Why Movies Suck Now Part One: The Myths

[sweetdude]

Again, just because Hollywood is in the spotlight most (being the leader in terms of pop-culture distribution and worldwide entertainment), it makes the place a far more easier target to attack.

Let's agree to disagree. I personally don't see any decline in films anywhere in the world. I think that a lot of people focus on Hollywood, like you say, and that results in a perceived decline, which I don't agree with. I don't think all films are perfect outside of Hollywood, but some of the best films I've ever seen, and I've seen a fair amount, have been from America outside of Hollywood, Korea, Britain, France, Belgium and Spain, and they've come in the last 10 years. At the same time, there have been some excellent Hollywood films, such as Invictus and Hangover. I just don't believe that films are becoming worse.

I mean, look at the comments, it's all about Hollywood.

Basically, movies don't suck now.

 

[gim73]

To balance it out, Starship Troopers had a one dimension pro military message I don't agree with, but I still enjoy watching the film when I'm in the mood for big bloody war action.

What? I thought Starship Troopers was supposed to be a spoof of the overbearing pro-military message from the original book complete with obvious propaganda and family-unfriendly morals.

Yup, sounds like Redd the Sock has completely missed the hilarious anti-military, fascism mocking black comedy that Starship Troopers is. If anything it's a multi-dimensional piss take on the love for the army that certain countries have, the glorification of young beautiful people fighting the "IRAQ-NIDS" (ring a bell?) with a healthy dose of straight faced wit in the form of Neil Patrick Harris playing a leader of the army troops while wearing a SS-Officer uniform.

It's one of the best satires of the 90's, I wholeheartedly urge you to watch it again with a bit more of an open mind.

Seriously? You wanna go THERE? Did you even WATCH this movie?

For one thing, it's VERY loosely based off the book of the same name. You could say that the aliens and characters have the same names, but almost nothing else is the same. Essentially what we have here is marine foot soldiers fighting giant bugs with pulse rifles. It's alot closer to an adaption of Warhammer 40k with tyranids vs space marines, but the marines have no body armor. Niel Patrick Harris doesn't lead the army. Hell, the leader is the fleet admiral, which changes several times over the course of the movie. He plays an intellegence officer with psychic powers. Seeing a military officer uniform as an SS uniform is a pretty lame comparison as well. Look back at the history of uniforms and you will see many trends re-emerge over the years.

Starship troopers 2 is at best a made for syfy original straight to dvd. It's essentially invasion of the body snatchers in space, and with a forgettable cast to boot. Starship troopers 3 returns to what made the original good, and adds the power armor suits that were in the books to make it a pretty good movie, especially after the crap that was 2.

So what makes movies suck? Back in the eighties we had no fear of making an R rated movie if the movie deserved to be rated R. Sadly these days we see more R rated comedies than action flicks. Does an R rating make a flick good? By all means, no! The thing is, you will often be watching a PG13 action flick and you will realize that it would have been good if it wasn't pandering to appease everyone in the audience. That's just not really how you should make a movie. I'd rather a movie was made with characters who made sense and fit in with the mood of the movie rather than the current likes of the audience. No, a gratuitous sex scene isn't needed, but if it actually fits with where you've placed the characters then it makes sense. Movie characters are supposed to be human, not anime protagonists who are oblivious to all feelings of those around them and never find themselves up to bat. Character interaction, dialog and mood are all necessary for a movie to become good. If those things are not believable, then only the fangirls will watch it.

 

[Hurr Durr Derp]

The disease is expense: Movies cost too much to make, and take too long to turn a profit, so no one in charge of the money wants to take a risk on anything without proof-of-profitability already behind it.

I think this is the core of the whole issue. The big names are scared of putting their weight (and money!) behind something that doesn't sound like a guaranteed hit. The exact same thing is happening with videogames, perhaps even quicker and more strongly than with movies.

We get remakes, sequels, spin-offs and rip-offs by the dozen. Meanwhile, the new and potentially revolutionary ideas are largely ignored, both by the publishers and the audience. Smaller 'indie' studios work hard to fill that gap, but without the big budgets to spend on their games they never reach the level of superficial quality that AAA titles proudly present and use to draw in their customers. Even less money is available for marketing, which pretty much means they're doomed to obscurity in this day and age where marketing can make or break a title even more than actual quality does.

 

[Hurr Durr Derp]

To balance it out, Starship Troopers had a one dimension pro military message I don't agree with, but I still enjoy watching the film when I'm in the mood for big bloody war action.

What? I thought Starship Troopers was supposed to be a spoof of the overbearing pro-military message from the original book complete with obvious propaganda and family-unfriendly morals.

Yup, sounds like Redd the Sock has completely missed the hilarious anti-military, fascism mocking black comedy that Starship Troopers is. If anything it's a multi-dimensional piss take on the love for the army that certain countries have, the glorification of young beautiful people fighting the "IRAQ-NIDS" (ring a bell?) with a healthy dose of straight faced wit in the form of Neil Patrick Harris playing a leader of the army troops while wearing a SS-Officer uniform.

It's one of the best satires of the 90's, I wholeheartedly urge you to watch it again with a bit more of an open mind.

Seriously? You wanna go THERE? Did you even WATCH this movie?

For one thing, it's VERY loosely based off the book of the same name.

I did watch it, more than a few times, wrote a paper on it university and everything.

Also made a pretty cool observation about it: movies =/= books. Who knew?!

I pretty much agree with what you're saying, but the "IRAQ-NIDS" comment is just plain stupid. The term "arachnid" is an existing term, and is used to refer to the bugs' insect/spider-like appearance in both the book and the movie (they're more insect-like in the movie, but more spider-like in the book). Apart from that, the book was published in 1959, long before either of the Gulf Wars.

 

[ultimasupersaiyan]

I honestly think that movies are starting to suck because they are trying to target everyone at once but end up making a poor movie as a result. I may be wrong but that's my guess.

 

[Saarai-fan]

Very great article, MovieBob. I especially liked all what you said about the first myth that Hollywood movies being too liberal makes them bad. It's more or less an argument made by mainly conservative minded people who often have a feud with certain liberal filmmakers/actors. Like how many conservatives hate Sean Penn, or their dislike of James Cameron due to Avatar's anti-imperalism message. Besides, there's plently of conservative minded actors and filmmakers. A handful compared to the majority of Hollywood being liberal, yes, but there are conservatives in the film industry. Jon Voight is a very conservative person, but as a liberal myself who disagree's with pretty much everything he believes, I still find the majority of his film work enjoyable.

Also, on your second myth, you of course noted that part of the problem is that the filmmakers tend to awkwardly cram unneeded extras, who happen to be usually female or a minority, so that they expect to satisfy the whole audience instead of just teenage boys. I agree with that quite a bit. It reminds me how you pointed out in your Transformers Revenege of the Fallen review, how the Hackers in the first Transformers movie served no purpose. The only purpose they served was that they were black, and they did somewhat act like sterotypes. I mean, couldn't of they instead made the President in the movie a black actor, like Billy Dee Williams? (Yeah, I know, I said Jon Voight's a decent actor, I'm just making an example.)

Still, great article Bob. Can't wait to see what you'll say what the real reasons are next week. But I'm going to make a guess is that the film industry tends to hash out unneeded sequel after sequel. Case in point, Shrek 4ever After, the Saw movies, and probably the Scream movie franchise will become this since a 4th movie is currently in the making right now.

 

[Necromancer1991]

I hate how people over-generalize when they complain about movies, at least give me a valid reason "The camera work was terrible [ala Cloverfield]", "The lead actor was bad', etc

 

[maxben]

The problem is the the political scale is in fact a square, and not a line. In america, people try to cut that square diagonally for the two-party dichotomy: Liberals are Left\Authoritarian, and conservatives are Right\Libertarian. V for vendetta challenges this notion by making the hero Left\Libertarian.

Of course, it's an entirely false dichotomy, but that's just where the chips at the present.

Juding it by an American political viepoint maybe. But judged from an Englich point of view? Anarchism has always been left wing. Always.

Watch Glen Beck, the Tea Party, and Libertarians. The anarchist right is huge in America right now.

 

[Sentox6]

Interesting that Michael Bay thought the transformers franchise was "stupid". He may be right. My question, though, is how he consequently managed to make it even more stupid.

 

[Lake Deuteronomy]

V for Vendetta (film) certainly isn't a good case to illustrate political nebulosity. It's just a case of a Hollywood's liberals messing with excellent source material. Sure, V for Vendetta was an above-average graphic novel adaptation, and I enjoyed the film (went to see it twice, in fact). But you would be very wrong to use it as an example of political ambiguity without reading Moore's novel.

Except, y'know, the comic wasn't released to mass audiences by a big Hollywood studio, and wasn't what he was talking about, to wit, a movie, it was, in fact, a graphic novel.

And when you are talking about perceived political leanings in movies, it would be silly and counteractive to the point you are trying to make by bringing up a graphic novel as an example of a movie.

 

[squid5580]

Why Movies Suck Now Part One: The Myths

Movies may suck these days, but these aren't the reasons why.

Read Full Article

I read your debate with "Men are pigs" woman at Big Hollywood. I decided to comment here since I don't want my online self connected any way to that site.

Speaking as a guy with an old fashioned style I have to say I was insulted. Just because I wouldn't say no to a willing and eager partner I have no respect for them and treat them as akin to a wet towel. Besides, chivalry is all about a pro-female sexual attitude. One of it's core tennant is "Ladies First".

Also, since I'm Canadian, could someone explain why abstinance education is a good idea but teaching safe sex isn't?

Safe sex isn't 100% safe. Abstinance is. Although that doesn't explain things like woodshop. By that logic we shouldn't be teaching the children how to use a bandsaw safely. We should be teaching them to stay away from the bandsaw until they are adults when they can legally chop off thier own hands.

And I am not sold on the whole remake thing. At least back in the day there was a reason for remaking a movie. They had the technology and they had good actors to fill the roles. These days we have the technology but they use good looking actors to fill the roles. Nightmare on Elm ST. remake is a great example of this. They pretty much stuck to the original but somehow fucked the entire thing up. All because they wanted to make sure everyone got their panties wet when the main characters popped up on screen.

 

[MovieBob]

THe other thing I have to wonder is where is this idea that Concervative = small government, Liberal = big government drawn from?

Language, for the most part. These are both words used to denote generalized amounts of any given thing: a "conservative" amount meaning very little, a "liberal" amount meaning a lot. Once upon a time, the only relevant question to ask of a politician was what they thought the role of government was - a "Conservative" would say it ought be small, a "Liberal" would say the opposite.

The whole idea of "social issues" being at the forefront of a political (as opposed to social) movement is a relatively recent development in the Western World. Ironically, it's likely a negative side-effect of an overwhelmingly POSITIVE evolution: In earlier times, social issues "didn't matter" because regardless of party-affiliation everyone who could even HOPE to attain political power was of the same basic race/gender/class and thus shared most of the same basic social outlooks.

The point at which this "broke" is different for every culture, but in the United States it probably solidified after Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that declared it unlawful for individual states to criminalize abortion (though there were certainly early rumblings in the Civil Rights era as well). Political "conservatives" decried the decision for putting too much power in the hands of the federal courts, holding that each state should get to make up it's own mind about such things. Religious Traditionalists who abhored the decision on theological grounds thus began to actively support the political "Right," and the two have been joined ever since - conversely, the pro-choice side and it's attendant supporters quickly took side with the "Left." Ironically, not long before that it was the other way around: Early 20th Century "conservative" thinkers were often reflexively pro-choice on individual-rights grounds (Ayn Rand, the fairy godmother of right-wing 20th Century philosophy, called it "a moral right") while most of the early Women's Rights pioneers were stridently AGAINST it.

 

[Aphroditty]

V for Vendetta (film) certainly isn't a good case to illustrate political nebulosity. It's just a case of a Hollywood's liberals messing with excellent source material. Sure, V for Vendetta was an above-average graphic novel adaptation, and I enjoyed the film (went to see it twice, in fact). But you would be very wrong to use it as an example of political ambiguity without reading Moore's novel.

Of course V is a good choice, because, as others have said, the comic has zero bearing on the film. The two are separate entities for the purpose of the discussion.

 

[S1mulacrum]

What are some of the things that studios do to pull in a black audience but end up being "borderline racist"?

 

[ilion]

Who cares about hollywood anyway. Theres cannes and berlin, and venice film festivals.

 

[Ghengis John]

Quick: Can you think of a functional premise somehow involving a hungry, hungry hippo? Because that might be worth money right now.

Okay, take one: So there's these two little kids right? A brother and a sister. Let's say they're British. One day they find a hippo. And not just any everyday hippo. They bring it home and feed it right? But wait till you hear this right? It's hungry. And not just hungry. It's Hungry Hungry. And did I mention that this just happens to be... a secret hippo? Yeah. Voiced by the Yeah Yeah Yeah's own Karen O. Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah in fact. Now feeding this hippo is expensive right? How's a Hippo supposed to earn her keep? She can sing. Fuck yes can she sing.

Through the power of song one sassy hippo will save a marriage, teach a pair of children about the magic of life, stop a corrupt land developer and like feed the poor or something. What do you want from me? Look, we'll have a guy on a phone calling some other guy and going: "The hippo's wow man. It's Just... WOW!" Just trust me on this shit. The soundtrack alone will bring in some cash. Then we can sell off advertising rights to her favorite foods. I hear Doritos is in the market for a hippo-related project, this could be gold for us.

We'll call it: 'Hungry Hungry Hip O'. Now. I'll just need 40 million dollars and we can get started.

 

[mattaui]

I think largely we suffer from the golden age reflex, where we look back with nostalgia upon the films (or music, or books, or television, or games, etc..) of our youth and just wish things could be as good now as they were then. Sometimes I try to force myself to imagine being that age now, and wondering what movies might seem like to some ten year old who didn't have the extra decades I have to get a bit bored and jaded by all that's come before.

This isn't to say that critique of modern movies isn't without merit, but if anything we suffer from a glut of what to choose from now, and because of that we can afford to be that much more selective in our criticism and praise.