Movies ain't what it used to be?

[Big Jim P]

All movies should by law be sequels of the Blues Brothers.

Agreed.

[New new nebraska]

Is it just me, or are most of the movies produced in recent times (10's, 00's), just CGI with lacking storylines?

Well Inception was fantastic and Inglourious Basterds was fairly close to artsy for a mainstream movie. 3D is a crappy gimmick that even now vastly improed does nothing. Avatar was waaaaay overrated. People thought it was great. Thank God The Hurt Locker (great movie, I also recomend K-19 The Widowmaker also directed by Kathryn Bigelow) took best picture and best director. Avatar was a predictable, recycled plot with a fancy background. In Inception you care about the chracters. It has catharsis and feeling. But people just seem to want to go say "oooohhh, aaaahhhhh, look t all the colors" after a movie.

[Arkinesia]

In Inception you care about the chracters. It has catharsis and feeling.

So you care about corporate agents and randomly introduced children who have no background in the story? God damn, kid, go read some decent literature. Inception's characters were friggin' horseshit. The average audience member can't connect to them at all.

Inception, summarized, is:

Action fight scenes
Destructoporn

[WWII History Geeks]

In Inception you care about the chracters. It has catharsis and feeling.

So you care about corporate agents and randomly introduced children who have no background in the story? God damn, kid, go read some decent literature. Inception's characters were friggin' horseshit. The average audience member can't connect to them at all.

Inception, summarized, is:

Action fight scenes
Destructoporn

I like it.

[Techno-Soviet]

Is it just me, or are most of the movies produced in recent times (10's, 00's), just CGI with lacking storylines?

Well Inception was fantastic and Inglourious Basterds was fairly close to artsy for a mainstream movie. 3D is a crappy gimmick that even now vastly improed does nothing. Avatar was waaaaay overrated. People thought it was great. Thank God The Hurt Locker (great movie, I also recomend K-19 The Widowmaker also directed by Kathryn Bigelow) took best picture and best director. Avatar was a predictable, recycled plot with a fancy background. In Inception you care about the chracters. It has catharsis and feeling. But people just seem to want to go say "oooohhh, aaaahhhhh, look t all the colors" after a movie.

1. Never saw Inception.

2. Inglorious Bastards was shit. No plot, just random killing. Tarantino can't make good movies, apparently, without feet and killing.

3. Avatar was decent, but minor niggles about how it's a total rip off of Dances with Wolves.

4. The Hurt Locker was decent. Some parts were stupid as shit (let's split up and cover more ground. Let's go into this dark alleyway without squad support, even though we're EOD and we have a packbot for this type of shit.)

[Lord Tothe]

Most good movies are old monster movies with bad plaots, with some guy and a few robots making fun of it.

^ This. Who else isn't allowed in theaters anymore due to excessive MST3K-ing of movies in real time?

[Yafor 2]

It's the culture. A 3+ hour movie just doesn't work in this day and age, no profit for theaters who have to cut their showings by half.

Intermissions are long gone.

Only for Hollywood films. Bollywood rarely gives a movie under 2:45 (I can't think of one of the top of my head) and here in India, even theaters showing Western movies (like most major theaters do) have intermissions (or "intervals", as we call it).

That doesn't make all Bollywood films good, by the way; most barely even approach tolerable (though they're fun). So to the OP: I'm pretty sure length does not equate to a good film or not.

[Iniika]

I've noticed a lot that movies are relying a lot more on appealing visuals than plot or character development. Part of this is the availability of the technology, and part of it is the decreasing attention span of the viewer. Movies, and indeed most mainstream media sell best to the lowest common denominator. These are the people who don't want to think about the deeper meaning of the plot, or how the characters interact and build chemistry. It's simply the changing face of entertainment. Tits, explosions and 3D, and that's about it.

I don't like it myself. Sitting through a movie that flashes a bunch of moving colors at me but has no intellectual or cultural relevance or flat out destroys suspension of disbelief by having no convincing connection to reality or even to itself isn't worth my $13, honestly, and I don't actually pay to see most new movies when they come out anymore, for this reason.

[Inertina]

Law of built-in audiences. It's harder to market an original movie than it is to market a sequel/remake that already has a fanbase. Hence why most summer movies tend to be a plethora of numbers or 're-imaginings'.

That said, I disagree with the idea that old movies were inherently better. I've seen plenty of terrible films from the 50s and 60s, and seen some truly breathtaking films come out of the last decade. There's always crap being produced, just as there's usually some gems which turn up as well.

[Conserative Morality]

I've noticed a lot that movies are relying a lot more on appealing visuals than plot or character development. Part of this is the availability of the technology, and part of it is the decreasing attention span of the viewer. Movies, and indeed most mainstream media sell best to the lowest common denominator. These are the people who don't want to think about the deeper meaning of the plot, or how the characters interact and build chemistry. It's simply the changing face of entertainment. Tits, explosions and 3D, and that's about it.

I don't like it myself. Sitting through a movie that flashes a bunch of moving colors at me but has no intellectual or cultural relevance or flat out destroys suspension of disbelief by having no convincing connection to reality or even to itself isn't worth my $13, honestly, and I don't actually pay to see most new movies when they come out anymore, for this reason.

*sigh* Why does everyone repeat the same talking point? "Attention spans are decreasing, movies are getting worse, and so on" without any real basis for such an assumption other than the whimsical imaginings of nostalgia. It's sad, really.

[Iniika]

I've noticed a lot that movies are relying a lot more on appealing visuals than plot or character development. Part of this is the availability of the technology, and part of it is the decreasing attention span of the viewer. Movies, and indeed most mainstream media sell best to the lowest common denominator. These are the people who don't want to think about the deeper meaning of the plot, or how the characters interact and build chemistry. It's simply the changing face of entertainment. Tits, explosions and 3D, and that's about it.

I don't like it myself. Sitting through a movie that flashes a bunch of moving colors at me but has no intellectual or cultural relevance or flat out destroys suspension of disbelief by having no convincing connection to reality or even to itself isn't worth my $13, honestly, and I don't actually pay to see most new movies when they come out anymore, for this reason.

*sigh* Why does everyone repeat the same talking point? "Attention spans are decreasing, movies are getting worse, and so on" without any real basis for such an assumption other than the whimsical imaginings of nostalgia. It's sad, really.

Well, alternatively, the creativity well has completely run dry, leaving the movie industry the only option of playing mad libs with plot and character archetypes and hiding the shoddy mash up of nonsense with flash and bang computer imaging and 3D whoring, while breathing a collective style of relief when the public eats it up like it's the greatest thing on Earth.

It's got nothing to do with "the whimsical imaginings of nostalgia". Shit is shit whether it's current or archaic. But shit becomes much more annoying when rendered in CG and blown up in 3D and heralded as a masterpiece.

[Conserative Morality]

Well, alternatively, the creativity well has completely run dry, leaving the movie industry the only option of playing mad libs with plot and character archetypes and hiding the shoddy mash up of nonsense with flash and bang computer imaging and 3D whoring, while breathing a collective style of relief when the public eats it up like it's the greatest thing on Earth.

It's got nothing to do with "the whimsical imaginings of nostalgia". Shit is shit whether it's current or archaic. But shit becomes much more annoying when rendered in CG and blown up in 3D and heralded as a masterpiece.

Was popular shit any less annoying when it wasn't blown up in 3D, yet still heralded as a masterpiece?

[UberWeegeeia]

If you ask me, whenever somebody tries to make a comedy, it's all one sex joke after another.
The Three Stooges would've shown those pussies like Seth Rogen how to be funny.

[Coccygia]

Abso-tootely-lutley. Movies have sucked increasingly since about the mid-70's and get worse every year. I watch coming attractions and that's the worst part of going to a movie. It used to be the fun part. Movies have gotten so bad that I find myself thinking, "I HATE movies." Of course the industry does slip up and a few good movies get made now and then but the average quality is utterly abysmal.

[Iniika]

Well, alternatively, the creativity well has completely run dry, leaving the movie industry the only option of playing mad libs with plot and character archetypes and hiding the shoddy mash up of nonsense with flash and bang computer imaging and 3D whoring, while breathing a collective style of relief when the public eats it up like it's the greatest thing on Earth.

It's got nothing to do with "the whimsical imaginings of nostalgia". Shit is shit whether it's current or archaic. But shit becomes much more annoying when rendered in CG and blown up in 3D and heralded as a masterpiece.

Was popular shit any less annoying when it wasn't blown up in 3D, yet still heralded as a masterpiece?

I think I already answered that when I said "But shit becomes much more annoying when rendered in CG and blown up in 3D and heralded as a masterpiece". Like I said, shit is shit no matter when it's produced. The popularity of shit comes from marketing to the right demographic. The current trend of CG shit is simply the kind of shit I have to deal with recently, so it's the shit I bitch about, and get irritated at when people try to sell it to me as though it's gold.

[Conserative Morality]

I think I already answered that when I said "But shit becomes much more annoying when rendered in CG and blown up in 3D and heralded as a masterpiece". Like I said, shit is shit no matter when it's produced. The popularity of shit comes from marketing to the right demographic. The current trend of CG shit is simply the kind of shit I have to deal with recently, so it's the shit I bitch about, and get irritated at when people try to sell it to me as though it's gold.

Yes, but movies aren't progressively getting worse, I mean, for Christ's sake, look at Tron! Cheap effects and poor taste will be, and always have been, around.

[OMGeverynameistaken]

Spoilers:
The only reason people think movies from before the 90's were good is because most people here weren't going to movies before the 90's and, therefore, never saw half of the crappy movies that came out in the 80's, 70's and 60's. For every Lawrence of Arabia there were at least four Plan 9's. The Great Escape probably generated a craze for motorcycle stunts, just like Avatar created this goddamn 3D idiocy. I imagine that a year after The Great Escape debuted people were groaning something along the lines of, "ANOTHER motorcycle stunt movie? I miss the days when we tripped horses with wires to make stunts, none of this fancy-pantsed machinery."

It's not like everybody suddenly got hit with a lazy-beam in 1989.

[Your Assholes]

"Movies ain't what it used to be." (?) It only seems that way because the crappy ones of old naturally fade into obscurity, while we're left with the greats.

[Arkinesia]

If you ask me, whenever somebody tries to make a comedy, it's all one sex joke after another.
The Three Stooges would've shown those pussies like Seth Rogen how to be funny.

Humor is dictated by culture. We can't make potty jokes any more because diarrhea isn't regular (read some of Luther's writings, you'd be amazed at many uses of the word "shit" a church father had left in him), we can't make jokes about stupidity because everyone's dumber than a box of hair (ooh see what I did there?), so basically we're left with sex because there are so many laughable sexual stereotypes in today's culture, and our scientists are so obsessed with sex that it's almost the only research we hear of nowadays.

That said, in spite of its occasional sexual humor may I refer you to the Blood And Ice Cream trilogy (though not due to be completed in 2012 thanks to…err…Seth Rogen actually)? Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are pretty solid when it comes to laying out good old British humor.

They'll be in a film with Rogen next year actually…

[Yootopia]

Is it just me, or are most of the movies produced in recent times (10's, 00's), just CGI with lacking storylines?

It's just you. Most of the films from Back In the Day when LoR was made were shitey cowboy flicks or similar.

[Cosumar]

This shold be in arts and fiction

[Cannot think of a name]

Take into consideration: You get the quality of movie you pay for.

[Unchecked Expansion]

Pixar manage to make some quite emotionally deep films that are still considered 'for children'. Up had a heartbreaking intro sequence, and Toy Story 3 is pretty poignant

[Arkinesia]

Take into consideration: You get the quality of movie you pay for.

I suppose you mean inversely, I find better films in bargain bins than I do selling for full price.

Pixar manage to make some quite emotionally deep films that are still considered 'for children'. Up had a heartbreaking intro sequence, and Toy Story 3 is pretty poignant

Pixar is modern filmmaking made into art. It became painfully obvious with Wall-E and has been consistent since.

[The Corparation]

Most good movies are old monster movies with bad plaots, with some guy and a few robots making fun of it.

^ This. Who else isn't allowed in theaters anymore due to excessive MST3K-ing of movies in real time?

Double this^ No one has ever made a better TV episode/movie then MST3k: Manos: The Hands of Fate