At the time, did you think the quality of that DVD was about the same as the experience you got in the theater?

The parent post is arguing that the gap in experience between home theaters and theater theaters has shrunk immensely. Right now I have a 85" wide OLED in my living room - That's not a thing that existed in 2002

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2. Broken_Hippo ◴[15 Jul 25 20:20 UTC] No.44575419[source]▶
No, but it was good enough for most movies. The person you replied to is correct: It was glorious at the time. We were all amazed by graphics, even on those old tvs. The "movie theater experience" wasn't worth the hassle for anything but movies with good action and graphics - things like comedies didn't get uniquely better at the theater.

It didn't need to be about the same or better, it just needed to be good enough to appreciate that you weren't dealing with the downsides. The theaters weren't that good back in the late 90's (in fact, most of the ones I visited in my teens have renovated to be more current sometime around 2010 or something). All people needed was more realistic alternatives. More and more folks were getting cable, DVD players were more affordable, and places like walmart sold DVDs for a cheaper price than you'd pay for a full price movie. Netflix started in the late 90s too.

Yes, I know folks could rent videos before this. I remember walking down to rent NES games when I was young - right next to the movies at the grocery store. This was a far cry from the stores of the late 90s, though. They got better (and worse).

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3. shaky-carrousel ◴[15 Jul 25 20:29 UTC] No.44575492[source]▶
> At the time, did you think the quality of that DVD was about the same as the experience you got in the theater?

No, I didn't. I don't think it either today, with my pretty big TV. The experience still pales in comparison.

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4. asdff ◴[15 Jul 25 21:12 UTC] No.44575877[source]▶
The big difference maker imo in movie theater experience is size and sound. You still need to drop about the same few thousand dollars you had to drop in 2002 to buy a proper projector and sound system today. 85 inch low pixel density screen and a sound bar ain't it, but if it is it for you, you are probably no discerning audiophile who would have probably have been fine with whatever was sold in a comparable market segment in 2002 (refrigerator width crt displays were in fact all the rage and very desirable at one point).
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5. zamadatix ◴[15 Jul 25 22:24 UTC] No.44576492[source]▶
Are you saying you'd order raw quality differently than:

  2002 TV setup < 2022 TV setup < movie theater
Or are you just saying that a home TV setup is still not as good as a movie theater? The point for the latter was the delta between home and theater used to be much larger, not that the delta is now 0, hence a decrease in theater ticket sales would make sense even if people were watching more movies. If the former, what order do you see it and what leads you to order them in the way you do?
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6. crazygringo ◴[15 Jul 25 22:29 UTC] No.44576540[source]▶
> No, but it was good enough for most movies. The person you replied to is correct: It was glorious at the time. We were all amazed by graphics, even on those old tvs.

I genuinely don't know what you're talking about. No it wasn't.

Movies on TV weren't glorious at all. They weren't "amazing." They were what you made do with. And when a classic movie played at your local arthouse theater you grabbed a ticket because it was so much better. The image quality. The sound. Seeing the whole image rather than a bunch of it hacked off.

That's why we went to the theater. Not just for action. For comedies too. Which is why comedies made tons of money at the theater!

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7. crazygringo ◴[15 Jul 25 22:33 UTC] No.44576579[source]▶
You can drop about $800 on a great 1080p projector, screen, and a pair of AirPods that will give you better surround sound than most speaker systems will give you.

My projector screen takes up more of my vision than any movie theater screen I've ever seen except IMAX.

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8. reactordev ◴[15 Jul 25 22:36 UTC] No.44576607[source]▶
I’ll chime in as a grey beard. Did we think the DVD was the same as being at the theater? It really depends on who your friends were. Some of us kids had techie parents that had things like VGA projectors for presentations. We would take these and play DVD’s off our full-tower Pentium 3’s at movie theater-like experiences. I fondly remember watching the Matrix bonus content with my friends over a giant 100ft wall.

Fight Club as well.

It was no IMAX but at 1024x1024 we didn’t care.

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9. shaky-carrousel ◴[16 Jul 25 07:14 UTC] No.44579567{3}[source]▶
No, what I mean is the 2002 experience was awesome for us in our time, like the 2022 is for people of today. But both experiences still pale compared with a movie teather. It's like for us at the time the DVD was a 8, modern TV is maybe a 10, but movie rather in both cases was like a 10000. It was, and it is, in a complete another level.
10. 7jjjjjjj ◴[16 Jul 25 15:17 UTC] No.44583225[source]▶
DVD is 720x480
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11. reactordev ◴[16 Jul 25 18:36 UTC] No.44585463{3}[source]▶
The projectors were 1024x1024 but yes you are correct. We just scaled it up to fit and used a black desktop background.
12. jjcob ◴[16 Jul 25 19:03 UTC] No.44585717{3}[source]▶
People don't just go to the cinema for the image/audio quality. Most people go to meet friends.
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13. crazygringo ◴[16 Jul 25 21:33 UTC] No.44587017{4}[source]▶
That's kind of my point. You don't need to go for image/audio quality at all now. It's purely social, or to see something sooner.

Whereas it used to be very much about image and audio quality.

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14. asdff ◴[19 Jul 25 19:07 UTC] No.44618371{5}[source]▶
I'm sorry but airpods and a 1080p screen from your couch are on a different planet compared to theater sound and even liemax or smaller formats. You can't feel sound from an airpod in your chest.
15. Broken_Hippo ◴[21 Jul 25 10:57 UTC] No.44633754{3}[source]▶
It wasn't that they were amazing. Good enough.

And while maybe not amazing, they were wonderful at the time. Do you remember folks being amazed at the graphics on the PS1 or heck, even the N64? Those weren't good, really, but at the time? Yeah, it was good enough. Late 90's started seeing bigger tvs and sound systems. DVDs brought options to see all that stuff on the sides if you wanted. You didn't "make do" if you are out there buying modern tech - maybe you made do with whatever brands they sold at walmart - but then again, they sold game systems so it really wasn't "store brands only" or anything like that.

I'm not sure where you lived, but absolutely no theaters around me showed classics, save for something like Star Wars or Disney movies. One played second run movies - the ones in the space between theater release and home video release. So no, no one went to things like that. I graduated high school in the mid 90s, and both local theaters were pretty run down places that treated employees badly. The ones in smaller surrounding towns, if they had it, usually only played a handful of movies and were old places. And this seemed pretty normal for Indiana, outside of perhaps Indianapolis or a few richer areas.