Jun 22, 2023·edited Jun 26, 2023Liked by The Bottom Feeder
Some years ago I thought that I had out-grown action movies, until I watched Mad Max Fury Road and realized that no....every modern action movie is crap (besides Fury Road). Each of them is overlong, and filled with over edited action scenes and abuse of green screen and CGI that after a while I go numb. And this includes Guardians of the Galaxy.
When Buster Keaton and Jackie Chan destroyed themselves to make movies, they made it look so much more /fun/ than when Leonardo DiCaprio suffers to make a wilderness survival movie.
And less tragic than when The Mummy 3 legitimately broke Brendan Fraser.
Agree all the way around, except that I haven't seen any of these movies because I quit going to movies about 5 years ago when I decided that I had ALREADY had enough of the classic superhero movie action sequence: two computer-generated hulks hitting each other in a battle that will end with neither of them wounded or in a different position than when they started.
That said, I'll be seeing Fast X eventually (probably on DVD from the library) because I like cars and car stunts even if the movie is increasingly about superheroes.
I made the mistake of watching one of the disney remakes (also, DVD from the library), and even for free I felt like I'd been ripped off. Aladdin and Mulan are STILL great movies. Why would I want to watch it again, but longer, and worse?
As far as superhero movies go - I just don't care anymore. I can only handle so much of what Brent described:
"classic superhero movie action sequence: two computer-generated hulks hitting each other in a battle that will end with neither of them wounded or in a different position than when they started"
Replace hulk with any other superhero. There are no stakes anymore. There's no real tension.
The first spider verse movie blew me away. Saw it probably 10 times in the theater. This second one still blew me away. I've only seen it twice but it's still just an amazing movie to watch.
Every other superhero movie I've seen since Endgame has bored me to sleep. Saw the flash last week only to see keaton portray batman again. But it was just a huge let down. The stuff with his mom definitely brought a tear to my eye but the rest of the movie I just didn't care.
I mean David Lynch has declared film a dead medium and famously moved back to television years ago. And things will just get worse because of the cost it takes to produce them. This cost has two sides - upfront and opportunity.
The upfront cost is obvious and it makes it so that films become as generic as humanly possible (gotta make up the 1.5 billion or whatever it costs to produce by appealing to as wide a demographic as possible!). A side-effect that is often overlooked, however, is that these upfront costs also mean that only 'tried and tested' directors get to make films. A film like In Bruges would never be made today since a short film director (even an academy nominated one) like Martin McDonagh would never be allowed near a 'film-level budget' without already having some major profitable films under his name. It's a near miracle that Banshees got produced (by one of the few remaining limited release production companies thank goodness).
However, more insidious are the opportunity costs - there's a set amount of labor hours (editors, actors, etc) and studio time and producers don't want to spend 'a little amount of money on a smaller budget film that will make a tidy profit' when those same hours and studio reservation slots could be used to film a 'gigantic insane budget film that makes a billion dollars.' The point here is that these leviathan films *cannot coexist* with films that have any import or value. They take priority because they're more profitable and devour all the available man-hours and shoot times like a parasite.
This coincides with the death or absorption of most of the limited release production companies, who were the only ones out there funding artists to make films that matter. Film's just a dead medium and I hope TV doesn't go the same way, though it seems to be sadly with the rise of the mega popular SFF IP hit.
I’m increasingly regretting the rise of “elevated genre entertainment” that started with the rapturous critical appraisal of Buffy the Vampire Slayer some 20 years ago. As a young person I felt that I could have my cake and eat it too by watching wizards grapple with their feelings but now I just feel had.
The snobs should have won. Sitting through a two hour film about elderly French women dying of cancer shot at a glacial pace should have remained a prerequisite for being thought a serious person.
As a perpetually over-stretched single adult, I feel like it would be okay if we just had *less* big-budget entertainment. Creative well running dry? Market shrinking? Take a break, then.
The preponderance of fantasy in modern movies and TV is exactly my thing. I'll take a superhero movie over a romantic comedy or a Western any day. Some of that Star Wars excess Disney is churning out actually sounds appealing. But I'm still finishing Stargate and Farscape, for pity's sake. There is no reason for me to throw money at these new movies and shows when I don't have time to watch them.
So I read this late and, seeing how I got off the superhero bus years ago, the one important thing I gleaned from this read was the comment about The Leftovers. Which was a series that completely passed me and my boyfriend by, cause its pitch just didn't sound all that interesting or original to us. So here's me trying to explain to a guy whose knowledge of the gaming world starts and ends with Nethack, on who's recommendation I insist we give this a try: "So there's this blog I read" (side eye) "well yeah, I don't read blogs anymore, but I've been following this guy's writing for more than a decade" (you don't even have the same friends as a decade ago) "yes, but listen, it's usually a game design blog" (imperceptive eye roll) "I usually like the guy's opinion is what I'm saying" (his opinion in movies?) "well, no, game design, but listen" (has stopped listening).
Long story short, we're gonna give The Leftovers a try, and I just realised you're one of my oldest internet habits, and I appreciate that. Sending love.
I was never into super-hero movies - they take themselves too serious most of the time. I kind of liked the first Deadpool. It was refreshingly deconstructive, I think, and super-hero genre can stand a little (OK, a lot) of deconstruction. But the sequel was already worse, because they failed to keep it a deconstruction, or create a reconstruction - they just brought back the same old tropes the first movie was poking fun at.
But if you think the situation is bad in super-hero genre, I think it's far worse with comedy. I mean... I know of no really good comedies made past maybe 2010. Big screen comedy gotten so low-brow it's impossible to enjoy if you can scrape more than two brain cells together. I mean, there always were risque jokes in movies, but these days I sometimes wish censorship would be heavier so that screenwriters would actually have to think and try to sneak stuff below the radar.
Some years ago I thought that I had out-grown action movies, until I watched Mad Max Fury Road and realized that no....every modern action movie is crap (besides Fury Road). Each of them is overlong, and filled with over edited action scenes and abuse of green screen and CGI that after a while I go numb. And this includes Guardians of the Galaxy.
When Buster Keaton and Jackie Chan destroyed themselves to make movies, they made it look so much more /fun/ than when Leonardo DiCaprio suffers to make a wilderness survival movie.
And less tragic than when The Mummy 3 legitimately broke Brendan Fraser.
Agree all the way around, except that I haven't seen any of these movies because I quit going to movies about 5 years ago when I decided that I had ALREADY had enough of the classic superhero movie action sequence: two computer-generated hulks hitting each other in a battle that will end with neither of them wounded or in a different position than when they started.
That said, I'll be seeing Fast X eventually (probably on DVD from the library) because I like cars and car stunts even if the movie is increasingly about superheroes.
I made the mistake of watching one of the disney remakes (also, DVD from the library), and even for free I felt like I'd been ripped off. Aladdin and Mulan are STILL great movies. Why would I want to watch it again, but longer, and worse?
As far as superhero movies go - I just don't care anymore. I can only handle so much of what Brent described:
"classic superhero movie action sequence: two computer-generated hulks hitting each other in a battle that will end with neither of them wounded or in a different position than when they started"
Replace hulk with any other superhero. There are no stakes anymore. There's no real tension.
The first spider verse movie blew me away. Saw it probably 10 times in the theater. This second one still blew me away. I've only seen it twice but it's still just an amazing movie to watch.
Every other superhero movie I've seen since Endgame has bored me to sleep. Saw the flash last week only to see keaton portray batman again. But it was just a huge let down. The stuff with his mom definitely brought a tear to my eye but the rest of the movie I just didn't care.
I mean David Lynch has declared film a dead medium and famously moved back to television years ago. And things will just get worse because of the cost it takes to produce them. This cost has two sides - upfront and opportunity.
The upfront cost is obvious and it makes it so that films become as generic as humanly possible (gotta make up the 1.5 billion or whatever it costs to produce by appealing to as wide a demographic as possible!). A side-effect that is often overlooked, however, is that these upfront costs also mean that only 'tried and tested' directors get to make films. A film like In Bruges would never be made today since a short film director (even an academy nominated one) like Martin McDonagh would never be allowed near a 'film-level budget' without already having some major profitable films under his name. It's a near miracle that Banshees got produced (by one of the few remaining limited release production companies thank goodness).
However, more insidious are the opportunity costs - there's a set amount of labor hours (editors, actors, etc) and studio time and producers don't want to spend 'a little amount of money on a smaller budget film that will make a tidy profit' when those same hours and studio reservation slots could be used to film a 'gigantic insane budget film that makes a billion dollars.' The point here is that these leviathan films *cannot coexist* with films that have any import or value. They take priority because they're more profitable and devour all the available man-hours and shoot times like a parasite.
This coincides with the death or absorption of most of the limited release production companies, who were the only ones out there funding artists to make films that matter. Film's just a dead medium and I hope TV doesn't go the same way, though it seems to be sadly with the rise of the mega popular SFF IP hit.
The first thing I look at for a movie now is runtime. If it's over two hours, that's a hard pass. Over ninety minutes I will be skeptical.
I’m increasingly regretting the rise of “elevated genre entertainment” that started with the rapturous critical appraisal of Buffy the Vampire Slayer some 20 years ago. As a young person I felt that I could have my cake and eat it too by watching wizards grapple with their feelings but now I just feel had.
The snobs should have won. Sitting through a two hour film about elderly French women dying of cancer shot at a glacial pace should have remained a prerequisite for being thought a serious person.
As a perpetually over-stretched single adult, I feel like it would be okay if we just had *less* big-budget entertainment. Creative well running dry? Market shrinking? Take a break, then.
The preponderance of fantasy in modern movies and TV is exactly my thing. I'll take a superhero movie over a romantic comedy or a Western any day. Some of that Star Wars excess Disney is churning out actually sounds appealing. But I'm still finishing Stargate and Farscape, for pity's sake. There is no reason for me to throw money at these new movies and shows when I don't have time to watch them.
So I read this late and, seeing how I got off the superhero bus years ago, the one important thing I gleaned from this read was the comment about The Leftovers. Which was a series that completely passed me and my boyfriend by, cause its pitch just didn't sound all that interesting or original to us. So here's me trying to explain to a guy whose knowledge of the gaming world starts and ends with Nethack, on who's recommendation I insist we give this a try: "So there's this blog I read" (side eye) "well yeah, I don't read blogs anymore, but I've been following this guy's writing for more than a decade" (you don't even have the same friends as a decade ago) "yes, but listen, it's usually a game design blog" (imperceptive eye roll) "I usually like the guy's opinion is what I'm saying" (his opinion in movies?) "well, no, game design, but listen" (has stopped listening).
Long story short, we're gonna give The Leftovers a try, and I just realised you're one of my oldest internet habits, and I appreciate that. Sending love.
I was never into super-hero movies - they take themselves too serious most of the time. I kind of liked the first Deadpool. It was refreshingly deconstructive, I think, and super-hero genre can stand a little (OK, a lot) of deconstruction. But the sequel was already worse, because they failed to keep it a deconstruction, or create a reconstruction - they just brought back the same old tropes the first movie was poking fun at.
But if you think the situation is bad in super-hero genre, I think it's far worse with comedy. I mean... I know of no really good comedies made past maybe 2010. Big screen comedy gotten so low-brow it's impossible to enjoy if you can scrape more than two brain cells together. I mean, there always were risque jokes in movies, but these days I sometimes wish censorship would be heavier so that screenwriters would actually have to think and try to sneak stuff below the radar.