They should put an epilepsy warning in this video. Bombing the viewer with one second sequences of random films for the entire video is really annoying
The audio is what is important.
Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]
131–140 of 414 posts
Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
> George Lucas definitely didn't have the name or history necessary when Alan Ladd gave the go ahead to make Star Wars that you would need these days for a comparably ambitious film. I don't know if that's entirely true. George Lucas had come off the back of American Graffiti, which was an incredible commercial success. It had made 50x its budget, and in 1977 was the 13th highest grossing film of all time . The quest…
True, American Graffiti was pivotal in him getting the shot he did. What I am saying is I don't think that plays out the same way today given movie budgets, you can't just have one person like one film you made and force through the production budget of a AAA film anymore.
Was "Star Wars" a AAA film though? I don't know what typical budgets were for films from that studio at that time were but in so many other regards it feels like it was a B-movie that over-achieved.
I mean just one aging star (sorry, Alec) in the film's credits.... That doesn't sound like a AAA studio effort.
Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]
#133One 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…
I call that sort of "good" plots "character-oriented plot". One best example is Breaking Bad, which is not movie, but it is a great show anyway. The episode of Fly is a good example how well BB portrayed character's personality. with character-oriented plot, we have character first, and let them play drama. It is like having initial condition and seeing how things evolve in Ordinary Differential Equation. Everything…
> The episode of Fly is a good example how well BB portrayed character's personality.
That was a pointless filler episode that only got made because they ran out of money.
Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The 99% trope thing has an associated concept of its own: fan service.
Once you go past a certain level of tropey-ness (tropiness?) you're unavoidably telegraphing a message to genre fans because everyone else rejects your work as derivative.
But giving it a name -- fan service -- is kind of a new version where all parties are aware of it and actively engaged with it.
And it gives rise to a new way for directors to have all the fun of breaking the fourth wall without breaking the fourth wall -- to have the characters also aware of the tropes of the circumstances in which they find themselves.
There's so much of this in TV in particular and a lot of it is because of the influence of Joss Whedon, but Rocke S. O'Bannon did some of this in Farscape (and then much more explicitly as I understand it in Cult, which I haven't seen yet).
You could argue that a certain strand of films of the late 80s and early 90s really kicked it off, not least the original, quite underrated Buffy The Vampire Slayer, which is all about trope awareness.
Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]
#135Another 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’d wager that many engineers are still mixing for the cinema experience, but the vast majority of people are consuming media via their TV’s, laptops, tablets and phones, with an extremely diverse range of audio quality and placement. Findings a happy medium is incredibly difficult, if not impossible. There’s certainly a need for a ‘context aware’ format that can dynamically change the way sound - particularly speech…
I can’t wait for the day Netflix gives us the ability to adjust volume by category like video games. Different sliders for dialogue, background music, explosions, etc.
Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]
#136I think the video doesn't go deep enough: the problem is not that movies teach the wrong lessons, but rather that the movies are so hyper-optimized for engagement and ROI that there's no room for nuance. He may not like the newest Star Wars trilogy, but it nonetheless made a lot of money. That said, I think the author (and also me in the previous paragraph) uses the term "movies" to refer to "big budget movies", whic…
> He may not like the newest Star Wars trilogy, but it nonetheless made a lot of money.
So "franchise" is golden.
I suspect all of us can agree that in some alternate universe where the prequels were released before "Star Wars" ... there never would have been a franchise.
Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]
#137My take is slightly different than what I'm reading here. I think movies is somewhat similar to engineering in a way. There's a ton of brainpower and talent actually required to come up with innovative and striking stories and screenplays etc. And I believe the limited reserve of people with this talent aren't given the fuck you money needed to achieve it.
There's basically a talent shortage and the modern culture in Hollywood no longer boosts the innovators to the top as they did in previous decades.
Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]
#138One 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 thing with tropes is that they weren't always tropes.
This reminds me of the Seinfeld effect.
Seinfeld was arguably brilliant, but even if you disagree with its brilliance, enough people thought it was brilliant that practically every bit in its entire run has been ripped off so many times that they've all become boring clichés.
So pervasive has the ripoff been, that watching Nickelodeon episodes of Hannah Montana and Sweet Life of Zack and Cody have ripped off (and watered down) Seinfeld plots to the extent that trying to watch Seinfeld now is burdensome. Despite the bits in Seinfeld having been mostly original and novel at the time they were made, they have become tropey enough that it feels unoriginal through the slow attrition of time.
People trying to get into the show at this point would likely see it as tropey, and those who still adore it as doing so more through fond remembrance than appreciation of its originality.
Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
> George Lucas definitely didn't have the name or history necessary when Alan Ladd gave the go ahead to make Star Wars that you would need these days for a comparably ambitious film. I don't know if that's entirely true. George Lucas had come off the back of American Graffiti, which was an incredible commercial success. It had made 50x its budget, and in 1977 was the 13th highest grossing film of all time . The quest…
True, American Graffiti was pivotal in him getting the shot he did. What I am saying is I don't think that plays out the same way today given movie budgets, you can't just have one person like one film you made and force through the production budget of a AAA film anymore.
[deleted]
Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]
#140On the other hand, we have movies you don't need context to watch; don't need to care or emotionally invest - just sit back and passively enjoy the sounds and colors. Like a 3 hour long cigar.
We need movies like this because a lot of people have enough drama and action in real life, and need audiovisual media to wind down and stop thinking
If I wanted to take a lesson, I could read the plot summary - it's the same information. For a 3 hour movie, I could resume all of Dostoevsky's works.