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Visualization: Movies Are Getting Worse

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Re: Visualization: Movies Are Getting Worse

#61

Post by JonnieCache »

bostonpete wrote: post #19

> The key, we think, is to look for movies that some love and some hate, which is the likely profile of a bad movie that's "safely" manufactured for an existing fanbase. But according to the graph, Toy Story 3 was the least polarizing movie of 2010 and that seems like a prime example of a movie "safely" manufactured for an existing fanbase.

>But according to the graph, Toy Story 3 was the least polarizing movie of 2010 and that seems like a prime example of a movie "safely" manufactured for an existing fanbase.

I think this is likely due to that fact that Toy Story 3 was superior to Toy Story 2, leaving people pleasantly surprised.

(It is actually unexpectedly complex. The first scene features the toys calmly discussing and preparing for their own deaths. It's quite stark.)

Re: Visualization: Movies Are Getting Worse

#62

Post by Gibbon »

Polarization is a measure of the assertiveness of an artist.. the degree to which they have executed an opinionated concept for a specific audience.

A niche film should be as highly opinionated as possible, with the objective of both catering to your chosen market and excluding all others intentionally.

For example, the musical act Prodigy do not do TV performances. This is a mainstream marketing method that does not appeal to their audience. By avoiding it, they increase their appeal to their true fans, while ignoring uninterested listeners. Likewise, the singer Adele does not perform at music festivals for the same reason.

The ideal niche product would repel exactly half the critics and attract the other half. This would create a core of hardcore evangelists, a bigger group of fans, a big group of uninterested bystanders and a small group of haters. The haters and bystanders can mostly be ignored, making marketing super-efficient.

Lack of polarization is a measure of beauty and popularity. Beauty is a measure of average-ness and normality. The most beautiful person in a given society is the one that looks the most an average of all the people. The most popular movie is the one that everyone can relate to.. the most profoundly average.

Case in point.. the Shawshank Redemption. This is a movie that is consistently voted one of the best ever made, but it's highly rated because of its familiarity. It's a near flawless execution of common mythologies that everyone can relate to: fall from grace, redemption, justice, freedom and so on.

Toy Story is another example. Pixar's entire methodology is to distill the world's archetypes and mythologies down into the "perfect" movie with every "i" dotted and every "t" crossed. The result is profoundly familiar, yet kept fresh with just enough plot twists and humour to keep it interesting.

Niche movies are just popular movies for specific groups instead of a general audience. Polarization is a measure of how effectively they achieved the goal.

Re: Visualization: Movies Are Getting Worse

#63

Post by gnaritas »

larrik wrote: post #13
pg wrote: post #2

Interesting. I'd just been thinking about this. The last two new releases I tried watching were so bad that I couldn't finish either of them. I know this is only 2 data points, but they were both bad in the same way: they were completely predictable. That's something you commonly see in a declining medium. People recycle old ideas instead of having new ones. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spolia

I find most movies to be predictable. "Hero's Journey" and all that. But I assume you mean less structural, and more like knowing exactly what they are going to say (or what jokes they'll use for a situation). I hate that. But still, movies are (generally) business first, and art second. They don't even want to be "new"... just "fresh".

Nothing wrong with predictable, humans have been telling the same basic stories plot-wise for thousands of years. It's about how well you tell the story, not whether the story is original or not; originality is great, but it's too rare to be a requirement.

You'd be crazy to make a movie, and not try and pull on the well known well loved plot lines. It'd be like trying to make music with chords no one has ever heard; it'd be terrible. People want something familiar.

Re: Visualization: Movies Are Getting Worse

#64

Post by jacques_chester »

bingaman wrote: post #59
munificent wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more than just date movies. High school kids have lots of disposable income, few bills, plenty of time to kill, can't get into bars, and don't need get hire a babysitter. College kids have lots of other things to spend their money on, like booze and, uh, booze. Once you're past that age, the odds of having kids goes up and then going to a movie becomes a major outing. For my wife and I to see a movie in the thea…

You don't have to buy the $60 popcorn.

Your kids expect to see the overpriced 3D version though. That'll be $20 per ticket, please.

Re: Visualization: Movies Are Getting Worse

#65

Post by gnaritas »

keeptrying wrote: post #24

I think its more that no one is taking the time to write great and compelling stories. It takes time and patience and a lot of effort to create a story like the The Lord of the Rings. And the movies that are really good are ones with a great story behind them. Hollywood seems to be just mining stories from the past. Its gonna run out at some point and all we'll get are sequels. There needs to be some infusion of crea…

> I think its more that no one is taking the time to write great and compelling stories.

Seriously? Pick up a book, that's so far from true it isn't even funny.

> It takes time and patience and a lot of effort to create a story like the The Lord of the Rings.

Sure, and there's a ton of them already out there in the form of books.

> Hollywood seems to be just mining stories from the past. Its gonna run out at some point and all we'll get are sequels.

You can't run out of mining stories from the past; more great stories have already been written than will likely ever be able to be put on film.

> There needs to be some infusion of creativity. "Contemporary" creativity. Ie new but compelling and interesting stories. It seems to be a lost skill.

Or you're simply misdiagnosing the problem. Perhaps movies just suck more recently because exec's have gotten really good at shooting for the lowest common denominator to gain the largest audience and thus revenue.

Making money is not a guarantee of a great movie and great movies are quite often box office failures because they're too niche, by necessity.

The more the business folks pull the strings, the worse the movies will be artistically, but their goal is money, so they don't care, nor should they.

Movies will become great again, when Avatar style technology drives down the cost of making one to the point that making cheaper niche movies can be profitable.

Re: Visualization: Movies Are Getting Worse

#66

Post by notahacker »

larrik wrote: post #5

This article makes two huge assumptions: 1) Critical meta-ratings as THE measure of quality 2) The Top 20 popular movies per year as a representation of the entire year's quality. The author's final result seems to be that movie studios prefer to make movies that have a built-in audience (at least for big-budget blockbuster movies).

Assuming the ratings have been made since the launch of the site, there's also a massive systematic error introduced by people being inclined to forget films they considered to be pretty rubbish a decade ago, whilst being determined to challenge popular opinion on the stuff they wished they hadn't watched last year.

Whilst people feel the need to use ranking systems to express their dismay at Avatar not being the experience they'd hoped for and correct their teenage daughter's friends' belief that the Twilight Saga is deep and insightful, it's mostly the people that actually consider themselves fans of Adam Sandler and Hugh Grant's stock characters that bother to go and rate Happy Gilmore and Four Weddings and a Funeral.

Re: Visualization: Movies Are Getting Worse

#68

Post by sigzero »

derleth wrote: post #39
weego wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you feel this might be kind of a cognitive bias? Like when people poll for the best album of all time and it's always something that was released within the last 3 years of whenever the poll was. The social network is of it's time and will date really badly, to the point where no one will watch or mention it ever again. True Grit is a remake so specifically cannot be included as it had to be good enough to have…

> True Grit is a remake So was the 1939 Wizard of Oz. > Inception isn't ever going to be a classic a la The Matrix. And you know this because...

He is using his own subjectivity like the OP did. Just because they get Oscar's doesn't guarantee anything at all.

True Grit while good was such a pale movie compared to the original John Wayne version.

Re: Visualization: Movies Are Getting Worse

#69

Post by InclinedPlane »

asr wrote: post #20
pg wrote: post #2

Interesting. I'd just been thinking about this. The last two new releases I tried watching were so bad that I couldn't finish either of them. I know this is only 2 data points, but they were both bad in the same way: they were completely predictable. That's something you commonly see in a declining medium. People recycle old ideas instead of having new ones. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spolia

To be fair, writers have been doing this for a long time... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare%27s_style#Similarit... Did you watch The Social Network? Did you like it? I think we all knew how it ended, it was the writing, cinematography, etc. that account for its popularity. And the fact that the writers stretched the truth so the story would be somewhat fresh :)

It's one thing to adapt a classic story or classic elements in a new form, that's how all writing works. It's another thing entirely to work within a narrow confine of sequels and reboots of a single story.

Re: Visualization: Movies Are Getting Worse

#70

Post by InclinedPlane »

JonnieCache wrote: post #60
rottencupcakes wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What specifically do you think is missing? Remember, it's only the 20 most popular films in a given year. Oldboy (Korea), City of God (Brazil), Pan's Labyrinth (Mexico), and Spirited Away (Japan) are all on those, and that's not an exhaustive list.

I think his point is that bollywood (for example) is bigger than hollywood by most measures (budget, gross etc.)

citation needed

By my research Bollywood's total annual revenues are barely a third of Hollywood revenues for theatrical releases alone (aside from dvd, broadcast, and digital distribution revenues).

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