Hacker News Reader

What happened around 2006 is streaming. This caused DVD sales to tank, which had a massive effect on the film industry’s bottom line. DVD sales were a money printer and that cash allowed studios to take more risk. Once DVD sales started tanking the indie film divisions of major studios (like Fox Searchlight) started to die, which is a big reason that films became less interesting. Also, the shift to making money mostly off the box office rather than DVDs meant that a movie needed to make more money in its opening weekend, which meant needing to make tent pole movies that appealed to all ages and international markets. Imagine how hard it is to write a movie for all ages in all countries.

DVD sales fell off a clif in 2006-2010.

But streaming did not get any significant market share before ~2014.

DVD was replaced by "non-consumption". My guess is that blue-ray should have been the replacement, but they were priced too high, so consumers dropped buying movies for a while.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/08/the-death-of-the-dvd-why-sal...

Social media networks and smart phones came around at that time, and in conjunction with increasing popularity of video games probably destroyed a lot of demand for video content.

There was simply a lot more choice for how one can spend time, and a ton of it at a higher cost to enjoyment ratio than movie tickets or DVD or Blu Ray.

Oops, I meant to write “a ton of it at a lower cost to enjoyment ratio”.

> What happened around 2006 is streaming.

I think you mean large-scale, mass acceptance of piracy. Streaming took a while longer to take off in big numbers.

I don't think digital itself is the problem. Rather, much like the music industry, the knowledge of how to monetize most efficiently has killed creativity to a great extent in mainstream culture. You can make a hundred Eyes Wide Shuts and you wouldn't get the profit of The Avengers.

I'd also note that a passion for film has been culled out of the Hollywood management class almost entirely. They are running corporations, not film studios, unlike some older generations. Not to say that profit wasn't an important motivator ever since film began, but it was never the sole reason for funding movies across the industry like it is today.

It's also very sad that taste in movies will be fundamentally altered by this period. Taste for complex movies needs to be formed - in a world of Marvel movies, it's very hard to even understand what is good about a film like A Clockwork Orange or Birdman.

Hmmm.... I guess it is when you grew up? I thought the 70's were king for U.S. filmmakers. And 70's sci-fi was some of the best. Until "Star Wars" came along and killed it.

I loved "Star Wars" when it came out, was blown away. But in hindsight I am sad to see it was marked the end of 70's sci-fi.

And then "Raiders of the Lost Ark", which I loved, was more or less the modern blueprint for all the crap that has come out since. It represents a storyboard approach to the screenplay/film: basically action sequences tied together with a thin thread of plot.

The various "Pirates of the Caribbean" are classic examples of the rot that followed as are every superhero film, every "Fast and Furious" film, "Transformers", etc.

I don't have the cycles to spend on all the "streamed content" that HBO, Netflix, etc. are cranking out now so I can't comment on whether "TV" is better these days.

You're focusing on a very specific niche. Sci-fi and adventure were rarely the interest of good film makers, so few sci-fi or adventure films were made.

But that does not reflect on the larger film industry of the 80s and 90s, which was producing many more incredible movies which stood the test of time. 1999 alone gave us Fight Club, The Talented Mr Ripley, Being John Malkovich, American Beauty, The Iron Giant, Eyes Wide Shut, The Matrix, The Sixth Sense, The Green Mile.

There has always been a lot of schlock cinema being produced, but right now it is dominating much more than in the last few decades.

I was focusing on sci-fi as more of an example. In all other areas of cinema though you had a kind of second "New Wave" in the 70's with films like "Chinatown", "The Godfather" — throw in Wood Allen's films.... My only gripe is how out of control the violence could be in that decade of filmmaking.

The original Pirates of the Caribbean was a superb work of its genre with classic acting, humor, and subtle characterization that you do not give it credit for.

https://youtu.be/zhdBNVY55oM

As far as claiming “every superhero film” - that’s a tall order. While one can say most MCU (and perhaps DCEU films) share a certain level of formulaic quality that make them easy to reduce and denounce, there are always outliers. Consider the neo-Western greatness of Logan. The contemplative complexity of Unbreakable. I didn’t even mention the late Heath Ledger’s performance in The Dark Knight.

I've tried to watch all the "no this isn't like other superhero movies" super hero movies and have been disappointed in all of them.

I was never into superhero comic books though so perhaps it's just my lack of taste.

Perhaps you should try watching Birdman.

In the 2000s-ish I started to think music was in decline and could never again rival the music of the late 20th century.

But then I thought maybe I was just getting older, and maybe the kids all loved new 2000s music.

But then after 2010-ish, it was like music came back, and is now great again, and it turns out I wasn’t just getting older - music really did go through a creative wasteland in the 2000s.

Naturally, these are very broad strokes, and there are exceptions.

I think if you only look at the biggest budget or most advertised movies you are right. But there are lots of great indie or lower budget, but not 'low budget's movies coming out. It's just hard to find these movies because they are drowned out by the noise of all the other ones. People said the same about music, but really I think things like discover weekly from Spotify and just general YouTube recommendations have proven that statement totally false and it's just people didn't have a way of finding anything.

Also, if you go back and watch some (not all) of those 90s movies some are pretty meh. Independence Day really stands out as being really boring and if anything the template for all the action movies you dislike. It has a very similar, shallow feel to it.

> From T2, to Jurassic Park, to the Matrix, Lord of the Rings, Pulp Fiction, Eyes Wide Shut, Fight Club, Cruel Intentions, Mean Girls, 5th Element, Independence Day, etc.. etc..

Really? ID4 is fun in the manner of that a formulaic, paint-by-numbers, checklist action-adventure can be, but there's non shortage of equally well-done iterations of that model today. (And ID4 wasn’t a groundbreaking example others since arw copying, it was rote, predictable, and formulaic for its time.)

I think a lot of this is just the same kind of nostalgia you see in every generation.

I do think something changed with cheap, ubiquitous CG, including how capable modern action heroes are, which is perfectly capable, because nothing's actually happening and there are no limits. Film used to be larger than life, obviously, but now even movies with a "realistic" setting are full-on fantasy.

Compare the action in Bullitt to something like a later entry in the Fast and the Furious franchise, for example. Imagine an already fairly intense and over-the-top scene like Ripley fighting the alien queen in the loader-mech—there'd just be so much more in a modern movie. They'd smash between rooms, swing from the ceiling, shit would be exploding everywhere but Our Hero would always not quite get hurt by it. Indiana Jones 1-3? Way too tame, needs more stuff flying all over the screen and expert-level acrobatic stunts by the hero.

I haven't watched the Independence Day sequel, but I bet a higher percentage of its runtime was special-effects-heavy action, because that's so cheap now. You can even fill in more of that to cut down on your shooting schedule (less time that the actors are on screen).

Action in high-budget modern films is more perfect and precise—the hero must always be narrowly avoiding something—and the heroes tend to be even less relatable than before, and the balance of talking to action has shifted toward action. That may not be worse, but it is different, and noticing that difference or preferring one over the other need not be pure nostalgia.