Why Are Older Movies Better?

Trick question. They aren't. People remember the good movies and blocked out the bad ones. Just as today's generation will say "why can't there be another There Will Be Blood," forgetting the multitude of Bad Boys and Transformers. The ratio of quality to crap remains consistent. Producers are no more greedy and cynical than they were when films started, and capitalism is the same danger it an art form like film that tragically needs business to survive.

You tend to post lots of interesting content here, I genuinely enjoy your input even when I'm not 100% on board Bill

I think older movies are often excellent but I do love the post 60s era movies (the 70s feels like movies became honest about things in my opinion)

Mad Max, E.T., Goodfellas, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Star Wars, Scarface...most of my favorites are post 60s so I guess we disagree on this matter

You seem pretty cool so no bad will intended...I'm 46 btw so maybe childhood nostalgia plays some part?

I think that older movies aren't necessarily better overall, but I do think that it was a matter of quality over quantity.

For example, I looked up 1946, the year It's a Wonderful Life came out and there were 1246 movies released worldwide that year. Fast forward to Star Wars, 1977 and there were 3098 movies released that year. That number stayed pretty level throughout the 80s, 90s and early 00s. By 2010 there were 7537 movies released and last year there were 11902.

So I guess all I'm trying to say is that it was easier in the past to find the good movies.

The older movies are more character driven.

Most of the votes are fake. Hipsters trying to cool by bashing anything new. Its just a trend created by sheep.

Back then they didn't try so hard to be different. They just told their story. I also noticed more tracking and dolly shots. It seemed more directed and planned. Movies now just have too much filter over the image and the sound effects are way too loud. And don't get me started on the amount of CGI in today's movies.

Here's why...and it's not pretty.

Back when movies came out, they actually hired real authors, like F Scott Fitzgerald, to write films. You would also see a wide variety of author names from different ethnicities. The original Dr. Who series, which is just a crazy TV show, actually had good plots as the BBC would have different authors for each episode, sometimes famous ones, so although the special effects weren't great, the plots and dialogue was good to great.

When Dr. Who came back on TV a "gay guy" who thought the show "creepy" as a kid wrote all the shows. There you have diva plastic surgery monsters, fat droplet beings from liposuction, and the characters screaming as they ran from monsters, but no actual science fiction. That's because the writer was a homosexual who didn't get the show and wrote about monsters, "gay stuff", and so it was stupid.

After Jews secured Hollywood the same thing happened. In their cult you really shouldn't hire nonjews except at servants. Non jews are evil "infidels" and shouldn't be given power. So, they hired all jewish directors, writers, and so on. So, no more famous authors calling the shots, you have idiots like Seth Rogan who does drugs, is stupid, and he is in command of vast amounts of money to make movies instead of intelligent non jews who have something to say. They cannot make movies due to bigotry.

An interesting thing to observe is all the show normal people have made on youtube that make them lots of money. There's even currently famous singers who did that. If something like that didn't exist we would never have heard of them. If it ever become possible to make real films this way, we will then see jews losing their standing in Hollywood.

I put it down to a few things,

1/ Adult characters. Generally in older films the characters are capable adults. Quite often in modern films the characters are a mess in various ways.

2/ Better clothes, cool cars, scenery in general. Seeing cities as they were back then looks cool, in the case of Westerns, wide open spaces also look great and add escapism. As mentioned with adult characters, seeing men and women dress well also adds to the look of the film.

3/ Black and white, I find black and white is great for "immersion' like you are seeing into a different world.

4/ Better stories and writing. NUANCE!!! In today's films everything has to be spelling out or shown. When I think of two of my fave old films "Waterloo Bridge" (1940) and "Shane" (1953) there is so much going on that is never even uttered let alone shown. In Waterloo Bridge you know she is prostituting herself but they get that across without saying it or showing her doing it. Today, they would have her walking streets and then we'd see her unhappily having sex with strange men. Mostly because writers have lost the ability to describe without showing.

In Shane, I always got the feeling there was something going, on some attraction between Shane and the ranchers wife. But again nothing is obvious. Today they would be showing that so there isn't any mystery at all.

5/ No or at least less political propaganda. There were films back then that had SJW overtones, Adam's Rib is one example. But even then it was fun. Now they are just over the top often sacrificing creativity for agendas... The women in a lot of these old films were very capable as well but always feminine and never perfect at everything or instant geniuses at something they had never done before.

6/ Romance - It is nice to see men behave like men and women behave like women and see the two genders actually compliment each other other. Even in a Film Noir where you have men and women try (and often succeed) in killing each other there is still a dark romance of sorts.