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Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis
41–50 of 565 posts
Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis
#42My 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…
not appealing to the masses is DEI; perfect robotic formula are just common sense.
Obviously.
Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis
#43The 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…
In the end people have limited number of hours to watch content, and only a few things bubble up to the popular attention.
What I meant is that I don't see truly indie-produced feature films reach the zeitgeist anymore.
I don't mean AI slop, but the next gen of creative tools that will allow people to make cool and creative and compelling stuff without the backing of 100's of millions of dollars.
It seems like movies are just another cyclical creative industry and this has already happened multiple times before- with each new technology and distribution platform there's the potential to get a wave of creative output that wasn't possible before.
Another aspect could be that the hollowing out of the top / polarization of the industry is another catalyst.
It could be enough that people who don't work on 100's of million dollar budget films get funding to do the next 1 million dollar film that looks great and is amazing.
That's more analogous to the SaaS startup boom that happened in the previous gen of tech startups. Initial costs went down and platform access went up.
Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis
#44My 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…
- Theatrical releases are how movies make most of their money, not giving them away for free on streaming. Box office margins are huge, but renting licenses to streamers is limited and fungible with all the other mountains of content they license.
- Box office optimizes for novelty, streamers optimize for "don't churn" - very different criteria for investment.
- Disney cannibalized the box office with Marvel Star Wars, which killed the mid market and killed innovation. This is your point. Disney's success and tentpole successes in general killed innovation and diversity and made the market more winner-takes-all. Comedy movies barely exist anymore. There are few $50-75M films now. Little original content. Now films are engineered for maximum audience penetration and maximum box office revenue. This changes how films are written and who they are written for. The answer is "everyone", and that means "safe", "predictable", and "repeatable". No gambles. Everything else has to fight for table scraps.
- End of ZIRP puts us back in 2000. Money used to be free. Now it's expensive. It's not as easy to underwrite productions anymore. Less innovation.
- Dopamine machines fit into your pocket and suck up time and attention. Gaming is also huge now. Less people going to the movies because plenty of alternatives exist.
- The $400 80'' plus Netflix versus the expensive theater, concessions, and rude people have made theaters unattractive. Theaters are where film margins come from. Without that revenue, expensive movies will be scaled back.
- Labor costs less in Europe and Asia, even with ample tax subsidy. The LA and American jobs and infrastructure are drying up. These are lifelong careers that are ending.
- Global audiences want global stories. American culture isn't local, and local talent can now make high quality productions. Asia is turning out banger after banger.
- Youth want youth mediums. Movies feel slow and boring. TikTok is where it's at.
- AI is now a thing.
All of the fundamentals have changed.
I will debate one point you raised:
> most-attractive people
Most people prefer to look at attractive people. It's an almost universal preference. Tried and tested throughout time. In film, those attractive people also need charisma.
Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis
#45I haven't been in cinema in the past ~10 years and to be honest I wouldn't care if no more movies were ever made, simply because there are hundreds, if not thousands, amazing movies made since the beginning of the cinema that I didn't watch. Most of the new movies are crap anyways, so why waste time and money when I can watch a classic movie instead which has a much higher probability of me enyjoing it.
Theatres don't just show new movies. There's something very special about being locked in a dark room with a big screen to watch Alien or Barry Lyndon. Older movies especially look great in a theatre and some of the magic is lost on a smaller screen.
90% of any content is crap but you're missing out if you like movies and you haven't seen Sinners, The Bone Temple, or NOPE (to name a few recent great theatre watches).
Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis
#46My 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…
I think it’s the finance people. They have decided every creative movie made represents resources and time that can’t be used for a “sure-thing” franchise schlock movie.
Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis
#47I haven't been in cinema in the past ~10 years and to be honest I wouldn't care if no more movies were ever made, simply because there are hundreds, if not thousands, amazing movies made since the beginning of the cinema that I didn't watch. Most of the new movies are crap anyways, so why waste time and money when I can watch a classic movie instead which has a much higher probability of me enyjoing it.
I went to see Avatar. I only go to the movies once a year its a kinda tradition on New Year's Day.
It cost me 50 eurodollars for two tickets. And people complain Netflix is expensive!
Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis
#48$100 to go to the movies for a family of four. No thanks. There’s no mystery why the movies are dying. They’ve priced themselves out and then they give away the product on streaming several months later anyways. If they want theaters to come back then they’ll have to put movies behind a paywall again.
Yeah, I think the prices also have resulted in a massive change in how consumers decide to go to movies as well. With the price so high for a family of four, people rely much more heavily on positive word of mouth/reviews before making a decision.
So people are much more risk adverse. I've never understood why they don't do tiered pricing based on the type of movie it is. If it's not a mega blockbuster type film, reduce the price a bit to make it easier for people to take a risk and try out a movie without it being a 90%+ rating on rotten tomatoes. I'd personally probably go a lot more if a movie like say Marty Supreme was $10 instead of $20.
Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can't it be both? In Marvel movies the plot, story, and characters are irrelevant and it's still the current greatest American cultural export.
There will be some creative people that can now tell stories they couldn't before with AI, but I think by and large the major use case is to create short form video clips to get attention on the internet (advertising). I don't foresee a "movie" (meaning narrative story told via visuals and sounds in 1-3 hours) renaissance happening, in part because I think the form is fully mature and there's not really much more tha…
It could be "film" as a medium is dead- but most likely 1+ hour video fictional story telling as a medium is just a very broad category and will probably continue to exist as a format that people enjoy.
It could be that in 20 years the Oscars are like the Jazz awards (the Grammys? - I listen to Jazz but I can't name a single Jazz Grammy winner)
Re: Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis
#50I haven't been in cinema in the past ~10 years and to be honest I wouldn't care if no more movies were ever made, simply because there are hundreds, if not thousands, amazing movies made since the beginning of the cinema that I didn't watch. Most of the new movies are crap anyways, so why waste time and money when I can watch a classic movie instead which has a much higher probability of me enyjoing it.
This is a boring opinion. It's the equivalent of what happens to many older adults when it comes to music. All of the best songs came out in their teens to about 30 so what's the point of listening to anything new? It assumes there is no innovation and the person just traps themselves in the past. You could say there hasn't been any good new music since 1970 and humans have been making music for thousands of year. Or…
That's funny. I was having this similar discussion with my 16 year old niece, and I was asking her what she's been listening to as a 50 year old trying to broaden my musical horizons. She pulled out her Spotify and shared some of her playlists with me, and I was astonished to see that most of the music that she had been enjoying was produced in the late 1960s to the mid-1980s. We had a good laugh about it, and bonded over some of the classic music that I love that I was suprised to find that she loves. There were some modern things interspersed, and I did learn about some new artists and experimental genres. Seems like a clear example of the Law of diminishing marginal returns in the cinema and music industries in Southern California — leading to those industries collapsing. AI and generative crap being a big evidence point for the argument.