Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You think older movies were better because of the time filter - we remember the classics and forget the crap. No you're making excuses. I don't think they were always better, but that they took from a FAR wider selection of production styles. Hollywood has been afraid of variety for decades, inserting the cliche "family values" ending in every movie, or even demanding the neat happy end every time, or some cliche c…
As for happy endings etc., this have always been a mainstay of Hollywood. In the Hollywood satire "The Player" from 1992 it is actually a plot point how a script without a happy ending cannot get produced. (And that movie itself have an improbable tacked-on happy-end to drive the point home.) For fun I looked up the term "Hollywood Ending" ("a film ending of a conventional type, characterized as sentimental, simplist…
It's one reason I miss a healthy British film industry - sure those mostly ended happily, but rarely so cheesy, except some from the 1940s. Yet there was a decent proportion of surprise unhappy, cynical, tired and non-endings too. A twist would sometimes be something you actually didn't see coming, rather than a "surprise" set up from the start and regularly telegraphed like a five year old keeping a secret. :)
It's not that I dislike superheroes. Well, didn't used to. The whole Marvel universe thing started off well enough. I enjoyed Wolverine, Iron Man, Deadpool 1 plenty, and some others. I really like roast lamb and mint, but getting it for 2 in 3 meals would cure me by boredom within weeks. Maybe it's just too large a proportion of the canon. Except it infects all genres... Wolf of Wall Street? Great Gatsby? Chernobyl? Superhero movies - in style, in script, in camera work, and in tropes used. Now that's putting lamb and mint in with my choc cake and just spoiling every meal.
Chernobyl was the surprise disappointment. It didn't need to deviate so far from reality - the affected were dangerously radioactive too? Not in our universe's physics. Nor be quite so McCarthy child's comic book (and wildly inaccurate) in representing the Soviets. That kind-of suited Stranger Things, though even there it was rather overblown, or Bruce Willis' Red, but not here. Legasov was the superhero - except he didn't actually tear down the whole Soviet system in court, nor get arrested by the KGB after the show trial. The plant manager (I forget the name) was the absurdist villain, missing only a white cat. Do as I say or I will throw you into the reactor Mr Stark. Oh wait, that was Serbina in the helicopter.
Chernobyl was clearly set in a comic book universe. It would still have been bloody good, and well made without any of that bullshit. The attention to scenic correctness and actors resembling the real people was remarkable. Spoiling the plot for a ha'p'orth of reality then.
Suffice to say, I don't think we're going to agree, but it's been a fun back and forth. :)