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The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

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Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#381
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For other relatively recent movies I'd add: > Evil Does Not Exist > Godland > The Beast > The Worst Person in the World > Misericordia > The Banshees of Inisherin > Amanda [0] > Afire [1] [0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt18469872/ [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26440619/

are movies like Evil Does Not Exist as popular in Japan as the examples in the article though? there must be a lot of similar niche movies made in the US

Evil Does Not exist is Ryusuke Hamaguchi's first movie after the internationally successful Drive My Car, so I would hope there would be some domestic support but that might be pure naivety on my part.

Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#382
post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The creator of The Boys has also said he needs to beat people over the head so he doesn't have a similar situation to Mad Men or Breaking Bad, where people think the main character is a hero to emulate

It was hilarious when the far-right noticed, IIRC on season 3 of The Boys, that they were being mocked. And just look at all Star Wars fans cosplaying as stormtroopers. It even says “evil empire” in the first movie intro. You can’t get much more obvious than George Lucas.

The Star Wars fans aren't missing that they're dressing up as the bad guys. People dress up as evil characters all the time.

Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#383

I'm surprised they call out the Conclave as an example of a good movie. It's not a bad movie, but the final twist (I'm not going to spoil it) is way over the top and almost absurdly Hollywood.

And called out the second part of Dune as a bad film. It got written off as simply a "sci-fi sequel"; I think for that movie in particular it is more fair to say that doing the book justice couldn't be done in a single film as the source material is extraordinarily dense.

LOTR is a fascinating counter example; each book is quite dense but was able to be made into a single (albeit long) film. Part of that I think is because a lot of the density of those books is exquisite detailing of the animated natural world of the books; a picture is worth a thousand words may be obnoxiously overused but apropos in this case. The movies seemed to understand the animate life force of the visual landscape and so were able to say a lot visually.

I just don't see Dune: Part II as a true sequel in the traditional sense of the term (though perhaps the literal sense of the term, despite literalism being apparently despised by the articles author).

Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#384
post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The creator of The Boys has also said he needs to beat people over the head so he doesn't have a similar situation to Mad Men or Breaking Bad, where people think the main character is a hero to emulate

It was hilarious when the far-right noticed, IIRC on season 3 of The Boys, that they were being mocked. And just look at all Star Wars fans cosplaying as stormtroopers. It even says “evil empire” in the first movie intro. You can’t get much more obvious than George Lucas.

People have been consciously cosplaying as villains for decades because pretending to be evil can be fun as hell; I'm not sure what that's supposed to illustrate, really.

Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#385

Mainstream films (or works of art writ large) rarely trust their audience. Artists imbue their work with a lot of handholding for the audience's sake; if it's a need or a want on the audience's part, conscious or unwitting, who can say. I don't particularly enjoy having my hand held through a narrative, but I know plenty of people who don't mind, don't care, or don't know. It's easier to "participate" as an audience…

Birdman's ending is atrocious, but the main problem ain't even there. The movie is just a giant pile of pretentious nothingness, I can't even remember what was the point of it. Hollywood movies from the last 2 decades or so are just disposable.

Hey, I kinda enjoyed Birdman!

Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#386
I've spent 20 years working in Hollywood. This is definitely not anything new, but we are in an up-cycle. Ambiguity is hard to tolerate, in life, in general. Ambiguity is also where personal meaning can arise. However in hard times (economically, culturally, politically, existentially... we're currently in all 4), market forces drive things away from ambiguity and toward one-pointedness. This is reflected in the world of trailers even more clearly than in the world of films - the trailers often specifically highlight exactly the kinds of moments this writer is critiquing, as if the purpose of film is to trade in such moments; the underlying conceit is something like "populist memes are a commodity."

This is what is currently driving pop culture; the commodification of the meme. Movies aspire to be memes - the dominant means of expression and the atomic unit of culture in the present moment.

They used to aspire to be themselves (movies, for their own sake). IMO that ended around 2008. The Dark Knight was the end and Iron Man was the beginning of a new Hollywood cycle; defined by the movie's ability to trade in this currency - memes - which stand alone, isolated, traded out of context of an entire narrative.

Further reading for whoever is interested: Society of the Spectacle by Debord (re: the degradation of being into having, having into mere appearing, as a universal and ubiquitous byproduct of the core function of capital which is commodification)... and Man and His Symbols (re: the difference between a symbol, which is universal and carries a wealth of meaning, and a sign, which is contextual/temporary and carries a fixed meaning).

Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#387
post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sure this is the majority of it but it’s an incomplete analysis. Netflix is hampering discovery of even what they do have. I can go to a friends and they can pull up their Netflix with things I had no idea were currently on offer.

How many movie cards can they put on a screen at once...10, at most. How are they supposed to show you what is "on offer"? If their catalog were 10x smaller or 100x larger, they can only show so much. I supposed they could email customers an excel document. But short of that, they have to make choices about what to do with the pixels on their page, and those choices represent filtering what they show you. How is "ham…

My complaint is that the repeat the same titles in multiple rows on the same screen.

Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#388
post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I genuinely without rose colored glasses think the obvious explanations is true which is that movies simply became worse since 2002 vs now. Look at the movies released 1999 vs 2024 and the reason fewer people go out to watch them is obvious

I was going to say, were movies really that good in 2002? Catch Me If You Can Gangs of New York The Pianist City of God Yes, yes they were lol. It is almost hard to believe those all came out in the same year. Imagine in 2025 having to pick if you want to see The Pianist or City of God? It is just so unthinkable

Even if you thought another movie was gonna be as good as City of God right now, do you think you'd be as likely to actually go to the cinema to see it as you were in 2002 or might you simply wait, safe $20 and a trip and watch it at home 3 months later? I think both factors play a role and they have synergy as well. Fewer people go to the cinema -> smaller market and less incentive to take risks -> fewer people go to the cinema -> ...

Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#389
post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how much of that is because the movies themselves changed vs everything else that has changed. Back in 2002 most people still watched tv on CRT that were very small by today's standard and had very low resolution. You either had to go out and rent a movie, rewatch something you had recorded or bought or watch whatever was on and enjoy the ads. Now we have a huge choice of movies and tv shows at our finger ti…

I genuinely without rose colored glasses think the obvious explanations is true which is that movies simply became worse since 2002 vs now. Look at the movies released 1999 vs 2024 and the reason fewer people go out to watch them is obvious

I think there’s a lot to that. It feels both like the market shrunk in the sense that they’re competing with options which didn’t exist back then but also two other interesting changes: very expensive movies need the international market to be really profitable which limits creativity somewhat (more social norms to stay within, many topics to avoid) and also leads to uncreating safe bets. The other big change was that streaming services sucked up a lot of audience & creativity, but aren’t tracked in box office revenue and also have different goals and weird relationships with their audiences (e.g. Netflix is so quick to cancel that some people never watch an incomplete series).

Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#390

I have definitely noticed the same occurring in North American cinema, but I do not think this is a new phenomenon. Rather, it's just a symptom of the increased commercialization of indie cinema - commercialization requiring film for all to understand. If one is to broaden their horizons, overseas cinema is still devoid of this literalism. European cinema, Korean cinema, and the famously show not tell Japanese cinema…

For other relatively recent movies I'd add: > Evil Does Not Exist > Godland > The Beast > The Worst Person in the World > Misericordia > The Banshees of Inisherin > Amanda [0] > Afire [1] [0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt18469872/ [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26440619/

I thought Banshees of Inisherin was quite literal. Two Irish friends are screaming at each other while a literal civil war is going on around them.

I found it pretty disappointing for that reason compared to McDonagh’s other movies which are much less literal.

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