The “Oscar movie” is dying
worldofreel.comI wouldn't overdramatize it. The movie business didn't start with Oscar awards and it does not need them to continue. The Oscars are essentially a self-congratulatory award which often were at odds with the public. The critics and audience don't always agree. And now with less capture by the studios and cinema resulting in people having more choices of what to watch, people are choosing the more basic and entertaining "plotlines" or rather, content.
The industry is changing, the audience probably didn't change too much, but the Oscars don't matter any more except to some (high profile) actors and some industry insiders and it looks like they are sad about it.
As an actor myself, I find that the Oscar bait is often the "Academy Award for the Most Acting". It has become a cliche that you seek an Oscar by playing a highly damaged character with obvious quirks.
More subtle performances are usually passed over, even though I consider them more challenging. They're often nominated, but rarely win.
Which is fine, since those kinds of films are usually not going to attract big audiences. The Academy Awards are a big industry advertisement, and they get the most bang for their buck by promoting a film that could catch the attention of an audience but hasn't yet.
I find that audiences are often puzzled by the Oscar winners. They go see them, and don't see what the fuss is about. But that does at least fund the next round of movies that are different from the summer blockbusters (which make plenty of money and need no help).
I cannot find a single accolade for J.K. Simmons' role in The Accountant. Heck, I don't even care to evaluate an entire role: that hallway scene[1] is seared into my head and that alone deserves an award if we're going to be giving out awards.
Stephen Root has countless memorable scenes if not entire characters. They're not "acting a lot" or playing highly damaged, complex characters. But they're absolutely nailing the characters in a way that I think, "no other actor could play that character."
Not that these actors don't get the credit they deserve. They're well-known and beloved. But if we're going to hand out awards, character actors like these, and countless others, are incredibly underrepresented.
He's an underrated actor in general, finally getting some starring roles.
This reminds me of Eddie Murphy's reaction to some "dramatic moment with a look he gave" in Showgirls that everyone reacted to as great acting, and he was like -- "Did you not see me in the Nutty Professor where I was FIVE PEOPLE AT THE SAME TIME? That was harder."
It's such an odd comment. Doing that is a great stunt... but it's a stunt. None of those characters were really all that well developed. The makeup team did amazing work, and it was an extraordinary technical feat (especially at the time), but Murphy's biggest contribution was some caricature voice work.
It must have been exhausting for him as an actor, and worth a ton of respect. But it's no surprise to me that other actors found it not to be his most interesting work.
Compare Tatiana Maslany, who portrayed multiple characters over several seasons, without prosthetics. If you want a real acting stunt, watch her play some of those characters pretending to be other characters.
I hope she doesn't get slotted entirely into genre films. Not that there's anything wrong with genre films, but all of the special effects tend to obscure what can be really great, subtle work. I'd love to see her do some theater.
Tatiana, if you're reading this ... I'm directing Midsummer Night's Dream next year and you'd be a killer Titania...
I absolutely fail to see the difference.
If anything, it's MUCH harder to be funny than to be dramatic.
I think you mean Dreamgirls, not Showgirls.
> It has become a cliche that you seek an Oscar by playing a highly damaged character with obvious quirks.
Even more likely if it's a biopic, and even, even more likely if the character has a disability. For example, The Theory of Everything vs Birdman for best actor and supporting roles.
Excellent example. Redmayne is a very talented actor, but that role was awarded for for its acting stunts rather than his understanding of who Hawking really was.
Birdman was very much an actor's movie. I went to see it with my actor friends, and had a wonderful time. Even setting aside the wonderfully long (and tricky) takes, it was an incredible exercise in performing the same scene several times in different ways. It was full of great performances, and Keaton surprised the heck out of everyone.
I notice that Iñárritu has a new film coming out on Netflix soon, Bardo, and I'm really looking forward to it.
Rare to find a fellow actor on HN :) You don't have contact details on your profile, but I do - would be interesting in knowing more!
I'm just an amateur, and I only do local theater. I'm very glad to be able to do programming for a living so that I can do theater the way I want to do theater, rather than having my dinner depend on whether I win an audition against long odds. It sounds like a terrible way to suck the joy out of the craft.
I have nonetheless helped a few actors build minor careers. Despite the fact that my main advice is "don't".
I'm not interested in acting as a career at all, but I realized I'd love to try playing in local theater. How do I get in with no/low (I once read 'an actor preparss') background? Last I looked at it the local place was a bunch of people who went to school and had credentials. As far as starting my own, I'm worried there would be too many who would join and make a farce* out of it instead of striving for a serious, if amateur, effort.
*it's okay and ideal to have fun, but I've seen too many amateur bands/art projects/films/etc veer off due to members dismissing things 'cuz it's not for real' and just turning the effort into a hang-out
Community theaters may have trained people in its management, but the cast and crew are usually untrained. Even reading Stanslavski once puts you ahead of most.
If you're looking at a regional theater (the kind where they actually pay people, albeit a pittance and most of the actors have day jobs), there will usually be a community theater in the area. If there's enough of an audience to support a regional theater, there will be others who want to do it just for fun.
Even if they don't have a place in the cast, they will often need techs of various kinds: lights, sound, props, costumes, stage management. It's a lot easier to cast somebody that you know can do things like "show up on time" and "be responsible". Actors... yeah. Even non-professionals.
(Bonus: I still use a light board with an actual floppy disk. The thing it replaced is literally a box of dimmer switches that they call Old Sparky. It's still in the closet. Theaters are fun places.)
Some areas really don't have community theaters. Mine had plenty, but I did actually start a theater of my own on shockingly little experience. Rent a performance venue, find a place to rehearse, get a script, put some notices on the relevant Facebook groups, and get ready for some Drama!
To get acting gigs at any level the one thing you have to do is go to auditions.
There is all kinds of training you can get which can help but ultimately you have to “just do it”.
> The Oscars are essentially a self-congratulatory award which often were at odds with the public.
Not to state the obvious, but Oscars over the years have degraded into “who can wine and dine the voters the most”. There was a time (more than a decade ago) when almost all “Best Pucture” nominees were really entertaining and fun to watch. You look at the more recent lineups and almost all of them are a drag to watch. I’m not sure what else did anyone expect with West Side Story? It’s a movie adaptation of a Broadway show that has been adapted countless times. Anyone who has any interest in this genre has probably seen the story multiple times. What value add did the film have?
The new West Side Story is incredible. It's what a 100-million dollar musical looks like. Every frame is planned out, the actors are vulnerable, the songs are touching and super fun. The dance numbers are exuberant, some of the best ever produced by Hollywood. The film brings together the very best of American artists: Tony Kushner for the screenplay, Gustavo Dudamel conducts, the NY & LA philharmonics for recording, Justin Peck for choreo.
There's no way it can be argued to be a bad movie. I have no idea why audiences didn't go to see the movie. But I had a ball bawling my eyes out for two hours at the iMax.
I went in with someone who was unfamiliar with the musical, and they walked out halfway deeply offended by the excessive and casual use of slurs throughout the movie directed at a specific racial group. If that had been a different group and the slur had started with a "k", nobody would think West Side Story is incredible.
And on a substantive note, the plot is fairly nonsensical.
Yes, the movie was technically well made but that's about it.
Did this slur end in the letter "X"? If so, yikes!
No doubt it was a great movie. But my question was more around whether it was worth it. In an age when an imax ticket costs $25+ or you don’t have an imax theater nearby, but watching a movie still costs $20, how many people do you expect will go to watch the movie.
(Rotten tomatoes suggests that the audience liked the movie, there are no questions about it)
> The critics and audience don't always agree.
The Oscars are not decided by critics. They're decided by peers. Directors vote for best Director. Actors vote for best Actor. Composers vote for best Music. Etc...
> The Oscars are not decided by critics. They're decided by peers.
That's the Oscar nomination process: it's by peers.
The entire Oscar Academy (ie all previous winners in good standing) get to vote on the winners in all categories.
Which is why many in the industry consider "it's more important to just get nominated", & also why the final winners are often a popularity context. Many of the ppl voting aren't skilled in the areas being voted for. E.g. there's 4x more actors voting for technical categories, etc.
This is not how it works. Anyone in the Academy can vote on the nominees. The nominees themselves are decided by the people in their specific category.
Other way around. See above.
Source: my family is in the Academy
I think you have misunderstood either what I said or what they said.
https://variety.com/feature/who-votes-on-oscars-academy-awar...
Each person belongs to one of 17 branches. Each branch nominates for its own category — e.g., editors nominate editors, actors nominate for the four acting categories. Everyone gets to nominate best picture. For the final voting of the winner, all branches vote for everything.
> The Oscars are essentially a self-congratulatory award which often were at odds with the public.
The Oscars is Hollywood's prom and Best Picture is the Prom King. It's a popularity contest.
True, but at least its a popularity contest among peers. As noted elsewhere in the comments here, actors vote on the best actors, etc.
Nominations are by peers. Overall winners are voted on by the entire academy, & thus often a popularity contest.
In regards to basic plotlines: These might go well if you look at movies in pure commercial terms or a made up metric of "how many people did a single piece of media manage to distract from their lives for a few minutes".
But both as a musician and a film maker I'd be warn about relying overly on such metrics alone. People (can) form connections to the media they interact with that go beyond these metrics and the functions culture itself performs for humanity is more than the money it produces and the minds it keeps busy. It is also about reflection, documentation, memories, meaning, representation and similar hard to define things.
Some of the most important pieces of music I heard or films I experienced have been commerical flops and have small (but passionate) audiences.
Humans are wildely different in their tastes and psychological needs — the media we really love is a reflection of that. Commercially successful media is media that a broad majority of people find good or at least worth consuming and there is nothing bad about that. But it is often more specific productions that really strike a deep chord withing their audience. Maybe it brings up memories from their childhood, maybe it expresses feelings they always had, but never could put their finger on, maybe it is a particularily good expression of a (power) fantasy that individual has and so on. There might be a film with horses in it that saved a teenage horse loving girl from suicide and even if 99% of the world (including me) thinks that movie sucks, it might not have sucked for that girl.
The point here is: Often the stuff that really hits deep for one personally might not woo the broad commercial audiences at all. Because what hits you might not hit all. And what hits most might also hit you, but not as hard or deep.
Obscure media has it's value.
The Oscars often don't agree with critics, either. I don't think anyone had Ordinary People, Dances with Wolves, Titanic, Shakespeare in Love, Crash, Green Book, even CODA at #1 on their year-end best of list. Best Picture is usually going to favor something that is at least serious enough that the voters don't feel like children for loving it, i.e. they're never going to award a tentpole or franchise entry, sci-fi, fantasy, horror genre-type stuff will only very rarely even be considered, but they're also going to favor relatively inoffensive, unchallenging, often feel good work that isn't particularly novel or ground-breaking, which is more what critics will lean toward. They also have a tendency to reward message movies and films about filmmaking and Hollywood itself, even if no one likes them.
Excuse me? Most if not all of these could easily end up on peoples year-end best of list. Some people don't even remember any other than Titanic from the 90s.
When Shakespeare in Love won Best Picture over Saving Private Ryan, I quit the Oscars and never looked back. How many people still watch Saving Private Ryan vs. Shakespeare in Love?
>The Oscars often don't agree with critics, either. I don't think anyone...
They're talking about critics.
"The Favorite" won best picture, director and original screenplay in 2019, and it's the first film in a long time a worthy film took the accolades. "The Favorite" is a black comedy and totally not the type of film you describe. I was astonished it did so well.
If you’re talking about the Oscars and “The Favourite“ it won (a different) one.
I misread the wiki, you're right. The Favorite was nominated for 10 awards, it won only for Best actress.
Hugo. A movie I had mixed feelings about. I liked the stereoscopy in Hugo because it can add a lot to human interactions (for one thing the two eyes see a little bit more of the muscles around the edge of the face which are obscured in a single view), but unfortunately the business model of ‘pay more for 3d’ and the fact that 20% or so of people are stereo blind makes 3d a tough sell for most movies. But yet there is something a little sleazy and self-serving about movies that celebrate movies.
My take from the post was less about the Oscar per se — more about the decline fit the theater experience (sans Marvel/Pixar flicks).
Yes, and one could argue it's just cyclical.
I quite enjoy the type of movie they are referencing and have almost never watched a super hero movie but The Fabelmans looks like a total bore. That is even with wanting to see Julia Butters acting evolve.
We will see with Nolan's Oppenheimer next year.
This is all over dramatized. Butters will probably be the biggest actor in the world in 10 years making "serious" dramas.
Tarantino has even talked about how this goes in cycles and we have been going through a boring time like in the late 50s.
I'm astounded that this article doesn't mention what to me seems like a no-brainer: We're in the golden age of television. People don't want to watch 10, unconnected movies now. They want 10-20 hours of a continuous story. Netflix, Apple TV, Prime, and other streaming platforms have been delivering a quality experience that immerses the viewer in an engagement that film can't compete with on depth, world-building, etc.
I'm not trying to suggest film isn't an art form in itself, that often has significant differences from television, but watching trends have been favouring television over film lately, especially by hour watched.
Almost all modern TV series are just a movie spread out over entire TV seasons. They are filled with nothing but teasers and cliff hangers in order to artificially stimulate intrigue and extend the relatively thin plots. I can barely imagine something more boring than modern streaming TV series. They also tend to devolve into characters forming romantic relationships with each other, because there's usually nothing else to do with a small and finite character set once the initial ideas are exhausted.
Movies are far deeper because they try to focus on a coherent story and character development. The incentives for TV series are all wrong aside from episodic comedies and docuseries.
The trends of TV have more to do with attention span, addiction, marketing/advertising, etc. than it being a supposedly more wanted format for actual content reasons.
I'm sorry, but I think this is an incredibly reductive take on television.
You could make all the same arguments about novels vs. short stories. The fact is that they're both related forms of art which take different approaches to developing narratives.
> Movies are far deeper because they try to focus on a coherent story and character development. The incentives for TV series are all wrong aside from episodic comedies and docuseries.
Here you seem to be arguing that movies, as a form, are superior (or perhaps that TV can't practically compete with film because the incentives are wrong, so that in practice, films are higher quality than TV).
I wasn't making an argument about the potential of the form though, merely about what viewers want. It should go without saying that in long-form writing you have more of an ability to develop characters, stories, and plot arcs than in short-form writing. These more fully developed characters, stories, and plot arcs are more compelling to readers/viewers.
Historically, this is why we've rarely seen short stories achieve the same level of commercial success as the successful novels, and now that we have the internet, the barriers[1] to television asserting the same dominance over videographic media have been torn down.
edit: And to be clear, I also disagree that in practice, television (as produced) is inferior to film (as produced). Of course there is plenty of filler and contrived drama in television (this has always been the case in film too), but we're in a renaissance of television shows which are incredibly tightly written and even dense, from a storytelling perspective.
[1]: namely, that you couldn't run a movie/episodes for 10+ hours on television, due to the complexity around scheduling slots, so you'd have to break it up, leading to confusion and fragmentation of understanding among the viewership
It honestly doesn't sound like you have watched many modern series at all.
What's a good one that you think I might have missed?
My picks for "best TV of the last decade": Better Call Saul, Atlanta, High Maintenance, Maniac, Severance, Game of Thrones (S1-5 only), Undone, and The Expanse. Maybe an honourable mention to Black Mirror, Bojack Horseman, and Silicon Valley.
I have some others I'd personally rate up there, but which are probably more niche (not as widely appealing).
I have actually seen some of those, including two (Silicon Valley and Game of Thrones) to fruition. Those two are actually excellent examples of what I am talking about, and you even called it out by cutting off the later seasons of Game of Thrones.
The types of TV series that are not episodic seem to always devolve in this way towards worse quality and inter-character romantic relationships, not to mention having cliff hangers at the end of every episode. It's a tension and resolve tactic that gets pretty annoying.
Black Mirrors is just a bunch of unrelated short stories which aren't that great compared to a movie.
Bojack Horseman is pretty good indeed, but mostly because it's a comedy. The drama isn't very interesting.
I've heard that a character dies in every Game of Thrones episode, which means some characters will lack depth since they won't have the time required to develop it.
Some of Black Mirror episodes are better than many films, and their concepts would absolutely work if expanded to full length features.
Best series of the past 20 years is likely Boardwalk Empire.
The Sopranos, The Wire, Breaking Bad
100% agree with this. TV has allowed writers to take more time with their characters, develop them more, give more time to other storylines and plots, and write more complex and interesting tales. People are also starting to expect more story and plotlines in their content, which I think is another reason movies are getting so much longer, since more time is needed to meet those expectations(see The Irishman). In the end, it's hard for movies to match the potential of a good TV series, just because a TV series has more time available to explore the universe of the series.
I watched “1899” last week and it was excellent. The characters seems real despite the very slow revealing of their backstories. I can’t stand most blockbuster movies. There’s always so much action going on that characters and plot suffer. No real dialogue between people. Just exposition and one-liners. And everything seems to be rushing. Compare Black Addams to Dune. Mad Max was also fast-paced, but the director knows that and focuses on the action to describe the characters instead of adding useless one-liners and forced jokes.
> I'm astounded that this article doesn't mention what to me seems like a no-brainer: We're in the golden age of television.
I disagree, the golden age of television was the late 90s to early 2010s, from the start of the Sopranos, to the last episode of Breaking Bad. I can’t name a series in the last 10 years that is on par with Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Deadwood, or The Wire.
Streaming services killed quality television, House of Cards was the beginning of the end.
This really comes down to opinion, and I happen to think there are comparable shows which have aired in the last year (Better Call Saul is as good as, if not better than Breaking Bad in my opinion)
But I think it's silly to argue about that ;) The golden age for you might not be the golden age for me, and most people. Personally, not having to sit through a million ads when I watch TV now makes the TV-watching experience leagues beyond what we had in the late 90s (and sure, we've had some phenomenal shows since Breaking Bad; I'd personally nod at Atlanta, High Maintenance, Maniac, Severance, Game of Thrones S1-5, Undone, and The Expanse)
But we also have access to everything from the 90s and noughts, without the ads and waiting for new episodes
The point I was making in the GP post was that people now have easy access to the long-form storytelling of TV shows, without interruptions and nonstop ads, in a way that didn't exist 10+ years ago. Whether or not you think the TV shows today are better than the ones from the late '90s, people nowadays are choosing watch more TV and less film.
The first season of True Detective was in my opinion the greatest single season of tv I've ever seen
If not for the end of the season, I'd agree with you 100%. It was really a phenomenal moment in television (especially that wonderfully choreographed tracking shot). But the finale was somewhat of a letdown, and the following seasons even moreso.
But it is a good example of the advantages of the television over film. An excellent, self-contained story presented over the course of ~9 hours.
I actually didn't find the finale a letdown to be honest, though I can understand why some people did
If not for Taylor Sheridan I'd agree with you.
I don’t want to spend my entertainment dollars subjecting myself to political gaslighting. I want to be entertained by a good story. Sadly, this seems to be an insurmountable hurdle for Hollywood at the moment.
are you one of the people replying in the comments of the article?
No. I just skimmed the article and decided I’d give the reason I thought the Oscar movie is dying.
Nothing quite breaks the immersion for me like having so many gay and interracial couples crammed into the cast that I end up sitting there wondering if there is any place on Earth that's anything like the "normal" town Hollywood is presenting to me.
"interracial couples" wow.. Perhaps this really speaks to our difference in perspectives based on where we live. I live in Vancouver, and find the increased representation of gay, queer, nonbinary, interracial people very true to my lived experience. Of course, lots of film and television is filmed here so maybe it's not that surprising.
I live in (a nice area of) Australia and it's rare enough here that you would definitely catch some glares and giggles if you were out in public. So yes, perspective matters.
I don't mind so much when the scene is set in a city like Vancouver. But when the show is set in a remote European village or outback Aussie town, yet they still force the usual Hollywood levels of diversity, it becomes an absurd juxtaposition that is impossible to look past.
It does seem like a bit much, but it's definitely better than the former state where none of that stuff existed, as far as Hollywood was concerned. I imagine it'll equilibrate over the next few decades.
Movies cannot be true to a single held vision like they once were now they are designed by committee and it shows.
Casablanca is just one example of a very great movie that actually was designed by a committee and motivated more by a political message (supporting the US entry into WW2) than artistic consideration. Contrast with an atrocity like "Heaven's Gate", referenced in TFA, which finally convinced 1970s Hollywood that giving some wunderkind-auteur free reign to follow every artistic whim does not necessarily end well.
I get what you’re saying, but think what it was like for non-white and non-straight people who saw practically nobody like themselves on screen in a “normal” role for decades.
I realized this yesterday: Representation is worthless in terms of peoples feelings, but it gives certain cultures examples of appropriate behaviour and people to look up to, so that they're not only influenced by their single parents and local culture.
This can be done in a natural way though. Take the movie Million Dollar Baby. The movie portrays a woman with strong physical characteristics but does so within the context of a good story that tackles a complex social issue. At no point in the movie does the main character’s physical abilities seem un-natural or forced. There are many other examples where socially desirable characteristics are portrayed by minority groups within the context of a good story without being forced or out of place.
Movies, nor any other story-telling, is really about representing statistical averages.
Anyway, there are plenty of gay people and interracial families out there, so these aren't exactly bizarre.
>Anyway, there are plenty of gay people and interracial families out there, so these aren't exactly bizarre.
That's true! But it seems like there's a new Hayes code where every single new show must have x, y, z "identities"[0] and they have to be represented in particular and empowering ways. Frequently also that the fact of their 'identity' has lent them a special advantageous approach to the situation at hand. Feels like all good ideas need to be edited by the HR department before they get on screen these days.
[0] this is, IMO, a really shallow way of understanding individuals' identities.
I think the greatest beneficiaries of the "representation" push seem to be diplomat's kids. They usually tick multiple (or mystery) racial boxes, have exotic accents, and are of the class where the people who greenlight movies socialize.
Are you saying that the Vikings weren't actually led by empowered African women? /s
Personally, I am not bothered by seeing gay and interracial couples in films.
As a member of an interracial gay couple, I get plenty of that at home.
The Oscars died for good after the diversity quotas. You can't have a Best Picture without having heads of major departments(such as editing, director, makeup and hairstyling, costuming, sound) from underrepresented identity group(i.e lgbtq). I fail to see how this makes the best movie "win". Perhaps that's why all the new movies became have some kind of forced gay plot just to tick some boxes. Not even the remakes are spared of this "upgrade".
During the pandemic a few movies that were supposed to be in theaters launched as expensive paid streams (mostly Disney, but also stuff like Bill and Ted).
I gladly paid for every one of them.
My wife and I used to go to the movies every weekend, sometimes twice, before we had kids. After we had kids we went to theater maybe three times. I was perfectly happy to pay $30 to watch a movie in my house, where I can watch it after I put the kids to bed but don't have to hire a sitter, can pause if I need to pee, can rewind, turn on subtitles, or watch it again.
The only advantages the theaters provide is a bigger screen, louder speakers, and the psychological effect of knowing that I will be watching a movie for two hours and doing nothing else (which I can replicate at home after everyone is asleep if I want to). And participation in the cultural zeitgeist.
I used to love going to see movies in a theater, and will still do it occasionally (we watched Top Gun 2 in a theater, but we brought the kids because it's cheaper than a sitter!), but I much prefer to watch at home.
Hell is other people.
Last time I went to the cinema there was an annoying gang of teenagers having fun in the row two ahead of me. I'm not angry at them; we were all teenagers once. But they were annoying. And the guy to my right thought so too, and let them know. The "movie-going experience" was the drama that this confrontation generated.
Thanks, but no thanks. I'll watch it on my inferior screen, with my inferior sound system, but my massively superior solitude.
you're not alone. i think the pandemic has made people more solitary, to the point of being anxious and/or annoyed around other humans.
a noisy theater was just something that happened in normal life before, it happened, and then we had a little story to gripe to our friends about. but now it seems an intolerable ordeal. the same goes for restaurants vs. take out, visiting friend's/family's house vs. just staying home, etc.
i'm noticing the trend more and more. i'm not sure where it will end up. it doesn't seem as if theaters will ever hold their old place in the cultural zeitgeist again, and maybe the same goes for all other "third places" where other humans will be a bother. that seems kind of sad.
it will keep the behavioral scientists busy for a few decades though.
To an extent, but it may be a bubble thing. I was just in Vegas for a conference and it was as busy as ever. I attended a music festival with 20,000 people while I was there. I was annoyed, especially at the lack of masks (I was one of the few), but I still enjoyed it.
And frankly it was good to be back at an in person work conference. It was so much better than the virtual crap we've had the last few years.
Meanwhile, I haven't spent thousands of dollars on a home cinema, because I have neither the room, time, or spare cash to buy a giant 4k TV, really good internet, 37 independent streaming services at their max tier, $14 a pop to buy a movie on a streaming service, etc etc etc.
$20 to see a movie on a local 50ft IMAX screen is such an incomparable experience.
Sure that's true if you never use TV otherwise. But most people are already getting all those things anyway. And I also I very clearly said that having kids is what made home streaming worth it. Because for me to go to a movie, I have to pay a babysitter $25/hr for 4 hours (to cover driving, waiting in line, previews, etc), and my wife likes popcorn so I have to pay $10 for that instead of popping an instant one at home for 20 cents. And I have to pay for two seats. So now a movie trip costs me $150.
And I already have all the streaming services because kids.
This article feels so very out of touch, like a car enthusiast telling parents with 4 kids that their minivan should have a manual transmission since it's a better driving experience.
It gets the whole situation backwards: it blames the modern audience for not wanting to take the time and money to go out to the theater unless they get a theme park-style spectacle.
In other words, the article is blaming the customer. How dare they look to their Internet-connected 4K television in their living room to get Oscar-quality storytelling? How dare they turn to long-form television story arcs to deliver deep character development rather than Oscar-winning directors who pack it all in to a two hour movie made to be watched in a sticky theater?
The article laments that things aren't right in the world when Steven Spielberg can't draw a theater crowd. Well, Steven Spielberg is an old, wealthy man now, and he is making movies for himself, not for the kind of audience that made Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park massive successes.
The Fablemans might be a good movie, but it's still at its core a piece of Steven Spielberg fan service. It's the deepest of the deep cuts. If you didn't know who Steven Spielberg was, The Fablemans is supremely skippable.
The article continues on to describe a theater environment where the vast majority of Oscar contending movies are financial failures, but to me this is the natural evolution of film as technology advances. When you look at things like 4DX, IMAX 3D, and the kind of advanced sound systems you can find in theaters, it's quite obvious that the most beneficial movie for that experience involves action-packed escapism. Yes, it is a mini-theme park, that's what people want, and that's okay.
> The article laments that things aren't right in the world when Steven Spielberg can't draw a theater crowd. Well, Steven Spielberg is an old, wealthy man now, and he is making movies for himself, not for the kind of audience that made Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park massive successes.
I sort of agree. I've enjoyed many of Spielberg's movies, but I have no interest in watching a fictionalized Spielberg biopic. West Side Story was meh, I tried watching it on Disney+, and gave up after 30 minutes or so. The music was dull and old-fashioned.
But the most obvious counter-argument to this is Schindler's List, a black-and-white Spielberg movie about the Holocaust (granted it has some 'feel-good' elements, but still). That movie made nearly $100M in the domestic box office in 1993. It's hard to imagine box office success for that kind of movie today.
It's funny that the column implied that West Side Story's failure was a surprise. It was a remake of a classic movie that never should have been made. You can't compare this to the ground Spielberg movies of the 70's through the 90's.
If Schindler's List was made today it would be best suited as a streaming mini-series.
Fun fact: Spielberg didn't get his bachelor's degree until 2002, having dropped out in the 60s for a hiatus to, you know, have a successful filmmaking career.
He submitted Schindler's List as his senior project and got an A on it.
Going to the movies was always a habit left over from an earlier time. Of course when all you have is a standard definition tube TV and VHS movies, going to see something on the big screen is exciting. But nowadays, large 4K HDR TV's are cheap now, and you can get almost everything on streaming. Covid really hit the big reset button and made people question a lot of their habits, including still going to movie theaters. What's the point of spending $15 per person for tickets to a movie I could see in a few months on my own equivalently good screen for a subscription I'm already paying for?
Cinema's latest brainwave, at least in the UK, is to run patronising adverts about how great the "big-screen experience" is, and how we shouldn't ruin films by watching on our TVs, laptops, phones, etc. Except, like the old anti-piracy ads, they run these adverts in cinemas before movies, to a group of people who've literally just made the decision to go to the cinema. Like a priest ranting at his congregation about the evils of not attending church.
Every time I see one of these adverts, I think that cinema deserves to die.
Funnily, the big picture is the least interesting part of the experience for me.
Back when I lived in NYC, I used to go to Nighthawk cinemas every once in a while for a date night. We'd pick a movie, shell out for some fancy cocktails and dinner, and enjoy the drinks and food while watching the movie. It was a great experience, really loved their menu. They even had a really smart ordering system, where you wrote your order down on a piece of paper and the servers picked them up silently so as not to disrupt the movie.
But most cinemas are just typical garbage big chain locations with way-too-loud, poorly balanced speakers, crappy food, crappy drinks, full of screaming children. Why would I go to all the trouble and expense for an experience that's just worse in every way?
I also prefer watching all content with subtitles, which makes me want to go to the cinema even less because so few showings have subtitles. Given that something like 70% of Gen Zers watch content with subtitles most of the time, I wonder how long it will take that to change?
> Back when I lived in NYC, I used to go to Nighthawk cinemas every once in a while for a date night. We'd pick a movie, shell out for some fancy cocktails and dinner, and enjoy the drinks and food while watching the movie. It was a great experience, really loved their menu. They even had a really smart ordering system, where you wrote your order down on a piece of paper and the servers picked them up silently so as not to disrupt the movie.
This is essentially how the Alamo Drafthouse works as well, and I loved their FiDi location (opened just over a year ago). The Alamo also has a monthly membership for 30 bucks that I used for a long time. Unfortunately, both of their NYC locations are inconveniently located for me, and I eventually switched over to AMC - and the amount of screaming children is insane - why are people bringing children to a PG-13/NC-17 movie?! The Alamo staff will come and shush people talking or disruptive in any way, while my most recent AMC experience had somebody in the theater smoking/vaping pot.
To add some context for those not in the UK or Europe...
I am guessing the advert you are referring to is the "Get lost in great stories" one [1] run in Vue cinemas. Other UK cinemas (Picturehouse, Odeon) mention the "big screen experience" but I think the Vue one is the only one that singles out that watching on a phone / laptop / TV can lead to a negative experience.
It's certainly one of the longer "please switch off your phones" messages, at over two minutes in length.
I used to enjoy seeing the adverts and trailers before a film at the cinema, but that was when I rarely visited. Now that I'm going much more regularly (sometimes multiple times a week), the lack of variety is very obvious: when I am forced to sit through the exact same collection of four or five adverts / trailers multiple times, it gets a bit old.
Of course, in my haste to post, I forgot the most important bit - the link to the advert itself!
They probably run those ads as placeholders until they find some real advertisers. Youtubers employ this practice sometimes.
But what about the children?
A movie in a theater was great for early stage dating. It gets you in a dark place in neutral territory with the other person where you sort of have some privacy but still public enough that it is safe, and you have a good excuse for sitting right next to them.
There you can do things that try to inch up the intimacy but with plausible deniability, such as the classics we've all seen a billion movies and TV shows like hand touching while reaching into a shared extra large popcorn ("it was a better deal than buying two smaller sizes...yeah, that's why we have to share!") or the arms resting on the back of the seat that sort of turns into a side hug.
I don't think that would work with movies at home. It is not neutral territory. There might be parents, or worse, obnoxious siblings around limiting privacy or even actively trying to see how your date is going. For the person who is the guest it isn't as safe as a theater. There isn't an excuse to sit right next to each other so the arm trick is out. You probably each have your own bag of microwave popcorn.
Like many others, there's a lot of reason still, today, to go sit down in a dark theater after spending $15 on a ticket.
Yeah, we have large 4K HDR TVs, but they aren't as large as what's down at my local movie theater. I have a decent sound system in my house, but it's not as loud or tuned as nicely as what's in that theater. Being able to see a film on a large screen is still a unique experience that very few people can truly replicate at home. I still love that experience as it provides a much more immersive way to experience a movie. Certain movies I think require that kind of screen and sound to work properly.
Plus, depending on the movie, the energy in the room of a packed movie theater also plays into that experience. Personally, I am willing to spend that $15 for a ticket to support the kind of films I want to see as well. I feel like I'm throwing a few bucks at the director and saying, thanks for making this, I appreciate it.
(I'm the kind of person who still has a large physical media collection, buys blurays, 4K blurays, etc.)
I went to the movies last weekend. I was one of 5 people in the entire theater.
The posted movie start time was 1:30. At 1:50, the movie still hadn't started. Even the previews hadn't started. They were still spamming us with TV quality advertisements for Coke-a-cola and other stuff I couldn't care less about.
20 solid minutes of ads. Under no circumstances is that acceptable. If I hadn't been with other people I would have walked out and lobbied for a refund. But as it stands, It's hard to imagine why I would go back.
That sounds horrible and rather disrespectful, what a bad experience.
That said, is "coke-a-cola" a humorous spelling (like "Micro$oft") or just a misspelling of Coca-Cola?
just a misspelling. Apparently those time wasting adds don't work.
There are still reasons people might want to go to the theater (and they do since there are some movies like Top Gun and Wakanda Forver have raked in money). One is you don't want to wait. Another would be that you like going to the theater, particularly if you have a nice one nearby. It's an afternoon or night out. A third would be that some movies you want to enjoy with a crowd. End Game or Avatar come to mind.
There are also dates, and it's a place teenagers can hang out, and you something for your kids to do away from the house. The socializing stuff you might not get as much of at home.
I went to the theater a couple months ago because Smile looked like a good enough horror movie that I wanted to see it when it came out. I enjoy the theater experience for certain movies. Dune was a really nice theater experience. There's been a few that were great to see in IMAX 3D, like Prometheus or Tron: Legacy. Infinity War and Endgame were magical becuase of the audience reactions and just they incredible excitement around them across the globe. Granted, that was pre-pandemic, but maybe the latest Avatar recaptures some of that.
For me, it depends on the movie. I'm glad I saw Mad Max: Fury Road on the big screen - it grabbed, and didn't let go until the credits. And the audio is a big component of that (at home, I just have regular headphones).
But for 90% of dramas, comedies, etc.? The 4K TV in the living room will do just fine.
Eh, I disagree on comedies. Seeing a good comedy in a theater is much more enjoyable than watching it at home. Laughter is contagious.
I wonder if anyone here has the AMC A-List subscription. I have had it for years and overall while I don't think I have gotten my money's worth across the entire lifetime of the subscription, overall it is still good value since when some really favorite movies come back I am going multiple times a month in the most premium format. For 25$ a month you get access to all movies playing(with exception to special third party events they play once in a while like "Fathom" events) in all formats. Three movies a week every week. You'd make your money back in essentially one or two of the premium screenings.
Despite this offer in the last two years I still have seen so many non-superhero comic book movies play to an audience of 1-2. (Me and a friend). I sometimes walk by a theater that has literally no one watching. I once watched with the lights on because why not? (there is a light switch located near the entrance)
Went to the movies recently and was disappointed about how bad the screen looked compared to my TV at home. I've got a nice OLED TV, but I was still shocked about how muted the colors were on the screen.
Find the nearest AMC Dolby theater. Everything else stinks if you have a quality setup at home.
The ability to pause, rewind and get up to go to the bathroom changes the experience for the worse. You just don't have to get serious about watching a movie anymore. You don't have to prepare to settle down, be quiet, and focus.
> The ability to pause, rewind and get up to go to the bathroom changes the experience for the worse. You just don't have to get serious about watching a movie anymore. You don't have to prepare to settle down, be quiet, and focus.
I disagree. Nothing is stopping anyone from staying at home and acting like they're in a theater. If that's what you really value you can choose to just ignore any important dialog that you didn't catch the first time instead of rewinding to hear it again. You can be distracted by the fact that you have to pee without pausing the film to run to the bathroom. You can divert your attention while you try to be as silent as possible while eating or opening snacks so as not to annoy anyone else in your virtual theater.
I think that it's far easier to focus on a movie when I'm at home and don't have anyone else talking or kicking seats or getting up and walking between me and the screen. While I have the option to obsessively check my phone while the movie is playing at home somehow I see fewer screens blaze up like beacons when I watch movies with the family than when I'm at the theater.
I can also fully control the lighting and temperature, and all while not spending a fortune on crappy food and drinks.
The one time I actually prefer to see things in a theater are live performances or special events where part of the fun is being in a crowd. I have some good memories of special showings and long awaited releases where the whole audience was buzzing with excitement while lined up outside and cheering and clapping while the film was rolling. None of that is getting serious about and focusing on the movie though, it's more about being a part of a shared experience and that's something genuinely harder to replicate at home.
"Nothing is stopping anyone from staying at home and acting like they're in a theater"
This is incorrect. The temptation to use the deleterious conveniences stops me. Going to the theater forces me into a certain posture.
While framing the watching of a movie as "serious" is probably a bit much I do agree that going to the cinema is a great exercise in focus. The whole place is setup for watching movies and when I'm there I feel engrossed in a way that doesn't happen at home for me. At home everything I watch sort of blurs together into a smear of "content". I can think back on the things I've watched and I do have favorites but I don't have the same visceral memories I have for movies I've seen in the theater. I remember where I was, who I was with, and all the feelings the movie conjured up.
It is certainly less convenient than streaming at home and does cost more but I get the same amount (at least) of entertainment in the moment and the memories are certainly more vivid. That has to be worth something?
It's not that people only go for theme park rides, they'll also go for "kino" movies. That's why Tarantino can still do it. His movies are all about completely immersing the audience in the movie's world and making use of tech and techniques that make for an epic viewing experience.
No one wants to go to the theater for a "basic" (maybe intimate?) movie where the cinematography doesn't really matter, the sound and visual effects aren't interesting, there's no grand cinematic vibe, etc. Don't get me wrong, it might be a great movie, but why would I want to see it in theater instead of at home?
People will go to theaters for Spartacus and 2001: A Space Odyssey, not for Life Is Beautiful or The Pianist.
A more modern example: I'm really stoked to watch The Whale, but I will absolutely watch it at home. I don't see any point in going to the theater for it.
Don't say "No one".
Usually the sound of action movies is too strong for me in theaters and I hate the experience ; I also never got the argument about special effects being better there. I can see them as well detailed on my computer screen, unless you're going to one of those ultra rare 8k laser room.
However, I genuinely really enjoyed seeing Michael Moore and Woody Allen movies in theater. I also loved seeing Lost in Translation on a big screen (and it's opening!, but you could argue that scene was going for the cinematic experience :p)
I would think film criticism is dying as well. Was there a true successor to Ebert? When I think of film criticism now I think of YouTube reviews and not writers who eloquently describe what makes a good movie good.
Mr Plinkett is not everyone's cup of tea for various reasons. But it does some deep dives into some key movies.
The rlm guys are very insightful and have great taste in movies. I think the difference is that they do a great job explaining why a movie is entertaining while Ebert was great at explaining why a movie is art.
RLM guys (at least the main ones) seem great at pointing out when a movie sucks, mostly because of:
- poor structure. Bad setup/payoffs, useless sequences, confusing narrative without any merit behind it
- poor pacing. Too much "brain-off" action, shitty dialog, too fast/slow for the theme
- uninteresting characters, with no redeeming characteristics (e.g. a great actor or enough plot quality to compensate)
These in decreasing order of importance for them -
They will certainly critize other things (plain scenes, bad framing, technical flaws, bad lighting, etc.) but I don't think I've ever seen them give a purely negative review based only on these.
If any of those three criteria above are met, though, (and god forbid all three) they will absolutely pile on a terrible rating with complaints on how the scenes are ugly and general filmmaking is lazy.
Oh, and also, they'll point out most editing errors, seeing as they are editors too.
And insert pointless Star Trek references no matter what, of course
Could someone kindly establish what "RLM" is? Some of us have a enough acronyms in the database already.
Red Letter Media. The clue is "Mr Plinkett"
I'm sorry - I swear I thought the post above mine used the full name.
You are absolutely right (YAAR) about acronyms
I think Half-in-the-Bag (also from RLM) is closer to the Siskel and Ebert style reviews than Plinkett.
Part of the joke with Mr Plinkett is nobody sane would do the sort of "deep dive" he is doing. It's not really meant to be an example of film criticism at its best.
There are plenty of good film critics and film reviewers. I'm actually pretty happy about that. It's just that they're all on places like Youtube, or Letterboxd, among others. Ebert commanded attention and ultimately became the go-to reviewer to reference because he had a major newspaper column and one of the only film review television shows, but now there are so many options that nobody can really be that anymore.
While there are plenty of good critics and reviewers, there are even more terrible ones. But that's just the basic problem of content on the internet recapitulating itself.
In addition to YouTube reviewers, I enjoy reading Emily St. James'critiques.
E.g. Hollywood’s hot new trend: Parents who say they’re sorry
https://www.vox.com/culture/23025832/everything-everywhere-a...
Critics are on YouTube (for better or worse). I rather like "Terry Talks Movies" but he rarely talks about current films.
> if Spielberg can’t even bring people to a movie theatre anymore, then who can?
Big shocker a 75 year old man can't attract kids to the theaters like he used to back in the 80s.
There never were Oscar movies. Maybe for the first or second, but now it's just a good-boy's club of who was a good-boy this year.
I'd disagree. There are a few (or more?) actors, directors and producers that make movies solely for receiving the Oscar nomination/win. One example is "The Deer Hunter".
Note, on looking into provide specifics, this came up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_bait
I can't tell from the summary and have not read IMDB to follow the timelines, but it appears that the Deer Hunter had already been made, but flopped in initial screenings, so they held it back and instead of an initial wide release they showed it to critics who loved it and got it nominated. In other words it wasn't initially made-to-order to cater to an Oscar, but ex-post did it that way because initial audiences hated it.
IMO a big part of the issue is that these media products simply don’t need a full theatrical experience like a more commercialized “popcorn movie” does, so consumers who want an “film” experience don’t go to the expense and hassle of going to the theatre. They just watch it on their TV
This isn't necessarily different from previous years. Hollywood has always had tentpole films fund these types of dramas that they know aren't going to make as much money.
The result is a fall movie season that has manifested the total disinterest of mature moviegoers, who are now unwilling to watch any of the well-reviewed/Oscar contenders.
The author then lists 10 Oscar movies.
They are not dying. The Oscar movie exists & will exist well into the future, even if people aren't necessarily watching it in theaters. Theaters are kind of a bad experience for a few reasons and the home viewing experience keep improving.
Mature films rarely require huge budgets anyways. And are we really lacking in good stories? Hell there's such a back catalog of entertainment I will never get to. We've saturated the market so now movies will be more like the fashion industry. Perhaps if they were to fill the gaps, with say historical dramas from perspectives that aren't usually shown, but that would require real research and work, and true creatives stay as far away from "the industry" as possible these days because that's not what it's about.
Could it be that people consume too much online video to have spare video cycles to see a movie. There is just a glut of audio-visual material out there.
I kinda stopped reading where it started to equate a movie's box office revenue with its success. A successful movie is a movie that entertains its audience, not one that makes a few people rich. The correlation is there, but it's weak.
I don't consider it problematic to see movie theaters go out of fashion and movie makers take a deeper look at what makes their art an art.
Are they even marketing these movies?
> The result is a fall movie season that has manifested the total disinterest of mature moviegoers, who are now unwilling to watch any of the well-reviewed/Oscar contenders. The list keeps piling up: “Till” ($8.6 million total), “The Banshees of Inisherin” ($7.8 million), “TÁR” ($5.1 million), “She Said” ($4.2 million), “Triangle of Sadness” ($4 million), “Bones and All” ($3.7 million), “The Fabelmans” ($3.4 million), “Armageddon Time” ($1.8 million), “Aftersun” ($790,000).
This is the first time I have heard of any of these.
Anyway, my wife and I used to love going to movies...but life changes (COVID followed by young kids) make that a lot harder. Our date nights are much fewer and far between and we prefer to spend them doing more high quality activities together. If we want to sit in silence in close proximity eating some tasty treats staring at a screen why wouldn't we just do that in our own home after the kids are in bed for the night?
I think there are great directors and movies in the adult drama genre but a lot of them are not being made in English anymore.
Too much unrealistic computer graphics in US movies. Also melodramatic story-lines. I no longer watch them.
British movies, on the other hand probably can't afford too much CGI and have more realistic story-lines as well. I've watched several of those in the last few years.
But overall, movies are just no longer on my 'to-do' list.
I've never really understood the hand wringing about this, or the assumption that movie theatres are real cinema, and watching at home is something lesser. As long as films are being made and people are watching them, what does it matter how big the screen is?
For me this is mainly because the home cinema experience is getting better. I want the big screen for good visuals, sound and music. I can watch a story driven movie at home, where I don't need the speakers to drown out the sound of somebody wolfing down popcorn.
In the pandemic I got a lot more sensitive to ‘disgusting’ and the thought of people making dirty popcorn and coke messes makes it hard for me to go back to the theatre. It is going to take something really special to get me to go. I wish they had real 3D IMAX movies at the theatre in Syracuse instead of ‘4d’ movies that seem really cheesy.
The people who used to watch an "Oscar Movie" want to watch independent films right now.
I mean, one part of the problem I see at a local level is Black Panther 2 is currently occupying 50% of available projectors at all of my local movie theatres. I’m sort of just waiting and hoping the silly capeshit phenomenon will die out already. I think we need to see that the cinematic universe concept was a novelty and is extremely difficult to execute, especially when it’s driven by soulless profiteering.
I mean, it’s not at all difficult or dishonest to argue that the MCU was 80 years in the making. More importantly, it was made by people that genuinely cared about comic books and their characters, as opposed to caring about (and subsequently engineering for) shareholder satisfaction.
I used to not take people who grouse about capeshit too seriously. I would go okay, maybe this whole superhero thing is starting to get played out, but I'll go see the next Marvel just to be sure.
Up until Captain Marvel (2019), the Marvel films were solidly entertaining if not great, and very respectful of the characters. There were still some Marvel films like that after that, but most of Phase IV has been a hard skip for me.
Now I'll sometimes watch anime or science fiction on streaming, but the last movie to make me really want to go to the theaters was Maverick.
Agree on all points.
Avengers Endgame had its visible flaws that I was straight up willing to forgive because the seams had just started to rip. Phase 4 just feels like Disney-owned Marvel going
“And for my next trick, uh, uhhhhh, uhhhhhhhh, here’s a twerking She-Hulk? Hello fellow kids.”
Maverick made me finally go watch Top Gun.
The only other movie I really wanted to see on the silver screen this year besides Maverick... had frickin' Sonic the Hedgehog in it.
> I’m sort of just waiting and hoping the silly capeshit phenomenon will die out already.
Ha ha, capeshit. I confess, I can't stand super hero movies either.
Instead I've been working through the "1001 Film to See Before You Die" and it regularly reminds me what film can be (has been).
As an aside, I also remember wondering when rap music would die out. We may both be waiting a long time.
It IS capeshit. The majority of the fans of capeshit today we're bullying the old school capeshit fans 20+ years ago.
Arguably many "Oscar movies" are not that great. There are often good films nominated but I am always surprised to look back post-1980s or 90s and see how many fairly mediocre films, many of which have since receded from critical awareness, have won "Best Picture"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_Award_for_Best_Picture
Which films are you referring to? I wouldn't say that an Oscar nomination is definitive proof of quality, but it certainly is a strong signal of quality, which can't be said about similar award shows (Grammys).
Has anyone crunched the numbers on what percentage of Oscar winning movies are themselves focused on Hollywood and it's early days vs the overall percentage?
This has been at least a 5 year long trend, exacerbated by the pandemic. The Big Picture is basically about this https://www.amazon.com/Big-Picture-Fight-Future-Movies/dp/05... and that came out in 2018.
I don’t think it is going to end the culture of famous actors and directors but will at least level the field a bit. The amount of available quality entertainment on streaming sites is immense and it affects the balance of the decision between going out to the cinema and see an outstanding movie or stay home in the couch and see and okay TV show.
I still tend to watch the best picture nominees, provided I don't have to go to a theater to do so.
Oscars are meaningless anyways.
One of my favorite subscriptions is Regal Unlimited. ~$25 a month and I can see as many movies in theaters as I want. Going to the movies is still something I do pretty often, and it’s certainly one of my greatest joys.
Maybe it is about the cost of tickets and availability of streaming services
Oscar should start listening to Gregg Turkington from On Cinema if they want to save mature cinema and their awards show from declining box office earnings and ratings.
Isn't it about time?