mouse wrote: ↑Wed Aug 17, 2022 3:03 am
aurelius wrote: ↑Tue Aug 16, 2022 3:00 pm
You just don’t get that anymore.
Once the fun and luster of seeing some of my favorite comic characters get some movie justice wore off (it really has now) I'm left with this disappointed sadness of just how bad of a place film seems to be in right now.
You mean a world where it costs $350M to make and market a film and the film needs to gross $800M to break even?
Old School is on Netflix. It’s a dumb (but entertaining, imo) film that has more subtlety than what’s coming out now.
I was having a conversation with my kids about some of these more recent cartoons that are kid appropriate. Lots of them have story arcs over several episodes. I think that’s kinda cool as compared to the shit I grew up on where every episode was self-contained.
For series, like Stranger Things, I can endure the episodic, long-plot-arc format simply because I can compact the viewing into a tight schedule.
However, for theatrical cinema, they can get bent with the continuing plot sprawl that is subsuming everyone. Just write semi-interesting self-contained films.
But… I think it was one of the Freakonomics books that talked about Hollywood studios not really knowing how to predict how well a film would do once released, even with focus groups and whatnot. So they mitigate risk by churning on stuff that has a guaranteed audience.
Nevertheless, with this dystopian present of sequels spawning at a factorial rate, movies are getting too long, talent seems to be growing thin (specifically in regards to editing), and time is finite.
To romanticize the past a bit more, it was kinda fun not knowing how big the summer movies would be. As an example, here’s the 1985 summer list:
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/season/summer/1985/
Then compare to 1986:
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/season/summer/1986/
Some huge winners and some awful losers, but a damn good bit of variety.
I’ll stop complaining now and go back to watching Knight Rider and various anime.