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The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

newyorker.com

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Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#171

Post by hinterlands »

alistairSH wrote: post #135
xnorswap wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dropped? You've produced a graph showing they've been on the increase for the past 30 years.

And where the heck can you get a movie ticket for $11? A discount matinee viewing at my local theaters is from $17 to $20. $20-$23 if you go in the evening. The lowest price ticket, a Tuesday noon showing, is $12. I don't recall the last time I went to the movies with my wife and spent less than $60 (tickets, a shared soda, two snacks).

My local Cinemark has tickets for $5.50, $8.50... you're probably in a premium market.

Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#172

Post by AlexandrB »

dkarl wrote: post #161

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 abilit…

One interesting example here is Joker. It seems like the filmmakers did not like the audience they attracted with the first film, nor the messages that this audience took away. So the sequel seems like it was intentionally designed to piss that audience off.

Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#173

Post by mpol »

hanlonsrazor wrote: post #146

I have definitely noticed the same occurring in North American cinema, but I do not think this is a new phenomenon. Rather, it's just a symptom of the increased commercialization of indie cinema - commercialization requiring film for all to understand. If one is to broaden their horizons, overseas cinema is still devoid of this literalism. European cinema, Korean cinema, and the famously show not tell Japanese cinema…

> a symptom of the increased commercialization

If it's about what people want to see, could it be that people cannot deal with insecurity anymore? We cannot deal with not knowing. We have to know for sure, so we can feel secure.

Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#174

Post by neuroelectron »

antognini wrote: post #151
neuroelectron wrote: post #93

New Yorker is plagued by shallow snobbery. A kind of assumed elitism based on geographic location and a specific demographic. What makes their opinions so correct ? Rich people agree with them. Of course, we have a term for this, luxury beliefs.

That's not exactly what is meant by luxury beliefs. Luxury beliefs aren't simply beliefs that rich people hold. It more refers to social opinions which would (allegedly) impose high costs on the poor, but from which the wealthy would be insulated from the consequences. Something like "defund the police" is usually pointed to as an example of a luxury belief. The poor, who live in high crime areas, would see crime go…

It's a luxury belief in the sense that they're in a position to have an impact on the zeitgeist. People have been complaining about bad movies for a while now but now The New Yorker has an opinion. The rest of us proles can't afford Broadway. We get what we're served.

Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#175

Post by zzbzq »

npteljes wrote: post #140
alexey-salmin wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the less enlightened of us, what is the joke?

The way I read it, the joke is just owning the insult in a good way. It works here on multiple levels, because first, owning the insult is not expected, so that's already a surprise, which can work as a joke. Then, by actually admitting to the many bad classes, it signals that the author can actually tell good from bad, implying knowledge about the matter after all, refuting the argument in the insult (that he is bad…

First guy says something about philosophy.

Second guy says he's had a bad philosophy class, implying it's a bad, naive, amateur, or uninformed take on the philosophical subject at hand.

First guy says he's had many, implying he's actually studied philosophy extensively, perhaps majored in it in college or obtained a degree, refuting the idea that the original take was amateur or uninformed.

Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#176

Post by toast0 »

ajmurmann wrote: post #117
somenameforme wrote: post #17

Fun fact: movie sales, in terms of tickets sold, peaked in 2002. [1] All the 'box office records' since then are the result of charging way more to a continually plummeting audience size. And this is highly relevant for things like this. People often argue that if movies were so bad then people would stop watching them, unaware that people actually have stopped watching them! Even for individual movies. For all the m…

I wonder how much of that is because the movies themselves changed vs everything else that has changed. Back in 2002 most people still watched tv on CRT that were very small by today's standard and had very low resolution. You either had to go out and rent a movie, rewatch something you had recorded or bought or watch whatever was on and enjoy the ads. Now we have a huge choice of movies and tv shows at our finger ti…

> Not sure if that's because this IMAX is too small or because even IMAX stopped being amazing due to growth and improvement of other screens.

IMAX broadened the licensing about 10-15 years ago. I'm not an IMAX person, but people who are complained a lot about it at the time.

Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#177

Post by 0cf8612b2e1e »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #118
2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be fine with the length if they actually used the time for something good.

If I understand movie theater economics correctly, the studio gets 80 to 95% of the ticket sales, depending on how "first run" the movie is. The theaters actually make their money on selling concessions. Well, the longer the movie, the more people feel the need of snacks to get through it. So maybe the theaters are pushing longer movies rather than shorter, because they make more money that way. Just an off-the-cuff…

Bit of a tight line to walk. Longer movies mean fewer showings per day. When I saw that Oppenheimer was three hours long -I want to watch that at home so I can take a bathroom break/snacks so a personal pause button is an improvement on the theater.

Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#179

Post by dfxm12 »

s28l wrote: post #149

I find this article rather underwhelming because it spends so much time calling out bad examples and so little time highlighting examples of subtlety (in any era). Without positive examples, I don’t think they make the case that this is a new phenomenon or even a phenomenon at all: all the author has done is identify a lens to criticize through. It may be the case that this is a recent phenomenon (though some other c…

Yeah, I can see where the author is coming from, but it's kinda effortless to dismiss a ~2hr movie with a five sentence critique of a few scenes or lines of dialog. I'd much rather see the author go deep on one movie than shallowly take on a bunch.

Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#180

Post by AlexandrB »

justanotherjoe wrote: post #34
Duanemclemore wrote: post #21

I don't know if calling it a "New Literalism" is helpful. I just don't know that a penchant for literalism ever went away. Now, what IS relatively new is the "ruined punchline" phenomena that they identify (without naming) on the movie recap podcast Kill James Bond, which is that contemporary movies always ruin jokes by telling one, say... "x" and then having another character chime in with "Did you just say 'x' !?"…

Can you describe more about the "ruined punchline" thing? Cause that sounds natural to me. Like in Jurassic Park, Alan Grant hears "We clocked the t-rex at 32 mph" and he goes "Did you just say 't-rex'?". Actually they repeat it like 3 times more to really lean into it. And I guess my point is that Jurassic Park doesn't feel modern or clumsy in this particular execution.

Part of it is overexposure. The same thing happened to snappy "Joss Whedon" dialogue. This stuff worked really well in Buffy and Firefly, but Whedon was good at writing dialogue like this and he knew when not to use it. We've now had 15+ years of various writers at Disney doing crappy Whedon impersonations and this style of dialogue has worn out its welcome for many.
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