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Comment by g42gregory | Hacker News Reader

With a very few exceptions, I don’t watch anything made past 2016. Not sure what happened in Hollywood then, but it’s just seems that they are constantly making some sort of public service messages that they need to pay me to watch. Not the other way around. That goes even if I agree with some of the messages.

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It was Netflix. Only the most milquetoast pablum gets made over there and it’s all shot with the same cameras and settings and it all looks the same and every idea is ripped from either an HBO show if it’s a series, or an older film if it’s a film. They sprayed Marvel content everywhere to my dismay, I can’t think of a less interesting universe or setting than “gritty version of reality except with superheroes”. Netflix hasn’t made a single TV show or film worth watching.

It really killed filmmaking, I’ve only seen ~5 movies released since 2016: Parasite, Backrooms, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Get Out, Don’t Look Up. I watch plenty of movies, there are more great movies from the 1940s to 2010s than I’ll ever have time to watch. I hope interesting movies start being made again.

Hollywood also went into sequel overdrive and released very few original properties and milked X-men, Harry Potter, Star Wars, etc. That didn’t help.

Films having a moral lesson for the audience is a weird thing to criticize when it's been done since time immortal—it's exceptional when a story doesn't have one. The fact that your cutoff is 2016 I think says more about what specific messages you're sensitive to rather than media containing more of them. I think cultural context is a big factor as well because you don't necessarily notice or react as strongly emotionally to what would have been considered controversial or on the nose at the time.

So like I think your experience is valid, and you're definitely noticing a real thing but I think it's better explained by you having more media literacy for contemporary topics and so you see the mirror being held up by these works way more obviously. Like I think about post 9/11 beginning of the Iraq war films and they're not even a little bit subtle.

There’s definitely didactic art made post 2016, but I wouldn’t write everything off beyond that date forever. Online review aggregators are less reliable for recent movies, so you might want to find individuals that you trust for >2016 recs, instead of algorithmic scores.

I actually view 2012-2020 as peak “PSA messaging” era more, which a lot of people would probably coincide with the liberal optimism from Obama and course-correcting anxiety of Trump term 1. I think since covid Hollywood has “toned it down”, because the US has by and large moved on from that social phenomenon.

I’ve been in Los Angeles for over a decade, and I disagree with the premise that Hollywood has some overarching plan to shape how we think— more people watch TikToks than movies and network TV. I view Hollywood, and the creators/writers/producers of films themselves, moreso holding up a mirror reflecting the current circumstances we’re in rather than manufacturing it out of nowhere.

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