Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video] • Hacker News Board

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#301

Post by Retric » Sat, Mar 12, 2022, 5:40 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #281

Retric wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real people aren’t quiet around intense emotions and loud noises. This often comes off really silly, when actual people would be yelling they come off as mumbling to themselves. Instead, actors are often chatting in front of green screens without any of the appropriate ambient sounds or emotional context.

Real people are often quiet around those. That is as normal reaction as loud yelling.

It’s so subconscious for people to speak lauder in a noisy environment that you might not realize it, but it’s so necessary we have started to program devices to do the same thing: https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/31/22651304/amazon-alexa-ada...

I am not saying intense emotions universally result in yelling, but people very rarely whisper when say calling 9/11. Even just kids playing tag get lauder.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#302

Post by sandworm101 » Sat, Mar 12, 2022, 5:41 PM UTC

RobertMiller wrote: post #231

sandworm101 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You probably hate clips like this. Male characters are dramatic, with big movements and loud voices to portray fear and disorder. The three female characters, including a very tough marine, are quiet and docile to engender escapist feelings of worry and protection. So which volume setting do you use? The camera is forced into an awkward zoom to reconcile the two. https://youtu.be/VrVZHxH2O1I "They mostly come at nigh…

I'd say the editors did a good job in this case, considering both "they mostly come at night, mostly." and "game over man, game over!" have both become iconic often-quoted lines.

Good memes rarely come from good writing.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#303

Post by RobertMiller » Sat, Mar 12, 2022, 5:43 PM UTC

bmelton wrote: post #138

IgorPartola wrote: post #81

Earlier 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.

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 Montan…

The Matrix fell hard to this. Slow motion bullet time? So passé!

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#304

Post by spywaregorilla » Sat, Mar 12, 2022, 5:44 PM UTC

sandworm101 wrote: post #297

spywaregorilla wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think captain marvel is an interesting one on this note. It is a problem in recent films that writers want to overpower women to make things fair, and they do a disservice to the women by doing so. Captain marvel seems to address this directly and in a more mature way. Her character does start weak. She is shown losing repeated to her officer in physical fights and feeling inferior. Later she becomes the most power…

A character who is put down, becomes angry, then becomes powerful and carries that anger forward. Yawn. That is the background of about half of comic characters. Compare Captain America. He was week and abused, became powerful, but actively decides not to carry baggage. It is a fish-out-of-water character that has to constantly reconcile ideology with army-inspired pragmatism and loyalty. And he has a foil (Iron Man)…

> A character who is put down, becomes angry, then becomes powerful and carries that anger forward.

But... that's the opposite of what happens. It is addressing this exact concept and doing something different. He's literally asking to fight like a gentleman.

The dialogue in this scene is literally "can you keep your emotions in check long enough to take me on, or will it get the better of you?" And she rejects his cliche premise entirely as a false dichotomy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KK1Kv0IzUg

male centric story telling often uses combat ability as a metaphor for personal growth. Usually with literal dialogue or reflections on moral lessons used to emphasize this relationship with the tide of battle turning when the lesson is made clear.

I thought it was great to show that, while captain marvel's growth arc is not acquisition of strength but in deriving her self worth from herself rather than from her officer.

I agree it will be hard to make more captain marvel movies because there's very little that can challenge her, unless they're willing to make a movie without a significant violent conflict. Not easy.

Captain america is a great character concept too. I liked the falcon's series dissection of it. He's explicitly not a supremacist, while acknowledging the ease with which his circumstances could allow that- and do create that within other superheroes.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#305

Post by RobertMiller » Sat, Mar 12, 2022, 5:46 PM UTC

sandworm101 wrote: post #302

RobertMiller wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say the editors did a good job in this case, considering both "they mostly come at night, mostly." and "game over man, game over!" have both become iconic often-quoted lines.

Good memes rarely come from good writing.

"If I took off the mask, would you die?"

"It would be extremely painful"

"You're a big guy!"

"For you."

hmm, you're probably right.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#306

Post by benreesman » Sat, Mar 12, 2022, 5:49 PM UTC

whycome wrote: post #273

benreesman wrote: post #175

In general I’ll watch anything the Drinker recommends (I’ll never stop being grateful that’s he got to me to give the Expanse a second try for example). With that said, there are lot of fantastic movies getting made, they’re just not big budget. You could watch nothing but stuff Pattinson (to name a single example) has been in over the last 10 years and have a, uh, good time. I personally think that these days the mo…

So, I should give the Expanse a second try? .... My biggest issue these days is that there isn't actual development within the world created. Superman falls for Lois lane, not because of some sort of event or circumstance that we experience on screen, but because they're 'supposed to get together'. Or it's also bad when movies rely on a wider generalized context rather than actually developing something within the wo…

I mean this is obviously very subjective, but to my tastes the Expanse is a must watch. Almost everyone I’ve asked bounced off the first few episodes.

The Drinker’s review is a pretty good place to get a sense of whether or not it’s your cup of tea.

I have at least one or two friends who had to kind of power through the first 4-6 episodes before abruptly becoming fanatics. It grabbed me on episode 4 and pretty much never let up. It’s got soft episodes like anything, but I don’t think there’s a soft season.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#307

Post by dionidium » Sat, Mar 12, 2022, 5:54 PM UTC

ReactiveJelly wrote: post #300

dionidium wrote: post #248

It's not a coincidence that all the main characters featured in this video are women. The main thing the filmmakers are trying to show is that these are girl-bosses who can do anything men can do (and more) and it's so important to show that with utter, relentless completeness, that they've created characters that are magical, who don't need to overcome anything, characters who matter mostly as individuals, who have…

Have you seen the feminist reading of Mad Max: Fury Road? You might find it interesting. YouTube is not loading for me, but it's called "The avenging feminine": https://www.reddit.com/r/GamerGhazi/comments/9jzuci/bringing... My favorite part is something the essayist points out about the mothers [1] in Fury Road: They help in every fight. They shoot, they reload guns, they operate bolt cutters, they deny guns to enem…

Thanks, I'll definitely check that out.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#308

Post by staticman2 » Sat, Mar 12, 2022, 5:59 PM UTC

Joeboy wrote: post #48

I think I agree with the thrust of the video. My caveats would be: 1) When anybody dunks on "modern movies", they mean "modern movies with $>100m marketing budgets". Which is actually a small minority of modern movies. 2) The messaging has changed, but movies have always had terrible messaging in them. Edit: Maybe it's a bad idea to say this out loud, but when you get protagonists who are "just born preternaturally a…

James Bond is as generically "the best at everything" as you can get.

Whatever the villain is into, golf, fencing, gambling, etc. James Bond will challenge the villain at his hobby and beat him before the action even begins.

Edited to add: But the biggest example is probably Superman, just born super at everything.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#309

Post by Strawhorse » Sat, Mar 12, 2022, 6:15 PM UTC

fullshark wrote: post #286

Strawhorse wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the new Mulan fail was due to some social media shitstorm about the lead actress or something; the spastic Chinese internet trolls had a feeding frenzy on something she said. At the same time, the movie got trashed in the West for being, well, shit.

In any case I think the macro issue is trying to placate too many audiences with their own agendas (hardcore fanboys, Chinese censors, feminist cultural agitators, etc) instead of telling a good story with interesting characters, at least for the cinema the video maker is focused on (big budget IP).

Tell that to Hollywood, man. A lot of their movies now are being passed by Chinese censors first with the domestic market somewhat of an afterthought. Interestingly, though, China hasn't produced a single decent movie in a decade or two, and they certainly don't give a fuck about the foreign market. But I agree with what you said there.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#310

Post by mixedCase » Sat, Mar 12, 2022, 6:37 PM UTC

hedora wrote: post #186

BoppreH wrote: post #24

Another 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've noticed an even newer effect: Making scenes almost all black. It might be a software problem with the HBO Max app's gamma and brightness settings, but it's absolutely the case that, during the day with thin curtains drawn, I had to put a thick blanket over my head and an iPad in order to see the highlights in some of the darker scenes in one of their recent original productions (probably Raised by Wolves Season…

Yep I subbed to HBO to get GoT a couple of hours before "other sources" and immediately cancelled mid-way through last season. Night-time fights were just pitch black and a few smudges moving around the screen.

They probably just throw the thing into ffmpeg with the fewest amount of arguments that satisfies a codec and bandwidth cost metric and call it a day.

However, I've never had any problems under the same situations on Netflix using a "blessed" 4K HDR10 set-up (Fire TV Cube and a cheap Hisense TV).