I think films were better before, more memorable. Take the Tom Clancy films. The first three were great but everything after stunk. Anime is the same way with classics like Akira and Ninja Scroll but everything after is more bland. Baseball has more interesting players in the 80s 90’s. Also, the Houston Oilers and the Run and Shoot were the pinnacle of NFL.
shareCulture happened to peak during the period when I was an adolescent and young adult. I've heard other people claim it happened to peak when they were adolescents and young adults, but those people are just being nostalgic. It was definitely when I was an adolescent and young adult. Objectively.
In all seriousness, I probably agree with Quentin Tarantino when he said that the present period is the worst for major studio Hollywood pictures since the 1980s. We live in a period when 'nerd culture' - which is unabashedly adolescent - has become the mainstream, which has effectively turned the studios into children's and family entertainment factories.
We also live in an era when Hollywood's budgets are absurdly out of hand, which makes the companies even more creatively risk averse than they used to be. If your movie costs $200m to make, it has to appeal to as wide a range of people as possible in order to have any hope of turning a profit: hence all the franchises, prequels, sequels, remakes, reboots, and other forms of products based on existing IPs.
But they're only giving audiences what they believe audiences want to see. If the general audience made different choices, the films being made would change almost overnight.
People do, however, tend to exaggerate how bad the situation currently is because they have nostalgia for the past. In any given era, most films aren't that great. But we filter away the bad and mediocre ones through memory over time. But we're living through the present.
Finally, outside of the major Hollywood studios -- in indie films and international films -- not much has changed in terms of quality (Although it may have done in terms of distribution). There's still plenty of good films for people to see if they want to engage with something that isn't a live-action Snow White or Sonic the Hedgehog 3. They're just probably not being made by Paramount or Universal Pictures. And certainly not by the Walt Disney Company.
That's an excellent post and captures most of the issues very concisely. However, I'm not sure about this:
But they're only giving audiences what they believe audiences want to see.
Some foreign-language films (e.g. Anatomy of a Fall, Exhuma, La Chimera) seem to be getting attention and plaudits that wouldn't have come their way several years ago.
You pretty much nailed it. Thankfully, there are international film boards and various countries subsidizing smaller, more actually adult films. They're my meat. I discover them by reading the best film lists from the 'snobby' critics, without whom I wouldn't know of their existence.
General release is, as you described, generally a kiddy-fare-infested wasteland.
Hollywood is struggling with progress and they are lagging behind what customers want to see.
The times when Hollywood was showing what people wanted to see are over, that's why you now believe they used to be better in the past, yet they weren't better, they just remained the same while the world around them made progress.
I mostly prefer older films.
shareI think they're crap.
shareSimple. I'm so annoyed that I won't be watching movies or TV next year.
I'd like to chalk it up to being old (40s).
But, I know it's really due to corporate social media approaches. They pandering rather than create. The use old IP's because Gen-X and millennials were given everything and didn't learn how to create they just adapt instead.
So, screw it, I'm taking the TV's down and focusing on reading and boardgames instead.
I'm not watching, reading or listening to anything new over the next year. I probably have enough downloaded media to last me the rest of my life anyway.
shareAlso, Simpsons was funny then as was SNL (I don’t watch these shows anymore.) Exotic cars looked better and video games were also better.
shareYou're missing a lot if you're in the "Simpsons is passe" clique. SNL was always very sophomoric, if not outright cringe. I could never watch more than five minutes of it. But speaking of recent Hollywood films...
shareAlmost everything from 2016 onward has really sucked. It's shocking that just as recently as 10 years ago, we were still enjoying great movies and TV, and suddenly it all goes down the drain in the name of a fanatical activist movement. It's only now that the studios finally got a clue when they lost enough money and customers to really feel the pain. But even now, with the changes they're making, it's gonna take years to flush the bad writing and acting, the soapbox preaching shit, and rage-baiting out of the pipeline.
shareI actually think it was a better year for the horror genre than the last few, but then, it's been kind of bleak.
Some pretty good indy horrors. Late Night with the Devil blended humor and horror quite well. Maxxxine brought back some of those 80s trashy horror vibes. Some people say not enough, but really, those 80s low budget slashers had long talky stretches as well. I think West does dialogue a lot better than those movies usually did.
For the most part we got more serious horror, but I think a lot of them were quite good. I didn't feel like I was getting preached at for the entire movie, anyway, which is a problem in some modern movies.