Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

youtube.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 414 posts

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#81

Post by IgorPartola »

blippage wrote: post #65

One thing I've noticed is that is seems more recent movies lack character observations. Everything is done is in service of the plot. I think it was in Doctor No there was a conversation between Q, M and Bond. Bond's favourite weapon was the Beretta, and Q explained their downsides. Bond was ordered to use the Walther (IIRC) as a replacement. It was in a box. At the end of the scene, Bond picks up the box, surreptiti…

Are you sure you aren’t just remembering fondly movies you saw when you were younger? Both those scenes are huge tropes/clichés.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#82

Post by seanhandley »

I worked for a while with a guy who'd worked at the BBC for many years.

His reasoning for why movies are more boring was simple: money.

A production team is looking to distribute their movie in as many channels as possible, and with the broadest appeal possible. As a result, you see a film made with the broad strokes but lacking in subtlety. If a film might be challenging because of the subject matter, the complexity of the dialogue, the character development, or the plot then it gets dialled back.

You lose the specific cultural references that give a film it's charm and it ends up not really being a true reflection of any people anywhere - just easy Friday night cinema fodder that maximises return on investment.

A movie sucks because it isn't art any more.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#83

Post by ballenf »

IgorPartola wrote: post #81
blippage wrote: post #65

One thing I've noticed is that is seems more recent movies lack character observations. Everything is done is in service of the plot. I think it was in Doctor No there was a conversation between Q, M and Bond. Bond's favourite weapon was the Beretta, and Q explained their downsides. Bond was ordered to use the Walther (IIRC) as a replacement. It was in a box. At the end of the scene, Bond picks up the box, surreptiti…

Are you sure you aren’t just remembering fondly movies you saw when you were younger? Both those scenes are huge tropes/clichés.

There was a lot of trope in those movies, but I think we'll look back at today's bad movies as 99% trope. It's just we don't see the tropes so clearly right now without a little distance.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#84

Post by zthrowaway »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #60
JanneVee wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nostalgia that is the most natural thing in the world is defined as 'fascist' now?

"Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering." -- Yoda These are all 'natural things', doesn't mean we should rush to embrace them and the people who use them to manipulate us.

Do you know what fascist means? Or are we just going to use that word for everything that we find unappealing now?

Would love for you to define it, and explain how it applies to American nostalgia for older classic movies that are a foundation of our pop culture.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#85

Post by dazc »

viraptor wrote: post #58
BoppreH wrote: 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 forced to watch every movie with subtitles The silver lining here may be that people stop treating subtitles as torture and see some non-English titles more often. There are some fun movie cultures out there beyond Hollywood, but I've found the "ugh, I've got to read‽" response common.

As it happens, I was watching a foreign film (Italian) last night with english subtitles but the dialogue was also muffled and I found it just as difficult to watch.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#86

Post by partomniscient »

IgorPartola wrote: post #81
blippage wrote: post #65

One thing I've noticed is that is seems more recent movies lack character observations. Everything is done is in service of the plot. I think it was in Doctor No there was a conversation between Q, M and Bond. Bond's favourite weapon was the Beretta, and Q explained their downsides. Bond was ordered to use the Walther (IIRC) as a replacement. It was in a box. At the end of the scene, Bond picks up the box, surreptiti…

Are you sure you aren’t just remembering fondly movies you saw when you were younger? Both those scenes are huge tropes/clichés.

The first time you see a huge trope or cliche, its not actually a huge trope or cliche because to you its new and you get the full impact of whatever it is.

Its only over time that you get the "I know this situation", "I've been here before" possibly reaching the point of not wanting it again because you're oversaturated with said trope/cliche and now recognise them as such.

But the first ones stick with you and you remember them differently to the others.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#87

Post by dmitriid »

chii wrote: post #59
dmitriid wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> uses the term "movies" to refer to "big budget movies", which are by no means the only movies out there They kinda are. Franchises have sucked all the air out of the room, and movies are given money on the premise that they will make money. Edit: not just money. But shit-tons of money that can be milked from multiple angles for many years. Already 10 years ago filmmakers were struggling to find funding for their pr…

> movies are given money on the premise that they will make money so what would be an alternative funding model? A patreon or kickstarter like model where directors and stars are pre-paid via crowd funding? A state sponsored funding model? Non-profit model?

The original model where 1 big movie would pay for 6 break-even and 4 non-profitable movies :)

Too bad we may never return to that.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#88

Post by loonster »

laurent92 wrote: post #38
BoppreH wrote: 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.

I've also seen GoT.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#89

Post by [deleted] »

seanhandley wrote: post #82

I worked for a while with a guy who'd worked at the BBC for many years. His reasoning for why movies are more boring was simple: money. A production team is looking to distribute their movie in as many channels as possible, and with the broadest appeal possible. As a result, you see a film made with the broad strokes but lacking in subtlety. If a film might be challenging because of the subject matter, the complexity…

[deleted]

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#90

Post by Pasorrijer »

BoppreH wrote: 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…

A response to your edit, I was on a zoom call with current musical editors / producers and that is 100% part of the problem. Many of today's actors /actresses almost mumble their lines and make it absolute hell for the audio people to pick them up, whereas theatre trained individuals were loud and enunciate the crap out of everything.
Post reply on HN