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Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

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Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#331

Post by darkerside »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #304
sandworm101 wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A character who is put down, becomes angry, then becomes powerful and carries that anger forward. Yawn. That is the background of about half of comic characters. Compare Captain America. He was week and abused, became powerful, but actively decides not to carry baggage. It is a fish-out-of-water character that has to constantly reconcile ideology with army-inspired pragmatism and loyalty. And he has a foil (Iron Man)…

> A character who is put down, becomes angry, then becomes powerful and carries that anger forward. But... that's the opposite of what happens. It is addressing this exact concept and doing something different. He's literally asking to fight like a gentleman. The dialogue in this scene is literally "can you keep your emotions in check long enough to take me on, or will it get the better of you?" And she rejects his c…

> male centric story telling often uses combat ability as a metaphor for personal growth

Why does this have to be male centric? Gaining strength as a metaphor and parallel to personal growth is a story as old as time, and there's a reason we all like it. It's like a meet cute in a date movie. You can have fun with the trope, but at the end of the day, something like it needs to happen to make a successful story in this genre.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#332

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

justinator wrote: post #99
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest problem with movies is none of the labor has been automated much. You still need an entire film and sound crew. You still need a cast of actors and a director and a screenwriter and a composer. You still need to raise money, producers, etc. Sure, video & sound editing have had a lot of automation improvements via software - but that's pretty much it. One person can make a game with a bunch of cheap pre-ma…

There are many examples of making a film on a budget of almost nothing. Clerks, Evil Dead, the Sweding movement, most all of Tik Tok… You can make a compelling story via flip book.

For anything with a niche target audience - sure.

You're not going to have multiple locations, good actors, good writing, good composition, quality cinematography, etc - unless you're incredibly talented and not counting how much your time is actually worth.

Films for a wide audience these days basically require - at a minimum - 6 specialists working for a month of shooting. Plus 5+ actors.

The absolute minimum that costs in labor - if you actually counted the value of your time - is ~$200k+.

A good script itself is worth well over $100k...

Realistically - it's almost impossible to make something with wide appeal for less than $2m in the US - or $1m internationally.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#333

Post by spywaregorilla »

darkerside wrote: post #331
spywaregorilla wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A character who is put down, becomes angry, then becomes powerful and carries that anger forward. But... that's the opposite of what happens. It is addressing this exact concept and doing something different. He's literally asking to fight like a gentleman. The dialogue in this scene is literally "can you keep your emotions in check long enough to take me on, or will it get the better of you?" And she rejects his c…

> male centric story telling often uses combat ability as a metaphor for personal growth Why does this have to be male centric? Gaining strength as a metaphor and parallel to personal growth is a story as old as time, and there's a reason we all like it. It's like a meet cute in a date movie. You can have fun with the trope, but at the end of the day, something like it needs to happen to make a successful story in th…

> Why does this have to be male centric?

I didn't say it had to?

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#334

Post by watwut »

Retric wrote: post #301
watwut wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real people are often quiet around those. That is as normal reaction as loud yelling.

It’s so subconscious for people to speak lauder in a noisy environment that you might not realize it, but it’s so necessary we have started to program devices to do the same thing: https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/31/22651304/amazon-alexa-ada... I am not saying intense emotions universally result in yelling, but people very rarely whisper when say calling 9/11. Even just kids playing tag get lauder.

People normally get mute in stressful situation. They normally have troubles to express things, they talk in weak voice, whisper or not at all. They have one word answers to complex questions. And anything in between. Some dissociate and act normal or follow normal script by routine.

They don't whisper to the phone, they will put more conscious effort to talk into 911 call ... or the shaken mute person won't be the one making call.

You seriously never had to ask people to talk louder in noise environment? The "people yell" assumption is artifact of movies, not reality.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#335

Post by watwut »

hackerfromthefu wrote: post #295
Beldin wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

2-3 years of regular training is a good guideline for the movements to become autonomic in real-time situations with fluent synchrony situational context, for someone reasonably coordinated at the start.

The movie is about becoming good enough to win tournament against people who trained continuously for years.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#336

Post by wolverine876 »

smegsicle wrote: post #321
wolverine876 wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Men are portrayed this way all the time. Why would portraying women this way get so much attention and concern?

showcasing female heroes as displaying exaggerated masculine abilities (in a sexualized female body) is belittling to actual feminine virtues

Who cares what you think - or what I think? Who are you or anyone to define what these women do or want - and then weakly try to appeal to authority by assigning your opinions the words "actual feminine virtues"? Many men used to define those 'virtues' as not working, voting, having an opinion, and as being obedient, sexy, and sexually available to them (but not to other men!) - how convenient!

> sexualized female body

So? Does it intimidate you? Should they hide or show their bodies based on what you prefer, or on what you think is right? Who the f- are you (or I) to have an opinion on what they should do. Should I have an opinion on what you do?

Meanwhile, women fight wars, run countries and corporations. They don't post much on Hacker News - look at this discussion of men saying what women should do, just like the old days. I wonder why we don't see more women here?

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#337

Post by Gatsky »

Strawhorse wrote: post #115
Gatsky wrote: post #46

I disagree that one learns anything important from a (non-documentary) movie. Movies are an experiential but non-interactive art form that resists internalisation. At best they make you feel a certain way for a short while, in my experience.

Movies (non-documentary) can moot and champion whole ideologies, psychologies, and philosophies, for example Fight Club (nihilism), Logan's Run (progressivism, anti-establishmentism), Lost in Translation (existentialism, contemporary anomie), Magnolia (existentialism, fugue) etc. I suggest you broaden your viewing.

My viewing is pretty broad, I’ve seen these movies except Magnolia. What you are describing is the placing of a movie in a cultural context. This is criticism, not learning on an individual level. For example, take Mulan. I can generate a feminist counter-critique that the new Mulan is in fact better because women are born with special qualities men don’t have, and often are superior when given equal opportunities. This isn’t a lesson the movie teaches however, it’s academic bloviating.

I mean I think actual existentialist philosophers would laugh if you tried to tell them that Lost in Translation is an existentialist movie. Also I think you mean ennui not anomie.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#338

Post by nebula8804 »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #124
cle wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money has always been there, I think it’s really more about connectedness. Audience sizes have exploded as population has grown and cultures have become more connected due to globalization and the Internet, so the TAM has exploded and led to the watering down of…everything, from movies to games to news & politics.

Too bad then, because if the audience has exploded then so too have the niche audience that would appreciate a film about, say, John von Neumann (ha ha, just to pick someone I just read an article about from HN).

I think this audience is there but they are watching these films on Netflix. I observed this phenomenon from 2019 to today when I got a monthly AMC movie pass that allows me to watch any three movies a week every week. What I observed even pre pandemic is that any film that is not a major established blockbuster (Superhero films, James bond, etc.) has little to no people coming out to see them. I further tried to understand this trend by writing a data collecting tool that leverages AMC's API to better understand who is coming out. It showed me that there are tons of empty screens for many smaller films going on. Finally to help control to see if this is a AMC thing, I also signed up for Cinemark(a competitor) and observed basically the same results.

It sucks because this harms directors I actually want to see succeed like Edgar Wright. Edgar is a big proponent of watching movies on the big screen so he designs his films to be primarily viewed on cinema screens and pushes for the longest release window he can get. Unfortunately, outside the cities, I observed little uptake for his latest film. :/

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#339

Post by darkerside »

wolverine876 wrote: post #317
ReactiveJelly wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen the feminist reading of Mad Max: Fury Road? You might find it interesting. YouTube is not loading for me, but it's called "The avenging feminine": https://www.reddit.com/r/GamerGhazi/comments/9jzuci/bringing... My favorite part is something the essayist points out about the mothers [1] in Fury Road: They help in every fight. They shoot, they reload guns, they operate bolt cutters, they deny guns to enem…

Does it pass the Bechdel Test? I don't remember it well enough: 1. There are at least two women characters, with names and their own personalities (i.e., they aren't extras) 2. The women talk to each other 3. They talk to each other about something besides men. (If you aren't familiar, an incredible number of films fail - and yes, the 'reverse Bechdel Test' (substituting men for women) is passed by almost every film.…

Yes

https://bechdeltest.com/view/6242/mad_max:_fury_road/

Also, the Bechdel Test is incredibly misleading and distracts from the actual problem IMO, which is simple underrepresentation of women in movies. If only 20% of movie characters are women, probably 4% of dialogue (20% of 20%) would end up being women talking to each other. Solve representation, not content.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#340

Post by [deleted] »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #270
dionidium wrote: post #248

It's not a coincidence that all the main characters featured in this video are women. The main thing the filmmakers are trying to show is that these are girl-bosses who can do anything men can do (and more) and it's so important to show that with utter, relentless completeness, that they've created characters that are magical, who don't need to overcome anything, characters who matter mostly as individuals, who have…

I think captain marvel is an interesting one on this note. It is a problem in recent films that writers want to overpower women to make things fair, and they do a disservice to the women by doing so. Captain marvel seems to address this directly and in a more mature way. Her character does start weak. She is shown losing repeated to her officer in physical fights and feeling inferior. Later she becomes the most power…

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