They should put an epilepsy warning in this video. Bombing the viewer with one second sequences of random films for the entire video is really annoying
While people might find that annoying, is it actually an epilepsy trigger?
Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]
21–30 of 414 posts
Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]
#22The main criticism of this YouTube video is that the main character doesn't really have to put in any effort and has all those skills from the very beginning. While I agree that this trope can make kids think they're special without trying in life (and that they will be a hero in the future), I think there have been similar tropes in the past. Just take basic story writing of many old movies: There is always a hero t…
No, think about Star Wars. Luke doesn't believe in the Force, doesn't believe Obi Wan is anything but a crazy old man. He has to come to his realization himself and then find the Force in himself. He isn't gifted with it. That truly is a big difference between the classic hero's journey and the newer 2010s films where people just have a magic power.
And people are sort of sick of it. It's why Watchmen or Guardians of the Galaxy stand out against so many boring superhero movies. Because a hero needs to be unwilling, unable, and unbelieving... and possibly not even a very good candidate for heroism. Hollywood shortened the journey with the classic stupid "karate montage to music" thing in the 80s. But now it's just like, oh jeez wow I have a superpower! Cool! So ultimately, who cares? Who can relate to that?
Look at Greek mythology. No one could understand why Zeus got all pissed off, but he was Zeus. He was kind of inscrutable. Man related to demigods who carried our emotions and message as envoys. Or, take Star Trek. Spock is half-human. He serves as a bridge between the alien logic and the emotional, rational part of our nature. We know we should eventually evolve to be like Vulcans, but we value our dirty humanity. So Spock, by occasionally regressing to his human side, is our proof that our humanity itself has value.
There's no humanity in a superhero who's just born with superpowers. That's Zeus. A great hero is like Spock, or Luke Skywalker, someone fighting their inner nature. Otherwise all conflicts are just eye candy, external, and ultimately CGI bullshit.
Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]
#23I kind of appreciate the gamer-style review of Mulan, just, like, not having as much difficulty or leveling up in the live-action version. Putting it in that way makes a meaningful point and is something that can actually be fixed. What can't be fixed, unfortunately, is Disney's enslavement to China. The classic Disney narrative was at one time was aimed at selling the American Dream. Which, bullshit as it may have t…
> I think you could trace the decline in meaningful storytelling to a political posture in China that is deeply at odds with anything that smacks of peasant uprisings, or power to the people
The first disney mulan is a story about a girl who overcame discrimination and gender roles to come into a position of great honour to the state.
Propping up the state is basically the opposite of a peasent uprising.
Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]
#24Another enormous gripe I have with modern movies, other than the (lack of) interesting moral lessons from OP, is the sound design. Loud explosions and music, with quiet, mumbled lines[1]. I'm forced to watch every movie with subtitles on, or to miss a good chunk of the dialogue.
And I'd go beyond that, and blame the mumbled lines for our lack of interesting quotes. It's a lot harder to have unexpected turns of phrase, speech patterns, or novel vocabulary choices when the audience is struggling to understand even the most basic, predictable sentences.
[1] https://www.slashfilm.com/673162/heres-why-movie-dialogue-ha...
Edit: for people mentioning audio mixing and stereo, that's only part of the problem. Even with my (admittedly cheap) 5.1 setup, I sometimes miss most of the dialogue in some scenes. I think the change from theatrical to more realistic enunciation is also to blame.
Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the difference is that the mentor might introduce them to the magical world, but its still up to the character what they want to do with it e.g. to quote the matrix "But I can only show you the door. You're the one that has to walk through it." And the decision as to what to do with it has consequences and changes them. Or to use another example - gandalf might mentor frodo, but yet it always seems like frodo…
Nah. Superman, spiderman, hluk, any of these got skills by accident. Even karate kid which shown some training, shown imaginary low effort low time investment training. The typical action movie of my youth had guys winning all the fights for no reason other then that they are awesome. Audiences loved it. The past movies had enough of pure power fantasy or other "just gonna win" in it for the whole generation to drawn…
It's true it's not new. But when AI is mainly responsible for rewriting old scripts over and over, every 10 years, and telling children they're new movies, it may be missing out on the human elements that made those stories good the first time.
Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]
#26The main criticism of this YouTube video is that the main character doesn't really have to put in any effort and has all those skills from the very beginning. While I agree that this trope can make kids think they're special without trying in life (and that they will be a hero in the future), I think there have been similar tropes in the past. Just take basic story writing of many old movies: There is always a hero t…
This has been a standard trope for well over a century. It's not really about "being shown the way" because heroes still have to do some active hero-ing to get to the end.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey
Movies and fiction are about moral lessons packaged into fantasies and escapism. If movies were relentlessly realistic no one would go to see them, because there would be nothing to see.
Even "gritty realism" isn't realistic. It's usually just the same trope populated with shady underworld characters and a flawed or outcast anti-hero instead of inspirational mentors.
Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the difference is that the mentor might introduce them to the magical world, but its still up to the character what they want to do with it e.g. to quote the matrix "But I can only show you the door. You're the one that has to walk through it." And the decision as to what to do with it has consequences and changes them. Or to use another example - gandalf might mentor frodo, but yet it always seems like frodo…
Nah. Superman, spiderman, hluk, any of these got skills by accident. Even karate kid which shown some training, shown imaginary low effort low time investment training. The typical action movie of my youth had guys winning all the fights for no reason other then that they are awesome. Audiences loved it. The past movies had enough of pure power fantasy or other "just gonna win" in it for the whole generation to drawn…
> Even karate kid which shown some training, shown imaginary low effort low time investment training.
The point of his training is that the moves have completely become muscle memory/second nature. I have no clue how long that would take, but it would be significantly more than "low time investment".
Note also that (1) he claimed to have had karate training before; (2) after hebuilds up the needed muscle memory, training continues to teach him when to use what muscle memory.
Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]
#28I've often thought that the look of 1950s films (and of other decades, I guess) was the result of a reinforcing positive feedback loop between film (and TV) and society.
If this is the case, what enables us to break out of the loop?
PS I really like The Drinker.
Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]
#29I kind of appreciate the gamer-style review of Mulan, just, like, not having as much difficulty or leveling up in the live-action version. Putting it in that way makes a meaningful point and is something that can actually be fixed. What can't be fixed, unfortunately, is Disney's enslavement to China. The classic Disney narrative was at one time was aimed at selling the American Dream. Which, bullshit as it may have t…
> I think you could trace the decline in meaningful storytelling to a political posture in China that is deeply at odds with anything that smacks of peasant uprisings, or power to the people The first disney mulan is a story about a girl who overcame discrimination and gender roles to come into a position of great honour to the state. Propping up the state is basically the opposite of a peasent uprising.
>> Propping up the state is basically the opposite of a peasent uprising.
True, and fair. I didn't mean to cast Disney as some kind of revolutionary force for anti-authoritarianism at any point in its history. But the Joan of Arc myth means different things to different people, and it's inherently dangerous to the status quo even if it's used for the glory of the state. Such a legend could not be told now in China, because there's too much room for subversion in the individual's self-empowerment.
Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]
#30Another aspect which is often neglected in movies of today is character development. A character's backstory is either completely unknown, or is told instead of being shown, or is shown in a couple seconds, and then something happens to them that was aimed to supposedly instil some emotions in me as a viewer, but no, I don't care about this character. If they die, I guess they will be replaced by another character I don't care about. Example of this chasm between the old and the new is Moffat-era Doctor Who vs post-Moffat Doctor Who. This YouTube review shows it best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMbZkR9vOrw>
Also, romantic scenes all look the same, completely generic. They're basically copy-pasted between movies. They're so flat and devoid of any genuine feeling I end up hitting the right arrow to skip them entirely.
Usually I don't have those issues with older movies (and movies of a couple selected directors still making good movies to this day).