The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

I think what this means is that the movies now care whether the least-common-denominator viewers get their "point."

Because of this, they have to have a single easily articulated point, and they have to beat the audience over the head with it.

Prior to this, I doubt whether directors, writers, or studios much cared if an unsophisticated viewer walked out of a movie with the "wrong" idea of what it "meant." The ability to attach multiple meanings, even multiple conflicting meanings, was seen as an inevitable aspect of art that should be embraced and engaged with. It was accepted that people would see a different movie depending on their background, their personal history, and their awareness of cinematic language. Supporting multiple readings was seen as a sign of depth and complexity, not necessarily a weakness.

Now the movies take a pragmatic, engineered approach to delivering a message. Ambiguity must be squashed. Viewer differences must be made irrelevant. The message takes precedence over art.

I think the interesting question is, why does the message now take precedence over everything else? What has changed? I see two possible answers.

First possibility, the audience demands a message. If the least-common-denominator viewer demands a message, and you are in the business of servicing that demand, you have to make sure you avoid any possible mishaps or misunderstandings in the delivery.

Second possibility, the makers of movies derive some personal satisfaction or social gain from broadcasting a message to the masses. They see the movies as propaganda rather than art. (Or perhaps a less active motivation: the makers of movies are afraid that there might be blowback from viewers attaching an unsavory meaning to a movie. They want to make sure that their movie doesn't become like Fight Club, a proudly embraced symbol of what it was meant to critique.)

Either of these would explain why movies are now engineered to deliver a single, unmistakable message at the expense of art and enjoyability. Or maybe there's another explanation. I'm just spitballing. I'd love to read more by somebody close enough to actually know what they're talking about.

> Not sure that pointing out the success of sci fi franchises is proof audiences want diversity.

The thing is, when AAA games or movie studios start to focus on that one thing that "sells best at one moment" everyone else checks out.

I did checked out of games when I realized they are just not made for me anymore, that stuff I liked is looked down at in the industry and they focus on stuff I do not care about. It was similar process with major movies, at some point too little appealed to me, so I stopped caring entirely.

> The VAST majority of movies that have been made in the past (when the real indicator, % of population going to movies, peaked) deal with ordinary, realistic human stories.

Sure. I like to watch those and I do, on Netflix or whatever. I just do not expect realistic human story or something new from a major Hollywood movie. They are not about any of that.

A major contributor to Titanic being the best selling movie by tickets sold is the amount of people that went to watch it multiple times, and going to see a movie multiple times in 1997, while not common, was not unusual because it was 1997 so what else are you going to do?

There are a lot of things that bother me in recent movies. I feel like there's a "yay, we're making a movie!" attitude, where people are more concerned with proving that they're part of a culture rather than simply doing their job to the best of their ability.

The most egregious example is the amount of Wilhelm Screams I've heard, absolutely crammed into media. It's a proclamation of, "I'm a sound editor, and I'm in on the joke!" but all it does is pull me out of the story completely.

Another sound editor example is the amount of ice clinking in glasses and sloshing sounds of drinks, as if the protagonist's long-neck beer bottle is a half-empty jug being jerked around.

Impressive stunts are virtually non-existent now. Instead, they drive a custom-built, tubular-frame car, swerving wildly, while the camera jerks around on a crane. Everything is reskinned using CGI, and the end result is the desired car being driven by an apparent maniac who chooses a profoundly sub-optimal path through traffic.

Writers have to point out their cleverness in order to announce to the audience how clever they're being. It reminds me of eye-rollingly clever newspaper headlines.

Everything has been turned up to 11, but in the lamest way possible.

Pretentious nonsense is plaguing the newyorker.