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Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis

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Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis

#31

Post by awongh »

sbarre wrote: post #14
awongh wrote: post #10

The cultural relevance of movies, and American made movies isn't going anywhere anytime soon, but I think the economics of streaming is finally playing out in the loss of the geographical concentration of power in Hollywood and California. This is the endgame of the feedback loop of streamers causing industry consolidation... the direct connection of dollars people spend to sit in a theatre seat was slowly declining,…

As much as I support unions and labour rights, the last SAG-AFTRA strike mostly just helped the big studios realize they could do more with less. Hollywood is a factory town at the end of the day, and we all know what happened to most factory towns in America. This one is just getting there a few decades after the others.

This is definitely another case where a union could either understand where the bigger economic forces are headed (in this case globalization, IP licensing, residuals that no longer make sense, attention economy fracturing the marketplace etc) and adapt to how people will consume content in the future, or double down on an economic model that is one generation behind.

In theory the union is the only org capable of standing up to the streamers' buying power, but it has to make sense within a business model where consumers pay one monthly fee for content. I'm not even sure what that really looks like in the end.

Maybe it's also that the FTC allowed all this monopolization to happen, and turns out that having three media companies in the US is bad.

Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis

#32

Post by fullshark »

awongh wrote: post #20
fullshark wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cultural relevance of movies is already greatly diminished. Maybe these AI tools will trigger a reversion of movies to the days of the nickelodeons where plot, story, and character are irrelevant and people just shell out money (attention) as long as the moving image looks cool.

Can't it be both? In Marvel movies the plot, story, and characters are irrelevant and it's still the current greatest American cultural export.

There will be some creative people that can now tell stories they couldn't before with AI, but I think by and large the major use case is to create short form video clips to get attention on the internet (advertising). I don't foresee a "movie" (meaning narrative story told via visuals and sounds in 1-3 hours) renaissance happening, in part because I think the form is fully mature and there's not really much more that can be done with it. It's essentially gonna be where Jazz music is today in 40 years, it will have its fans, and there will be talented practitioners, but every year it will be more and more culturally irrelevant.

Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis

#33

Post by Larrikin »

pkorzeniewski wrote: post #19

I haven't been in cinema in the past ~10 years and to be honest I wouldn't care if no more movies were ever made, simply because there are hundreds, if not thousands, amazing movies made since the beginning of the cinema that I didn't watch. Most of the new movies are crap anyways, so why waste time and money when I can watch a classic movie instead which has a much higher probability of me enyjoing it.

This is a boring opinion. It's the equivalent of what happens to many older adults when it comes to music. All of the best songs came out in their teens to about 30 so what's the point of listening to anything new? It assumes there is no innovation and the person just traps themselves in the past.

You could say there hasn't been any good new music since 1970 and humans have been making music for thousands of year. Or you could try out the many new genres and eventually find something new and exciting.

it just seems like a very boring way to live out your life.

Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis

#34

Post by soared »

embedding-shape wrote: post #26
rdtsc wrote: post #17

There just aren’t as many good new movies. Most movies we watch at home are from decades ago. If we didn’t have streaming maybe we’d go to the movies more often, but it’s hard to say. A few movies we watched are not worth the money. To stay afloat they have to raise ticket prices, but if we’re paying so much, the movie better be absolutely outstanding, and the are just not usually, so we stopped going.

> To stay afloat they have to raise ticket prices, but if we’re paying so much What are you paying when you go to the cinema? Just went to the cinema today to see Hoppers, and was slightly surprised that the tickets were only 8 EUR per person, then we spent maybe 5-10 EUR per person on snacks too, so ended up paying maybe ~15 EUR per person overall. This was outside a metropolitan city in South-Western Europe, maybe…

Just checked AMC - $18.50 in the app for a normal adult ticket. ($16 + $2.50 fee for using the app). An icee and popcorn would be ballpark $18 as well.

Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis

#35

Post by jl6 »

the_af wrote: post #24
awongh wrote: post #10

The cultural relevance of movies, and American made movies isn't going anywhere anytime soon, but I think the economics of streaming is finally playing out in the loss of the geographical concentration of power in Hollywood and California. This is the endgame of the feedback loop of streamers causing industry consolidation... the direct connection of dollars people spend to sit in a theatre seat was slowly declining,…

> The optimistic viewpoint is that maybe new AI production tools will trigger a re-democratization of creative movies I don't think so. Part of the downfall of movies -- blockbusters movies anyway, the kind where being a box office hit matters -- is that they have seemed produced like AI slop even before AI. Making it easier to produce more slop isn't going to fix this. Then there's one thing making noise in my brain…

Anton Ego in Ratatouille gives this take on what democratization should mean:

Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere.

Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis

#36

Post by vachina »

pkorzeniewski wrote: post #19

I haven't been in cinema in the past ~10 years and to be honest I wouldn't care if no more movies were ever made, simply because there are hundreds, if not thousands, amazing movies made since the beginning of the cinema that I didn't watch. Most of the new movies are crap anyways, so why waste time and money when I can watch a classic movie instead which has a much higher probability of me enyjoing it.

There is very little incentive to make good movies now, especially when zoomers' attention spans are maximum 2 minutes. I still enjoy a classic movie or two but I'm running out of movies to watch even then.

Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis

#37

Post by shrubby »

pkorzeniewski wrote: post #19

I haven't been in cinema in the past ~10 years and to be honest I wouldn't care if no more movies were ever made, simply because there are hundreds, if not thousands, amazing movies made since the beginning of the cinema that I didn't watch. Most of the new movies are crap anyways, so why waste time and money when I can watch a classic movie instead which has a much higher probability of me enyjoing it.

Enshittification seems to be the modus operandi in every business. The music and the movies from current era feel like they're made for idiots.

Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis

#38

Post by bombcar »

SamuelAdams wrote: post #25
pkorzeniewski wrote: post #19

I haven't been in cinema in the past ~10 years and to be honest I wouldn't care if no more movies were ever made, simply because there are hundreds, if not thousands, amazing movies made since the beginning of the cinema that I didn't watch. Most of the new movies are crap anyways, so why waste time and money when I can watch a classic movie instead which has a much higher probability of me enyjoing it.

The same argument could be made for the book industry, where there are centuries of content available. And yet, people still read new books.

IIRC the book merger lawsuits, they don’t really read many new books. Many are published few are bought.

Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis

#39

Post by the__alchemist »

My 2c: They should stop concentrating on appealing to the broadest audience. Formulaic heros' journeys, franchises, predictable characters acted by the same narrow set of the the most-attractive people etc.

Safety and mass-market appeal over creativity.

For contrast: Books, non-AAA video games, and movies from smaller studios still produce high-quality, creative efforts I continue to be excited about. Big-budget movies (and games), and Netflix shows are mostly bottom-feeder stuff.

Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis

#40

Post by echelon »

pkorzeniewski wrote: post #19

I haven't been in cinema in the past ~10 years and to be honest I wouldn't care if no more movies were ever made, simply because there are hundreds, if not thousands, amazing movies made since the beginning of the cinema that I didn't watch. Most of the new movies are crap anyways, so why waste time and money when I can watch a classic movie instead which has a much higher probability of me enyjoing it.

Young people are going to prefer content that caters to their cultural zeitgeist and worldview. This is why new media is continually made and we don't all just listen to Mozart.

Everything changes and evolves. Fashion, music, games, young adult fiction, memes.

You wouldn't limit yourself to your grandparents' taste, would you? (I didn't say parents because some kids are instilled with parental preferences. I grew up around kids in the 00's who said the Beatles were the peak of music - obviously learned preferences straight from their parents.)

You might not understand youth culture because you grew up before them and have different tastes. We're imprinted with preference and nostalgia for our youth, and we can see changes to that as a hideous affront. The next generation is meanwhile going through the same cycle we did.

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