Is it really just nostalgia?

[Animated Rope]

I just watched another episode of a miniseries called V. (check the links)
V is about the resistance against the visitors. The battles they engage in isn't about violence and special effects, it's about what they're fighting for. V inspires me to think about that and begin to actually wonder about the long term outcome of their skirmishes. Something that modern films/series/whatever usually fail at because I become too distracted with the how(many grenades and kung fu moves do I need). I also find the characters more realistic and relatable.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCUPPkjgHws&feature=channel_page
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hJRafM1e8Q&feature=related

I think the thing with motion picture today is that they strive to be so damned dramatic and spectacular. Characters are introduced just so they can die, characters die just so someone can get emotional over it or because they outlived their purpose. A glass of water can't break without making a metaphor for some guy's shattered hopes. Every fool and his dog is a poet that can improvise emotional speeches. Characters are driven by a personal slight or a traumatic past event as opposed to common sense and personal preference. I just can't relate to them.

I'm wondering if nostalgia really means so much as people make it out to be. I mean, I've thoroughly enjoyed movies more than twice as old as myself. And I've realized there are fundamental differences other than technology, culture, and age between them.

 

[oliveira8]

Hmm...Well theres nostalgia like the old Battlestar Galactica and then theres the cold facts that the remake Battlestar Galactic is superior to the old one. Which is probably one of the few times that a remake is actually good.

How things get directed these days its very different from back then. You have better special effects, more money to produce big projects and better script writers. Sometimes someone manages to do everything right and create something better than the original(Like Battlestar Galactica) and then theres crap like "The Day the Earth stood still" when everything manages to fail...in an epic way.

But stuff that was made years ago was as good as the stuff there is now. The difference is that time filtered the crap, so we don't get to see the bad stuff only the "good" and now there is no filter to save us. If such a filter for crap existed today we wouldn't have to suffer with Michael Bay and films like "The Day the Earth stood still"...

 

[APPCRASH]

Some people take movies too fucking serious. A cigar can just be a cigar, and movie can have an explosion in every fucking scene with every character dying, and I'll be fine.

 

[Labyrinth]

Nostalgia is the rose tinted blur that drops before the 20/20 vision of hindsight. It can make all the difference between a good movie, game or book and a bad one. The same with people. After death we're often remembered more fondly than when we were alive.

Some things about old films are simply more complex than their modern counterpart. There weren't flashy special effects and some things such as the cardboard cutout of the mansion lifting off in Rocky Horror were done on the fly due to a lack of materials. People had to be smarter about what they did, a lot more thought was put into such things because they couldn't stick an explosion in the background later.

Oh, and there were often better actors. Don't get me wrong, people like Hugo Weaving are fantastic, but there are so many mediocre, even piss-poor people on screen.

 

[Kiutu]

Its called bad movies.

 

[oliveira8]

Some things about old films are simply more complex than their modern counterpart. There weren't flashy special effects and some things such as the cardboard cutout of the mansion lifting off in Rocky Horror were done on the fly due to a lack of materials. People had to be smarter about what they did, a lot more thought was put into such things because they couldn't stick an explosion in the background later.

Pointless trivia time!

In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the idea to have the Knights riding invisible horses wasn't planned out. The reason why the knights ride on make belief steads and have a guy banging coconuts behind them to provide Horse soundtrack, was that there was no money to afford real horses. Cause they had to have horses in the movie, they went with the actors pretending to ride horses and a guy banging coconuts to make the sound of a horse moving. Which just added more stupid on the movie.

Today you would get real horses and less crazy stuff on the movie.