Why Have Movies Been So Bad Lately?

mikesd81 asks: "Why have movies and shows been so bad lately? I find myself looking on my Video on Demand service from my cable company or flipping channels and just nothing seems to have any depth any more. But on the other hand, I happened to watch Stargate Atlantis and there was an incredible scene that just caught the emotion and emergency. So is it the directing? The writing? The acting? It seems more and more movies just aren't worth anything. Let alone paying $20 to go to a movie." Let's not forget the recent number of Hollywood remakes and the amount of "reality TV" being pumped out by the networks.

movies have always sucked

[Anonymous Coward]

there's always been shitty movies, and moviemaking has ALWAYS been an explicitly for-profit venture. hence the beginnings of hollywood, which was little more than a way to avoid licensing technology developed by Thomas Edision by virtue of being out of his reach.

the reason older movies seem so great, and new movies seem so the suck, is because you're only remembering the Metropolises, the Battleship Potemkins, the Citizen Kanes, the 8 1/2s, the Mon Oncles, the Dr. Strangeloves, the 2001s, the Apocalypse Nows, and so on. you're talking about over a HUNDRED years of filmmaking, and gotta tell you, they certainly wasn't ALL winners. Plenty of chaff in there to pad down the wheat. And seriously, in about 20 years there will definitely be a handful of films that absolutely stand up as classics of the early 21st century.

can't say much about stargate or whatever the fuck, cause that shit's retarded.

A little research is all you need

[goodbadorugly]

Im going to take a different approach and say that if you honestly think good movies arent coming out anymore, you arent looking particularly hard.

First of all, video on demand is not the place to begin your search, oh I know its convenient, but chances are you'll only find last years crap that couldn't make back production costs. Best of luck finding something good.

Check out some movie review sites before judging whether a movie is worth your time or not http://www.rottentomatoes.com/ [rottentomatoes.com] has a pretty good track record with me.

Also, you don't necessarily need to watch something thats come out in the past few years, hundreds of good films have come come out over the past 80 years. I'd be willing to bet that you could easily dig up something good with a quick google search. I personally would much rather sit down with a good film noir than the 99% crap track record hollywood has going on. Start on the IMDB 250 http://www.imdb.com/chart/top [imdb.com] and I guarantee you'll never be short of something good to watch.

Re:Simple Answer...

[imperious_rex]

*Very* good point. About 10 years or so ago, I came across an issue of Entertainment magazine and in it they listed the top 10 movies for some week in 1972. I only recognized *one* movie title in that list. That pretty much confirms your point (and Sturgeon's Law). The vast majority of entertainment is junk and only the test of time and/or the strength of collective memory prevents an entertainment product (movie, novel, song, game, etc) from sliding into total obscurity after a few years have passed.

Here's my take on it...

[wtansill]

Passion does not scale well. The greatest restaurants are all one-offs where the staff is passionate about serving good food and giving the customer a quality experience. Programs that we love to use (Linux, say) are put together by people who are passionate about what they do to the point of evangelism. Art house movies are made by people who are passionate about using cinematic techniques to tell stories that are compelling both visually and in terms of their plotlines. But passion takes time, is monetarilly intensive, and, let's face it, is a crapshoot; there are many folks who are passionate about their beer can collections or what have you (I knew a woman who was fascinated by bricks or all things), but they aren't ever going to make money from it.

Enter the financial folks. They are absolutely necessary any time a business moves beyond being an expensive hobby, but they will strive for efficieny. Efficiency is best gained by homogenizing operations, but that also weeds out the things that tended to make the enterprise truly great in the first place. On top of that, some things (movies in this case) are enormously expensive to make (someone has to pay Industrial Light and Magic for all those special effects), and once the expense goes up, the natural tendency is to minimize risk. But again, minimizing risk keeps you from taking that fresh view and going out on a limb.

Sometimes this isn't really all that bad. If I swing by the supermarket to pick up a gallon of milk I want commodity pricing, and the bean counters excell at building the sort of enterprise that can deliver those commodity prices. You want really good creative stuff? Stay far away from the big guys and shell out extra for the starving artists who live for this sort of thing.

Re:Couldn't Agree More

[Dachannien]

Oops! This weekend was the third episode of the season in the US, not the second. Sorry :/

Re:Couldn't Agree More

[syukton]

the history on the pegasus arc of the sg1 panoply indicates atlantis was both the first and last inabited city in that galaxy, but it has no zpm factory?

I don't call that a stupid tactical blunder, I call that a stupid viewer. I'm sorry, but a little bit needs to be left to the imagination so that you can "what if" the story a little bit, opening your mind to a new possibility. Asking for every single thing to be written out for you is the mark of complete mental laziness.

All of the cities similar to Atlantis are actually starships--they have hyperdrives and other systems for interstellar and intergalactic travel--so maybe the "ZPM factory" left Pegasus to some other galaxy which will be brought in on another plot arc? Maybe communications were cut off between Atlantis and the factory and its departure was not recorded in the ancient database? Maybe the factory was obliterated during the many centuries of war with the Wraith, but that section of the ancient database hasn't yet been decoded? Or, maybe you'll just have to keep watching to find out, lazy viewer!

There are excellent movies

[MemoryDragon]

I recently went to a film festival of young european directors, and what I saw there blew lots of professional stuff easily away. One of the movies which gave me one of the biggest impressions was Zamedi/13, one of the best movies I have seen in the recent past (partially thriller/horror themed), you really have to look outside of the box, there is lots of talent there probably never to be discovered blowing most of the plastic garbage from hollywood away easily.

Nope.

[Anonymous Coward]

BTTF was a single movie, shot and released in 1985. The flying car sequence at the end was meant as a joke. When BTTF turned out to be the biggest movie of the year, Universal commissioned two more films to make a trilogy, which were filmed back-to-back between 1989 and 1990 and released in 1990. If you look at the end of the first film and the start of the second (or look it up on IMDB) you'll see that the actor who played Jennifer changed and the flying car sequence was re-shot with the new actor for the start of BTTF 2. The original actor was unavailable during the filming of the two sequels.

Re:Couldn't Agree More

[syukton]

It wasn't an insult, it was a commentary on your mental agility; a mere observation.

And in The Siege (Part 3), they do say that the mostly-depleted ZPM which they received from earth would last for days, yes, but that was a depleted ZPM, not a fully charged one. Further, we don't know if ZPMs deplete linearly or not. A conventional chemical battery, for instance, will have a higher voltage when it is fresh than when it is at 10% capacity. It's possible that the first 20% of a ZPM's power would last for decades when powering the shields, and then it would deplete more rapidly over time. Sci-fi requires a little suspension of disbelief, that's what the "fi" part is all about.

Perhaps the city was abandoned was because they were cut off from their ZPM supply lines. Also, perhaps the ZPM factory was destroyed to prevent it from falling into wraith hands. Use your imagination.

Re:The writing is the problem, for the most part

[Larry Lightbulb]

The writer may start off with a good script but it's soon out of their hands.

It gets rewritten by the backers, the producers, the director, and the lead actors. All these groups will have their own writers, and will be pulling to make the version which is best for them.

No no no.

[Anonymous Coward]

Causing a traffic jam when you're already late would be ironic behaviour, as you'd expect someone who is late to attempt to try to get where they are going faster.

Simply being in a traffic jam is just a pain in the butt.. or unfortunate.. whatever.

Buying or otherwise intentionally acquiring ten thousand spoons when you need a knife would be ironic; merely having the spoons is not.

Paying for a ride that was just offered to you for free would be ironic, however if the ride is paid for first and then a freebie comes along then the Universe is just playing silly buggers with you.

In short, the only thing ironic in that song is the song itself. Through it's title it represents that it is about irony, when it is in fact not.

And please don't hang one definiton off of another and then use the second definition to prove your point.