The End of Great Films

[GreenLantern2814]

I saw the Barbie half of Barbenheimer this weekend. In the first ten minutes, I was genuinely concerned I might be watching one of the worst films ever made. Thankfully, I was wrong. Barbie is not a subtle movie, but if you want to tell me it’s worlds worse than the John Goodman Flintstones… no. It’s not.

If you forgot John Goodman made a Flintstones movie in the 90s, that’s okay - nobody will remember the Barbie movie in 25 years either.

Nobody is going to remember much of anything the studios have churned out in the post Dark Knight era. I was looking at all the Best Picture nominees since 2007, and almost none of them are movies that anyone in their right mind would watch more than once.

To me, a movie you can’t watch over and over is not a great movie. And great movies really don’t get made anymore.

Maybe this is an oversimplification, but I wonder if this is because the up and coming directors literally aren’t filmmakers. They are movie makers, but if they’ve never made a movie on actual film stock, they’re not filmmakers.

This has nothing to do with film “looking better” - the simple truth is this. Film is expensive. Film has limitations. Film is harder to modify in post-production. Film is finite.

Film makes the whole production elevate their game.

The director asks the right questions: is this worth filming? Is this the right way to film this shot? Is this idea stupid?

The actors know they don’t have endless opportunities to get it right, and that urgency comes through their performances.

The writer(s) don’t want to turn in anything subpar that’s actually being committed to celluloid, and when someone asks “is that stupid?” They might actually wonder themselves, and care to figure out a way to make it not so.

The crew pay more attention because the people at the top are more invested in what they’re doing simply because they’re working with film - when the people at the top care, that filters down to everyone.

Bad films are inevitable. But I can’t help but notice, the best filmmakers in 2010 are still the best filmmakers today - Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese and Christopher Nolan.

The most noteworthy new directing talent of the last decade is Jordan Peele. Other people have made quality films - they have. It’s that almost none are rewatchable. (La La Land and Death of Stalin are the only recent examples I’ve seen more than twice).

Disney has a hundred different Star Wars projects and nobody cares. Nobody should care. Because Star Wars isn’t Star Wars because people sycophantically consumed every piece of Star Wars media.

Star Wars is Star Wars because people watched the same three movies a thousand times.

If I ran a movie studio, I wouldn’t let any noteworthy project be shot digitally. The evidence is in - it sucks. Jurassic Park cost $30M and it still looks better than every other entry in the following 30 years. Use robots, puppets, and clever framing to achieve your effect. Spending $200M on some awful CG velociraptors isn’t not how you live forever.

There’s almost no CGI in Dark Knight, and nobody cares about CGI armies. Hire some extras.

With very rare exceptions, Modern movies are far too concerned with referencing the iconic and no time at all BEING iconic.

Shooting on film doesn’t eliminate bad movies, but I don’t know how many more great directors we’re going to get without someone deciding to re-emphasize it.

As I said, when the people at the top care, everyone else working on the project cares.

When the production cares, I mean really cares, about what they’re doing, the audience cares too.

You can tell people in a Tarantino movie know they’re part of something special, just like you can tell Chris Pratt cares about the $20M he was given to appear in another Jurassic movie.

Here endeth the (34-year) Old Man Yelling at Cloud.

Long live film.

[SutterBrother]

I was looking at all the Best Picture nominees since 2007

There’s yer problem…

The best movies aren’t selected by the Acadamy anymore. But there are still great movies being made. I’m glad you mentioned Tarantino. Once upon a time in Hollywood was AMAZING. I love Peele’s movies too.

In the last 5 years, the following are on my top list:

Ford vs Ferarri
Dune
1917
Jojo Rbbit
Top Gun Maverick
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Banshees of Inisherin
Sisu
Nope
Ad Astra
Knives Out
Parasite
Into the Spiderverse
A Quiet Place

I am certain i am missing a bunch. I feel confident all of those will stand the test of time as good movies in 25 years.

Here endeth the (34-year) Old Man Yelling at Cloud.

Adorable!
��

[Traditional_Ale]

Movies used to be cool because they were so difficult to make, so even a bad movie had the merit of at least being a big giant bright moving thing on a screen. In a world with no computers, internet, cell phones, and the like a movie was a true escape from reality. While I don't disagree with anything you said about shooting to film, I think the reason movies aren't special anymore is because simply that. They're not. A great story, with great camera work on great actors can produce a quality film with a cellphone camera.

[Traditional_Ale]

Originally Posted by SutterBrother

Ford vs Ferarri
Dune
1917
Jojo Rbbit
Top Gun Maverick
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Banshees of Inisherin
Sisu
Nope
Ad Astra
Knives Out
Parasite
Into the Spiderverse
A Quiet Place

I am certain i am missing a bunch. I feel confident all of those will stand the test of time as good movies in 25 years.

Every single one of those movies is at best mediocre, most are steaming piles of crap, and will most certainly not be thought about 25 years from now in the same way the Matrix is now (which I still think is a pile of crap but history proved me wrong), and then Star Wars 25 years before that. And they're not even "good" movies. But they exploded the imaginations of the entire world. There is nothing that happens on screen any more that makes me go "oh wow" because I have a computer too.

I don't even like music recordings anymore that isn't a live performance. I know what goes into music production now compared to even 20 years ago. Talented performances by talented performers hasn't been a thing for a long time. If a five minute metal song needs 65,000 edits, are they even really a band?

[CaptainCrunch]

Ok, that was really an interest read for me being a movie buff. But the idea of digital destroying film quality because its simple to erase and reshoot as opposed to original film which is finite, expensive and not renewable is a unique perspective.



I'm not disagreeing because your idea has merit.



But to me it goes further then this. Film making is corporate. Directors intentionally try to create films that capture Oscar votes instead of just telling the story that they want to make. They pull elements from a can labeled Oscar voter desires. On top of that because of the pressures of the mega budget films, the Studios don't allow Directors to experiment and push. I'd even argue that the advent of child labor and general labor laws have effected the ability of a director to get the best out of his performances (I'm tongue firmly in cheek here but here me out). Look at what directors used to do to get the best performances out of actors. Kubrik basically traumatized Duvall. Hitchcock pretty much psychologically tortured Tippi Hendren to make her convincing in the Birds.



Instead now we get blooper reels and Actors that are constantly doing their own thing leading to take after take after take. I'm sure its maddening being a director.



There's literally no control by the director anymore. The money controls the process and the Studios will pre pick the movies that they want to push for Oscar consideration.



At the same time, we're not seeing all that many originally movies anymore, either the well is dry in the writing room, or all the stories have been told. I can't honestly tell you when I've seen a truly original story and a twist that I couldn't see coming.



Honestly, when is the last time that any of you had a holy sh%t moment in a movie theatre?


If you want to see a return of original movies. Then have the Oscar committee put a budget limit on films. Or simply ban big budget studies from entering their films and celebrate Film Makers that have to struggle to create their picture on limited dollars.

[GirlySports]

The answer is no more VHS or DVDs. Movie companies only have one shot to make money now which is at the theater. There is no longer a secondary market to recoup, almost like another open 6 months later. There are many movies that bombed at theaters and became DVD cult classics. I had dates where we went to the video store and rented a movie to watch.

That can't happen anymore. The movies today need to make $100 million at the theater to even consider profit and those aren't going to be about two people falling in love.

[CaptainCrunch]

I think they should have a category for Porn Films at the Oscars.

[Yamer]

Woof.

Despite the bemoaning, beautiful and innovative films are made every year, year after year.

Have another scotch, cup your own farts, and sit back and enjoy whatever brings you to a masturbatory climax. The rest of us will be able to find renewed joy in filmmaking.

[GreenLantern2814]

Originally Posted by Traditional_Ale

Every single one of those movies is at best mediocre, most are steaming piles of crap, and will most certainly not be thought about 25 years from now in the same way the Matrix is now (which I still think is a pile of crap but history proved me wrong), and then Star Wars 25 years before that. And they're not even "good" movies. But they exploded the imaginations of the entire world. There is nothing that happens on screen any more that makes me go "oh wow" because I have a computer too.

I don't even like music recordings anymore that isn't a live performance. I know what goes into music production now compared to even 20 years ago. Talented performances by talented performers hasn't been a thing for a long time. If a five minute metal song needs 65,000 edits, are they even really a band?

Not to bring everything back to Dark Knight, but the moment the semi flips in the middle of Gotham was the last “oh wow” moment I had in a theatre.

Because they really flipped a truck in downtown Chicago.

That’s something about movies, for the most part, up until the end of the 20th century.

They’re really blowing something up.

They’re really chucking a stuntman through the air.

They’re really driving cars at high speeds.

They built a 4-mile stretch of highway to film the chase in Matrix Reloaded - that’s going to look good forever.

When the Titanic splits in half, that’s a real, to-scale model.

Every movie now has five minutes of VFX names attached to their end credits, and I can’t help but think of a story from the production of Empire Strikes Back where they spent like $100k trying to get a functional robotic 3P0 that could turn its head strapped to Chewie’s back.

The solution that made it into the film was “two guys and a fishing rod”.

[jg13]

The most noteworthy new directing talent of the last decade is Jordan Peele.

I would argue that Robert Eggers The VVitch (2015), The Lighthouse (2019), The Northman (2022) and the remake to Nosferatu (2024) on the way, has been more impressive. Also, Ari Aster with Hereditary (2018), Midsommar (2019) and Beau Is Afraid (2023) is right up there next to Peele as well.

"Martin Scorsese Praises Ari Aster As “One of the Most Extraordinary New Voices in Cinema"

https://www.gq.com/story/ari-aster-m...-is-afraid-a24

There are plenty of new exciting directors that are making excellent film without massive budgets particularly through NEON and A24. I personally love where the state of film is.

[Traditional_Ale]

Originally Posted by Yamer

Woof.

Despite the bemoaning, beautiful and innovative films are made every year, year after year.

This is true. But I think the point of the thread is that the inherent value of films has never been lower, and I personally don't see it changing. TV and Movies had their day, and while I'm sure will always be around in one form or another they're just not impressive anymore. With the advent of AI especially now I find 99% of it as plastic and disposable as water bottles, a veritable garbage island in the ocean of human expression.

[GreenLantern2814]

Originally Posted by Yamer

Woof.

Despite the bemoaning, beautiful and innovative films are made every year, year after year.

Have another scotch, cup your own farts, and sit back and enjoy whatever brings you to a masturbatory climax. The rest of us will be able to find renewed joy in filmmaking.

Suggest some of them.

From where I’m sat, there haven’t been three movies made in the last ten years that are better than Jackie Brown.

I want to know why that is.

Athletics are getting better as time goes on.

Engineering never stops improving - it took 110 years of innovation for cars to reach the Bugatti Veyron, and less than ten years of mainstream EV development for the Rimac Nevara to render it all null and void.

Movies are getting worse. They don’t resonate with people, and they rarely live up to expectations. They feel empty, they feel pandering, and they don’t take risks.

I think one reason the MCU thrived while the DCU has languished is the original movies were, in their own way, trying something new. They were trying to set up four separate characters in their own movies and bring it all together for a team up event with the Avengers.

They took a risk. People wanted to see how it turned out, it more or less worked, and they kept coming back. Of course it’s collapsing under the weight of its own enormity now, but as a great movie once put it, “die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”

Whereas the DC movies try to do things that were just done, only worse.

“Let’s give Superman the Batman Begins treatment, only let’s hire a director who doesn’t have original thoughts.”

“Marvel set up the Avengers in four movies, we’ll do it in two. And hire Joss Whedon to re-shoot the thing. He directed the avengers, you know.”

“Multiverses are in right now. Let’s throw a baby in a microwave and put Nic Cage in a Superman suit and have him fight a Giant Spider and spend $2M bringing an old Kevin Smith youtube clip to life. In our Flash movie.”

GirlySports also correctly points to the death of the VHS/DVD/rental market - that money has been replaced with the Chinese box office, and the only way to access that is by making a movie that doesn’t say anything.

[Swift]

I don't agree with the OP's reasoning (Kubrick was famous for doing take after take until he got the scene just right, regardless of the cost of film) I do ultimately agree that films have lost something this century. There is a huge overreliance on CGI that means it's very rarely impressive looking anymore (though the Star Wars TV shows use of the Volume does look very good IMO) There's little sense of awe and worse, it's painfully obvious these days that most scenes aren't even being shot on location, with heavy use of green screen technology. So the set doesn't exist, half the characters don't exist and most action scenes are just pixels crashing into other pixels. I appreciate guys like Nolan and Cruise for trying to do as much as they can for real.

Additionally while sometimes digital cinematography can look perfectly fine, a lot of the time it can look very flat, dim or smudgy looking. Give me the look of film any day of the week.

[Yamer]

Originally Posted by GreenLantern2814

Suggest some of them.

I don't know. They're your own farts. Have a whiff.

From where I’m sat, there haven’t been three movies made in the last ten years that are better than Jackie Brown.

I want to know why that is.

Because art is subjective. *whiff*

Athletics are getting better as time goes on.

Engineering never stops improving - it took 110 years of innovation for cars to reach the Bugatti Veyron, and less than ten years of mainstream EV development for the Rimac Nevara to render it all null and void.

Movies are getting worse. They don’t resonate with people, and they rarely live up to expectations. They feel empty, they feel pandering, and they don’t take risks.

You can't compare film to automation and mechanics.

As for the rest, I can't think of a film that tackled everything, everywhere, all at once like Everything Everywhere All at Once. That's the riskiest Oscar winner I can think of, and that's within the last year.

I think one reason the MCU thrived while the DCU has languished is the original movies were, in their own way, trying something new. They were trying to set up four separate characters in their own movies and bring it all together for a team up event with the Avengers.

They took a risk. People wanted to see how it turned out, it more or less worked, and they kept coming back. Of course it’s collapsing under the weight of its own enormity now, but as a great movie once put it, “die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”

Whereas the DC movies try to do things that were just done, only worse.

“Let’s give Superman the Batman Begins treatment, only let’s hire a director who doesn’t have original thoughts.”

“Marvel set up the Avengers in four movies, we’ll do it in two. And hire Joss Whedon to re-shoot the thing. He directed the avengers, you know.”

“Multiverses are in right now. Let’s throw a baby in a microwave and put Nic Cage in a Superman suit and have him fight a Giant Spider and spend $2M bringing an old Kevin Smith youtube clip to life. In our Flash movie.”

There it is.

GirlySports also correctly points to the death of the VHS/DVD/rental market - that money has been replaced with the Chinese box office, and the only way to access that is by making a movie that doesn’t say anything.

Streaming is the new norm, but even then there are plenty of films and series existing outside of these platforms that deliver a cinematic experience.

And they do say something, even if you don't want to recognize that the movie experience isn't what you remember or that superhero films dominate box office numbers.

The Whale
The Banshees of Inisherin
The Florida Project
Knives Out
1917
Everything Everywhere all at Once
Gone Girl
Looper
12 Years a Slave
Edge of Tomorrow
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse
BlackKkKlansman
Get Out
The Northman
Moneyball

All said something and all made me go "whoa". All as good and often better than Jackie Brown.

[GreenLantern2814]

Originally Posted by Yamer

I don't know. They're your own farts. Have a whiff.



Because art is subjective. *whiff*



You can't compare film to automation and mechanics.

As for the rest, I can't think of a film that tackled everything, everywhere, all at once like Everything Everywhere All at Once. That's the riskiest Oscar winner I can think of, and that's within the last year.



There it is.



Streaming is the new norm, but even then there are plenty of films and series existing outside of these platforms that deliver a cinematic experience.

And they do say something, even if you don't want to recognize that the movie experience isn't what you remember or that superhero films dominate box office numbers.

The Whale
The Banshees of Inisherin
The Florida Project
Knives Out
1917
Everything Everywhere all at Once
Gone Girl
Looper
12 Years a Slave
Edge of Tomorrow
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse
BlackKkKlansman
Get Out
The Northman
Moneyball

All said something and all made me go "whoa". All as good and often better than Jackie Brown.

Stop talking about my farts.

[Sr. Mints]

Clearly you haven't seen Speed Racer

[OutOfTheCube]

Counter-point: Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

[PepsiFree]

Movies aren’t getting worse. A specific kind of big budget blockbuster is getting worse because drawing from and adapting source material made for children where the majority of the interest comes from nostalgia or novelty is always going to have diminishing returns, but studios are going to stick with that until people demand something better.

The other issue that I can see is there is no longer a distinction between made for TV/direct to video type movies and genuine achievements in the art. Before, it was “this movie is in theatres, so it might be good, this movie wasn’t, so it’s definitely trash.” Now these movies are sharing the same space and released the same way, so you have to put in a bit more effort.

It’s good that there are guys like Tarantino, Scorsese, Nolan, Anderson and Cruise who are working hard to protect, preserve, and represent the medium in their own way. But I wouldn’t say any of them are pushing boundaries or presenting something new anymore. They make films that feel like the way films used to be made, or at very least like they used to make them.

But when you look at directors and films like Uncut Gems, Everything Everywhere, Banshees, Lighthouse, Annihilation, Parasite, or Sorry to Bother You, just in the last few years, it’s pretty much impossible to argue that nothing has topped Jackie Brown in the last few years and the entire art form has gotten worse. That’s just nonsense.

[TrentCrimmIndependent]

There are great, rewatchable films.

They're just admittedly less frequent, and they don't always crack the best picture list (where often the poignant films that are a one time experience that tell a heartwrenching story or make a political statement or social commentary but don't aim for pleasurable viewing are nominated).

Blockbusters are certainly declining in their on-average quality and are becoming less original though.

[TrentCrimmIndependent]

(Warm take?)

The horror genre is getting markedly better and certain films of the genre aren't getting the awards consideration that they've deserved.