[HN Gopher] Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]
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Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]
Author : jdkee
Score : 290 points
Date : 2022-03-12 08:00 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| yakubin wrote:
| Another aspect which is often neglected in movies of today is
| character development. A character's backstory is either
| completely unknown, or is told instead of being shown, or is
| shown in a couple seconds, and then something happens to them
| that was aimed to supposedly instil some emotions in me as a
| viewer, but no, I don't care about this character. If they die, I
| guess they will be replaced by another character I don't care
| about. Example of this chasm between the old and the new is
| Moffat-era Doctor Who vs post-Moffat Doctor Who. This YouTube
| review shows it best:
| <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMbZkR9vOrw>
|
| Also, romantic scenes all look the same, completely generic.
| They're basically copy-pasted between movies. They're so flat and
| devoid of any genuine feeling I end up hitting the right arrow to
| skip them entirely.
|
| Usually I don't have those issues with older movies (and movies
| of a couple selected directors still making good movies to this
| day).
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| I liked this video. With the glaring exception of wandavision.
| Characters in that series are constantly telling her that what
| she is doing is wrong. There is no ambiguity that it's an evil
| selfish thing she is doing. It's also unintentional and
| subconscious because she can't control her powers and frankly she
| is weak. Her sacrifice is the loss of her children and husband
| because she recognizes she has to restore freedom to the
| innocents. This part of the analysis felt extremely unfair.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| This just doesn't ring true to me, at all.
|
| Is the Youtube algorithm directing people to make vaguely fascist
| feeling, "bring back the good old days", 'kids today',
| 'civilization is doomed' content aimed at young males? Or is that
| just a natural cycle that repeats throughout history?
|
| The biggest film in history was "Birth of a Nation" until it was
| replaced by "Gone with the Wind", "Star Wars" may have been a
| rebellion against a vaguely Nazi empire, but it was still about
| hereditary rulers that are related to each other starting wars.
|
| Overall, the trajectory seems fairly positive. The good old days
| were pretty crappy and that was reflected in their books, films
| and songs. Though I suppose if you're young enough that Mulan
| 1998 is a classic film from the good old days you might simply be
| ignorant of a lot of the crazy shit that went on.
|
| Look up parents re-watching films from their youth with their
| children, to realise, horrified, what passed as entertainment in
| their youth that is now shocking to them and stuff they don't
| want their kids to emulate or look up to.
| JanneVee wrote:
| Nostalgia that is the most natural thing in the world is
| defined as 'fascist' now?
| dudul wrote:
| marcosdumay wrote:
| throw872291 wrote:
| OP is replying to a video titled 'why modern movies suck'. So
| OP is not referring to nostalgia. It's more a reaction to
| 'old times wow, now sucks'.
|
| If the video was titled 'Why I love these old films', then
| your reply makes sense.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| "Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to
| suffering." -- Yoda
|
| These are all 'natural things', doesn't mean we should rush
| to embrace them and the people who use them to manipulate us.
| JanneVee wrote:
| So my affinity and longing for simpler times with 8-bit
| computers can be used to manipulate me for someones
| ideological purposes? There is a huge gap between someone
| saying 'it used to be better' and the primrose path to
| embracing a fascists autocrat!
| zthrowaway wrote:
| Do you know what fascist means? Or are we just going to use
| that word for everything that we find unappealing now?
|
| Would love for you to define it, and explain how it applies
| to American nostalgia for older classic movies that are a
| foundation of our pop culture.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| > The core mobilizing myth of fascism which conditions
| its ideology, propaganda, style of politics and actions
| is the vision of the nation's imminent rebirth from
| decadence.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degenerate_art
| zthrowaway wrote:
| Trying to spin people glorifying classic movies to be a
| form of Nazi degenerate art would've worked better
| (though I disagree with this even being remotely the same
| thing and view it as hyperbolic.) This still has nothing
| to do with fascism.
| watwut wrote:
| It is nostalgia for movie era that never really was. By
| cherry picking old movies and seeing in them what you
| want to see. Which is something different then trying to
| analyse actual past production as it actually was.
|
| It is seeing decadence in contrast to past heavenly era,
| because you want it to be like that.
| zthrowaway wrote:
| Okay, you can have a problem with people glorifying the
| old days. But that still has nothing to do with fascism.
| My above question has yet to be answered.
| watwut wrote:
| Your question is meaningless, because the comment you
| answered to did not claimed nostalgia is fascist.
|
| He said, youtube algorithm is giving him vaguely fascist
| content.Bringing up "Birth of Nation" in literally second
| paragraph.
|
| And I did not said anything about glorifying past, I said
| the narrative lies about the past.
| zthrowaway wrote:
| > Your question is meaningless, because the comment you
| answered to did not claimed nostalgia is fascist.
|
| In OP's post:
|
| > Is the Youtube algorithm directing people to make
| vaguely fascist feeling, "bring back the good old days"
|
| So yeah, no. The OP here used the word fascist in
| reference to the idea of "bring back the good old days".
| watwut wrote:
| In referencie to that and butcher of other things. So,
| no.
| EamonnMR wrote:
| > hereditary rulers that are related to each other starting
| wars
|
| Star Wars (New Hope) is nothing of the sort. The universe just
| got progressively smaller as they retconned every character
| into being related to every other character.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| I meant that as general dig at "princesses" in film and
| history, not the specific weird Star Wars geneaology.
|
| Star Wars is basically old War Movies, Flash Gordon serials
| and Errol Flynn swashbuckling movies spliced together, as
| such it draws on the long history of storytelling that, in
| turn reflecting their own 'good old days', often revolves
| around the beautiful and genetically superior children of
| heriditary dictators who murdererd their way into power and
| how they deserve to be the rightful ruler and basically owner
| of the populace.
|
| This is not a good lesson and is exactly the kind of thing
| Terry Pratchett satirizes with Lance Constable Carrot
| Ironfoundersson in Discworld, or George RR Martin in Game of
| Thrones.
| blippage wrote:
| One thing I've noticed is that is seems more recent movies lack
| character observations. Everything is done is in service of the
| plot.
|
| I think it was in Doctor No there was a conversation between Q, M
| and Bond. Bond's favourite weapon was the Beretta, and Q
| explained their downsides. Bond was ordered to use the Walther
| (IIRC) as a replacement. It was in a box. At the end of the
| scene, Bond picks up the box, surreptitiously hiding the Beretta
| underneath. As he is about to walk out, M, continuing with his
| writing and without looking up, says to Bond, "Oh and Bond, leave
| the Beretta behind on your way out." (Or something like that).
|
| It's a small scene, but it tells you a lot about the characters.
| It just adds to storytelling, even though it isn't a key scene.
|
| Another example is the difference between the original Robocop
| and the remake. In the original, the villain Boddicker is hailed
| into the police station. Battered and bruised, he spits blood on
| some paperwork on a desk and says "Just give me my fucking phone
| call."
|
| How badass is that? The villains in the remake were much less
| interesting, and it made for a weaker movie. I guess modern
| screenwriters /could/ write decent if they wanted to, but I
| assume that gunning for a 13 certificate really neuters the
| possibilities. I also suspect that there is more influence by the
| producers, who insist that certain things need to be in certain
| ways "for the demographics". So what you end up with is a story
| that's bent to suit the demographics, rather than just telling a
| good story.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| I feel like I'm going to call bullshit on this. I'm not
| convinced at all that this is less common in modern films. This
| one off example is nothing noteworthy. Plenty of similar
| examples in recent films.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| The 70's were a great time for character driven film.
|
| A more recent character-driven film that reminds me of the 70's
| was "About Schmidt" with, of course, that veteran of 70's films
| and filmmaking, Jack Nicholson.
|
| Oh, "Frances Ha" comes to mind as well. You'll probably have to
| pick through the indie films to find character these days.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| Are you sure you aren't just remembering fondly movies you saw
| when you were younger? Both those scenes are huge
| tropes/cliches.
| barrkel wrote:
| Yeah, Casablanca is just a bunch of quotes strung together.
| mellavora wrote:
| I think you mean "Hamlet" or was it "Macbeth". One of the
| two.
| barrkel wrote:
| No, I didn't. That would be a slightly different joke.
| ballenf wrote:
| There was a lot of trope in those movies, but I think we'll
| look back at today's bad movies as 99% trope. It's just we
| don't see the tropes so clearly right now without a little
| distance.
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| The 99% trope thing has an associated concept of its own:
| fan service.
|
| Once you go past a certain level of tropey-ness
| (tropiness?) you're unavoidably telegraphing a message to
| genre fans because everyone else rejects your work as
| derivative.
|
| But giving it a name -- fan service -- is kind of a new
| version where all parties are aware of it and actively
| engaged with it.
|
| And it gives rise to a new way for directors to have all
| the fun of breaking the fourth wall without breaking the
| fourth wall -- to have the characters also aware of the
| tropes of the circumstances in which they find themselves.
|
| There's so much of this in TV in particular and a lot of it
| is because of the influence of Joss Whedon, but Rocke S.
| O'Bannon did some of this in _Farscape_ (and then much more
| explicitly as I understand it in _Cult_ , which I haven't
| seen yet).
|
| You could argue that a certain strand of films of the late
| 80s and early 90s really kicked it off, not least the
| original, quite underrated _Buffy The Vampire Slayer_ ,
| which is all about trope awareness.
| partomniscient wrote:
| The first time you see a huge trope or cliche, its not
| actually a huge trope or cliche because to you its new and
| you get the full impact of whatever it is.
|
| Its only over time that you get the "I know this situation",
| "I've been here before" possibly reaching the point of not
| wanting it again because you're oversaturated with said
| trope/cliche and now recognise them as such.
|
| But the first ones stick with you and you remember them
| differently to the others.
| Shugarl wrote:
| But that's completely besides the point.
|
| Tropes are nothing more than patterns we can observe in
| multiple stories. Cliches are tropes used extremely
| frequently. There's nothing inherently wrong about either of
| those things, it's only the way they're being used, the
| execution, that can be good or bad.
|
| The James Bond one manages to add a touch of comedy, gives
| more information to the viewer about the characters who the
| characters are and how well they know each other, and makes
| the viewer remain attentive in what would otherwise be a
| fairly boring exposition scene. It has become used over and
| over again in various precisely because of how effective it
| is.
| bmelton wrote:
| 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 cliches.
|
| So pervasive has the ripoff been, that watching Nickelodeon
| episodes of Hannah Montana and Sweet Life of Zack and Cody
| have ripped off (and watered down) Seinfeld plots to the
| extent that trying to watch Seinfeld now is burdensome.
| Despite the bits in Seinfeld having been mostly original and
| novel at the time they were made, they have become tropey
| enough that it feels unoriginal through the slow attrition of
| time.
|
| People trying to get into the show at this point would likely
| see it as tropey, and those who still adore it as doing so
| more through fond remembrance than appreciation of its
| originality.
| aikinai wrote:
| It's like people complaining the Lord of the Rings is just
| all the fantasy tropes. Well they weren't tropes yet when
| Tolkien invented them.
| bsder wrote:
| Worse, they were _counterculture_. "Bored of the Rings"
| came out in _1969_.
|
| People also forget that fantasy tropes were "evil and
| satanic" up through about the 1980s.
| RobertMiller wrote:
| The Matrix fell hard to this. Slow motion bullet time? So
| passe!
| User23 wrote:
| Tropes are not bad[1].
|
| [1] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Administrivia/Trop
| esA...
| newsclues wrote:
| I think being a Hollywood writer has become a prestige job,
| largely devoid of merit and the talent isn't what it used to
| be.
| warabe wrote:
| I call that sort of "good" plots "character-oriented plot". One
| best example is Breaking Bad, which is not movie, but it is a
| great show anyway. The episode of Fly is a good example how
| well BB portrayed character's personality.
|
| with character-oriented plot, we have character first, and let
| them play drama. It is like having initial condition and seeing
| how things evolve in Ordinary Differential Equation. Everything
| seems natural. I don't think screen play is not that simple,
| but good plot makes people think in that way.
|
| On the other hand, with plot for the sake of plot, there is a
| predetermined plot at the outset, and as the show progresses,
| the actions and personalities of the characters are adjusted
| accordingly. There is no real personality there, just a cog in
| the wheel.
| distances wrote:
| > One best example is Breaking Bad
|
| Breaking Bad is my usual example of bad plot building. I'm
| sure I haven't given it a fair chance as it's universally so
| highly liked, but the plot events were very much built up so
| that you could see what's coming. You are already
| anticipating some events, or they feel predictable and made
| up, as if precisely to serve the show. They don't come
| through as authentic.
|
| I stopped watching Breaking Bad in the first or second season
| due to this poor plot building, and Better Call Saul after a
| couple of episodes when I realized it's just more of that
| very same style of bad plotting. The difference to well
| written shows such as Sopranos is like night and day.
|
| Negative comments about Breaking Bad and pointing out its
| flaws seems to often receive controversial reactions. I
| suppose it's because it's the favourite show for so many.
| unmole wrote:
| > The episode of Fly is a good example how well BB portrayed
| character's personality.
|
| That was a pointless filler episode that only got made
| because they ran out of money.
| Joeboy wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottle_episode
| oriolid wrote:
| Sometimes creativity comes from constraints.
| jsnodlin wrote:
| mikaeluman wrote:
| Completely agree with this guy. New movies inevitably seem to
| teach strange lessons that make you uneasy and kind of feel bad
| when you leave the cinema or turn of the screen.
|
| Superhero movies used to be about growth. Yet now it's more often
| than not the case that the hero was simply born awesome.
| Completely uninteresting.
|
| Politics also creeps into movies in a disconcerted way. Star Wars
| is suddenly not about defeating totalitarianism and tyranny, but
| about some strange mix of feminism and animal rights. I think.
| Batman has to see Batman become a medic rather than do what
| Batmam does: beat up bad guys. And of course Catwoman must be
| with the times and complain about the attention paid to "rich
| white men" when they get horribly assassinated in gruesome ways
| by a psychopath - as if murdering the mayor such that his now
| fatherless son finds him should receive equal attention to some
| drug deal gone wrong.
|
| The latest Bond movie of course had to kill Bond. Something that
| should just never happen. And then we have to watch this
| extremely annoying supposed new 007 get an insane amount of
| screen time even though she is a transparent, vapid character.
| dustingetz wrote:
| the english second language market is several times larger than
| the english market, so mega franchises like Marvel really need to
| keep it simple. a lesson for entrepreneurs as well.
| jeltz wrote:
| There is no need to keep it simple for our sake, we can follow
| complex dialogue just fine using subtitles.
| Strawhorse wrote:
| These foreign cinemas have their own industries. Plus, Marvel
| as an entity has been around for years before they started
| making those crap movies. It's just hollywood kowtowing to
| other countries for more money.
| gyozapump wrote:
| I suspect younger people generally understand this and watch
| streaming shows instead. A creative who wants to tell a deep
| nuanced story would prefer 10 episodes where they get more time
| and probably better terms.
|
| People lamenting the death of movies don't get this. The good
| stuff is still out there, it's just in a different format.
|
| Movies are now more occasions to go out to the theatre. They have
| to be mass appeal, family friendly, nothing too complex.
| moltke wrote:
| Shows are not movies and streaming even more so.
| Strawhorse wrote:
| We can blame a lot of the dumbing down on Hollywood's kowtowing
| to China
| fullshark wrote:
| Every example here is a female protagonist also, I think it's
| also partially kowtowing to feminist cultural critics who are
| vocal online and are particularly sensitive to perceived
| slights.
| Strawhorse wrote:
| That's ironic, because China hates strong female role models
| or protagonists in movies due to an endemically sexist
| culture
| fullshark wrote:
| I think the Mulan update was a huge flop in China FWIW, so
| maybe Disney tried to thread the needle there and failed.
| New Star Wars movies also I think didn't do well there.
|
| https://variety.com/2020/film/asia/why-china-hates-disney-
| mu...
|
| > The most fundamental flaw, most felt, was that Disney's
| new heroine starts out from childhood already equipped with
| superhero-like abilities, thanks to her extraordinary
| reserves of "qi," the force that she cultivates and
| controls to excel as a fighter.
|
| > Turning her into a superhero removes Mulan's everywoman
| appeal, and leaves her with no room to grow as a character,
| huge swathes of Chinese viewers said.
|
| Basically the exact criticism of the youtube video
| interestingly enough
| Strawhorse wrote:
| 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.
| fullshark wrote:
| 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).
| Strawhorse wrote:
| 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.
| smallerfish wrote:
| Ehh, I think he's asking movies to do too much. It's not the
| responsibility of hollywood to teach cultural mores.
|
| I do think blockbuster movies are (perhaps) increasingly just
| glorified cartoons, though, and Marvel/Disney are probably
| significantly to blame. Is fighting _really_ that interesting?
| Does the wire pull _have_ to be used in every fight? Why are big
| dumb CGI animals so popular? Why does every small CGI animal make
| the same wuk wuk wuk noise? Why does every large CGI animal snort
| like a buffalo?
| stiltzkin wrote:
| ESG funds is the worst that had happened to the American
| entertaiment industry:
|
| https://comicsgate.org/2021/10/30/ethan-van-sciver-is-right-...
| jl2718 wrote:
| You're blowing my mind.
|
| "So, it's all just government money?"
|
| "Always has been."
|
| Click.
| [deleted]
| netcan wrote:
| Fun rant.
|
| IMO, much of what The Drinker describes is just plain old bad
| writing, but currently it's a lame writing in the style or George
| RR Martin or whatever is modern. It's not the style that sucks,
| it's the writing.
|
| GRRM makes for an easy example. He wrote the novels for GoT's
| wonderful early seasons. Other people wrote the later seasons. We
| can compare. Both told morally ambiguous stories that played with
| fantasy motifs, but with the confusing twist. The handsome knight
| is a villain. The good lord gets killed. etc. This is the style
| of both early and late seasons, the late seasons just suck.
|
| In GRRM's writing, you follow characters make fucked up, horrible
| and evil decisions... but motivations make sense. You understand
| _why. " In late seasons, that breaks down.
|
| I believe a good writer could have hit all the "Rey Skywalker"
| identity waypoints and tied it into a story that _doesn't* suck.
| The sucky writers could have written a simple, New Hope style
| hero's journey where Rey overcomes internal and external
| obstacles... and that story could have still sucked.
|
| Fiction writing can have almost any moral take. Confusion,
| nihilism, certainty. The world can be just, the characters
| immoral. The world can be cruel, the heros can be moral.
|
| In short, it's totally possible to take the lamest of moral
| positions and write a great story around it. Possible, but not
| guaranteed. Look at Ayn Rand.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| What a great video!
|
| On Star Wars in particular, in the original trilogy, it's about
| coming from nothing, and overcoming your challenges. Luke fails,
| he makes numerous mistakes throughout the series.
|
| Ray never makes any mistakes, in fact in Episode 9 she clearly
| kills Chewbacca, but 30 seconds later they backtrack that
| decision.
|
| The new Star Wars movies are absolutely god awful, except for
| Episode 8. I liked it for a fairly unique reason. Back when I
| lived in LA I basically went out with this girl who knew she was
| a model and I wasted a ton of time and money on her.
|
| When I moved to Chicago, I met a dorky awkward girl, who became
| my first real girlfriend. This is priceless dating advice, go for
| that dorky awkward girl that actually likes you.
|
| Of course this really pissed a lot of people off, so they
| basically got rid of that story arc for the last movie. Looking
| at the entire series, I really think someone at Disney got
| uncomfortable with interracial dating, and thus Finn ends up
| making no sense as his two previous love arcs need to be
| eliminated by the last movie. This is understandable because even
| in America I've met people who are very uncomfortable with it,
| and Disney needs to distribute these movies to a global audience.
|
| That might actually be the root of the problem, you have to make
| a movie that goes out of its way to keep everybody comfortable.
| In various countries showing LGBT plotlines are a big no-no, so
| you have reports coming out of Disney that they've cut these at
| the last moment from various movies.
|
| The moment you have to make a movie that's okay for every single
| person, you end up creating these devoid visual spectacles. As
| in, most action movies are just a bunch of explosions and music.
| You can replace all the dialogue with gibberish and still get the
| idea of what happened.
|
| I was trying to watch Free Guy and had to turn it off 10 minutes
| in. Stop with the freaking music for a second and let people
| speak.
|
| However, other countries are still making real movies. I think a
| big part of the Korean wave is you don't have as much pandering
| to every single possible audience in K-pop dramas. Even then,
| I've had friends post that the subtitles are often toned down.
| Edit: Language Reactor is a great Chrome plugin which offers
| alternative subtitles as well as context. It's a great tool for
| language learning as well
|
| I can't imagine ever going to a movie theater again,
| congratulations Disney You've ruined cinema.
|
| Maybe I'll put one of these mediocre movies on in the background
| while I do other things, but they're not worthy of my undivided
| attention.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| yeah I think the bright side is that foreign film can shine
| now; it's amazing how korea has been entering the american
| zeitgeist regularly now, that's no small feat
| zarkov99 wrote:
| Start Wars, at least episode III, meaning the first one, is
| clearly structured around the hero's journey, a story archetype
| that has been around since time immemorial, in every culture on
| earth. A story that old and enduring must resonate deeply with
| something deep and true about the human condition and a
| talented director cannot help but be successful by retelling it
| skillfully. Many modern movies eschew any such ballast .
| Instead the weapons of choice are technical prowess, amygdala
| hacking and the parroting of the ideological fad of the day.
| Needless to say nothing inspiring comes out of these efforts
| and in a generation no one will watch these things.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| I would say 8 is by far the worst of the generally terrible new
| trilogy.
|
| 8 abandons pretty much everything from 7 and then tries to make
| a large sub plot about how the real evil is the oligarchical
| weapon vendors funding both sides. Ffs, the star wars universe
| has a faction self identifying as the evil dark side. It's not
| the place for his kind of thing.
| throwaway4220 wrote:
| off topic but is there a tool that just lets me read a YouTube
| videos transcript?
| jdougan wrote:
| Yes. Youtube Comment Search and youtube-dl (and others) can do
| so.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30566470
| aembleton wrote:
| Yes - https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=Dnuqp4_K7ik
| 88840-8855 wrote:
| The main criticism of this YouTube video is that the main
| character doesn't really have to put in any effort and has all
| those skills from the very beginning.
|
| While I agree that this trope can make kids think they're special
| without trying in life (and that they will be a hero in the
| future), I think there have been similar tropes in the past.
|
| Just take basic story writing of many old movies: There is always
| a hero that is living a boring or even sad life, often
| unsuccessful and unhappy. Suddenly, a "mentor" appears who takes
| our hero into this new magical world and teaches him the most
| amazing things in no time. Matrix, Star Wars, Harry Potter,
| basically all Disney movies, even Sailor Moon.
|
| That doesn't teach kids very positive things either: just wait
| for a mentor to come along and show you the way to become a hero,
| don't worry, you will be a hero because someone shows you the
| way.
|
| So I don't see the development described in the YouTube video as
| dramatically, it has existed forever.
| bawolff wrote:
| I think the difference is that the mentor might introduce them
| to the magical world, but its still up to the character what
| they want to do with it e.g. to quote the matrix "But I can
| only show you the door. You're the one that has to walk through
| it." And the decision as to what to do with it has consequences
| and changes them.
|
| Or to use another example - gandalf might mentor frodo, but yet
| it always seems like frodo's accomplishments are his own and
| gandalf didn't really do all that much for him when all is said
| and done. Frodo is a hero and an interesting character, but i
| wouldn't want to be him.
|
| Anyways i don't think the problem is lack of life lessons (even
| if they are lacking) its static characters and lack of stakes.
| Characters that were born ready are boring to watch. We like
| watching characters that change and adapt to circumstances
| whose choices are meaningful and consequential. The protagonist
| who was basically born with super powers, does not face a
| challenge and doesn't have to adapt their personality, is a
| boring character.
| watwut wrote:
| Nah. Superman, spiderman, hluk, any of these got skills by
| accident. Even karate kid which shown some training, shown
| imaginary low effort low time investment training. The
| typical action movie of my youth had guys winning all the
| fights for no reason other then that they are awesome.
| Audiences loved it. The past movies had enough of pure power
| fantasy or other "just gonna win" in it for the whole
| generation to drawn in it.
|
| And not just American movies. Bud Spencer and Terrence Hill
| were super famous and did basically nothing but that. They
| don't train, never ever, they are lazy as cool factor and are
| strongest guys most sharpest shooters around. Franch movies,
| fairly often the same thing. Random middle aged man thrown in
| situation and suddenly climbing and jumping roofs.
|
| And series targetted at kids still show plenty of training.
| Lego ninja go, winx club, all show training or classroom
| scenes often.
| bawolff wrote:
| > Nah. Superman, spiderman, hluk, any of these got skills
| by accident
|
| And half the plot is typically devoted to if they want to
| accept their new found powers or ignore them to live a
| normal life. So its still quite devoted to a choice with
| life changing consequences.
| watwut wrote:
| > And half the plot is typically devoted to if they want
| to accept their new found powers or ignore them to live a
| normal life. So its still quite devoted to a choice with
| life changing consequences.
|
| There is no way for Hulk to ignore or reject the powers.
| Nor for superman or spiderman for that matter. Superman
| in particular is just born that way, full stop. And
| speaking about action movies that nope, no big deep
| choices there. Even in matrix, the choice is singular
| scene where main character picks the pill so that movie
| can happen.
|
| And I liked Bud Spencer and Terrence Hill movies, so I
| have seen them multiple times and consequences for
| choices and actions are not the theme there at all.
|
| I have also read Spiderman comic targeted at kids back
| then. Half the time he just reacts to what is going on
| around, not having much choice nor choice being theme
| beyond "Am I going to do the right thing or not" false
| choice. Ninja Turtles had training in them ... but also
| they are essentially magical turtles due to some
| experiments or what done on them.
|
| Average movie and entertainment in 90ties just was not
| that deep.
| noduerme wrote:
| It's true it's not new. But when AI is mainly responsible
| for rewriting old scripts over and over, every 10 years,
| and telling children they're new movies, it may be missing
| out on the human elements that made those stories good the
| first time.
| Beldin wrote:
| > _Even karate kid which shown some training, shown
| imaginary low effort low time investment training._
|
| The point of his training is that the moves have completely
| become muscle memory/second nature. I have no clue how long
| that would take, but it would be significantly more than
| "low time investment".
|
| Note also that (1) he claimed to have had karate training
| before; (2) after hebuilds up the needed muscle memory,
| training continues to teach him when to use what muscle
| memory.
| watwut wrote:
| It takes over summer or something like that. He is 17
| when movie starts and tournament he wins is when is 18
| birthsday gift. Bulk of training is housework chores. No,
| you cant do housework for few months and emerge
| tournaments winning fighter out of it. That is literally
| plot of first Karate Kid.
|
| However, it is kid/teenage fantasy. Which is fine! But
| not some kind of hard work message movie.
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| 2-3 years of regular training is a good guideline for the
| movements to become autonomic in real-time situations
| with fluent synchrony situational context, for someone
| reasonably coordinated at the start.
| watwut wrote:
| The movie is about becoming good enough to win tournament
| against people who trained continuously for years.
| akemichan wrote:
| > I think the difference is that the mentor might introduce
| them to the magical world, but its still up to the character
| what they want to do with it e.g. to quote the matrix "But I
| can only show you the door. You're the one that has to walk
| through it." And the decision as to what to do with it has
| consequences and changes them.
|
| And in most cases they accept blindly, otherwise there's no
| story. Madoka Magica is one of the few stories that I know
| where this trope is broken by the characters questioning the
| decision.
| carrolldunham wrote:
| bawolff wrote:
| They didn't use rey skywalker as their only example or even
| their primary example.
|
| I would also say that people dismissing other people's
| arguments without even listening to them is a major problem
| with internet.
| em500 wrote:
| According to The Seven Basic Plots[1], all stories follow one
| of the archetypes
|
| - Overcoming the Monster
|
| - Rags to Riches
|
| - The Quest
|
| - Voyage and Return
|
| - Comedy
|
| - Tragedy
|
| - Rebirth
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Basic_Plots
| noduerme wrote:
| No, think about Star Wars. Luke doesn't believe in the Force,
| doesn't believe Obi Wan is anything but a crazy old man. He has
| to come to his realization himself and then find the Force in
| himself. He isn't _gifted_ with it. That truly is a big
| difference between the classic hero 's journey and the newer
| 2010s films where people just have a magic power.
|
| And people are sort of sick of it. It's why Watchmen or
| Guardians of the Galaxy stand out against so many boring
| superhero movies. Because a hero needs to be unwilling, unable,
| and unbelieving... and possibly not even a very good candidate
| for heroism. Hollywood shortened the journey with the classic
| stupid "karate montage to music" thing in the 80s. But now it's
| just like, oh jeez wow I have a superpower! Cool! So
| ultimately, who cares? Who can relate to that?
|
| Look at Greek mythology. No one could understand why Zeus got
| all pissed off, but he was Zeus. He was kind of inscrutable.
| Man related to demigods who carried our emotions and message as
| envoys. Or, take Star Trek. Spock is half-human. He serves as a
| bridge between the alien logic and the emotional, rational part
| of our nature. We know we should eventually evolve to be like
| Vulcans, but we value our dirty humanity. So Spock, by
| occasionally regressing to his human side, is our proof that
| our humanity itself has value.
|
| There's no humanity in a superhero who's just born with
| superpowers. That's Zeus. A great hero is like Spock, or Luke
| Skywalker, someone fighting their _inner nature_. Otherwise all
| conflicts are just eye candy, external, and ultimately CGI
| bullshit.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Luke Skywalker was just born with superpowers. Sure he had to
| learn to use the force properly, but there was still no other
| person in that story capable of using the force. Luke could
| have replaced either Wedge or Biggs, but they were not
| capable of replacing him.
| watwut wrote:
| Luke Skywalker is shown as natural born talent. Which is why
| he can become Jedi despite being too old for it and
| emotional. His hero journey starts with right genetical
| inheritance.
|
| > Look at Greek mythology. No one could understand why Zeus
| got all pissed off, but he was Zeus. He was kind of
| inscrutable.
|
| I think he is just powerful rather then impossible to
| understand. Not that I am expert, but Greek gods don't come
| across to me as something alien. They are fairly human,
| emotional at times rational at others, political among
| themselves, but definitely too strong for actual humans to
| handle.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| This has been a standard trope for well over a century. It's
| not really about "being shown the way" because heroes still
| have to do some active hero-ing to get to the end.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey
|
| Movies and fiction are about moral lessons packaged into
| fantasies and escapism. If movies were relentlessly realistic
| no one would go to see them, because there would be nothing to
| see.
|
| Even "gritty realism" isn't realistic. It's usually just the
| same trope populated with shady underworld characters and a
| flawed or outcast anti-hero instead of inspirational mentors.
| version_five wrote:
| As another post mentioned, this really only applies to big budget
| blockbusters. Just to summarize what I've observed:
|
| 1. Every movie is basically the "Mattel-Mars Bar quick energy
| chocobot hour" at this point, basically just an empty ad
|
| 2. Studios are currently falling all over themselves to show how
| ideologically correct they are
| bendergender wrote:
| Wait till you hear about the history of shows like
| Transformers, HeMan, Gundam, etc. Media has more or less been
| an ad for 50+ years at this point, that's hardly a new
| phenomena.
| cryptica wrote:
| The monetary system rewards compliance and unethical conduct so
| that may be why many modern movies lack creativity and moral
| lessons. The people who have the money to fund movies don't have
| the taste nor creativity to choose good scripts to fund.
| cheaprentalyeti wrote:
| A quick note: this is part of a series of "Why Modern Movies
| Suck" with different subtitles by the same person.
| tomohawk wrote:
| There used to be 2 categories: character driven and plot driven.
|
| Character driven movies require good writing, which is in short
| supply. Plot driven movies - you just need a cool plot idea, and
| then throw in some actors to service the plot. The characters
| personalities morph to suit whatever the plot demands.
|
| With the rise of woke, a different category has experienced a
| resurgence: ideology driven. It's kind of like plot driven, but
| instead of characters being malleable in service to some plot,
| they are malleable in service to woke ideology. This makes the
| characters unrelatable and inhuman.
| eezing wrote:
| I never thought Star Wars episodes 1-3 were all that terrible. I
| struggled to make it through the latest batch.
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| Omg Disney completely ruined it - couldn't believe 7 and never
| going to watch any after that. Ever.
| ZYinMD wrote:
| I have a different problem with the modern movies - modern people
| have pretty much seen everything, but still ask "show me
| something I haven't seen before", so movies try their best to
| create "novelties", and end up with crazy plot twists that make
| the story worse. But then the novelty wears off quickly as we've
| seen everything yet again, so movies have to find newer and
| crazier shit to keep us entertained, and deviate father away from
| the best stories. Sooner or later we'll run out of stimulus,
| meanwhile our children are exposed to crazy shit from day 1.
| TipiKoivisto wrote:
| I agree 100%. A movie doesn't have to be great, but it should
| be different.
|
| I made a short film and even the people who didn't get/like the
| jokes said: "At least it was different and not boring."
|
| BTW, you can watch the film in https://youtu.be/LkclVXofHbU
| jasperry wrote:
| I think what you're getting at is that novelty is being sought
| as a (poor) substitute for real substance. Give me a movie made
| by someone who has really thought about an aspect of the human
| condition and explores it from their own point of view, and it
| will have true originality and keep you riveted, even if the
| theme has been treated thousands of times. There aren't that
| many different themes, but they are inexhaustible if treated
| well.
|
| Movies bore us not because of lack of novelty, but because
| they're just tropes stitched together to fit a formula rather
| than representing a real creative endeavor.
| smitty1e wrote:
| Art has to bespeak truth to be worthy of the name.
|
| Postmodernism scuttles truth, prepending a grade of 'F' to the
| word 'art'.
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| And lately adds ridiculous over pc-ness to become phart!
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Don't forget that Anakin Skywalker was special because he carried
| more midi-chlorians since birth. He is, after all, "The Chosen
| One".
|
| So he, too, is "born that way".
| cptnapalm wrote:
| He was gifted at birth, true. However, this hero does fail. In
| fact, he fails so spectacularly, he becomes the villain.
| [deleted]
| jsz0 wrote:
| It's probably been 5 years now since I willingly watched a movie.
| I've been dragged to a few not by preference which I was bored to
| death by. I don't want to be a Debbie downer or come off as a
| snob so I try to make reasonable excuses why I won't watch a
| movie but the truth is I think most of them are stupid as hell as
| I generally look down on people who waste their time watching
| lots of TV and movies. There are better things to do with your
| life.
| baking wrote:
| For anyone not familiar with The Critical Drinker's work, this
| should be considered to be part of an ongoing series:
|
| Why Modern Movies Suck - Setup And Payoff
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmOZgSyQjtA
|
| Why Modern Movies Suck - They're Destroying Our Heroes
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qY-GLeHS0Ik
|
| Why Modern Movies Suck - The Soft Reboot
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyU63LJV3AE
|
| Why Modern Movies Suck - They Teach Us Awful Lessons
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dnuqp4_K7ik
|
| You can probably include earlier videos along the same theme,
| such as:
|
| What Happened To Our Villains?
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnRP7SKzOgk&t=22s
| seanhandley wrote:
| I worked for a while with a guy who'd worked at the BBC for many
| years.
|
| His reasoning for why movies are more boring was simple: money.
|
| A production team is looking to distribute their movie in as many
| channels as possible, and with the broadest appeal possible. As a
| result, you see a film made with the broad strokes but lacking in
| subtlety. If a film might be challenging because of the subject
| matter, the complexity of the dialogue, the character
| development, or the plot then it gets dialled back.
|
| You lose the specific cultural references that give a film it's
| charm and it ends up not really being a true reflection of any
| people anywhere - just easy Friday night cinema fodder that
| maximises return on investment.
|
| A movie sucks because it isn't art any more.
| walkhour wrote:
| Really good movies appeal to different audiences at different
| levels, if you're looking just for pure action, funny lines,
| you may find it there, and if you're looking for a deep story,
| you may find it there as well. So in theory, there needn't be a
| contradiction between a wide audience and an awesome movie.
|
| Admittedly, these movies are hard to come by, Drive (2011)
| would be one of them for me, although there must be a more
| recent one I can't think of now.
| psychlops wrote:
| Oddly enough, money is also why exciting movies are made. Not
| many people make movies, nor art, out of the generosity of
| their hearts.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I think I would argue that the "art" is in fact made by
| people without the expectation of financial gain.
|
| Everything else you're describing is not in fact "art", it's
| a product.
| seanhandley wrote:
| No kidding.
|
| I'm not saying "money is wrong, make all films for free".
|
| When a production team makes a movie, they take a risk. I
| think the problem is that the people making the artistic
| decisions are also the ones trying to minimise risk and
| maximise revenue.
|
| I appreciate a film needs to be a commercial success to make
| it worthwhile to the creators, but there comes a point where
| the artistic integrity has been utterly sacrificed and you
| get a dull, anemic, forgettable film.
| psychlops wrote:
| Fair enough. I thought you were going down the "capitalism
| is bad" route. I think I understand what you mean.
|
| > I think the problem is that the people making the
| artistic decisions are also the ones trying to minimise
| risk and maximise revenue.
|
| Knowing absolutely nothing about production, I would
| surmise there is a financial science and formula applied to
| films estimating modelling their potential profit. I mean
| something like "there must be x car chases to draw y amount
| of viewers" for an action film and so on.
|
| Since such formulas would be based on past data, we rarely
| see something fresh as it's riskier.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| You can have movies make money without having the money drive
| creative decisions. The bottom line focus of corporate
| content is the reason american pop culture has turned to shit
| in the last 20 years and everything is a remake or a rehash.
| joeberon wrote:
| nathias wrote:
| It isn't money, it's risk management/minimalization by large
| coorporations because that's their optimal strategy.
| Alex3917 wrote:
| > His reasoning for why movies are more boring was simple:
| money.
|
| If you look back at the best movies throughout history, a lot
| of them were made outside the Hollywood system. It's easy to
| think that movies today are worse than Apocalypse Now or Star
| Wars, while forgetting that those movies also couldn't get made
| in their day.
| [deleted]
| cle wrote:
| Money has always been there, I think it's really more about
| connectedness. Audience sizes have exploded as population has
| grown and cultures have become more connected due to
| globalization and the Internet, so the TAM has exploded and led
| to the watering down of...everything, from movies to games to
| news & politics.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Too bad then, because if the audience has exploded then so
| too have the niche audience that would appreciate a film
| about, say, John von Neumann (ha ha, just to pick someone I
| just read an article about from HN).
| nebula8804 wrote:
| I think this audience is there but they are watching these
| films on Netflix. I observed this phenomenon from 2019 to
| today when I got a monthly AMC movie pass that allows me to
| watch any three movies a week every week. What I observed
| even pre pandemic is that any film that is not a major
| established blockbuster (Superhero films, James bond, etc.)
| has little to no people coming out to see them. I further
| tried to understand this trend by writing a data collecting
| tool that leverages AMC's API to better understand who is
| coming out. It showed me that there are tons of empty
| screens for many smaller films going on. Finally to help
| control to see if this is a AMC thing, I also signed up for
| Cinemark(a competitor) and observed basically the same
| results.
|
| It sucks because this harms directors I actually want to
| see succeed like Edgar Wright. Edgar is a big proponent of
| watching movies on the big screen so he designs his films
| to be primarily viewed on cinema screens and pushes for the
| longest release window he can get. Unfortunately, outside
| the cities, I observed little uptake for his latest film.
| :/
| zzzbra wrote:
| first time I've actually understand some of the Last Jedi hate
| durnygbur wrote:
| I'd rather announce the end of American cinematography. It's
| entirely product placement pulp, preceded by numerous ads when
| displayed in cinema or the internet, and any form of sharing them
| on the internet oftentimes implies a vicious strike of copyright
| predators. Shut down this industry already.
| Gatsky wrote:
| I disagree that one learns anything important from a (non-
| documentary) movie. Movies are an experiential but non-
| interactive art form that resists internalisation. At best they
| make you feel a certain way for a short while, in my experience.
| Strawhorse wrote:
| Movies (non-documentary) can moot and champion whole
| ideologies, psychologies, and philosophies, for example Fight
| Club (nihilism), Logan's Run (progressivism, anti-
| establishmentism), Lost in Translation (existentialism,
| contemporary anomie), Magnolia (existentialism, fugue) etc. I
| suggest you broaden your viewing.
| Gatsky wrote:
| My viewing is pretty broad, I've seen these movies except
| Magnolia. What you are describing is the placing of a movie
| in a cultural context. This is criticism, not learning on an
| individual level. For example, take Mulan. I can generate a
| feminist counter-critique that the new Mulan is in fact
| better because women are born with special qualities men
| don't have, and often are superior when given equal
| opportunities. This isn't a lesson the movie teaches however,
| it's academic bloviating.
|
| I mean I think actual existentialist philosophers would laugh
| if you tried to tell them that Lost in Translation is an
| existentialist movie. Also I think you mean ennui not anomie.
| Joeboy wrote:
| 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 awesome",
| they're generally female, right? I'm not sure the same trend
| applies for male protagonists.
| moltke wrote:
| That's an underrated comment, there are tons of good indie
| movies.
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| There are also lots of modern movies sub-$100M budget that suck
| spectacularly. Many of them star Bruce Willis:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd1eNS9HtXo
| staticman2 wrote:
| 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.
| Joeboy wrote:
| That's more a description of 20th century Bond than Craig-era
| Bond. Contemporary Bond is a traumatized alcoholic who only
| passes a medical because M fixes his results. IIRC In Casino
| Royale he crashes his DB5 and is captured by his nemesis, who
| proceeds to beat his genitals with a knotted rope. That sort
| of thing doesn't happen to Captain Marvel (or Roger Moore).
|
| It's admittedly a while since I've followed anything to do
| with Superman. I'm imagining he's undergone a similar
| reinvention, but I admit I'm guessing.
| aaron695 wrote:
| JeremyNT wrote:
| > Maybe it's a bad idea to say this out loud, but when you get
| protagonists who are "just born preternaturally awesome",
| they're generally female, right? I'm not sure the same trend
| applies for male protagonists.
|
| Do you watch many superhero movies? Because I feel like you
| must not.
|
| Many of the characters are _literal gods_ , and many more are
| just uncannily good at everything because of some hand wavey
| backstory.
|
| Even the characters that start off "normal" tend to become
| awesome by simply being in the right place at the right time
| and being exposed to some external force (rather than through
| overcoming flaws or weaknesses on their own).
| karpierz wrote:
| > Edit: Maybe it's a bad idea to say this out loud, but when
| you get protagonists who are "just born preternaturally
| awesome", they're generally female, right? I'm not sure the
| same trend applies for male protagonists.
|
| I think this is a bit of selective memory ala:
| https://xkcd.com/385/
|
| Did you have particular movies in mind with this? The whole
| Marvel universe is riddled with male protagonists who are
| simply better than other people. That's the whole schtick that
| the Watchmen criticises.
| Joeboy wrote:
| Surely the whole point of Watchmen was that superheros _aren
| 't_ better than other people. For the last couple of decades
| cinema's been reinventing (male) superheroes as "complex
| characters" with flaws, moral weaknesses and questionable
| motivations.
|
| Like you say, maybe I'm remembering selectively but I think
| that's less the case for Black Widow, Captain Marvel or
| Wonder Woman than it is for Iron Man, Superman or Batman.
|
| Can you imagine Marvel greenlighting a female-led equivalent
| of Logan?
|
| For what it's worth, I now regret saying anything, and will
| try to restrain myself from saying anything else.
| [deleted]
| t0bia_s wrote:
| I don't mind that modern films are flat end empty, because then I
| have more time for watch tons of good old films and I do not have
| regrets that I miss something.
|
| Last week I saw "Three colours" from Kieslowski. Absolutely
| amazing trilogy about liberte, egalite, fraternite.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Recently put on and enjoyed Fellini's "Nights of Cabiria."
|
| I think I only saw one of the "color" films. (Was so
| depressing.)
| justinator wrote:
| Good pick- it's to the point that I try to express my love of
| these movies and I just start sobbing. At once because of how
| beautiful these films are and also that I fear an audience for
| them no longer exist in a world where movies = The MCU.
| noduerme wrote:
| I kind of appreciate the gamer-style review of Mulan, just, like,
| not having as much _difficulty_ or _leveling up_ in the live-
| action version. Putting it in that way makes a meaningful point
| and is something that can actually be fixed. What can 't be
| fixed, unfortunately, is Disney's enslavement to China. The
| classic Disney narrative was at one time was aimed at selling the
| American Dream. Which, bullshit as it may have turned out for
| most pepole, at least vaunted (can you use that as a verb?) the
| advancement of the underdog and, like, bootstrapping peasants or
| immigrants into responsible leadership by their talents. (It was
| a Universal film, but "An American Tail" was the only movie my
| parents took us to see TWICE in the theater when I was a kid). I
| think you could trace the decline in meaningful storytelling to a
| political posture in China that is deeply at odds with anything
| that smacks of peasant uprisings, or power to the people, which
| in spite of its corporate undertones in production Hollywood
| writers actually used to somewhat be allowed to champion.
| Remember that even though these are huge multinational
| corporations, most actual screenwriters were for all functional
| purposes extreme liberals or communists up until they were killed
| and replaced with regurgitating AI bots in the mid-2000s.
| _tik_ wrote:
| I think this argument is overstretching into a political
| argument. The live action Mulan movie is consider a flop in
| China. The Chinese audience hate it. It is more successful in
| Singapore and Saudi Arabia. Disney remove one of main major
| male character to be aligned with the MeeToo movement. For the
| Animation version the Chinese complained for their foreign
| looking character and it is too different from myth. China love
| Kung Fu panda. The find kung fu panda show a sincere love to
| Chinese culture without over trying too be a chinese.
| bawolff wrote:
| > I think you could trace the decline in meaningful
| storytelling to a political posture in China that is deeply at
| odds with anything that smacks of peasant uprisings, or power
| to the people
|
| The first disney mulan is a story about a girl who overcame
| discrimination and gender roles to come into a position of
| great honour to the state.
|
| Propping up the state is basically the opposite of a peasent
| uprising.
| noduerme wrote:
| >> Propping up the state is basically the opposite of a
| peasent uprising.
|
| True, and fair. I didn't mean to cast Disney as some kind of
| revolutionary force for anti-authoritarianism at any point in
| its history. But the Joan of Arc myth means different things
| to different people, and it's inherently dangerous to the
| status quo even if it's used for the glory of the state. Such
| a legend _could not_ be told now in China, because there 's
| too much room for subversion in the individual's self-
| empowerment.
| threesmegiste wrote:
| Modern generation wants sucks
| newguy999 wrote:
| dionidium wrote:
| 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 no duties or
| responsibilities to anyone else (most certainly not to any men).
| They're just total kick-ass take-no-prisoners empowered women.
|
| That's why these characters are good at everything from the
| start. It's why they never struggle. The overriding point that's
| trying to be conveyed in every scene is that these women _kick
| ass_. That 's why the modern Mulan can't be shown as weak and
| later overcoming her physical weaknesses in other ways. No, she
| cannot be weak -- full stop. If she encounters a much larger man,
| then she has to _kick his ass._
|
| Addendum that shouldn't be required, but of course it is: I want
| to make it totally clear here that _of course_ women leads can be
| interesting and dynamic and multi-dimensional. If you think I 'm
| saying otherwise, then please don't even bother engaging, because
| you will have totally missed my point, which is that this
| particular approach to featuring women is ham-fisted and risible
| and probably counterproductive, in the end.
| dragontamer wrote:
| I don't think gender has anything to do with it though.
|
| > 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 no duties or responsibilities
| to anyone else (most certainly not to any men). They're just
| total kick-ass take-no-prisoners empowered women.
|
| But what you've just described is Christopher Nolan's Batman
| (who loses to Bane physically early in the movie, and beats him
| by... physically overpowering Bane a bit later).
|
| The modern "superhero" genre is completely devoid of modern
| responsibilities. This wasn't true before... in the 70s, you
| had Clark who had to be a responsible person (show up to his
| job, write articles, etc. etc.). Despite being a magical alien
| from a futuristic society, Clark Kent had a number of "human"
| scenes, interacting with his boss, showing off responsible uses
| of his powers (ex: the Robbery scene, he manages to protect
| Lois Lane and the Robber, by pretending to be weak. Catching
| the bullet and pretending to go unconscious from fright).
|
| Today, Christopher Nolan's Batman (who is considered well
| written), leaves his company to go off on a Ninja-adventure.
| Leaves all the decision-making to a rival group of executives,
| and then magically takes back over the company despite his
| multi-year absence after siphoning funds to a secretive and
| poorly managed research-and-development corner of the company.
| And somehow the people who ran the company during his absence
| are the antagonists who need to be disposed of by the end of
| the 1st movie.
|
| ----------------
|
| Don't get me wrong, Nolan's Batman is really interesting and
| fun to watch. But he's fun to watch BECAUSE he's an amoral
| asshole with crap moral lessons.
|
| Iron-man is another movie character who has this effect as
| well. Assholes who magically get their way are often
| interesting to watch.
|
| I wouldn't want any children following in the "lessons" of
| Nolan's Batman or 2008+ era Iron Man. They're awful moral
| characters.
|
| Ray (Star Wars, episodes 7-9) is positively a saint in
| comparison.
| dionidium wrote:
| I upvoted both you and Buldak because I'm certain there's
| something to what you're saying. Few things are monocausal or
| completely explained by one factor. And surely these modern
| filmmaking tropes feedback on themselves and reinforce
| prevailing styles. Mine isn't any kind of grand unifying
| theory. I just think it's a factor.
| dragontamer wrote:
| There's a little bit of gender role in there:
|
| Male assholes (ex: Rick from Rick and Morty, Nolan's
| Batman, Downy's Iron Man) are fun and interesting to watch.
| Female assholes are much, much harder to write (Amanda
| Waller, Suicide Squad, seems to be the best written one in
| recent films?)
|
| I guess there's explicitly "female" movies, like "Devil
| Wears Prada" where that kind of behavior is more acceptable
| (Miranda Priestly plays the role of asshole boss).
|
| But maybe the "formula" for what audiences accept just
| hasn't really been figured out yet for female characters.
| You certainly can't just take male-oriented tropes and try
| to apply them to female-oriented characters.
| dionidium wrote:
| Yeah, I think this is a pretty interesting response. That
| double standard feels to me like a plausible explanation
| for why some female characters are written differently.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > You certainly can't just take male-oriented tropes and
| try to apply them to female-oriented characters.
|
| Why do you say that? People don't, but they can. I've
| seen plenty of plays written for male leads but acted by
| females (e.g., Hamlet).
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| I tend to think the iron man movie are all trash. However I
| don't think they follow this pattern as you say.
|
| By the third movie he's literally having anxiety panic
| attacks. He's fearful that spidey, whom he brought to the big
| leagues, will get hurt and it'll be on his conscious. He's
| afraid and guilty of the collateral damage he's spawned into
| the world but intializing super hero culture.
|
| Execution of those movies aside I thought his character
| development arc was pretty good.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Men are portrayed this way all the time. Why would portraying
| women this way get so much attention and concern?
| smegsicle wrote:
| showcasing female heroes as displaying exaggerated masculine
| abilities (in a sexualized female body) is belittling to
| actual feminine virtues
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Who cares what you think - or what I think? Who are you or
| anyone to define what these women do or want - and then
| weakly try to appeal to authority by assigning your
| opinions the words "actual feminine virtues"? Many men used
| to define those 'virtues' as not working, voting, having an
| opinion, and as being obedient, sexy, and sexually
| available to them (but not to other men!) - how convenient!
|
| > sexualized female body
|
| So? Does it intimidate you? Should they hide or show their
| bodies based on what you prefer, or on what you think is
| right? Who the f- are you (or I) to have an opinion on what
| they should do. Should I have an opinion on what you do?
|
| Meanwhile, women fight wars, run countries and
| corporations. They don't post much on Hacker News - look at
| this discussion of men saying what women should do, just
| like the old days. I wonder why we don't see more women
| here?
| smegsicle wrote:
| re-framing traditional feminine virtues (those things
| that most women are good at and enjoy, and which make
| families stronger and society flourish) as worth less
| than traditional masculine virtues is offensive to a lot
| of people, and is itself an appeal to an extremist
| ideology
| vannevar wrote:
| Right, though I think I'd maybe use the term "values"
| rather than "virtues." The underlying message of these
| movies is that everyone---women included---should be judged
| by masculine standards (plus a traditional notion of female
| beauty). But a pseudo-feminism that imagines a world where
| women succeed only through a combination of feats of
| strength and hotness is not feminism in any meaningful
| sense and serves to maintain male primacy. Changing out
| women for men in the same old stories is not the answer;
| the answer is to _change the stories_ to put feminine
| values on par with masculine values. That doesn 't mean we
| can't have kick-ass women heroes, it just means that kick-
| ass heroes shouldn't be our only benchmark.
| dudul wrote:
| You can also note a parallel with female villains. Yeah they're
| bad, but you know, it's not their fault. They had such a tough
| life. And really are they that bad?
|
| And don't hear me wrong. I do love fleshed out bad guys/gals. I
| do want deep bad characters, but when the backstory can always
| be summarized with "she went through tough time because of bad
| men, so now yeah she's kind of bad" it doesn't really count.
| RobertMiller wrote:
| > _Yeah they 're bad, but you know, it's not their fault.
| They had such a tough life. And really are they that bad?_
|
| A little bit of that can make for a good villain I think.
| Villains who were truly victims earlier in life, or have a
| lot of seemingly rational rhetoric to back up their position.
| But usually there's a point where the audience is told that
| yes, they _really are_ bad, despite their background or
| arguments.
|
| Ma-Ma in _Dredd_ or Solidus in _MGS2_ are examples that come
| to mind. Ma-Ma is a heavily scarred ex-prostitute and drug
| addict, but shamelessly has people tortured to death and
| thinks little of condemning thousands of innocents to death
| to protect herself. Solidus talks about taking the country
| back from the censorious AIs that control discourse and rig
| elections, but he 's also a former warlord who trained child
| soldiers and has no remorse about it.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > You can also note a parallel with female villains. Yeah
| they're bad, but you know, it's not their fault. They had
| such a tough life. And really are they that bad?
|
| Popular Hollywood female villains, maybe.
|
| My favorite female villains are Granny Goodness and Amanda
| Waller from DC Comics.
|
| Granny Goodness runs an orphanage for Apokolips. On the
| surface, she's a sweet old lady who recruits superheroines
| into Darkseid's machinations. But when the going gets tough,
| she pulls out her super-powers to punish any orphan who goes
| against her will.
|
| There's no "terrible backstory" or "not her fault" going on
| here. Granny Goodness is 100% loyal to the "evil new gods" of
| Apokolips and is incredibly competent at her role in raising
| new villains for the evil gods.
|
| --------
|
| Amanda Waller is gonna plant a bomb in your head and force
| you to do what she wants. Why? Cause that's what she does.
| She's the official government's response to counteract the
| rise of superheroes / metahumans (Superman / Flash / etc.
| etc.), and feverishly works to blackmail any prisoner into
| building her super team.
| Jiro wrote:
| >Popular Hollywood female villains, maybe.
|
| Well, this is about "modern movies".
| Buldak wrote:
| You're right that it's not a coincidence, but that's more a
| reflection of the video's author than its subject matter. I
| agree that the depictions of female characters in question are
| shallow and uninteresting, but I wonder what you're watching if
| you think recent blockbuster movies with male leads are much
| better.
| RobertMiller wrote:
| Classic action movies of the 80s often had very flat good-at-
| everything male heroes. What weaknesses does John McClain
| ever show in Die Hard? Vulnerability to walking barefoot on
| broken glass I guess, not much.
|
| There are obviously exceptions, but generally action movies
| don't have very interesting characters.
| dionidium wrote:
| He's presented as a sad-sack alcoholic at the start of the
| movie!
| RobertMiller wrote:
| I guess I missed the alcoholism, I don't recall that. I
| remember he starts the movie with a bad relationship with
| his wife, but that's so he can win her back in the end
| with his counter-terrorism prowess (lol), not with any
| real character development that I remember.
| darkerside wrote:
| I feel like this is a poor example. McClain is frustrated
| and outmatched throughout the entire movie, and slowly is
| able to outmaneuver his foes through wit and determination.
| ReactiveJelly wrote:
| 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
| enemies, they assist with _any_ light work that the buff action
| hero and heroine are too busy to do. And if there's nothing to
| do, they take cover without being asked.
|
| The mothers don't start weak and become strong, the movie isn't
| about that. In fact I don't think anyone in the movie gains
| strength. Nux has a heel-face turn, but that's all I remember
| for character change.
|
| Just because they're _side_ characters doesn't mean they
| _aren't_ characters. There's no scene (that I recall) where you
| have to ask, "What are the non-combatants doing right now?
| Standing and watching?"
|
| And even though they're still physically weak at the end of the
| movie, their actions still matter. The movie doesn't imply
| there's anything wrong with weakness. Even if they are like
| pawns on a chessboard, every pawn still matters. I think that's
| very empowering.
|
| [1] I think only one of them is pregnant, but they are all
| escaped slaves, so they're not in shape for direct combat.
| dionidium wrote:
| Thanks, I'll definitely check that out.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Does it pass the Bechdel Test? I don't remember it well
| enough:
|
| 1. There are at least two women characters, with names and
| their own personalities (i.e., they aren't extras)
|
| 2. The women talk to each other
|
| 3. They talk to each other about something besides men.
|
| (If you aren't familiar, an incredible number of films fail -
| and yes, the 'reverse Bechdel Test' (substituting men for
| women) is passed by almost every film.)
| darkerside wrote:
| Yes
|
| https://bechdeltest.com/view/6242/mad_max:_fury_road/
|
| Also, the Bechdel Test is incredibly misleading and
| distracts from the actual problem IMO, which is simple
| underrepresentation of women in movies. If only 20% of
| movie characters are women, probably 4% of dialogue (20% of
| 20%) would end up being women talking to each other. Solve
| representation, not content.
| nullc wrote:
| It's informative to realize that a substantial portion of
| movies also fail a gender reversed version of the Bechdel
| test (though sure, smaller than the original test)... Not
| only does it reflect the representation in main roles, it
| also counts films which are about men and women
| interacting as fails.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| 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 powerful person the MCU
| has ever seen and the officer turns out to be evil.
|
| The climax of captain marvel's character arc in her movie is
| him trying to bait her into fighting him on fair, unpowered
| terms and she basically says fuck you and blasts him with a
| laser. It's not explicitly a gender thing, but making a firm
| statement that she isn't intrinsically better than the guy
| without her powers but that she won't be defined by those
| metrics. It felt like a much better way to handle this message.
|
| Being explicit that other people's (traditional male)
| competencies don't get to define your self worth.
|
| It's a flip on the "Let's Fight Like Gentlemen" movie trope and
| frankly I thought it was a solid message which helped avoid
| this narrative pitfall even though captain marvel herself is by
| far the most overpowered female example of late.
| [deleted]
| Jiro wrote:
| Captain Marvel's reference to being too emotional is a
| specific feminist shibboleth (https://geekfeminism.fandom.com
| /wiki/You%27re_being_emotiona...), which is "not explicitly a
| gender thing" only because that's how shibboleths work. It's
| absolutely a gender thing, if not explicitly one.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| 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). That's a balanced character that I can like.
| Captain Marvel is a hyperbolic one-sided character. Those
| Superman characters are doomed to be boring. Batman-like
| characters with complex stories are unpredictable and
| therefore have the potential to be interesting. Gender has
| nothing to do with Captain Marvel's fundamental problems.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| > 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.
| darkerside wrote:
| > male centric story telling often uses combat ability as
| a metaphor for personal growth
|
| Why does this have to be male centric? Gaining strength
| as a metaphor and parallel to personal growth is a story
| as old as time, and there's a reason we all like it. It's
| like a meet cute in a date movie. You can have fun with
| the trope, but at the end of the day, something like it
| needs to happen to make a successful story in this genre.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| > Why does this have to be male centric?
|
| I didn't say it had to?
| darkerside wrote:
| I'll rephrase. What makes this more central to male
| storytelling in particular?
| clove wrote:
| What's the point of the third paragraph? To protect yourself
| from criticism?
| dionidium wrote:
| From a certain kind of boring, predictable, repetitive
| criticism that's unresponsive to any of the actual points I
| made in my comment, yes. It either worked or I was too
| pessimistic, because the responses so far have been
| substantive and interesting!
| zionic wrote:
| Deserves top comment
| jpgvm wrote:
| Knew this was Critical Drinker before I clicked on it. Mate
| introduced me to it and he is absolutely spot on for the most
| part.
|
| Modern movies (and TV for that matter) have become so
| commercialized and expensive that the series they are now
| rehashing (Star Wars for instance) wouldn't be possible to create
| today. George Lucas definitely didn't have the name or history
| necessary when Alan Ladd gave the go ahead to make Star Wars that
| you would need these days for a comparably ambitious film.
|
| It's weird because I feel like some other forms of media, namely
| games and music have gone in the opposite direction because of
| the availability and power of tools for independent production.
| However movies just need so much more resources the same indie
| competition hasn't been able to come in and shake things up
| sadly.
| k__ wrote:
| So true.
|
| I feared the Hollywoodization of the game industry.
|
| But it never happened in the mindless extend of movies and
| music.
|
| Indie games are still going strong.
| dgb23 wrote:
| I mean there's indie games that are works of art just like
| there are indie movies for the lack of a better term.
| Similarly there are plenty of popcorn games with big budgets
| and shallow content.
| k__ wrote:
| This might be true. But to me it seems like Indie games
| make real money. Mosty because making a good game requires
| less personel than making a good movie.
| ekianjo wrote:
| most indie games have shallow content as well... you are
| probably just cherry picking the top of the iceberg.
| pawelmurias wrote:
| Plenty of indie games have stunning visuals and lame
| cookie cutter gameplay.
| viraptor wrote:
| I think all media you mentioned have similar effects and all
| have both Hollywood and indie areas.
|
| I mean, some sports games are definitely hollywoodized with
| "let's just swap some colours, change 2021 to 2022 and charge
| another $70". On the other hand Bill Wurtz still releases new
| tunes on YouTube and Ben Levin continues doing... Ben stuff.
| In movies you can still get quality indie productions like
| Joel Haver's full movies. My random selection of course, but
| the point is, there's definitely indie stuff available if you
| want it.
| xvilka wrote:
| There are some jewels in the category of the short movies.
| For example, some films, even mini-series from the DUST
| channel on YouTube.
| objclxt wrote:
| > George Lucas definitely didn't have the name or history
| necessary when Alan Ladd gave the go ahead to make Star Wars
| that you would need these days for a comparably ambitious film.
|
| I don't know if that's entirely true. George Lucas had come off
| the back of American Graffiti, which was an incredible
| commercial success. It had made 50x its budget, and in 1977 was
| the 13th highest grossing film _of all time_.
|
| The question was really whether Lucas could turn his hand to a
| completely different genre. It's down to American Graffiti's
| success that Lucas was able to re-negotiate a deal for Star
| Wars that gave him merchandising rights.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| My recollection of the history of The Star Wars though was
| that Lucas had begun to shop it around _before_ Graffiti 's
| success. Also "American Graffiti" was not an instant success
| but had more of a slow-burn upon its release.
|
| Of course then "American Graffiti" caught fire and I suspect
| that (and the urgings of Francis Ford Coppola) is when Ladd
| gave the green light.
| jpgvm wrote:
| True, American Graffiti was pivotal in him getting the shot
| he did. What I am saying is I don't think that plays out the
| same way today given movie budgets, you can't just have one
| person like one film you made and force through the
| production budget of a AAA film anymore.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Was "Star Wars" a AAA film though? I don't know what
| typical budgets were for films from that studio at that
| time were but in so many other regards it feels like it was
| a B-movie that over-achieved.
|
| I mean just one aging star (sorry, Alec) in the film's
| credits.... That doesn't sound like a AAA studio effort.
| whycome wrote:
| Wait, what does AAA mean here? For beef, AAA is top of
| the line. For baseball, its the 'not quite good enough'
| level.
| [deleted]
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| The biggest problem with movies is none of the labor has been
| automated much.
|
| You still need an entire film and sound crew. You still need a
| cast of actors and a director and a screenwriter and a
| composer. You still need to raise money, producers, etc.
|
| Sure, video & sound editing have had a lot of automation
| improvements via software - but that's pretty much it.
|
| One person can make a game with a bunch of cheap pre-made
| assets and make something really interesting and cool.
|
| You just can't do that with film.
| justinator wrote:
| There are many examples of making a film on a budget of
| almost nothing. Clerks, Evil Dead, the Sweding movement, most
| all of Tik Tok...
|
| You can make a compelling story via flip book.
| bmelton wrote:
| _ahem_ PRIMER
| Joeboy wrote:
| "Almost nothing" in movie terms means "the cost of a
| house". Not "almost nothing" on a normal human scale.
| justinator wrote:
| I would actually say, "almost nothing" in movie terms
| means, "human scale almost nothing" all the way to
| perhaps, "cost of a house". We all have phones, video
| editing software is free, there's plenty of distribution
| channels. If you want to make a movie for "almost
| nothing", you can do so.
|
| Doesn't mean it's going to be good, or that anyone wants
| to see it.
|
| Is this a peculiar concept? We all work OSS every day,
| right?
| Joeboy wrote:
| True, to the extent that any 90 minutes of smartphone
| footage uploaded to youtube is technically "a movie". In
| order to be "a movie" in the sense that Evil Dead or
| Primer are movies, I would say you need a bit more than
| that.
| justinator wrote:
| I really wouldn't consider, "a budget larger than, 'x'"
| one of the defining traits of what, "a movie" is. That's
| gatekeeping.
| Joeboy wrote:
| I would also vigorously oppose such a view.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| For anything with a niche target audience - sure.
|
| You're not going to have multiple locations, good actors,
| good writing, good composition, quality cinematography, etc
| - unless you're incredibly talented and not counting how
| much your time is actually worth.
|
| Films for a wide audience these days basically require - at
| a minimum - 6 specialists working for a month of shooting.
| Plus 5+ actors.
|
| The absolute minimum that costs in labor - if you actually
| counted the value of your time - is ~$200k+.
|
| A good script itself is worth well over $100k...
|
| Realistically - it's almost impossible to make something
| with wide appeal for less than $2m in the US - or $1m
| internationally.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| I feel like CGI has increased productivity a lot. Not so much
| in big, effects driven movies, but in everyday type shots
| where they can change backgrounds or remove things so they
| don't need to make big elaborate sets or control environments
| quite so much. That's my guess at least. Film was also a huge
| cost of production and especially distribution that's
| essentially gone now. I think Hollywood unions also add a lot
| of jobs - look up the job of focus puller sometime.
|
| On the other hand to all the expensive stuff - you can just
| not do those. I'd take Primer as an example. I believe it was
| shot for the cost of a Toyota Corolla and became a fairly
| significant film. I've also seen "low budget" movies (meaning
| $3-5 million or so) in the last decade or so that probably
| would not have been possible 20 years or more ago, so I feel
| like there has been some progress.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > I feel like CGI has increased productivity a lot.
|
| Yeah, but take a look at the massive number of VFX people
| listed in the end-credits of CGI-heavy films. Often several
| different companies (e.g. DNEG) each with its own array of
| artists, modellers, riggers, tech, pipeline engineers,
| asset developers, IT support, etc etc.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| Yep, that's what I mean when I say not so much in big,
| effects driven films - I suspect those will always
| consume as much budget as you throw at them because
| there's always a cutting edge to push. But in smaller and
| less effect driven films/TV shows, the tech seems to be a
| net win for productivity.
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| > Knew this was Critical Drinker before I clicked on it.
|
| Absolutely. He seems to be consistently spot-on with his
| analysis of TV and Movies and the wider industry. I also enjoy
| Red Letter Media:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/user/RedLetterMedia
|
| Both channels use a humours approach to their reviews and
| analysis.
| loonster wrote:
| I agree with the box office movie theater experience, and yet
| movies as a whole still allow the offshoots. You cant find them
| in theaters, but you can fine them on streaming services.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| I don't think this argument holds for TV. Unlike movies which
| have a large sunk cost, require a coordinated rollout and
| expensive marketing, television can make a short proof of
| concept pilot season and doesn't require a marketing blitz.
| Television also doesn't have the expectation of budget breaking
| CGI/effects. As a result, TV can take chances and do things the
| suits would never approve for movies. If a show fails, it fails
| small, but if it succeeds it can do just as well as any movie
| (e.g. friends).
| probably_wrong wrote:
| I think the video doesn't go deep enough: the problem is not that
| movies teach the wrong lessons, but rather that the movies are so
| hyper-optimized for engagement and ROI that there's no room for
| nuance. He may not like the newest Star Wars trilogy, but it
| nonetheless made a lot of money.
|
| That said, I think the author (and also me in the previous
| paragraph) uses the term "movies" to refer to "big budget
| movies", which are by no means the only movies out there. There
| are lots of good movies out there, but most people aren't
| watching them.
|
| If you have the chance, I suggest everyone spend a couple weeks
| going to a "mystery movie night". Sure, sometimes you may end up
| watching "Blackhat" (or even worse, "Tracers"), but the good
| movies you'll end up also watching will make up for it.
| bsenftner wrote:
| Check out non-US filmmakers, there are some incredible films
| outside the Hollywood/Netflix cabal. For example, if you want
| nuance, check out "I am not an easy man", a French film, on
| Netflix at the moment, where a male chauvinist is transported
| to a world where females are the dominant gender, and he's
| forced into a frivolous, weak and sensitive male stereotype.
| That's just the setup, and it is multiple view worthy for all
| the nuance.
| dazc wrote:
| I enjoy watching French comedy dramas becuase the humour is
| incredibly subtle, unlike the majority of Hollywood films
| that are the exact opposite. I'll tolerate Jeniffer Aniston
| though.
| danielrpa wrote:
| And don't forget that they are also optimized to the lowest
| common denominator of American and Chinese sensitivities.
| jpgvm wrote:
| This video is actually just one in a series of videos on the
| subject, you might want to watch the others if you want a more
| complete picture of his views.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > uses the term "movies" to refer to "big budget movies", which
| are by no means the only movies out there
|
| They kinda are. Franchises have sucked all the air out of the
| room, and movies are given money on the premise that they will
| make money. _Edit:_ not just money. But shit-tons of money that
| can be milked from multiple angles for many years.
|
| Already 10 years ago filmmakers were struggling to find funding
| for their projects. Birdman and Gravity were very close to not
| being made even they had Oscar-winning directors and stellar
| casts. It's significantly worse today.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > Franchises have sucked all the air out of the room
|
| Ahh, to remember the 1970's when a whole new crop of young
| American filmmakers were given the reigns to create some of
| the more original but still engaging content.
| dmitriid wrote:
| These days everyone is immediately drafted into <Franchise
| X Phase Y Spin Off Z Origin Story> :)
|
| IIRC Marvel had trouble finding directors for their latest
| phase (or the one before that) because everyone was tied up
| doing franchise movies (or series).
| chii wrote:
| > movies are given money on the premise that they will make
| money
|
| so what would be an alternative funding model?
|
| A patreon or kickstarter like model where directors and stars
| are pre-paid via crowd funding?
|
| A state sponsored funding model?
|
| Non-profit model?
| dmitriid wrote:
| The original model where 1 big movie would pay for 6 break-
| even and 4 non-profitable movies :)
|
| Too bad we may never return to that.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > He may not like the newest Star Wars trilogy, but it
| nonetheless made a lot of money.
|
| So "franchise" is golden.
|
| I suspect all of us can agree that in some alternate universe
| where the prequels were released before "Star Wars" ... there
| never would have been a franchise.
| pharmakom wrote:
| I find much better content on TV than in movies these days. My
| favourite format is probably the mini-series, where a self
| contained story is told properly, with no openings for a second
| season or franchise opportunity.
|
| One of the best and strangest TV shows I have watched is The
| Leftovers. If you want something different check it out. Season 3
| is sublime.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| There are various schools of art criticism that argue that the
| purpose of art is not to teach morality. I've just noticed in the
| last few years that the teaching of morality through the arts
| seems to have come back into vogue, with concomitant disciplining
| of those that are deemed immoral, but the funny thing with
| moralizers is the absolute certainty with which they believe that
| the purpose of art is to teach morality, their morality, and that
| they do not seem to have any awareness when they talk that there
| may be other viewpoints regarding art.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| I would go as far as to say movies teaching morality are just
| bad and tiresome when the moral concept is obvious. Art is most
| interesting, imo, when it takes a position on something that
| matters or isn't obvious to those not thinking about it.
|
| Birdman still stands out to me as an amazing film. It's
| messages are so specific and consumable, and it had something
| to say that felt somewhat novel.
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| How much of "why modern X sucks" is attributable to survivorship
| bias? There were plenty of horrible movies/music/art/etc. made in
| years past; today, we only watch and remember the ones that were
| good enough to survive the test of time.
| hwers wrote:
| This argument doesn't really hold up if you look at e.g. the
| year 1999 compared to pretty much any year in say the last
| decade. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/40538583. Choose
| any year and pick the 'survivors' of that year (the top 10 or
| so movies) and will you really argue that those are better than
| that list?
| aliswe wrote:
| To be honest the author makes a pretty solid case (albeit
| opinionated) spanning over multiple clips - its not possible to
| use survivorship bias against most of his arguments IMO.
| ekianjo wrote:
| most good movies of this decade still suck compared to good
| movies 20 or 30 years ago.
| the_doctah wrote:
| OK, but those weren't the ones setting box office records
| either. The new Star Wars were terrible, still made truckloads
| of money, and will also be remembered 50 years from now, just
| because of the franchise.
| a257 wrote:
| > _Basically what this means is they are teaching people really
| sht lessons now, and if this sort of thing continues for too
| long, it 's going to produce an entire generation of shtty
| people._
|
| Out of curiosity, how much influence do movies/tv shows have in
| shaping society? Could it be that the seemingly casual link
| between movies and culture be opposite? Or, in other words:
|
| B (bad movies) = "this sort of thing continues for too long"
|
| S (shtty people) = "produce an entire generation of shtty people"
|
| B -> S is claimed in the video, is !B || S always true? Could it
| be B <- S instead? B <-> S?
| carapace wrote:
| This is something I ponder pretty often, and I think the best
| you can say is that there are causal _loops_.
|
| Certainly, planned media campaigns seem to cause (in some but
| not all cases) large shifts in mass behavior. (E.g. Bernays
| getting women to smoke cigarettes[1], or pedestrians being
| removed from the streets to make way for automobiles by
| deriding them as "jaywalkers" and then criminalizing the until-
| then ancient and universal custom[2].)
|
| On the other hand, as much as I don't like to "blame the user"
| I can't help but feel like we have personal responsibility for
| our behavior. E.g. on the individual level it feel to me like a
| "cop out" to say, e.g. advertising made me eat this junk food
| and get fat (or whatever.)
|
| In any event, if you want to study this sort of thing using
| formal symbolic systems, you have to use systems that can
| handle causal loops, i.e. Cybernetics:
| http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/books/IntroCyb.pdf
|
| [1] I view Edward Bernays as a mass murderer for his largely
| successful efforts in this regard:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torches_of_Freedom
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays#Tobacco
|
| [2] The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime (Adam Ruins
| Everything) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxopfjXkArM
| makeitdouble wrote:
| I'd see this as an already well established field we call
| either "propaganda" or "advertisement.
|
| No need to go real deep, with a "follow the money" approach,
| the amounts that are spent im product placement and effort to
| shape narratives through work of art speak for themselves.
| throwmeariver1 wrote:
| This gets pondered everywhere but product placement was worse
| in the beginning of television like the "The Colgate Comedy
| Hour" and it's abbreviations from Coke etc. or the characters
| from sponsors directly integrated into the plot of a tv show.
| Imagine your favorite character going into the kitchen making
| a coffee and the coffee salesperson comes in and makes a
| 5-minute pitch. You can say about modern advertisement what
| you want but it was way more subliminal in the beginning.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| I hear you. France had to pass rulings limiting the
| frequency you can say a product name on tv.
|
| Advertisement and propaganda have always been the bread and
| butter of tvs (and to a lesser extent movies). The whole
| industry grew leaps and bounds during the last century, yet
| people still dismiss it as low brow, or only care about
| images/narratives influence when it's children looking at
| boobs or games that are supposed to be too violent.
|
| On getting better or worse, I think it got more
| sophisticated as the reach increased and the market for
| attention became more competitive. All in all I don't think
| the core of it changes much, the army is still heavily
| supporting war movies and games to the same extent for
| instance, the landscape just got more diverse making it
| less prominent.
| BoppreH wrote:
| 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, speech patterns, or novel vocabulary choices when the
| audience is struggling to understand even the most basic,
| predictable sentences.
|
| [1] https://www.slashfilm.com/673162/heres-why-movie-dialogue-
| ha...
|
| Edit: for people mentioning audio mixing and stereo, that's only
| part of the problem. Even with my (admittedly cheap) 5.1 setup, I
| sometimes miss _most_ of the dialogue in some scenes. I think the
| change from theatrical to more realistic enunciation is also to
| blame.
| greggsy wrote:
| I'd wager that many engineers are still mixing for the cinema
| experience, but the vast majority of people are consuming media
| via their TV's, laptops, tablets and phones, with an extremely
| diverse range of audio quality and placement. Findings a happy
| medium is incredibly difficult, if not impossible.
|
| There's certainly a need for a 'context aware' format that can
| dynamically change the way sound - particularly speech - is
| delivered based on the device, volume, or even physical
| setting. (I suspect that this is about as useful as the
| 'loudness' button on many older amps though.)
| elliekelly wrote:
| I can't wait for the day Netflix gives us the ability to
| adjust volume by category like video games. Different sliders
| for dialogue, background music, explosions, etc.
| ratww wrote:
| That would be a fair bet, but a lot of modern movies are
| difficult to understand in a cinema as well.
| cvuls wrote:
| I'm guessing you're using a stereo setup then, dialogue is
| usually mixed into the centre channel, downmixing a 5.1 or 7.1
| stream to stereo will produce those results.
|
| even worse is if you don't downmix to stereo, and all you are
| hearing is front left and right, which is often just the reverb
| effect channels for dialogue
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| considering the vast majority of people listen to movies in
| stereo, why don't they include a decent stereo mix?
| kabes wrote:
| I've got the full klipsch THX ultra 2 system (7.2), and I
| also find dialogues in modern movies much harder to
| understand than in older releases. I think they should mix in
| more of the dialogue in the front left and right channels
| loufe wrote:
| Christopher Nolan's Tenet was a prime example of horrible
| stereo translation. I could hardly understand the dialog.
| I've never changed volume so much during a movie. IIRC he
| refused to produce any audio mixes aside from those meant for
| the most premium 7.1 stream theatres. What a shame.
| rhino369 wrote:
| That mix was garbage even in 7.1. I had to add 10db to the
| center channel.
| mysterydip wrote:
| Don't many people have just a stereo setup still (myself
| included)? Why would a newer standard be backwards-hostile
| like that?
| RobertMiller wrote:
| In many cases, people ostensibly using stereo sound may as
| well be using mono sound. Stereo speakers built into a TV
| that's 20 feet away, or watching a video on their
| smartphone without headphones; technically these people are
| using stereo sound but with the speakers so close to each
| other relative to the listener, it might as well be mono.
|
| I think if you want to make widely accessible audio
| content, you should be taking this into account. Make it
| intelligible in mono first, then worry about the rest.
| willcipriano wrote:
| As a counterpoint, I have both 5.1 via ARC and Dolby Atmos
| system hooked up via eARC and dialogue is still quiet in
| some modern releases. Older movies sound great though.
| cvuls wrote:
| this will be because more recent movies will be utilising
| high dynamic ranges for audio, worked around by
| compressing/limiting but in doing so, you lose quality.
|
| trade-offs for everything.
|
| there was a time when stereo was seen as unnecessary
| faff, too.
|
| edit: movies are mixed for theatres and no longer are the
| home releases adjusted to suit.
| crtasm wrote:
| > will produce those results.
|
| If that's commonly the case then whatever is doing the
| downmix isn't fit for purpose.
|
| I found on Kodi you can boost the centre channel when
| downmixing, this helped quite a bit for me but I still watch
| with subtitles.
| birksherty wrote:
| I watch using headphones and dialogues are still difficult to
| hear. Now I use vlc method to make them audible.
|
| https://lifehacker.com/how-to-fix-movies-that-are-really-
| qui...
| mrslave wrote:
| How to do this in mpv? Then we'll automate it with a short
| shell script!
| RobertMiller wrote:
| There are a few ffmpeg filters you can use with mpv to
| get this effect, though you may have to fiddle with their
| options to get what you want. acompressor or dynaudnorm
| might be what you're looking for.
|
| https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-filters.html#acompressor
|
| https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-filters.html#dynaudnorm
|
| To use them with mpv you'd do something like `mpv --af=la
| vfi="[dynaudnorm=param1=value1:param2=value2:param3=value
| 3]" ...`
|
| (make sure the first parameter is preceded by a '=', not
| a ':' because reasons)
| cvuls wrote:
| that would be because headphones are stereo.
| squarefoot wrote:
| That problem is due to wrong downmix from multichannel to
| stereo. both VLC and Kodi have options to compress audio so
| that louder parts can be lowered. Here's the relevant Kodi wiki
| page: https://kodi.wiki/view/Settings/System/Audio
| Philip-J-Fry wrote:
| The problem exists in the cinema too, so it's not that.
| Krasnol wrote:
| God...the headache I had coming out of the new Blade
| Runner...terrible.
| toastal wrote:
| I wear earplugs for live music when I go to the movies
| nowadays
| Krasnol wrote:
| I thought about something like that too but than there
| are dialogues which are already hard to understand
| because they're not loud enough just before you get
| blasted with sound effects again...well yeah..one more
| reason why I don't go to the movies so much anymore.
| laurent92 wrote:
| The "let's turn luminosity to 0 to drive up the sale of screens
| with 5000000:1 contrast" got me as much as "let's make the
| sound inaudible on stereo to drive up the sale of 7.1 sound
| systems."
|
| VLC should have a setting such as "flatten sound to 70dB all
| the time and luminosity to 50% the ability of the display in
| average". Even pirated packs are becoming unwatchable.
| masklinn wrote:
| > The "let's turn luminosity to 0 to drive up the sale of
| screens with 5000000:1 contrast.
|
| Pitch Meeting recently gave up the game there.
|
| (in the latest video, Ryan jokes that they're making the
| screen darker and darker until they don't even have to
| project a video and can just play an audiobook over the
| speakers)
| loonster wrote:
| I've also seen GoT.
| hedora wrote:
| 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 One;
| can't remember for sure).
|
| These were action scenes with grunting and no dialogue, so the
| blanket was the only way to follow the plot.
| Cerium wrote:
| In the past I have adjusted the black level on my video
| player to make movies like this watchable. It won't look
| good, but you can make the few shades they used visibly
| different.
| 0xcde4c3db wrote:
| This sounds a lot like "dynamic contrast", i.e. varying the
| display's light source brightness with the scene brightness.
| I can't speak to whether or how the iPad implements it, but
| it's a common behavior of LCD screens. It's configurable on
| some devices.
| drexlspivey wrote:
| You can just cover the light sensor (right next to the
| camera) if you don't want to mess with menus instead of
| using a blanket.
| thfuran wrote:
| But that would dim the display. Selectively illuminating
| the sensor would boost display brightness.
| mixedCase wrote:
| 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).
| analog31 wrote:
| If this were a conversation about mixing for recorded or live
| music, someone would invariably mention hearing damage. It's a
| huge problem. Could it be that the technicians are deaf?
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > I'm forced to watch every movie with subtitles on
|
| Me, too... but my kids say they can hear everything just fine
| and please turn off the subtitles. It's possible we're just
| getting old.
| ZiiS wrote:
| I certanly also struggle with modern dialog. Another common
| factor is twenty years ago my hearing was much better.
| civilized wrote:
| This was perfectly satirized a decade ago
| https://www.mrlovenstein.com/comic/87
|
| ...and still hasn't been fixed.
| Pasorrijer wrote:
| A response to your edit, I was on a zoom call with current
| musical editors / producers and that is 100% part of the
| problem. Many of today's actors /actresses almost mumble their
| lines and make it absolute hell for the audio people to pick
| them up, whereas theatre trained individuals were loud and
| enunciate the crap out of everything.
| nine_k wrote:
| I remember that back in the day, actors re-voiced what they
| said on the set, but from a studio with proper recording
| gear, and sound engineers mixed these voices into the general
| soundscape.
|
| Are modern movies shot in reporting style instead, with all
| the visuals and sounds recorded once and simultaneously? That
| would surprise me.
| wildrhythms wrote:
| In some recent musical-to-film adaptations they recorded
| the voices ON THE SET during filming, often with no backing
| track or metronome, and then forced the music director,
| post-filming, to conduct the orchestra along with whatever
| the hell the actor was filmed doing:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ikqU6G6Xgs
| sandworm101 wrote:
| They are trying to be authentic. That is what actors are
| taught these days, to portray "realistic" characters that
| move and sound as realworld people. The net result is
| mumbling and tiny little movements that in turn mandate tight
| closeups and asmr-like microphone placement. Try that on a
| stage or in any live performance and you will be called
| wooden. Compare actors like Samuel L Jackson, Percival
| Ulysses, Jane Lynch or Rowand Atkinson. They dont need
| closeups and microphones secreted in hairlines. But they also
| rarely get leading drama roles, more often appearing as side
| characters who run on stage to tell the team the dramatic
| news.
| gcthomas wrote:
| One big problem is that US actors have a history of
| recording adverts, so they are not classically trained,
| unlike a lot of British actors who have backgrounds on the
| stage and so have learned to speak clearly.
|
| I hate having to watch movies and TV with the subtitles on
| -- the mumbling may be realistic, but I'm paying for
| escapism.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| 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 night. Mostly."
| RobertMiller wrote:
| 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.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Good memes rarely come from good writing.
| RobertMiller wrote:
| _" 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.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| That is the incredible acting, not the lines IMHO.
| Imagine Bane played by an average actor - what a corny,
| laughable display it might have been.
| watwut wrote:
| I like it better this way. Theatre like playing in movie
| come across as fake to me - as bad acting.
|
| When the whole thing is clearly exaggerate comedy, then
| it don't bother me. But, if I am supposed to immerse
| myself in the story, it does not work.
| Retric wrote:
| 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.
| watwut wrote:
| Real people are often quiet around those. That is as
| normal reaction as loud yelling.
| Retric wrote:
| 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.
| watwut wrote:
| People normally get mute in stressful situation. They
| normally have troubles to express things, they talk in
| weak voice, whisper or not at all. They have one word
| answers to complex questions. And anything in between.
| Some dissociate and act normal or follow normal script by
| routine.
|
| They don't whisper to the phone, they will put more
| conscious effort to talk into 911 call ... or the shaken
| mute person won't be the one making call.
|
| You seriously never had to ask people to talk louder in
| noise environment? The "people yell" assumption is
| artifact of movies, not reality.
| Retric wrote:
| Asking someone to speak lauder in a noisy environment is
| normally because they aren't raising their voice enough
| rather than them failing to raise their voice at all.
| It's not easy to judge how laud you need to be but the
| basic feedback of failing to hear your own voice if you
| don't speak up prompts raising your own voice.
|
| As to going mute, some people do completely shut down in
| an stressful situation, but that's associated with for
| more than their voice. I have no issue with an actor in a
| war movie endlessly stacking ammo from point A to B. But
| if their having a coherent conversation, activity and
| productively responding to stimulation, that's very
| different.
| ElephantsMyAnus wrote:
| I'm not a native speaker, but, I think it's rather the
| opposite. It's very inauthentic.
|
| English is a rather unusual language that the meaning is
| mostly carried only by consonants, while vowels are almost
| meaningless.
|
| What actors seem to be doing is that they focus too much on
| their accent, and the vowels that define it, and mostly
| ignore the consonants. Which means you can only hear the
| accents, but not what is being said.
| umanwizard wrote:
| > English is a rather unusual language that the meaning
| is mostly carried only by consonants, while vowels are
| almost meaningless.
|
| Sorry but this sounds like nonsense. Vowel distinctions
| absolutely matter in English. Think of how many words
| would be indistinguishable otherwise: bout, bought, bet,
| bat, bit, beet, boot, boat, bite, but, and bait are all
| distinguished from each other only by a vowel.
|
| (And, yes, these all sound quite different to me, an
| American, though non-native speakers often have trouble
| making or recognizing some of the distinctions. Some
| native speakers further distinguish "bot" from "bought",
| but I don't.)
| ElephantsMyAnus wrote:
| I get that, but it matters very little in a typical
| sentence. I bet you could understand almost everything
| with all vowels replaced with schwas.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _I bet you could understand almost everything with all
| vowels replaced with schwas._
|
| No. Have you tried understanding someone who can only
| pronounce consonants but also whose dialect is foreign?
| It's unintelligible. Vowels absolutely serve a purpose.
| You're just used to hearing your own words spoken back to
| you in the same way you've always expected them.
| ElephantsMyAnus wrote:
| Different accents use different vowels, but they remain
| comprehensible. It's specifically those accents that also
| change consonants that are taken as hard to understand,
| such as Scouse.
| plorkyeran wrote:
| You can replace unstressed vowels with schwas and usually
| end up with something understandable. Stressed vowels
| cannot be schwaed. This is also specific to american
| English and doesn't work for other dialects, or even all
| american accents.
| [deleted]
| nanomonkey wrote:
| It may sound like nonsense, but in comparison to many
| other languages, English is super flexible with how
| vowels are pronounced and toned (entoned?). If you've
| ever tried to learn a tonal language, or one with more
| specific vowels like Khmer (which has 33 consonants and
| 22 vowels) you'd realize how relaxed English can be.
|
| Generally this is in English's favor, I pronounce button
| differently than my NZ friends, but they still understand
| me.
| umanwizard wrote:
| American English has something like 15 distinct vowels.
| That's not that much less than your citation of Khmer,
| and way more than many languages. Any claim that American
| English has a _uniquely_ poor vowel inventory is just
| wrong.
| vlunkr wrote:
| It seems pretty short-sighted to blame it on actors. They are
| a low-level cog in the machine that are trained to exactly
| what they are told. It's the job of the director to get the
| performance out of them that will look good on screen. Can't
| the sound teams talk to them?
|
| Seems much more likely that, as other posters have said,
| movies are edited to play on the big screen at high volume.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Many of today 's actors /actresses almost mumble their
| lines and make it absolute hell for the audio people to pick
| them up, whereas theatre trained individuals were loud and
| enunciate the crap out of everything._
|
| There's zero correlation between how loud someone says their
| lines and how loud they are in the resulting mix when ADR is
| used.
|
| There is a limit to how far you can push this for lines
| recorded live because of environmental noise, but in that
| case there's more control than ever before because of
| software like iZotope RX (which is close to magic).
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| This. These are largely mixing decisions, although it would
| be kinda weird to have a whispering actor boosted to sound
| as loud as a train in a scene.
|
| The technical term for this is "Dialogue LRA" measured in
| LU: https://s3.amazonaws.com/izotopedownloads/docs/insight2
| 00/en... - this link also mentions some of the standards
| around this and now to use their software to adhere to
| those standards.
|
| LUFS is also relevant here as a measure of loudness:
| https://blog.landr.com/lufs-loudness-metering/
|
| https://auphonic.com/blog/2020/10/08/dialog-loudness-
| normali...
|
| and
|
| https://www.pro-tools-expert.com/home-page/2018/11/10/is-
| dol...
|
| Give some insight into how this works.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| _Many of today 's actors /actresses almost mumble their lines
| and make it absolute hell for the audio people to pick them
| up, whereas theatre trained individuals were loud and
| enunciate the crap out of everything._
|
| Sorry, but I work with a lot of Hollywood production
| companies and have been on plenty of sets, and this is a load
| of crap.
|
| Today's actors and actresses speak their lines just fine. The
| problem is the trend toward louder audio f/x and music, which
| can drown out voices if not mixed correctly. See, e.g., Tenet
| for a horrific example of audio mixing, and the characters
| can barely be heard even when yelling; compare to The Batman
| where Pattinson rarely speaks above a whisper but is audible
| and understandable in every scene.
| glandium wrote:
| I always wondered what people have against Tenet's audio. I
| originally saw it with headphones and using vlc and it was
| fine. Then I saw it on a TV and it was awful. I wonder if
| it was tested in normal environments.
| jerome-jh wrote:
| Gameplay and enunciation look quite standardized in modern
| movies. I remember a quote from a vietnamese director who said
| he cannot stand movies where you do not see people breath. Look
| at blockbusters: you never see people breath. When you do see
| them breath it is very much overplayed.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Female characters get to breath. Look at marvel movies. Black
| Widow and Scarlet Witch are seen pausing and breathing,
| mostly breathing in, but that is more for male gaze than
| anything else. In the pauses of fight scenes they are mouth
| agape, almost panting as the male characters stand like
| stones.
| driverdan wrote:
| Can you give examples? I've heard this before but have never
| noticed it myself. Is it possible you have hearing loss that
| you're unaware of?
| BoppreH wrote:
| Almost every movie that features Tom Hardy:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iSOWRsmibc
|
| And from personal experience, from the last movie I watched:
| https://youtu.be/AJ0uqAr8Q4E?t=106 . I'm not a native
| speaker, but (1) I've been communicating exclusively in
| English for years, (2) my hearing is quite good, (3) I'm
| wearing headphones, (4) there's nothing else happening in the
| scene apart from dialogue and music. But I still cannot
| understand Anne Hathaway's two sentences following the time I
| linked.
|
| This movie also had a lot of another pet peeve of mine, which
| is shoulder dialogue where the foreground character is
| clearly not speaking, or saying something different.
| bawolff wrote:
| I personally don't find this happening as much as OP says,
| but nolan movies (e.g. interstellar) are an example where i
| have definitely had this.
| driverdan wrote:
| I've watched Interstellar with multiple audio setups and
| didn't have an issue understanding the dialog. It may have
| a higher dynamic range than most movies but that's a good
| thing.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Definitely a known Nolan issue.
|
| I will go to my deathbed attesting that Tenet was the
| absolutely worst sound mixed movie of all time!
| bawolff wrote:
| I don't think not understanding the dialog matrially
| changes that movie.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| It's also because producers and directors make more use of the
| "dynamic range" that theatre sounds systems are capable of
| today. They paid a ton of money for that music and they're
| going to make sure you hear it. In surround setups, most of the
| dialogue is mixed into the center channel, which is behind the
| screen in theaters. At home, if you don't have a center
| channel, you're either relying on the stereo mix and however
| they decided to balance the speech on that, or if you play the
| surround version on a nice processor, it'll probably let you
| adjust the center channel.
|
| An audio compressor would also help here on consumer devices,
| as that would allow a variable degree and ratio of dynamic
| range flattening. Basically, it can form a band of volume and
| ensure that quiet sounds and loud sounds both fit into that.
| Sadly, most consumer gear, although already equipped with all
| the DSP they need to implement this in software, thinks
| consumers are absolute morons and/or that this wouldn't be a
| selling point, so we get watered-down poorly-implemented
| dialogue boost features or largely no option at all except for
| the consumer to "ride the fader" and constantly adjust the
| volume. https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/soundbar-can-
| help-he... has some info on what's out there today to address
| this, but yeah: it's mostly fixable if consumers had control of
| the center channel mix + a configurable compressor +
| configurable EQ. There are ways to do this in consumer-friendly
| ways for folks who don't know of care to learn about mastering
| audio for film, but the current situation is pretty bad and it
| really makes me wonder why so much mixing targets home theater
| setups vs built-in crap TV speakers. At very least, streaming
| companies could provide an alternate audio track
| [algorithmically] mixed specifically for built-in audio devices
| that has more clear dialogue.
|
| I personally watch with subtitles because I don't want to miss
| a word.
| viraptor wrote:
| > I'm forced to watch every movie with subtitles
|
| The silver lining here may be that people stop treating
| subtitles as torture and see some non-English titles more
| often. There are some fun movie cultures out there beyond
| Hollywood, but I've found the "ugh, I've got to read!?"
| response common.
| tnbp wrote:
| I appreciate your inclusion of an interrobang here, which,
| like non-English movies, is too often overlooked.
| JadeNB wrote:
| I definitely watch all movies, English and foreign, with
| subtitles, and can't stand dubbed movies. I've found an
| amusing effect of well subtitled movies is that sometimes I
| forget that they're on, and, if I walk away and can only hear
| the dialogue but not see the subtitles, then I have to take a
| minute to process why I can no longer understand it ....
| glandium wrote:
| I have the opposite problem. Subtitles draw my attention,
| even when I understand what's said just fine. And then it's
| extra distracting when the subtitles change the meaning of
| what is said (which happens both when watching Japanese
| movies with English or French subtitles, or English or
| French movies with Japanese subtitles)
| JadeNB wrote:
| > which happens both when watching Japanese movies with
| English or French subtitles, or English or French movies
| with Japanese subtitles.
|
| Also, though with less frequency, sometimes when the
| subtitles are in the same language as the speech, which I
| agree is distracting. (I am monolingual, so do not
| experience it otherwise.) But I had rather experience
| that dislocation than dubbing, which to me can ruin a
| beautiful movie.
| foobarian wrote:
| I do love watching foreign shows on their original audio
| track. Korean especially has an awesome sound! For example
| right in the first ep of Squid Games, protagonist talking
| with his elderly mom, lines where he is disagreeing or making
| excuses end with this long up-and-down "huuuuuuuuuh!" sound
| that is the coolest thing ever :-)
| dazc wrote:
| As it happens, I was watching a foreign film (Italian) last
| night with english subtitles but the dialogue was also
| muffled and I found it just as difficult to watch.
| gcthomas wrote:
| In the UK people prefer subtitles to dubbing, although that
| is different across parts of Europe. Foreign language
| programmes are quite popular.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| I've always found that subtitles for a non english movie
| actually results in me watching the move an walking away with
| a more memorable experience than if I'd just been listening.
| I'm not sure if that's a common experience but it's mine at
| least.
| dudul wrote:
| As far as I'm concerned we could stop making movies right now (or
| 10 years ago really). We would still have enough great movies to
| watch for several life times.
|
| As a side note, I strongly recommend checking out Drinker's books
| - published under his real name Will Jordan. While I was
| skeptical at first, I have to say I really enjoyed them.
| [deleted]
| ComradePhil wrote:
| Cry me a river! Why are adults in the west (I'm not talking about
| 18 year olds or even 30 year olds... I mean proper adults, like
| 35+) watching superhero movies clearly written and performed for
| kids? I do understand nostalgia but I really don't think
| westerners understand the concept of growing up. Like, at some
| point, it has to be like
|
| "Yeah, I enjoyed this so much when I was 6 and I can see why a
| kid me would love this... but I am 36 now and while the actual
| content does remind me the great carefree time when I was 6, it
| no longer appeals to me as a person I am today... because it is
| so far removed from the things I know and care about that I can't
| really relate".
|
| When a grown ass man excitedly talks about a new kids movie that
| came out, I really don't know how to react without cringing. It's
| way too common and I've had to join to not look like an outcast
| at times and sit through terrible forgettable overdone movies.
| Please stop.
| bendergender wrote:
| Why are people watching things they enjoy? Because they enjoy
| them.
|
| Stop trying to be the arbiter of what other people enjoy. I'm
| sure you have some tastes in media others would find
| cringeworthy, but we're all better if we recognize that taste
| in media is highly personal and we should let people enjoy
| things.
| ComradePhil wrote:
| > Why are people watching things they enjoy?
|
| No. Why are adults enjoying things clearly meant for kids?
| And I am not talking about a few adults. Is there some
| widesperad development disorder that is prevalent?
|
| I'm concerned because kids are wreckless, short-sighted,
| immature. They are kids and that is expected... but if they
| are in put in positions of power just because they have aged
| physically, isn't it dangerous and should be addressed? Even
| if they were not in positions of power, they can still vote
| and influence policies... which sometimes have consequences
| in another part of the world... so I think it is important to
| discuss.
|
| I have no problems with personal freedom. In fact it is
| personal freedom which reveals things like this making it
| visible and hence easier to analyze and solve.
|
| If you are watching such movies yourself, I don't want to
| engage with you for obvious reasons. Go watch your superhero
| movies where the lead character is played by a kid half your
| age and let the adults discuss this.
| bendergender wrote:
| > Why are adults enjoying things clearly meant for kids?
|
| There are many potential reasons. Abnegation, power
| fantasy, sense pleasure, social cohesion (being able to
| discuss with your peers what's in the zeitgeist). I could
| spend a paragraph on each of these and why they are
| reasonable for adults.
|
| Your attitude is narrow minded, and you've resorted to
| insults to try to make your point on several occasions,
| rather than having an investigative, curious mind. You've
| drawn your conclusion before interrogating the details.
|
| Academic research into games has identified 8 or nine broad
| categories of why people play games, and I'm sure there's
| something similar for movies.
| ComradePhil wrote:
| > Abnegation, power fantasy, sense pleasure
|
| And all of these don't sound problematic to you for
| adults to be aiming for?
|
| The world is exactly the way it is. Children have the
| opportunity to grow in it and develop the possibility to
| imagine something better... the reason for which is that
| if the world changes in the favor of their imagination,
| we will have people who already intuitively have a frame
| of mind to navigate it and develop it in that direction.
| But once you are adults, you have responsibilities to
| keep the world working well, not keeping on imagining
| childish fantasies. That's for kids. It's dangerous for
| people with important responsibilities and power to be
| doing that.
|
| > you've resorted to insults
|
| You'd only perceive them as insults if you can only
| imagine me through your own imagination of other
| people... and I believe because your world is completely
| imaginary, you feel disagreeing with each other is
| insulting.
|
| "mY SuPeRhErO is StRoNgEr", "nO MiNe iS". "MOM"
|
| The above was teasing. The rest of my comment is not.
| Imagine the most serious person you have encountered...
| and try to read this in that voice. That is how I am
| talking to you.
|
| Also, when I say teasing, I mean as one would tease a
| kid... as an adult, I would expect myself to be teased as
| a kid... something that I would potentially have found
| offensive as a kid have but not get offended now because
| I have long outgrown that phase.
|
| > You've drawn your conclusion before interrogating the
| details.
|
| Isn't that even a little bit interesting to you? Have you
| ever tried being curious enough to find why adults would
| be that way?
|
| That is what being an adult means. You optimise yourself
| for the world that is... while enabling the kids to be
| fantacizing safely and playfully. It is dangerous to be
| fantacizing when you are potentially capable enough to
| try to impose your fantacies into the world.
| edpichler wrote:
| Does anyone else feel that you may know why new movies sucks, but
| you cannot talk about it?
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| No?
| sniglom wrote:
| Yes.
| zabzonk wrote:
| I've often thought that the look of 1950s films (and of other
| decades, I guess) was the result of a reinforcing positive
| feedback loop between film (and TV) and society.
|
| If this is the case, what enables us to break out of the loop?
|
| PS I really like The Drinker.
| hwers wrote:
| My take is slightly different than what I'm reading here. I think
| movies is somewhat similar to engineering in a way. There's a ton
| of brainpower and talent actually required to come up with
| innovative and striking stories and screenplays etc. And I
| believe the limited reserve of people with this talent aren't
| given the fuck you money needed to achieve it.
|
| There's basically a talent shortage and the modern culture in
| Hollywood no longer boosts the innovators to the top as they did
| in previous decades.
| thanatos519 wrote:
| I watched "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" with my kid recently,
| and it was still awesome.
|
| I'm struggling to recall the last time I watched a 'modern'
| movie. I have even downloaded some but I always seem to have
| something better to do with my time.
|
| Oh. Come to think of it, it might have been "Star Trek II: The
| Type Casting of Benedict Cumberbatch".
| benreesman wrote:
| 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 most effective way to
| watch great films is to pick actors that are only in stuff you
| like. Some actors are extremely picky about what they'll work on,
| and that's great.
| whycome wrote:
| 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 world.
| benreesman wrote:
| 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.
| dvdkon wrote:
| The Expanse isn't a "remake" of a decades old comic book
| storyline, quite a few movies aren't. I like movies that try
| to fit into an overarching "mythos", but that's just one
| particular approach to storytelling.
| WaxedChewbacca wrote:
| lordnacho wrote:
| For me the noticeable thing about modern movies is the pace. It's
| like something must happen all the time, if there isn't something
| moving or someone talking, it isn't a modern movie. I feel like
| been conditioned to not be able to watch older movies anymore, my
| brain is just like "huh why isn't something happening?".
| Strawhorse wrote:
| Juxtapose this with a movie like Lost in Translation, where as
| much of the progression comes from just observing characters
| and actions as comes from dialogue and interaction. That movie
| was a modern masterpiece and spits in the face of most
| Hollywood junk.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| There was this film called "2001: A Space Odyssey". You won't
| be able to stand it.
| vidanay wrote:
| The Gods Must Be Crazy has even less.
| mcphage wrote:
| I love that movie, it's just wonderful.
| toast0 wrote:
| I watched the Gods Must Be Crazy recently... I don't recall
| any long drawn out scenes with no dialogue? But maybe I
| took a micronap.
| Krasnol wrote:
| Those cuts!
|
| I know I grow older and my brain probably has some issues with
| that too but my god, there are too many cuts. Even in (US made)
| documentaries they introduce this artificially creating fast
| pace where there is none.
|
| I got a headache from watching Star Trek Discovery which pretty
| much was peak madness.
| EamonnMR wrote:
| Gotta keep the audience from looking at their phones.
| pvaldes wrote:
| They should put an epilepsy warning in this video.
|
| Bombing the viewer with one second sequences of random films for
| the entire video is really annoying
| omnicognate wrote:
| I agree it's not very pleasant to watch and this style is often
| abused, but it serves a real purpose in this video. He's making
| broad points about movies as whole in two different timeframes
| and comparing between them. When he's discussing a particular
| movie the shots illustrate which movie (and in many cases which
| parts of it) he's referring to. When making broad statements
| about whole clases of movies the shots provide examples of the
| points being made.
|
| Using shots like this is much more information-dense than
| verbally listing a load of titles and scene descriptions and
| triggers the viewer's memory much more effectively. Keeping the
| clips very short allows more examples to be packed in and also
| protects against intellectual property complaints. (The need
| for the latter is highly regrettable but a daily reality for
| youtubers.)
| dudul wrote:
| I believe it may partly be to avoid copyright strikes.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Extremely quick cuts are a staple of YouTube videos that my 10
| year old nieces and nephews seem to enjoy watching. Very
| annoying to me and a good filter of the part of a YouTube to
| avoid.
| bawolff wrote:
| While people might find that annoying, is it actually an
| epilepsy trigger?
| gsich wrote:
| The audio is what is important.
| causality0 wrote:
| A lack of moral subtlety is also hurting modern productions. I
| nearly cringed out of my skin when Peacemaker and Resident Alien
| managed to have blunt anti-anti-masker scenes in the same week. I
| really don't need to see my own opinions fed back to me out of a
| baby food jar.
| Bancakes wrote:
| On the other hand, we have movies you don't need context to
| watch; don't need to care or emotionally invest - just sit back
| and passively enjoy the sounds and colors. Like a 3 hour long
| cigar.
|
| We need movies like this because a lot of people have enough
| drama and action in real life, and need audiovisual media to wind
| down and stop thinking
|
| If I wanted to take a lesson, I could read the plot summary -
| it's the same information. For a 3 hour movie, I could resume all
| of Dostoevsky's works.
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