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Comment by keenmaster | Hacker News Reader

Agreed. Citizen Kane was insanely boring even though it’s supposed to be the best movie ever. I need to pull a Wittgenstein and ask: what does the word “best” mean here?

I care mostly about movies that are incredible to me now in 2023. That informs my definition of “best movies”. I am not interested in Citizen Kane’s innovative use of the deep focus technique. I can appreciate an incredible older movie, but not for obscure film buff reasons. If anyone knows of a good best movie list that is free of this sort of pretentious navel gazing, please link it below.

Also, this is a hot take, but at a certain point older movies become worse precisely because of their datedness rather than “more interesting due to what they achieved within their technological boundaries at the time”. If they’re still good, that’s because they have an absolutely stellar story.

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You probably find most literary novels incredibly boring too.

Crime and Punishment, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Frankenstein, Lord of the Rings, 1984, The Great Gatsby, The Chronicles of Narnia, and Odyssey (by Homer) are all books that I enjoyed that are varying degrees of old. I think comparing old vs new books is fundamentally different from old vs new movies. Let’s bring in another form of media since you brought up books: what about video games? Most gamers have some cutoff before which they either generally don’t play games older than that or they do but wouldn’t call any of them “greatest of all time.” This is not a deliberate decision, but a product of revealed preference. Even then, newest doesn’t mean good.

I think Morrowind, Ocarina of Time, and FF7 are GOATed, but I also don’t go out of my way to play older 2D games and certainly would never call them the greatest. On top of that, I have to admit that the games I mentioned are less enjoyable today than they were back then, and are on the same level as other 10/10s that I played in more recent times.

The medium by which books are conveyed hasn’t really changed meaningfully (holding fixed what is being written about). They’re still words. That’s not true of movies and video games.

I can respect this. There is no problem in saying that Citizen Kane is a boring movie as a matter of personal opinion based on personal preferences in style and technical requirements. Ocarina of Time, which you mention and is often considered the best game of all time, isn't a game I particularly enjoy despite recognizing its many qualities. I simply don't like that type of game very much.

> The medium by which books are conveyed hasn’t really changed meaningfully (holding fixed what is being written about). They’re still words. That’s not true of movies and video games.

Movies are still a lot of still images shown fast enough to give the impression of movement. Video games are still interactive electronic entertainment.

'Old' books, movies and video games can have just as much to offer as anything created recently.

I was going to expand on this point. “Moving images” abstracts away a lot of large improvements in both the technology for producing and for consuming movies. Same with “interactive electronic entertainment” for video games. And the more limited technology in 1941 placed constraints on storytelling such that, if Citizen Kane was made today instead of 1941, just with better resolution and color (but the same shots, same dialogue, same story), it probably wouldn’t even be in consideration for GOAT by most movie critics.

In contrast if LOTR (the book series) was released today instead of 1954-1955, it would have a serious chance at being a mega best seller. It’s such a good read independent of its influence on subsequent fantasy novels.

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