←back to thread

The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

(www.newyorker.com)
231 points frogulis | 1 comments | 15 Jul 25 03:52 UTC | HN request time: 0.244s | source
Show context
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/

replies(25): >>44567864 #>>44567968 #>>44568136 #>>44568154 #>>44570905 #>>44570997 #>>44571105 #>>44571251 #>>44571355 #>>44571403 #>>44571486 #>>44571608 #>>44571759 #>>44571905 #>>44572267 #>>44572485 #>>44572904 #>>44573167 #>>44573177 #>>44573253 #>>44573502 #>>44573585 #>>44574449 #>>44576708 #>>44580563 #
PaulHoule ◴[15 Jul 25 13:25 UTC] No.44570905[source]▶
In my pod we've got the theory that more people in the US like anime than domestic pop culture. All the time my son and I have random encounters with people who like Goblin Slayer or Solo Leveling or Bocchi The Rock but never find anybody who is interested in new movies and TV shows. They say Spongebob Squarepants has good ratings -- of course it has good ratings because it is on all the time. People mistake seeing ads for a movie for anyone being interested in the movie.
replies(9): >>44571113 #>>44571200 #>>44571300 #>>44571380 #>>44571456 #>>44571588 #>>44573145 #>>44575128 #>>44576475 #
1. busterarm ◴[15 Jul 25 19:50 UTC] No.44575128[source]▶
Anime has the same discoverability problem as film and other media.

The anime that you mentioned are things that are popular _right now_. There are a few shows from a decade or so ago that people are told to go watch and do but only a few.

How many newly minted anime fans do you know that are going and digging through the 80s and 90s OVA trash that really defined the medium? (and for every one of those there are 50 more who will complain to you about the animation quality because they were raised on nothing but full CG animation...)

That's just as niche as being a cinephile is today.