Maybe I'm insane or it's my age, but I can't watch new movies/shows without just seeing propaganda agendas at every turn. Really kills it for me.
Should art not of a point of view?
Should a sentence have a verb?
Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis
221–230 of 565 posts
Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
Didn't The Game Awards receive more viewers than the Super Bowl? It used to be referred to as, like, "the Oscars for video games", but now it's immensely more popular than the Oscars.
> Didn't The Game Awards receive more viewers than the Super Bowl? To be fair, barely anyone (in global terms) watches the Super Bowl. You are correct though - [0] claims 171M for TGA with [1] claiming 125M for the Superb Owl 2026. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_Awards_2025 [1] https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/20...
There's no cite for the 171 million, which is a bit hard to believe. There are cites (which I didn't check) for these claims. Maybe they are counting people watching clips on Twitter?
According to Streams Charts, the ceremony peaked at 4.4 million concurrent viewers—the most in its history and a 9% increase from 2024—including 1.4 million viewers on the official YouTube broadcast (an 8% increase) and 1.8 million on Twitch. On YouTube, the ceremony peaked at 2.4 million total concurrent viewers (a 9% increase), including a record 8,600 co-streams.[6] More than 16,500 creators co-streamed on Twitch—a record for the show, representing a 50% yearly increase—with total unique viewers and hours watched each increasing 5% from 2024.[6][114] On Twitter, posts about the show increased by 12%, with more than 1.79 million posts from December 10–12, while the broadcast and related videos received over 60 million views.[6]
Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Ironic that pro-unionization people on HN frequently use SAG as an example of what a software industry union could look like. Ignoring that that's absurd (no other engineering union I know of works like that), just as the parent highlights, unions won't make a difference when the economics of an industry no longer make sense and that is what is happening to software right now.
One of the main differences I've heard referenced is that acting and being a movie star means that the work is fundamentally differentiable via the end-product, where producing software is meant to have the same outcome no matter who creates it.
That is just not the case with acting, where the end product being differentiable is part of the inherent value of the product.
Also, it's probably true that SAG's loss of industry power has very much to do with the loss of the power of movie stars in general.
Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hollywood produced some of the most influential pieces of art of the last century and it permeated global culture in a way only comparable to Renaissance-era Florence. Even if your simplistic take stained by marxist propaganda is true, you shouldn't just casually dismiss the labor of hundreds of thousands of artists and technicians over a century simply because you've become jaded by Marvel slop.
Influential? Yes. Was that influence for the betterment of humanity? I’m not sure. Beyond the slop many of the classics were deeply racist and built on immoral exploitation. Yes all those artists did great work but they did it in terrible conditions for where near enough pay. Take apocalypse now: a great piece of art. Was it worth the pain and suffering of its production? Absolutely not.
Terrible historical practices/immoral productions shouldn't the reason alone for such dismissal. Every industry had it's fair share of terrible things. Sometimes, we learn to do better. There are also enough ongoing things to be worried about.
Hollywood should implode and hopefully the art form will resurrect for the better. But for me the primary reason is that they don't live up to what they are supposed to do. Creating good art.
Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis
#225The 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…
Democratization is a specious argument. The artistry in an AI assisted work is the part that the human contributes as opposed to the the part that the AI contributes. If the human contribution is negligible, the artistry is negligible and there is no meaningful democratization because there was only token artistic intent in the first place.
And what's actually happening with AI? Someone mentioned in another submission that 7500 new books _per day_ are being released on Amazon Kindle. The wave of low quality AI submissions to HN was so severe that the HN mods had to restrict them. Whatever democratization is actually happening is drowned out by those taking advantage of the low cost of AI slop for profit.
Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis
#226My 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.
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…
Google claims the average price in the USA is $16 with Wyoming being $9 and NYC being $23. It's $18 at my local theater
Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis
#227My 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.
The last movie we attended people were incredibly disruptive throughout the film, to the point that it was difficult to focus on the film. Some people enjoy screaming, laughing, and talking as part of the experience, but it's apparently been normalized beyond my tolerance threshold. Add in the cost and overall movie quality decrease of Hollywood productions, and it's difficult to justify. Presently, we watch foreign…
With current TV setups or projector technology I basically have cinema in my living room.
As a kid who grew up in 90’s I would say it is easily better than what cinema had back then.
I don’t have that high expectations of sound/video as many people will point out that streaming kills the quality but for all its worth still much better than what I need to enjoy a movie.
Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
Influential? Yes. Was that influence for the betterment of humanity? I’m not sure. Beyond the slop many of the classics were deeply racist and built on immoral exploitation. Yes all those artists did great work but they did it in terrible conditions for where near enough pay. Take apocalypse now: a great piece of art. Was it worth the pain and suffering of its production? Absolutely not.
Terrible historical practices/immoral productions shouldn't the reason alone for such dismissal. Every industry had it's fair share of terrible things. Sometimes, we learn to do better. There are also enough ongoing things to be worried about. Hollywood should implode and hopefully the art form will resurrect for the better. But for me the primary reason is that they don't live up to what they are supposed to do. Cre…
Hollywood was never about making art. It was about making money. That some good art came out of it was an accident of the process.
Do I want movies to survive? Sure. But Hollywood as a thing was about vacuuming up every penny it could and that I do not grieve.
Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis
#229My 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.
Most if not all the ticket price goes directly into the studio's pockets. So the theatres stay alive by selling concessions. I'd wager everyone here complaining about prices would also wax poetic about how theatres don't "pay a living wage" to the kids scooping popcorn and would immediately drive home in their $100k Rivians or Teslas so they can give a one star review on Yelp or complain on Reddit about the bathrooms…
Why can’t I have it both ways?
If all of those things are true, then the conclusion is that theaters can’t operate in a way that wins my business. That would be unfortunate, but it’s not contradictory. It also seems to be that pretty much true, as I see a movie in a theater maybe once a year.
Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis
#230If Sinners and One Battle After Another are up for movie of the year then it's no wonder no one is going. One is a fun but ultimately forgettable horror action movie. The other is a movie that just based on its major theme would attract less then half the country and even in those remaining is a very polarizing movie. It's up for best picture because to preach, not because it's actually good.