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Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

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Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#31
post #7

Knew this was Critical Drinker before I clicked on it. Mate introduced me to it and he is absolutely spot on for the most part. Modern movies (and TV for that matter) have become so commercialized and expensive that the series they are now rehashing (Star Wars for instance) wouldn't be possible to create today. George Lucas definitely didn't have the name or history necessary when Alan Ladd gave the go ahead to make…

So true.

I feared the Hollywoodization of the game industry.

But it never happened in the mindless extend of movies and music.

Indie games are still going strong.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#32
This just doesn't ring true to me, at all.

Is the Youtube algorithm directing people to make vaguely fascist feeling, "bring back the good old days", 'kids today', 'civilization is doomed' content aimed at young males? Or is that just a natural cycle that repeats throughout history?

The biggest film in history was "Birth of a Nation" until it was replaced by "Gone with the Wind", "Star Wars" may have been a rebellion against a vaguely Nazi empire, but it was still about hereditary rulers that are related to each other starting wars.

Overall, the trajectory seems fairly positive. The good old days were pretty crappy and that was reflected in their books, films and songs. Though I suppose if you're young enough that Mulan 1998 is a classic film from the good old days you might simply be ignorant of a lot of the crazy shit that went on.

Look up parents re-watching films from their youth with their children, to realise, horrified, what passed as entertainment in their youth that is now shocking to them and stuff they don't want their kids to emulate or look up to.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#34
post #24

Another 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…

I'm guessing you're using a stereo setup then, dialogue is usually mixed into the centre channel, downmixing a 5.1 or 7.1 stream to stereo will produce those results.

even worse is if you don't downmix to stereo, and all you are hearing is front left and right, which is often just the reverb effect channels for dialogue

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#35
Ehh, I think he's asking movies to do too much. It's not the responsibility of hollywood to teach cultural mores.

I do think blockbuster movies are (perhaps) increasingly just glorified cartoons, though, and Marvel/Disney are probably significantly to blame. Is fighting _really_ that interesting? Does the wire pull _have_ to be used in every fight? Why are big dumb CGI animals so popular? Why does every small CGI animal make the same wuk wuk wuk noise? Why does every large CGI animal snort like a buffalo?

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#36

The 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…

Luke Skywalker was just born with superpowers. Sure he had to learn to use the force properly, but there was still no other person in that story capable of using the force. Luke could have replaced either Wedge or Biggs, but they were not capable of replacing him.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#37
post #13

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

I agree it's not very pleasant to watch and this style is often abused, but it serves a real purpose in this video. He's making broad points about movies as whole in two different timeframes and comparing between them. When he's discussing a particular movie the shots illustrate which movie (and in many cases which parts of it) he's referring to. When making broad statements about whole clases of movies the shots provide examples of the points being made.

Using shots like this is much more information-dense than verbally listing a load of titles and scene descriptions and triggers the viewer's memory much more effectively. Keeping the clips very short allows more examples to be packed in and also protects against intellectual property complaints. (The need for the latter is highly regrettable but a daily reality for youtubers.)

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#38
post #24

Another 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…

The “let’s turn luminosity to 0 to drive up the sale of screens with 5000000:1 contrast” got me as much as “let’s make the sound inaudible on stereo to drive up the sale of 7.1 sound systems.”

VLC should have a setting such as “flatten sound to 70dB all the time and luminosity to 50% the ability of the display in average”. Even pirated packs are becoming unwatchable.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#39
What a great video!

On Star Wars in particular, in the original trilogy, it's about coming from nothing, and overcoming your challenges. Luke fails, he makes numerous mistakes throughout the series.

Ray never makes any mistakes, in fact in Episode 9 she clearly kills Chewbacca, but 30 seconds later they backtrack that decision.

The new Star Wars movies are absolutely god awful, except for Episode 8. I liked it for a fairly unique reason. Back when I lived in LA I basically went out with this girl who knew she was a model and I wasted a ton of time and money on her.

When I moved to Chicago, I met a dorky awkward girl, who became my first real girlfriend. This is priceless dating advice, go for that dorky awkward girl that actually likes you.

Of course this really pissed a lot of people off, so they basically got rid of that story arc for the last movie. Looking at the entire series, I really think someone at Disney got uncomfortable with interracial dating, and thus Finn ends up making no sense as his two previous love arcs need to be eliminated by the last movie. This is understandable because even in America I've met people who are very uncomfortable with it, and Disney needs to distribute these movies to a global audience.

That might actually be the root of the problem, you have to make a movie that goes out of its way to keep everybody comfortable. In various countries showing LGBT plotlines are a big no-no, so you have reports coming out of Disney that they've cut these at the last moment from various movies.

The moment you have to make a movie that's okay for every single person, you end up creating these devoid visual spectacles. As in, most action movies are just a bunch of explosions and music. You can replace all the dialogue with gibberish and still get the idea of what happened.

I was trying to watch Free Guy and had to turn it off 10 minutes in. Stop with the freaking music for a second and let people speak.

However, other countries are still making real movies. I think a big part of the Korean wave is you don't have as much pandering to every single possible audience in K-pop dramas. Even then, I've had friends post that the subtitles are often toned down. Edit: Language Reactor is a great Chrome plugin which offers alternative subtitles as well as context. It's a great tool for language learning as well

I can't imagine ever going to a movie theater again, congratulations Disney You've ruined cinema.

Maybe I'll put one of these mediocre movies on in the background while I do other things, but they're not worthy of my undivided attention.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#40
post #27
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, trai…

It takes over summer or something like that. He is 17 when movie starts and tournament he wins is when is 18 birthsday gift. Bulk of training is housework chores. No, you cant do housework for few months and emerge tournaments winning fighter out of it. That is literally plot of first Karate Kid.

However, it is kid/teenage fantasy. Which is fine! But not some kind of hard work message movie.

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