[HN Gopher] Reel Inequality: Charting the Vanishing Middle Class...
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Reel Inequality: Charting the Vanishing Middle Class of Movies
Author : tennisprince
Score : 25 points
Date : 2023-12-04 21:13 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reelinequality.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reelinequality.com)
| snoopsnopp wrote:
| I feel like consumer choice has kinda gone too far with movies,
| people never cross genres because they never have to go along
| with something they don't like.
| aethros wrote:
| I wonder how valuable this is as a metric, since much of what
| gets viewed is a function of art as much as it is marketing,
| production, or other elements. Some years studios make movies
| that are just bad--I wouldn't necessarily expect the income
| distribution to remain balanced across years.
|
| Furthermore, these graphs don't appear to take into account the
| production cost of movies. If a low-budget film garners critical
| acclaim, it means more than a studio movie that just broke even,
| although their gross incomes could be pretty similar.
| rob74 wrote:
| I'm not sure 2023 is a good year to compare against, what with
| the actors' and writers' unions striking for several months? If
| you look at the list of "2023 movies", you see titles such as
| _Coraline (Remastered)_ , _Star Wars Episode VI_ , _Titanic (25
| yr Anniversary)_ and probably some others that I missed which are
| not really 2023 movies...
| mjr00 wrote:
| 2023 had a _lot_ of big-budget bombs. Ant-Man, Indiana Jones,
| Mission Impossible, Transformers, The Flash, Fast X, Blue Beetle,
| Elemental, Shazam!, and the Marvels all underperformed somewhere
| on the scale from "disappointment" to "disaster".
|
| On the other hand, aside from the massive big-budget hits of
| Barbie and Mario, there were also a number of mid-budget films
| that did very well: John Wick 4, Sound of Freedom, Five Nights at
| Freddy's, Cocaine Bear and M3GAN all exceeded expectations.
|
| So it's hard to interpret this as the "middle class" of movies
| disappearing. I'd say it's the opposite, in fact. People have
| gotten sick of the big-budget crap that follows the same formula
| (note how most of those bombs are superhero movies). It's really
| the big-budget films that are falling apart.
| justrealist wrote:
| To be more precise, those mid-budget films all did well
| _relative_ to their budgets. Marvels still made far more money,
| but the budget was so bloated that Marvel took a loss.
| g9yuayon wrote:
| > 2023 had a lot of big-budget bombs. Ant-Man, Indiana Jones,
| Mission Impossible, Transformers, The Flash, Fast X, Blue
| Beetle, Elemental, Shazam!, and the Marvels all underperformed
| somewhere on the scale from "disappointment" to "disaster".
|
| And rightly so. The so-called special effects in those
| superhero movies are really getting exhausting. What's the
| point of having superpower yet battling like a peasant in
| medieval times? What's the point of having super intelligence
| yet making so many illogical decisions? What's the point of
| having the best technologies on earth yet having your tribe
| living in dirt and fighting with rhinos and using duet to elect
| your leaders? I can even tolerate such plot holes if the movies
| have good stories or interesting characters, but do they?
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> What's the point of having the best technologies on earth
| yet having your tribe living in dirt and fighting with rhinos
| and using duet to elect your leaders_
|
| Yes, Marvel is shit now, but escapism and fantasy
| entertainment doesn't work on real world logic. If I want to
| see realistic battles going on I just turn on the news. I go
| to the cinema because I want a dose of escapism while I turn
| off my brain for 2 hours.
| g9yuayon wrote:
| Me too. It's just that I don't want to escape into the
| world of the villagers in Wakanda, where owners of stealth
| jet and energy shield fought on rhinos and spears, and a
| handful of people live like royalties but I live like a
| peasant.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| If you haven't already read Mother of Learning you really
| should, you would absolutely adore it.
| EarthLaunch wrote:
| And Torth series. No punches pulled on the logical outcomes
| of superintelligence and powers.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| If you have superpowers, _you_ are more powerful than almost
| all weapons. So you fight with _you_ as the weapon, because
| it 's the most powerful you have.
|
| Also: I presume you meant duel. Using a duet to elect your
| leaders has a certain charm to it...
| tunesmith wrote:
| But that's not really what the graph plots; it doesn't try to
| estimate revenue expectations or even production costs.
| (Although, that would be interesting to factor in production
| costs.)
|
| Comparing 2006 to 2023, I see more sequels early in the list,
| and fewer originals.
| mjr00 wrote:
| Right, which is why concluding that there's a "vanishing
| middle class" from those charts doesn't make sense. (assuming
| that's what the author intended the conclusion to be. Aside
| from the title, there doesn't seem to be much of one.)
| PreachSoup wrote:
| I agree. The opposite seems to be happening. This trend has
| been a while and this article is REALLY late
| intalentive wrote:
| I miss "smart" mid-budget movies of the kind Miramax used to put
| out in the 90s. With a few exceptions they don't seem to be as
| prevalent. The market has changed.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| I miss the cheesy but wholesome comedies and parodies of the
| 1990s and 2000s: Anger Management, Rush Hour, The Cable Guy,
| American Pie, Scary Movie, Bruce Almighty, Eurotrip, Tropic
| Thunder, Hot Shots, Borat, Idiocracy, How High, White Chicks,
| etc.
|
| We can't have any like those in this age because someone on
| Twitter will claim to be offended. Good thing to back-up those
| old gems as well before they get cancelled/edited to comply
| with modern sensibilities.
| metabagel wrote:
| > We can't have any like those in this age because someone on
| Twitter will claim to be offended.
|
| I think this is mostly an exaggeration. I think there will
| always be an audience for tasteless and raunchy movies. It
| might be a good long while before we see another white actor
| in blackface though, I'll grant you that.
| whartung wrote:
| Isn't this because the mid range is going straight into the
| streaming services, rather than through (an I assume expensive)
| distribution process into theaters?
|
| Theater going is expensive (I think it's expensive), the
| alternatives are "pretty good", so that impacts overall theater
| presence.
|
| Having a "block buster" that can justify the expense of marketing
| and distributing to the now weaker theater market seems like a
| prudent thing for the studios and it's just part of the current
| reality of entertainment.
|
| I know I don't see many movies in the theater. I don't know if
| I've seen anything since Top Gun. I was hoping to see Dune 2, but
| it's delayed. I will be seeing the Ferrari bio-pic, simply
| because I'm a Mann nut. Otherwise, we rented Barbie. We rented
| GoG3, we'll be renting Oppenheimer.
|
| And whatever other random stuff I sleep through from Netflix.
| lapcat wrote:
| I think that the data is missing something crucial, because it
| only talks about percentages. It's also important to know the
| total absolute (inflation-adjusted) revenue for each year. I'd
| like to know if the non-top movies are doing worse than before,
| in absolute terms, which we can't tell from the charts.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Please, please, do not override my mouse scroll wheel behavior!
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