Is Hollywood in the Dark Ages right now?

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cagedwisdom
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Re: Is Hollywood in the Dark Ages right now?

Post by cagedwisdom »

Ocelot wrote:Every big movie now is almost exactly 140 minutes long. It's insane. I think the idea is that it's long enough to feel epic but just short enough that it's not too boring with all that talking nonsense.


I work at a cinema, can confirm. Literally every blockbuster-type film is 2 hours 20 minutes, particularly the past year. In theaters here now, Amazing Spider-Man 2, Noah, Divergent, Captain America all 140min. It's pretty infuriating because a lot of them really don't need to be longer than 90 minutes.

m3tan
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Re: Is Hollywood in the Dark Ages right now?

Post by m3tan »

Rufflesack wrote:
Ocelot wrote:Every big movie now is almost exactly 140 minutes long. It's insane. I think the idea is that it's long enough to feel epic but just short enough that it's not too boring with all that talking nonsense.


I work at a cinema, can confirm. Literally every blockbuster-type film is 2 hours 20 minutes, particularly the past year. In theaters here now, Amazing Spider-Man 2, Noah, Divergent, Captain America all 140min. It's pretty infuriating because a lot of them really don't need to be longer than 90 minutes.


One of the reasons I rated "I Am Legend" highly is that it was the shortest action film I've seen in like 20 years. A short and sweet 95 minutes. Replace the Hollywood ending with the novel's ending (found on the DVD/Blu-Ray) and it's a really good movie. I may have rated movies like the Dark Knight and the Amazing Spiderman MUCH higher had they not felt like Chinese water torture watching the last 30-45 minutes...

mattorama12
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Re: Is Hollywood in the Dark Ages right now?

Post by mattorama12 »

Movies are definitely getting longer. The question is why? Ticket prices are the same. Budget/cost increases with longer films. If anything, you'd expect the market forces to be pushing movies to be as short as the audience will tolerate, rather than as long as the audience will tolerate (which seems to the case in reality). In search of answer, I came across this article: http://www.businessinsider.com/movies-a ... ger-2013-1

Long story short, Peter Travers (I don't put any stock in his opinion on movies, but he must know more about the movie industry than I do, right?) says that it's because longer movies are seen as more Oscar worthy.

Is it just that filmmakers are able to make longer movies now that digital is available? Is it that producers are pushing the post production time and it's easier/faster to throw in all the scenes you shot rather than make cuts? Here's another article that talks about some of these ideas: http://wegotthiscovered.com/movies/film ... ng-longer/

I'm not really convinced by any of these explanations, but I can't come up with anything better.

lisa-
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Re: Is Hollywood in the Dark Ages right now?

Post by lisa- »

i imagine most of the cost of CGI is in labour. in fact, the technology is absolutely available to indie types now, but it requires not just technology, but time. so there will need to be an increase in efficiency of creation. i'm not sure how much of the CGI process is mechanical (and so subject to improvements in technology) and how much is artistic (which requires a more human element, at least for now). depending how it all stacks up, it could be more difficult to reduce costs of producing CGI.

i'm pretty sure that the largest cost of big movies isn't actually the visual effects though, but rather the stupidly large salaries of actors. indies can cut that out entirely.

Ocelot
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Re: Is Hollywood in the Dark Ages right now?

Post by Ocelot »

I don't think it has to do with being Oscar-worthy. If anything, it's backwards -- I thought 12 Years a Slave was far too short for its subject matter, and a Spider-Man movie doesn't need to be two and a half hours long.

My guess is that it's the modern equivalent of the sword and sandal epics or musicals of the early 1960s. Those were made in an era when television was starting to become a household thing instead of just a luxury, with the idea being to lure people back into theaters with gimmicks like Super Panavision or whatever the hell-o-rama How the West Was Won was shot in. Now instead of just competing with television, studios also have to contend with video games, social media and, well, television still, which has since become a hub for legitimate, quality entertainment as opposed to Sid Caesar yelling at people.

The fault is the mindset that "epicness" is directly correlated to length. Epics have lots of things happening, and if you have more time, you can do more things! The problem is that when you've cluttered your films with things that aren't memorable, viewers will mentally blot out the filler anyway, so your movie with 100 minutes of fine content is just carrying 40 minutes of baggage that does nothing but present the image of quality, when it wouldn't be necessary if they'd stop bloating films in the first place.

I'd like to blame the audience too, but I'm not sure what they're to blame for. When I went to see Captain America 2, I noticed that there was very little action until the very end of the movie. It was mostly just talking about politics, yet people weren't leaving in droves -- maybe, like, two people? I've come to the conclusion that audiences will just watch anything, so what's the point of blowing up these films with a buncha malarky and other grandpa words?

Stewball
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Re: Is Hollywood in the Dark Ages right now?

Post by Stewball »

The younger generation's full of shit, that's been the cry since Plato, and it's always been 2/3rds right.

Take everybody and divide them into two groups: Those who think, and....

It was ever thus.

ShogunRua
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Re: Is Hollywood in the Dark Ages right now?

Post by ShogunRua »

FarCryss wrote:Obviously this is all a matter of opinion, however, I do notice one thing that I'll point out since I'm a nerd. Yes, you've seen more movies than me (exactly 100, apparently, lol), but since 2010 I've watched something like 240 movies that were released between 2010-2014 and you've watched only 77.


If anything, that should cause me to rank 2010-2014 films higher than if I watched 240 of them, no?

The fewer films ones watches from a given era, the higher the average score tends to be, because one is going for the best pictures, or at least those one is most interested in.

FarCryss wrote:So my advice to you: don't embrace the idea that modern movies are shit,


Where are you getting this moronic notion from? Certainly not from anything that I wrote. I wrote that modern Hollywood pictures tend to be disappointing. But that's a far cry from "modern movies are shit!"

This is also what I hate the most about so many Internet discussions. You write statement X, and then the other person responds to an entirely different statement Y. Usually, Y will be ridiculously exaggerated and obviously stupid.

FarCryss wrote: and try to watch more of them. I guarantee you'll find a lot of great stuff you love -- even some that are popular.


What makes you think I'm avoiding anything based on the year it came out? I watch a movie if the plot and director interest me, no other factors.

FarCryss wrote:Almost anytime I talk to somebody who groans about modern art I tend to pry a little and ask "Well, how much have you really been exposed to?" and more often than not, it's very little.


This is a fair point, but I don't believe it applies to me here. I keep a very close track on all the indie and highly-regarded new films that come out through a variety of sites.
Last edited by ShogunRua on Fri May 09, 2014 1:18 am, edited 1 time in total.

ShogunRua
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Re: Is Hollywood in the Dark Ages right now?

Post by ShogunRua »

m3tan wrote:
ShogunRua wrote:I agree that we live in exciting times and you might be correct with regards to music. In fact, we're probably at the apex of quite a number of other forms of entertainment. But unless you're solely looking at resolution, pixel count, and special effects, movies have certainly been far better.

By the way! When talking about music, popular music nowadays is shittier than ever. I would gladly take the popular music of the 70s over what's trendy nowadays.


Not just music! I would say that popular movies, TV, and also video games are all worse than they've ever been.


I can't really speak about popular TV. Overall, I would agree that television is better now than it used to be. As for the very popular series, what I have seen of the classic shows from the 60s through to the 90s all mostly struck me as boring bullshit, too.

Video games is another difficult one. Overall, I think video games are way better than they have ever been, with great games being made to appeal to every nice and taste. As for the major sellers, I can't call any of them bad, either.

Part of that is because I think our enjoyment of video games is completely and utterly irrational, perhaps even moreso than music, and certainly much more than with movies.

Speaking of major sellers, many of the recent Mario titles moved over 10+ million units, and most people seemed to love them. (I enjoyed the several I played, too) Minecraft is wildly popular, and is a unique indie title that I certainly don't believe appeals to the stupid. Hype and backlash aside, many of the CoD installments are decent arcade shooters with fun multiplayer, too.

Ag0stoMesmer
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Re: Is Hollywood in the Dark Ages right now?

Post by Ag0stoMesmer »

m3tan wrote:I'm a huge film buff yet have found it increasingly difficult to actually enjoy going to the movies ... Inception was OK...

Do others agree that it's increasingly hard to find great mainstream films these days?


Yes it is. Funny you mention inception as i think it's message is relevant here. the dawn of hollywood -the dream factory- was an age where newspapers were filled with journalism and politicians were slightly less greedy and dishonest. reality now is a 'mass of competing fictions' - how'd y' want your sugar-water; 'real thing' or 'Change The Game' - your news; bullshit and lies from fox or bullshit and lies from bbc? where truth was once found outside ourselves we now need to look inside -like inception i tells ya.

hollywoods response; make the dreams bigger and wilder, kablam superhero mcmovies, any substance only the fool's gold of 'darkness'. its not what we want or need from them anymore

It's Jacobs death of culture, we're not in Romero zombie-land now, the zombies aren't us; theyre culture itself. joylessly cannibalising/appropriating -consume ergo sum- a rank hipsterization of culture devoid or post-originality

CMonster
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Re: Is Hollywood in the Dark Ages right now?

Post by CMonster »

Ag0stoMesmer wrote:
Yes it is. Funny you mention inception as i think it's message is relevant here. the dawn of hollywood -the dream factory- was an age where newspapers were filled with journalism and politicians were slightly less greedy and dishonest. reality now is a 'mass of competing fictions' - how'd y' want your sugar-water; 'real thing' or 'Change The Game' - your news; bullshit and lies from fox or bullshit and lies from bbc? where truth was once found outside ourselves we now need to look inside -like inception i tells ya.

hollywoods response; make the dreams bigger and wilder, kablam superhero mcmovies, any substance only the fool's gold of 'darkness'. its not what we want or need from them anymore

It's Jacobs death of culture, we're not in Romero zombie-land now, the zombies aren't us; theyre culture itself. joylessly cannibalising/appropriating -consume ergo sum- a rank hipsterization of culture devoid or post-originality

What you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

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