I feel like movies haven’t changed much at all since around mid 90s. Like as long as current day fashion doesn’t appear in the movie, then i don’t see how a person would even be able to tell if a movie came out today vs. twenty years ago.
Effects have gotten better, but they’ve made everything else worse. Costume? Add it in post. Proper lighting? Add it in post. The entire set? Add it in post.
Add second screen syndrome and every new movie and TV show is perfect to have on in the background while you scroll through Facebook
Effects CAN be better, but studios often don’t give them enough time anymore, so they get rushed and can often look worse than stuff they did 20 years but took their time on.
The corridor digital guys have a video where they compare what an animator can do for a shot given 5 minutes, 5 hours, 5 days.
I don’t disagree. Practical effects are are almost always preferable to CGI, especially with things like explosions and fluid movement. I’m just saying that special effects themselves have largely improved, to the detriment of the medium as a whole
I think I get your point better now, CGI has improved and is now being used for everything because it’s “good enough” but this has lead to a reduction in quality because no one bothers to do anything properly any more?
There’s actually quite a lot that’s changed in cinema since then. Since digital cameras and effects are incredibly common these days, we light everything very flatly so that it’s easier to change in post without reshoots. It makes lighting abysmally bad. (See wicked where the actress in vibrant green makeup looks a little grey the entire movie).
Pacing is also much faster, there’s more emphasis on not confusing audiences rather than letting things have mystery. Dialogue is more quippy rather than grounded.
Oh! And since there’s no more mid-budget movies, there’s a whole lot less comedies running around. Everything is either high budget, wall-to-wall action or grounded indie films with very little in-between.
It is now! After I watch it. Thanks for the suggestion.
I was referring to the aforementioned YouTuber who blames the lack of mid-budget movies for cinema being so boring now. And blames several things for the death of mid-budget movies.
Lol, that is a great response. I must warn you though, Hail, Caesar! is not the Coen brothers best movie — well, that’s a high bar. But it does feature some communists politely kidnapping George Clooney and nearly even recruiting him!
The pacing got much faster over time. Comparing LotR with a new MCU film, you clearly notice the shift. (Admittedly, LotR was a little slower than the average movie at the time)
That’s not a valid comparison, lotr was waaaay slower and longer than movies of its time. If you want to compare against a modern mcu movie then you have to compare to a similar type of movie, like for example even years before lotr look at men in black from 1997
They’re called “popcorn movies” and they’ve been around at least as long as I have. I personally don’t like the MCU films very much, but their existence and popularity doesn’t bother me any. (Except that now people think even more wrong things about Norse mythology, but I guess that’s better than the Nazis having a monopoly on it. Hel is a very nice girl.) This year was pretty great for good movies and games.
I feel like if you’re comparing it to modern movies, the MCU isn’t really fare. Compare it to Dune maybe. I’d guess the new Dune is still paced faster with more action, but I’m not really sure. They’re probably not that dissimilar. Probably the biggest difference is Dune (part 2 in particular) has a constant building of tension, with no release until the end. LotR builds and releases tension in cycles.
Arguably Dune should be even slower than LotR, as almost all the action in the Dune books is at best mentioned, but it isn’t focused on. Meanwhile the new Dune movies, especially the second, added a ton of fighting that wasn’t in the books and doesn’t really fit the story of the books. The LotR books are slow, but it does give quite a bit of detail on fights and battles.
its the buildup of the story, its so much better that way. MCU is just cocaine for a quick fix, hence why its just garbage these days, other than having to push out that much garbage to fund thier streaming service.
You’re comparing episodic spectacle movies whose source is also episodic and based on visual spectacle to a set of multi book arced epic adventure movies that are all need to be viewed to complete the story.
LOTR is MEANT to be slower, that’s one of the things that makes the books so good as well!! They take their time. I’m also weird though; one of my favorite movies is 2001: A Space Odyssey.
I REALLY hate the new fight montages where they jumpcut every punch like in Matrix 4. They never let it settle enough for you to get your berings, feels like it’s just a rabid weasel with a gopro starapped to it.
Hrm, I was thinking more about well choreographed fight scenes than modern frantic pacing.
I … kind of lost my own train of thought and didn’t really directly reply sensibly to your comment, sorry.
I went off into how a bunch (not all, but a good deal) of modern fight choreography has basically been ruined by both the fighters and the camera being able to be fully digital… and forgot to write that part, lol.
Whole lotta stuff is a comic book fights now, uses cartoon logic, isn’t visceral and technical, isn’t compelling if you’ve ever been in a real fight.
… anyway, the modern frantic pacing of everything is done basically because a rapid, jarring scene transition catches your eyes when you, who have a negative attention span due to brainrot, are about to look away.
So, in one sense, they are achieving their goal, keeping the attention of those with no ability to focus… but in another way… there is no meaning they wish to convey.
There’s no real message to slop.
But when you firehose it very fast, in high volumes and vibrant colors… well it does hold a lot of people’s attention very well.
So, given my previous definition of art, and hyperfrantic pacing for a dumb story full of plot holes, that move so fast you can’t keep up with them visually or conceptually… where that is the point, to be a slop-hose of meaninglessness?
Like the other comment says, the CGI doesn’t hold up that well. Luckily, the LotR trilogy doesn’t rely on it that much. I still hope they have the original unedited footage stored somewhere and we get a new version with modern CGI capabilities. That’d be amazing to see. It holds up mostly fine though, so it isn’t a huge issue.
And then the better tools just scrape most of it, because it’s considered then-a-days as “boring” and “not catchy”. I recently ran some old songs through Suno. Sure, the tracks are catchy, but they scraped most of the buildup, intentionally overlapping sounds and noise and after listening to some originally different tracks, they kind of had the same beat and vibes in the newly generated tracks. Hope that gets better instead of worse.
Better tools, as in rendering technology and hardware, not as in like AI or something that would modify it. If they do it they need to keep the original format and only re-render the CGI components.
I feel like movies haven’t changed much at all since around mid 90s. Like as long as current day fashion doesn’t appear in the movie, then i don’t see how a person would even be able to tell if a movie came out today vs. twenty years ago.
Easy: the effects got worse /hj
Effects have gotten better, but they’ve made everything else worse. Costume? Add it in post. Proper lighting? Add it in post. The entire set? Add it in post.
Add second screen syndrome and every new movie and TV show is perfect to have on in the background while you scroll through Facebook
Effects CAN be better, but studios often don’t give them enough time anymore, so they get rushed and can often look worse than stuff they did 20 years but took their time on.
The corridor digital guys have a video where they compare what an animator can do for a shot given 5 minutes, 5 hours, 5 days.
Some have, some haven’t. I feel like physical explosions often work better for instance.
I don’t disagree. Practical effects are are almost always preferable to CGI, especially with things like explosions and fluid movement. I’m just saying that special effects themselves have largely improved, to the detriment of the medium as a whole
I think I get your point better now, CGI has improved and is now being used for everything because it’s “good enough” but this has lead to a reduction in quality because no one bothers to do anything properly any more?
plus most of its catering to asia/specifically china at least for action shows, thats why Rock still get roles.
There’s actually quite a lot that’s changed in cinema since then. Since digital cameras and effects are incredibly common these days, we light everything very flatly so that it’s easier to change in post without reshoots. It makes lighting abysmally bad. (See wicked where the actress in vibrant green makeup looks a little grey the entire movie).
Pacing is also much faster, there’s more emphasis on not confusing audiences rather than letting things have mystery. Dialogue is more quippy rather than grounded.
Oh! And since there’s no more mid-budget movies, there’s a whole lot less comedies running around. Everything is either high budget, wall-to-wall action or grounded indie films with very little in-between.
Give us back mid-budget original films or Patrick H Willems will start kidnapping Hollywood execs one by one!
Is this somehow an allusion to Hail, Caesar! by the Coen brothers?
It is now! After I watch it. Thanks for the suggestion.
I was referring to the aforementioned YouTuber who blames the lack of mid-budget movies for cinema being so boring now. And blames several things for the death of mid-budget movies.
Lol, that is a great response. I must warn you though, Hail, Caesar! is not the Coen brothers best movie — well, that’s a high bar. But it does feature some communists politely kidnapping George Clooney and nearly even recruiting him!
Im one bus away from Hollywood. I have some 6" zip ties and a chipped kitchen knife. LETS GO
Interesting you chose to include this tidbit.
Also, do you mean chipped as in damaged, or has some kind of technology in it? 😁
What do you think?
The pacing got much faster over time. Comparing LotR with a new MCU film, you clearly notice the shift. (Admittedly, LotR was a little slower than the average movie at the time)
That’s not a valid comparison, lotr was waaaay slower and longer than movies of its time. If you want to compare against a modern mcu movie then you have to compare to a similar type of movie, like for example even years before lotr look at men in black from 1997
They’re called “popcorn movies” and they’ve been around at least as long as I have. I personally don’t like the MCU films very much, but their existence and popularity doesn’t bother me any. (Except that now people think even more wrong things about Norse mythology, but I guess that’s better than the Nazis having a monopoly on it. Hel is a very nice girl.) This year was pretty great for good movies and games.
I feel like if you’re comparing it to modern movies, the MCU isn’t really fare. Compare it to Dune maybe. I’d guess the new Dune is still paced faster with more action, but I’m not really sure. They’re probably not that dissimilar. Probably the biggest difference is Dune (part 2 in particular) has a constant building of tension, with no release until the end. LotR builds and releases tension in cycles.
Arguably Dune should be even slower than LotR, as almost all the action in the Dune books is at best mentioned, but it isn’t focused on. Meanwhile the new Dune movies, especially the second, added a ton of fighting that wasn’t in the books and doesn’t really fit the story of the books. The LotR books are slow, but it does give quite a bit of detail on fights and battles.
its the buildup of the story, its so much better that way. MCU is just cocaine for a quick fix, hence why its just garbage these days, other than having to push out that much garbage to fund thier streaming service.
You’re comparing episodic spectacle movies whose source is also episodic and based on visual spectacle to a set of multi book arced epic adventure movies that are all need to be viewed to complete the story.
LOTR is MEANT to be slower, that’s one of the things that makes the books so good as well!! They take their time. I’m also weird though; one of my favorite movies is 2001: A Space Odyssey.
deleted by creator
Cellphones changed shape.
90s movies did not have ‘MillenialSpeak’ / ‘Marvel-isms’. They had cheesy one-liners. Which were better.
Club scenes are no longer filled with Goths, they’re filled with Jocks and Popular Girls.
Scores are generally much less unique and interesting these days.
More frantic pacing, contemplation is not allowed, outside of arthouse films.
I REALLY hate the new fight montages where they jumpcut every punch like in Matrix 4. They never let it settle enough for you to get your berings, feels like it’s just a rabid weasel with a gopro starapped to it.
Art is conveying what you intend to convey, through constraints, bound by limitations.
The cleverness, the beauty… is not in disregarding those limitations, those handicaps.
It is in accepting them, and finding a way to do the job anyway.
They literally nauseate me. I would assume that wasn’t the intent, but to each their own.
Hrm, I was thinking more about well choreographed fight scenes than modern frantic pacing.
I … kind of lost my own train of thought and didn’t really directly reply sensibly to your comment, sorry.
I went off into how a bunch (not all, but a good deal) of modern fight choreography has basically been ruined by both the fighters and the camera being able to be fully digital… and forgot to write that part, lol.
Whole lotta stuff is a comic book fights now, uses cartoon logic, isn’t visceral and technical, isn’t compelling if you’ve ever been in a real fight.
… anyway, the modern frantic pacing of everything is done basically because a rapid, jarring scene transition catches your eyes when you, who have a negative attention span due to brainrot, are about to look away.
So, in one sense, they are achieving their goal, keeping the attention of those with no ability to focus… but in another way… there is no meaning they wish to convey.
There’s no real message to slop.
But when you firehose it very fast, in high volumes and vibrant colors… well it does hold a lot of people’s attention very well.
So, given my previous definition of art, and hyperfrantic pacing for a dumb story full of plot holes, that move so fast you can’t keep up with them visually or conceptually… where that is the point, to be a slop-hose of meaninglessness?
I think I would call that Anti-Art.
Worse than ‘bad’ art. It is its antithesis.
After Sept 11 films moved into the superhero fantasy land en masse, where good guys swoop in from the skies and save the US.
i recently rewatched the first jurassic park and wow is it so incredibly different from new movies. i don’t dislike it though.
Pratt-era is just bad, especially with pratt him self. the original JP used pratical effects and animatronics, plus a little cgi.
That’s actually quite an interesting topic. Some good things in the comments, too.
Like the other comment says, the CGI doesn’t hold up that well. Luckily, the LotR trilogy doesn’t rely on it that much. I still hope they have the original unedited footage stored somewhere and we get a new version with modern CGI capabilities. That’d be amazing to see. It holds up mostly fine though, so it isn’t a huge issue.
Found George Lucas.
Lol. Hopefully not that far. They should try to capture the intent of the original, just with much faster technology and better tools.
And then the better tools just scrape most of it, because it’s considered then-a-days as “boring” and “not catchy”. I recently ran some old songs through Suno. Sure, the tracks are catchy, but they scraped most of the buildup, intentionally overlapping sounds and noise and after listening to some originally different tracks, they kind of had the same beat and vibes in the newly generated tracks. Hope that gets better instead of worse.
Better tools, as in rendering technology and hardware, not as in like AI or something that would modify it. If they do it they need to keep the original format and only re-render the CGI components.