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Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis

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Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis

#201

Post by wafflemaker »

magicalhippo wrote: post #149
Jtsummers wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is that? Tickets here are only $7-10 each (except maybe some IMAX or similar showings) and two drinks and popcorn would be $15-25 for two people (size dependent). This is in Colorado. EDIT: I was going off of memory, but matinee/child/senior pricing is apparently $9.75 at the theater I usually go to, evening is $13.25 (I never go in the evening, had forgotten what that price was). They have a two drink and popc…

Not op, but in Norway, so includes 25% VAT. IMAX opening week is a lot, $25-35. After a while it can drop to $20 or so. Regular is more like $20-25 opening week and drops to $12-15. I don't bother with popcorn and soda, it's grossly over priced. Like $10 for a small popcorn the size of a pint. I buy a 0.5L bottle at the grocery store next to the cinema and some M (our M&Ms), maybe $10. Though lately I've been going a…

I thought that you're being a little too critical. Others should know that Norway is a country with relatively high costs of living.

The minimum wage for a cleaner is 46k per year ($23\h). And your boss better not try any shenanigans, because you're most likely unionized and shouldn't really be messed with.

I've found $18 ticket for opening week for Hail Mary in my city. Most of them were at $23, but that's for the premium sall, with shaking seats or other fancy stuff.

So a person with a job looked down upon in most other countries can still get one ticket for an hour of work.

Reason I've felt compelled to reply was because cinema tickets always felt cheap to me in Norway, compared to more like 2h of work for minimum wage worker in Poland where I originally come from. Compared to any other prices like $15 for a beer at a bar or $30+ for a bottle of vodka in the alcohol shop* they just always felt like a steal. YMMV OFC.

*Interesting trivia: The alcohol shop is called Vinmonopolet and it really is a monopoly. The only company allowed to sell alcohol above 4.7% is run by the state. They have shops in towns, and if you live far from one (like most of northern Norway past the polar circle) you're most likely getting your alcohol from homebrew mafia instead.

Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis

#202

Post by epolanski »

jrowen wrote: post #124
awongh wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like I said elsewhere, I think people still want to watch 1+ hour fiction stories that are compelling. This is a broad category that I think people still want that's differentiated from 30sec vertical video, and that should exist in the cultural conversation. It doesn't feel fully democratized because if it was, you'd see more indie things in this same format competing with "big budget" movies on the same playing fie…

> I think people still want to watch 1+ hour fiction stories that are compelling. I mean, "want to" is one thing, but the numbers show what they end up doing. Instagram and TikTok, like video games as someone else mentioned, have taken a significant share of the "entertainment hours" budget. I feel like the impact of the low-to-no-budget content creator is undeniable (this traces back to ebaumsworld and early YouTube…

> Gen Z probably wholeheartedly prefers this type of content

I think it's virtually all demographics below 70.

My 60/70 years old family are all too distracted by the phones to watch a movie, and so are millenial friends.

Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis

#203

Post by jrowen »

vl wrote: post #184
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.

> There just aren’t as many good new movies. Is this true, or you just can’t discover them anymore because everything else competes for your attention? Arguably in the last decade more great content in both movies and TV shows produced than ever, it’s just so much, that it’s hard to choose.

I recently watched A League of Their Own and Die Hard. In my opinion, these movies are just categorically different from what's being made today, are still totally compelling start to finish, and really capture the magic and the high art of the golden age of cinema. I truly believe movies were just better 30-40 years ago.

That was the era of "every second counts." Every second has meaning and purpose and adds something to the narrative. The Fifth Element is another good example, and almost 30 years old. Now in the age of binging, where a 2 hour plot is stretched into 17 hours of TV, there is SO much filler and downtime and it's honestly just offensive in comparison.

I kind of enjoyed Pluribus, I liked the concept and what they did with it, but there's way too much forgettable filler that dilutes it into a slog. The movies I mentioned are (again, IMO) absolutely gripping and just lean and mean storytelling vehicles.

Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis

#204

Post by madaxe_again »

the__alchemist wrote: post #39

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 movi…

Sure, but Spider-Man CXXVI is a sure bet for a safe ROI. Nobody knows what Chopper Chicks in Zombietown will yield.

Books are a great example - even popular books will now have a readership in the tens of thousands, at most. Nobody makes money - it’s an art, not an industry.

Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis

#206

Post by Cerium »

g947o wrote: post #114
WarmWash wrote: post #96

My fiance mentioned we haven't gone to see a movie in theaters in years and it would be fun to go. I checked what was playing and: 2 tickets, 2 sodas, 1 popcorn. $86 dollars. Don't know if I'll ever go to a conventional movie theater again.

Then I guess you aren't familiar with the 20 minutes of trailers, 1 minute of Cocacola ad and 2 minutes of other completely irrelevant content before the movie actually begins.

Now that reserved seats are the norm, I leave my house at the specified starting time and never have missed even a minute of the feature film.

Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis

#207

Post by skeeter2020 »

g947o wrote: post #114
WarmWash wrote: post #96

My fiance mentioned we haven't gone to see a movie in theaters in years and it would be fun to go. I checked what was playing and: 2 tickets, 2 sodas, 1 popcorn. $86 dollars. Don't know if I'll ever go to a conventional movie theater again.

Then I guess you aren't familiar with the 20 minutes of trailers, 1 minute of Cocacola ad and 2 minutes of other completely irrelevant content before the movie actually begins.

Calling them trailers is a bit of a stretch; and only 3 minutes of ads? We go to different screenings!

Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis

#208

Post by olivierestsage »

vl wrote: post #184
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.

> There just aren’t as many good new movies. Is this true, or you just can’t discover them anymore because everything else competes for your attention? Arguably in the last decade more great content in both movies and TV shows produced than ever, it’s just so much, that it’s hard to choose.

Whenever someone says online that something's declining (Hollywood movies, video games, UX experiences in desktop environments, etc.), I see a variation on this argument: "actually the options are even better today, they're just buried" (often accompanied by: "you were just younger then and everything was new and that's why you liked it").

Sometimes, cultural decline actually does happen, usually eventually followed by some kind of renaissance. Anyone who has studied the cinema, literature, etc. of a certain country in the past knows that there are "hot" periods and "cool" ones. When we see this phenomenon in the past, it doesn't tend to trigger the same defensive reaction, I guess because it doesn't feel as personal.

Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis

#209

Post by beedeebeedee »

gzread wrote: post #142
rishabhaiover wrote: post #100

So many more products are competing for finite attention now. And the solution to that problem is not to productize your commodity imo, art created for the sake of selling is not art.

If you don't productize something you won't make money and then you'll starve and die.

Then UBI. This is a failure of our economy, which creates perverse incentives. Clean air, clean water, good food, plentiful housing, and opportunities for sport, contemplation and art are the things we need, but our economy incentivizes people to pollute, sell slop, restrict housing, and exploit ourselves and others.

Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis

#210

Post by skeeter2020 »

deadbabe wrote: post #195
g947o wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they exist. None exists the in 15 mile radius of where I live.

In the millennial suburbs some people have converted their garages into small indie move theaters with good sound systems and people from around the neighborhood show up to watch obscure movies together and eat barbecued food.

pre-millennial here; we call this a party, rather than a "suburban prosumer boutique theatre".
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