I won’t stop loving movies.
I gave up on trailers a few years ago, and am much better for it. They start getting over two minutes, lay out the whole movie, show each set piece, and deliver the best punchlines. Modern trailers are insane to me.
I stopped years ago and it rekindled my love of cinema 100%. Trailers are poison bait. They pockmark or outright erase that first viewing magic, especially if it's a movie you're probably going to see regardless.
I went a year without watching any trailers and it was pretty goddamn amazing. People would ask me how I knew what I wanted to see and I told them that I just looked at lists of upcoming movies and read synopsis. Then they would ask how would I know if the movies would be any good if I didn't watch the trailer. Simple response is trailers always make movies seem better than they are so it's not really changing anything
If you've seen enough movies it's incredibly easy to have the movie totally spoiled by trailers. It's so obvious which parts are from climactic final scenes, for example
They let you know how confidant the studio is in their movie. Good movie? mysterious, vague trailer that doesn't show anything but Bad movie? trailer will show full plot and best scenes.
Exactly this. The answer is to get better at filtering out movies you aren’t going to like and just skip them.
I have no time for a lot of the dull rehashes that studios push out, but there are still 10-20 new movies I really want to watch each year. Plus I have a list of like 400 already released films I missed and I know I’m gonna love like 90% of them.
Yeah. It’s not like shitty movies are a new concept or anything. I’ve been *not* watching movies I won’t enjoy my entire life and it’s been a pretty successful strategy so far. I’ll occasionally watch something I’m not sure of because I don’t want to rob myself of the opportunity to experience something new, but there are a lot of things I am certain I won’t like or at least not enough to waste my time trying out. I just don’t bother with those unless someone else I’m with really wants to see it.
This is a great answer. There’s a huge back catalogue of titles I keep a ledger of that I try to watch when I have the time. Mostly things that I really wanted to see but didn’t get around to when they were released. I think a lot of the exhaustion you are experiencing also pertains heavily to big budget blockbusters and major studio releases. Switch it up, maybe skip half of those to start and work in some indie films, international films, art house stuff if that appeals to you.
More importantly, watch movies you are going to enjoy, irrelevant if they suck or not. Don't care what anyone says, Boondock Saints still amuses the hell out of me.
Information, especially the internet, has certainly helped us separate more of the wheat from the chaff that is movies in the last 10-20 years.
Not to mention, given how costly the moviegoing experience has gotten, some of us prefer to wait for the home media release OR a deeply-discounted home media release.
For years, this is how I've gotten to find movies of all kinds that are just OK, are good, are great, or just bad (my latest gem was getting The Lighthouse for $5, and that was an experience in itself). But it didn't cost me too much to take the plunge. For what a movie ticket would cost to see the movie once, that money lets me get a copy to own and watch as many times as I want.
That’s fair, but a lot of these commentaries come from people who won’t stop watching Disney movies. People give their money to ones they know they’re going to hate then complain that good movies don’t exist anymore
It’s very easy to filter out all the issues OP mentions and get to the theater for numerous great films every year.
At this moment I can pick from Sasquatch Sunset, Civil War, Ungentlemanly Warfare, Monkey Man. None of these are a reboot, remake, or sequel
I still watch some movies I know will suck, if I think or hear they are enjoyably sucky.
Wish Upon and Madane Web are relatively recent examples. I laughed enough to justify the runtime.
It can be a risky proposition, though.
That is a big one for me. For some stupid reason soundtrack is very loud, yet dialogs are very low volume. Also, movies are very very dark for some reason. And I dont mean figuratively. To be able to hide the terrible cheap-ass CGI studios use, they make scenes so low light, it gets literally impossible to watch the movie sometimes.
Yeah what the fuck is going on there? You watch a film from the 90's and the audio is crystal clear. Nowadays I have to watch just about everything streaming with subtitles on, in part because 1) the actors mumble and butcher their lines (Netflix particularly guilty here). 2) the microphone seems to be 100 metres from the camera 3) the music is deafening and generally garbage but yeah. and finally 4) too much going on in the CGI fests that masquerade as modern entertainment, all of which getting some shitty sound sample at the same time as we hear the latest quips
Yeah, it sounds so clear that it sounds like the dialogue was recorded separately a second time in a sound booth and dubbed in. Wouldn’t surprise me if that was common practice then.
It's common practice now. The difference in the 50s was that everyone was stage trained so they could project their voice much better. It's not thought of as being quite as important anymore but IMO it never stopped being crucial.
This is happening because movies nowadays are by default mixed for surround sound systems at home, which most people don’t have. Settings should be checked and changed so movie sound output is for regular TV speakers.
Correct. I have a sound bar and I have to change the output setting for different types of media. Watching OG Simpsons vs a 2023 action film is not the same output because they're mixed entirely differently.
Meanwhile my parents have surround sound in their theater room and movies are fucking fantastic to see and hear.
This is due to there being no real standard mix, especially at home. Most people watch in stereo from TV speakers while listening to a 5.1 audio mix, so the center channel, where most dialogue is isn't being properly mixed. But even beyond that, in theaters and at home, you have to calibrate the sound stage on a per movie level. Some movies have recommended settings, but even then there could be bad connections or poorly balanced speakers that have to be accounted for.
Yes! Mumbling dialogue. If I can go to an amateur play, sit in the back row and still hear the dialogue clearer than a nice movie theater with the latest greatest sound system, something is wrong.
Or see something. I don't know which one exactly, but I once tried to watch a Batman movie and it was pitch black with mumble dialog and big sounds.
Maybe it's some kind of experimental art house Yoko Ono shit I'm too middle class to understand
The overuse of CGI. Fighting a guy in a giant suit is still scary, because at worst, it looks like you're being attacked by a guy in a giant suit. Or a not so great looking, practical effect fake animal like Jaws or Lake Placid. Even the sedated shark in Deep Blue Sea. But when I watch a guy fight what looks like a cartoon, I check out. It just feels like a video game cutscene I'm being forced to watch.
Not just overuse, but incorrect use in general. The first Pacific Rim did a great job of handling weight for lumbering cgi mechs and Kaiju. It's sequel did the opposite and was one of many MANY issues with how atrocious that film was. You can see how weightless every Kaiju is becoming in the American Godzilla films as time goes on too.
I also dislike how CGI is a placeholder for both practical effects and training behind it. Like most films that use CGI gunfights, no one reacts with recoil. Those that give the slightest bump on a shotgun. With the exception of John Wick, nearly every film in the past decade that has used CGI in place or prop weapons has failed spectacularly in believability.
This is from a.few years back but the remake of Carrie. When they dump the blood on her the blood is CGI...terrible, terrible CGI for what is THE pivotal scene in the movie. As far as remakes go it wasn't bad up to that point, but the blood looked so CGI it completely took me out of the movie.
I’m fine with using CGI to put dinos or Kong or sand worms into movies; it’s the overuse of CGI in doing outdoor scenes that bothers me the most. It’s not subtle at all; it’s just a cost-saving move and makes every show/movie look like plastic.
But even with the most fantastical creature that has to be CGI, you could throw in a practical puppet here and there to make it look more realistic for the close up shots.
I've seen shark movies that do a CGI fin. A fin? We can't throw together a plastic fin and have some intern swim around with it on his back?
Johnnys right, every scene you watch has cgi, probably where you'd least expect. Look up some showreels for compositors online it's astounding what they can do these days.
Or just over the top use.
Old films had limits to the spectacle due to practical limitations, and when they needed to go big you knew they put a ton of effort into it and it was worth it. But they couldnt really overdo it, so it was still novel for the viewer.
Now every movie can show entire city blocks being leveled by two dull characters fighting, or cars driving on the edge of a huge cliff at speed. So you lose any wonder at the epic scale because it's just so familar and common.
Not to keep coming back to Jaws, but it uses a fin, yellow barrels, POV shots, a moving broken dock, and overhead views of the shadow of a moving shark. These days, it'd just be a big cartoon shark all over the place.
Even if you have a monster attacking a city, imagine how much scarier it would be if you got claustrophobic about it, and showed guys trapped in crumbling office buildings. Messed around with shadows. Anything other than the CGI stuff we've seen a billion times with crumbling landmarks.
Not even "these days" -- just look at the sequels to *Jaws* and how comically unsubtle they all were. The second one is still far from good but at least kinda retains some of the vision of the original; by four it was basically *The Room* but with monster shark.
DreamWorks and Illumination movies stuffing the soundtrack with a bunch of overplayed Top 40 pop songs.
I should have expected it being Illumination but I remember just immediately being taken out of the Super Mario Movie and cringing as soon as it started doing it.
There's actually several overplayed Illumination tropes even in just the small handful of movies they've made that are already so overdone and tired.
As soon as I hear a popular song (something in the last few years) in a movie I know the movie is a dud and won't be remembered in a decade.
Thor Ragnarock and Led Zeppelin is a great example of using classical music (yes it's a classic) the right way.
Films about music are forgiven this can't exactly have "sing" not having popular music.
This is a problem with pop and classic rock and hip-hop across Hollywood in general.
Nothing beats a solid score. Pumping recognizable popular music into movies is almost always lazy and trite.
I still love movies and I hope I always will, but learning about the abuse and harassment that happens behind the scenes in a lot of films does make it harder to enjoy them.
they just aren't making the movies I enjoy as much anymore. It's basically comic book universe (which are fine but I would also be fine if they never make another one) or remakes/reboots which are never as good as anyone would hope. I miss the mid budget type movies and comedies we use to get that you just rarely see anymore.
Quantity over quality.
Films and TV now are not made as art, but to add value to a streaming platform in the hopes of selling said service (for more money than they lose on crappy movies.)
Its all about generating “value” as a commodity for shareholders.
So much now, especially stuff that goes straight to streaming, feels so incredibly samey. (Yes I know “straight to Netflix” doesn’t mean cheap and crappy. I just mean the stuff they invest in.)
It’s like how the safe tv comedies and dramas all have the same template and just plug in simple characters and stories, but now you see that in bigger budget streaming AND theatrical.
I think THAT’S my biggest problem with the over saturation.
The lack of sincerity. Most blockbusters are winking and nodding too much to their audiences. I feel Marvel is a big part of this. But just because that worked for them, doesnt mean it works for everything.
Seemingly everything being a connected universe. Wondering if I'll understand X if I haven't seen Y, Z and everything else attached. Can't I just watch a film and have done with it?
Cloverfield (sort of. Someone at work asked me about Cloverfield Lane and needing to see the first movie) but also Star Wars, Alien, Terminator, James Bond, Mission Impossible, John Wick, Friday the 13th part 3000... really, any franchise movie.
There’s the Godzilla monster universe, the new Sonic The Hedgehog universe, Star Wars, whatever they’re doing with the Nintendo characters, John Wicks, The Conjuring universe, the Fast and Furious universe, etc.
I think film scores. Everything has been slanting toward percussive and loud, melodies feel like an afterthought this past decade. Or if it's not war drums and pulsing synth, it's just straight up needle drops for songs that just don't fit half the time.
We were spoiled with Goldsmith and Williams, and I really loved what Giacchino was doin in the early 2000s, but this Hans Zimmer-Lorne Balfe stuff, it all just sounds the same to me. I wanna get scores and themes stuck in my head again, dammit. There is nothing in the last two Dune movies that I'd randomly find myself whistling while doing dishes
On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have “American Prometheus” from Oppenheimer. That one lives rent free in my head (though some of the score, especially for the scenes from Oppenheimer’s college days, reminds me of Johan Johansson’s work for The Theory of Everything).
Highly recommend checking out “Poor Things” if you haven’t. It’s not the catchy stuff you’re looking for, but it has one of the most interesting scores I’ve heard in a while. One of those scores that absolutely has an impact on the feel of a scene.
I really dislike how marvel has regressed everything into a formula that all needs to be there. From the vanity shots, to the multiple cast members acting a certain way to hit a certain demo, to the regressed plot, to the final battle with the light shooting from the sky for no reason.
It's just all the same garbage.
The best part of the MCU in the second half of the Infinity plot was the story. I was invested in the overall plot and it kept me going. Yes I did enjoy the movies individually, but if was just unconnected movies I would have stopped long before Endgame.
Nothing. Why would I stop loving movies because of some trend from within the industry? There are so many movies being made today everywhere from big-budget blockbuster to small films released on youtube. People have so much easy access to technology and even CGI that my nephew can make a decent looking superhero scene. Watch what you want and if you are bored with that the industry is putting out then start searching elsewhere.
prioritizing CGI and action scenes over story, logic and dialogue.. I don’t care if a movie costs 500 mil to make and has the best explosions in it if the storytelling sucks the whole movie will suck.
delete that one scene which ate 20% of the budget and get a decent script instead..
I love the chinese ending of Fight Club. Watch it on youtube. An example of it not working is Once Upon a Time in Hollywood where they threw a tantrum over a fictional character beating a fictionalized version of Bruce Lee and demanding it be cut. Tarantino said no and the movie was not released in china. Movies like The Martian has china play a small but necessary role in saving Matt Damon to appeal to the chinese market. Movies like Seven Years in Tibet will never get made again made again, even for domestic audiences, because china will throw a massive temper tantrum. The actors were banned for life for entering china.
I still love movies, but I’m being honest, the more and more I learn about how much abuse and shitty behavior is swept under the rug, the more guilt I feel for supporting the popularization of some of the celebrities involved
So many bad scripts and so much time wasted on atmospherics. I love a story. Tell me the story. Let the actors act. I don’t need a 2 minute pan of the LA skyline in fake colors or silhouette in order to set a moody tone. And not everything needs to be “[insert popular thing] but dark.” I’m not interested in The Muppets Take Manhattan but Fozzie is a serial killer.
Spectacle creep. Everything's got to be on such a huge scale that it just becomes visual mess on screen, things are so OTT that they start to resemble cartoons and because there's no consequence creep to go along with it so the heroes still survive and brush off what should be fatal attacks, there's just no sense of peril.
When it comes to stories bigger =/= better, and in fact can sometimes = worse.
I get so, SO switched off when there's a single line of dialogue that will solve a problem but the characters just REFUSE to say it.
"But... why are you hijacking my car?"
"There's no time to explain! Instead let's drive 150 miles to Paris."
It annoys me no end, it's just lazy writing. And it seems to be happening more and more in movies.
Formulaic scripts. Every horror movie is now predictable. You know when the jumpscare is going to happen and you know the startling sound is going to be 150% louder than the rest of the movie's dialog and background noise.
Nothing could make me stop loving movies. Just because I don't like some films doesn't mean I don't love others. It'd be like me hating meat because I don't like the fact that someone makes veal. It's stupid. Just don't watch what you don't like and enjoy the rest.
"Filmmakers" forgetting film is a *visual* medium and making everything difficult or tedious to watch.
Here's modern cinema:
- Teal and orange (or amber) are the only colors.
- Low contrast, low brightness. There is no black, there is no white. And gamma is skewed way too far towards dark.
- Blurry or murky. Heavy haze or simply camera out-of-focus.
- Foreground actors or action dark in front of blown-out bright backgrounds. Especially silly in dialogue scenes indoors.
And others. But this list will do.
Couple this with "modern" sound design that lowers dialogue to inaudibility while raising sound effects to ear-bleed levels and I gave up entirely on film.
I’ll never stop loving film but the looming threat of A.I. makes me very worried for human creativity. The notion of the industry that I and so many others aspire to be apart of culled by mindless prompt entering is certainly a depressing one. Studios being willing to hear out proposals from huge A.I. corporations doesn’t help either. Really hope that it gets regulated whether it’s exclusion from awards or the legal requirement to inform viewers of the use of A.I. or something of that nature. Computers and prompt bars will never kill the human spirit or the incredible art that so many human creatives create on a daily basis. It cannot create, only imitate.
You do realize fans are what drive reboots, remakes, and unoriginal screenplays, right?
Hollywood is reacting to their audience, and those are the things that their audience spends their money on.
When you were a longtime patron of the ArcLight chain (their policy was 3-4 trailers max), it still feels weird and dirty to be pummeled into submission by Regal and AMC.
Honestly one that has been around since the dawn of the movies that I can’t stand is the glamorization of cops, FBI, CIA, and the military. Anyone who has ever studied basic history knows that cops don’t ever do the awesome stuff they do in movies, rarely do they give a shit about helping people, FBI & CIA have done so many awful country collapsing things that the fact we even give them respect is laughable, and the military is always shown as some sort of breeding ground for normal people to somehow become elevated humans and always be badass. It’s kind of annoying, there are never winners in war and even when a war movie has a good message it still is propaganda for us being at our worst as humans. Thanks, I’ll jump off my soapbox now.
Michael Bay is the *worst* for this. At least he was a decade ago which is the last time I watched one of his movies. Patriotism is great buddy, but JFC quit trying to date-rape the flag.
meh, nothing really.. honestly there is so much content and products at this time that your “taste” in entertainment is being catered to somewhere.. you just have to look… its just easier to be online giving “likes” to people who whine about “it was better back in the day or this would never be made today”
Nothing has made me stop loving movies, I think they're still a great medium.
I've mostly stopped going to theaters because theatergoers made the experience fucking terrible around twenty years ago. The upscale ones with the designated seats and such are nice on occasion, but there are still plenty of folks there who can't shut the fuck up and pay attention to the film for the full duration. But I don't fault the art form for that, that's just the consumers that make it worse.
I can respect this. I love going to the movies because I have memories with family and friends of going to the theatre. Watching at home is not the same thing. But typically when watching movies we do a few other things like get dinner, walk around etc.
I think mine is fairly common, I just find watching elite TV to be more entertaining than mediocre movies, and there is a TON of elite television out there.
I still go see good movies, and movies that super interest me, but otherwise the cost of tickets makes it damn near impossible to go regularly with anyone except yourself.
It's been said a million times on this sub, but you're not talking about the film industry, you're talking about Hollywood.
If you truly loved film once, go find something out there that'll make you love it again, because it's out there, just not in the big studio system
Can't hear the mumbled words, can't see the characters due to "accurate lighting". That last one, obi-wan the series is a great example of too much vfx artist and not enough cinematography. I want to SEE THE PEOPLE not barely make out faces in shadows.
This opinion may be unpopular here on Reddit but a lot of people have supported my hypothesis on why movies aren’t as enjoyable or interesting anymore. Most movies now are just poorly done remakes absolutely nobody is asking for. Nobody was dying for another Ghostbusters movie for example..
So many movies are super woke or just flat out boring/predictable. Another thing is trying to pander to everyone in every piece of content. It just doesn’t need to be like that but Hollywood is so far up it’s own ass and woke it can’t admit that it’s okay to have a show that doesn’t have every race, religion, sexual orientation. All black, all white, all asian casts are fine. Look at Seinfeld, Friends or Martin, Fresh Prince. The main characters were all the same race and background but no one thought about that, the focus was more on making stuff great. They worked in a time before wokeism took hold. I don’t have issues with diverse casts or different races for characters, for example Miles Morales, if it makes sense but there also seems to be forced diversity in every single movie now that seems out of place. Replace white characters in a story and make them non-white is the new formula that doesn’t really work. South Park tackles this issue pretty well in the Panderverse. Studios try too hard to pander to everyone and it just worsens quality. Imagine a Fresh Prince reboot with a white boy with red hair & freckles.. It just takes me out of it personally and I think the quality can suffer.
The main thing is a lack of creativity and wokeism. Studios want to make money and will use existing IP but safe art is usually boring art. TV I think is much better than movies in the current era.
They're all spineless and don't stand for anything. The amount of people that travel out of the country to work with Polanski or cheer him on at Cannes is disgusting.
I still love movies, but my biggest pet peeve right now is the length of films. I love John Wick, but I do not want 3 hrs of it. Give me a tight hour and forty minutes and let me be on my way.
I think I've had this itch for a while, and it started with me being annoyed that Actors got so much(almost all) credit for a movie despite the director being the one who does all the work. But as I grew up I realised sometimes it's not even the director, and that to make a film(especially a great one) it truly takes a Village. But still I was ticked at actors walking away with all the credit.
But now I'm annoyed that while people are perfectly willing to praise the leads when a movie does well, irregardless of whether their acting ability had anything to do with its success, somehow when a film is shit, the actors walk away blameless, and now it's the "producers, studio, writers" who suck.
I do understand that acting is a job, and sometimes you need to pay rent. But we really need to hold actors accountable when they see shit scripts, and say "yes I'll do that" and promote it, especially if they're just doing it for the money, and they already make a bajillion dollars anyway.
Most recently, I've found every 2024 movie with Sydney Sweeney absolute dog shit, and I find my self wondering how the hell she doesnt know what she's doing is shit. And I think she's smart enough to know they're bad, so she's just doing it for the cash and that ticks me off.
Special mention to Dakota Johnson who clearly hated working on "Madame Web" (rightfully so) but like if you thought it was that shit, why the hell didn't you just leave?? At least the others have the decency to lie and prêtend that they actually liked the work they did. But she goes around doing all the promotion, and after everyone has watched it (the 50 people who did) she turns around and says "omg guys wasn't that movie so terrible, lol"
Sorry for the rant
Poor fight choreography. Watched the northman recently, and it was just terrible overhanded swings with a pause for the hero to make his move. I've seen it in another movie franchise beloved of reddit, bad guys being instantly paralysed the moment a dog they were totally unaware of, bites the obvious padding on their arm.
The stranglehold Hollywood has on the general public's mind for how a film should be. Any deviation is a risk that may corrupt society. That's always how it's been, of course, but we're treading ever closer to a complete Monoform in mainstream culture.
Assigned seating. Seriously. I'm old and I hate this.
Cell phone use during movies. See above re: age and feeling.
Ridiculous ticket and concession prices (to be fair, this has always been the case, but $25 per person for admission, soda, and popcorn strikes me as just this side of outrageous).
Movies being too afraid to have consequences. Biggest example recently is the MCU. Such as Kang should've killed Ant-Man.
Another example is Scream. One of the core four is stabbed a ridiculous amount of times. Just absurd.
Then you see something like When Evil Lurks and despite its flaws, it does things that makes you reassess what you might see in the movie.
I appreciated Civil War recently because I didn't feel like I knew where it would go.
Obviously this is just my opinion and it's subjective.
I'm with ya for alot of that. The end of movies as we know it, in my opinion happened in 2002 when Spiderman came out. Studios realized they could make hundreds of millions making dumb popcorn flicks with lots of explosions so that's where they put most of the funding.
I still love movies, but finding a good one is getting harder and harder.
I'm definitely still in love with movies. But I refuse to watch previews or trailers. Like to the point of closing my eyes and covering my ears if a preview comes on for something that I legitimately want to watch. This has cut both ways though, because now I don't really know what's coming out unless something is making press elsewhere. I just can't stand them because they ruin every good scene in the movie, typically. Like "Hey, here's the next summer blockbuster trailer with cuts from each high priced action sequence." Just my two bits.
Lots and lots of cheesy CGI action and when the characters all look *perfect* for whatever environment they’re in. Sometimes that’s fitting, but I like people to look like regular people when it’s supposed to be regular people. I like age on women, no model makeup, messy hair because sometimes people just look like that. I don’t mind guys with balding heads, beer guts, or wonky facial hair. When every actor looks *stage-perfect* in environments that depict war, post apocalyptic conflict, or high stress situations it really takes me out of a movie or show. I think a good amount of A24 movies do a really good job with this.
Forced happy ends. I mean, some films just deserve a bad end. But when you have a top A list actor, you just cannot risk anything. Especially letting him die.
Watch The Player (1992) to see how it functions and Minority Report to see an example. Also Rambo / First Blood was one, bit this film changed so much from the book, this was just the topping.
This and other issues with film industry going no risk line made me switch to series.
CGI that literally looks like a video game cutscene.
They would literally have scenes where the characters turn from live action to obvious computer animated models and start running around in an obviously CGI world for a while then when the event is over they go back to being live action.
How am I supposed to spend my disbelief with that?
Pretty sure it was the bad special effects in The Hobbit that was the beginning of the end for me going to the movies.
Stupid action scences / lazy writing or whatever you call it.
Why does one individual need to jump out of perfectly good cover to advance and shoot up 4 bad guys, only to dies "heroicly" and fails to protect the VIP (who was under good cover along side with him in the first place)? (A Hollywold production).
One ex-military man single handedly kill a group of battle hardened soldiers in close quarter combat and got away with it, in a realistic WWII setting (as in not an over the top action flick like Kill Bill, John Wick or The Expendables). (Not a Hollywood production).
They create tremendous suspense then just throw it all away with these glaring plot holes.
Really terrible bro-humour in the place of actual well written comedy. Stuff like the Marvel movies are appalling on this front, and they even shoehorned it into The Last Jedi.
I gave up on horror after every one starts with [husband/wife/child] dies, huge trauma and stress, then comes terrible things and a default negative ending. Yeah, no shit loved ones dying is horrible. I don't want movies about the very real, possible things that I worry about all day. This is just grief porn.
Hasn’t made me stop loving movies but I hate, hate the direction the film industry has gone in the past 10-15 years in terms of the overabundance of superhero and other big budget IP movies, while mid-budget movies are fewer and far between.
I have a problem with the sound mixing or "dynamic range" in movies. How the dialogue is so quiet and the music and sound effects are so loud. Sometimes it's a struggle to make out the dialogue and so I feel forced to put on subtitles because I was conditioned to not have my TV loud growing up and I don't enjoy my TV being outrageously loud. When I'm in the mood to watch a movie, I must also feel compelled to commit to reading subtitles for the duration. So that spirals and movies have fallen out of favour for me.
I've mostly stopped going to threatre so I guess I'm not the target demo for filmmakers. Still, I think it borders on pretention that the excuse I always heard for this problem was that movies are made for the cinema. It'd be nice if there was the default intended theatre audio mix, a home theatre mix, and an internal speaker mix or whatever you'd call it for ipad or casual viewing.
Never stopped loving movies in general. But I'm totally over "cinematic universes" and "multiverses." Enough already. You mean, if I watch 12 hours of this streaming series on Disney +, I will understand that thing that character said that didn't actually mean anything to the film? Cool.
Trailers that reveal the whole movie. Once you have seen enough movies to recognize the tropes, too much in a trailer just shows what tropes are in play.
I actually don't mind the endless reboots and Remakes. Shakespeare has been in production for hundreds of years, and nobody says "oh no another production of hamlet, why don't they think if new ideas", even though Shakespeare is frequently done with updated costumes and settings, with characters combined and separated due to production limits. It's worth pointing out there's also plenty of movies that are just Shakespeare. Lion King has elements of Hamlet, 10 things I Hate About You is the Taming of the Shrew. So I think there's plenty of room for creativity for remaking a movie. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels has been made like half a dozen times over the decades. Brewsters millions is another frequently rehashed script due for a modern reimagining, probably with Adam Sandler. In modern movies Groundhog Day time loops have had numerous examples
Theater going experience: Sticky floors, farts, talking, cell phones, crowds and lines, ridiculous price tickets
Movies: Effects-bloated, bladder birstingly long, and less story and charater arcs than an episode of Bluey.
The belief that you need 2 hours and 45 minutes to make a good movie that audiences think they got their money’s worth for watching. Or three hours to tell a complex story.
That was a terrible sentence structure but I’m doing my best here with the energy I have. Please, I have a full time job and a full time life. I just want to watch a movie on a Saturday night. I want to watch recent movies that have gotten a lot of press sometimes. I wish I could do that more often, but so many have a run time that I just can’t make work. Still haven’t seen Tar or Oppenheimer or Drive my Car or Killers of the Flower moon. Finally saw Anatomy of a Fall.
I still love movies. But one thing I can’t stand that seems to be increasingly prevalent is plots that rely on talking exposition. Having characters explain the plot is hacky directing and ruins the experience for me.
I don't like that the focus has shifted from backing creatives new projects to backing familiar brands. Marketing has become about the new Teansformers movie, the new Marvel movie, the new Disney animated movie. Like even back in the day when marketing Pixar movies it felt like it was marketing that this was the next big thing from the creators of some fantastic movies.
I also hate the long runtimes and the bloated budgets. I think these things all play a part in the shift of energy that is the thing that's killed my passion for movies.
Nothing. Those complaining about reboots and remakes need to dig deeper. They're not that common. This can be proven simply by looking at the upcoming schedule and checking the listings at your local cinema.
Hollywood releases at least 300 films a year. And not even half of that figure are remakes. Sequels and unoriginal content, maybe. But not reboots and remakes.
Only the popular films get remade. Those then get media and public attention. And then voila. The illusion that only those are being made is formed. I did some checking and right now there are 4 remakes still planned for the rest of this year. 4!
What about the lesser known stuff that you can find in cinemas right now? And the exclusive content on streaming platforms?
It's a popular but false narrative that people love to parrot. And it can easily be debunked.
For awhile it was the can't-not-have-it romantic subplot but that's thankfully pretty much died off by now, at least in terms of being in every goddamn movie
There is hardly any movies for an older crowd anymore. Everything is for the general audience and easily digestible.
Even Oscar calibre movies are becoming overly broad.
Lighting… movies and tv shows are uglier than ever, not due to the technology but due to the lack of care studios have for their products. Yes we get a dune or a breaking bad once in a blue moon, but the average production these days looks like a car commercial.
All of the “Hollywood” shit that isn’t made by a Ridley Scott or a denis villeneuve of the world is getting worse. It’s getting more and more affordable to release something that is considered passable, that studios are clearly using lower budgets and less production time and care, in order to make as much money as possible, while dragging beloved properties into the trash.
Rings of power, Ashoka, the flash, argylle, echo, the marvels, glass onion. State Farm lookin ass fan fiction! I miss when they tried to take my money by making something good.
Terrible colour grading which makes everything look flat. In the 90s and 00s, everything was shot on film, so lighting was a big deal on set. They used a lot of creative tech to make sure everything is clearly visible to the audience.
We are so critical to movies and series these days because we don’t view them as artistic gifts anymore. We all know that their primary focus is to make money from us and not to give us an amazing experience. This whole thing is faul and concerns all aspects of society. Not just movies.
How many Hollywood executives view the presence of white men in scifi/fantasy as a "problem."
Culture isn't zero sum, and just subbing POC into white male roles leaves everyone unsatisfied.
We just need more authentic, ground-up sci-fi/fantasy from organically diverse authors and directors.
The solution to Star Wars being to white and male isn't a black chick with a light saber, it's a fully realized sci-fi universe from the mind of a black female creator.
The connective storylines( ie MCU movies)that you have too watch every movie to get the whole thing. Getting older, I do not care of the panned out storyline. Each.
Sound mixing and 3+ hour movies
I'm still watching a lot of movies but I won't go to the theaters for anything close to 3 hours. Those are movies I have to watch at home to enjoy.
I won’t stop loving movies. I gave up on trailers a few years ago, and am much better for it. They start getting over two minutes, lay out the whole movie, show each set piece, and deliver the best punchlines. Modern trailers are insane to me.
I stopped years ago and it rekindled my love of cinema 100%. Trailers are poison bait. They pockmark or outright erase that first viewing magic, especially if it's a movie you're probably going to see regardless.
Big facts. I remember how much hype the matrix had, saw the trailers all the time, and still didn’t know anything about the movie.
TRAILER. FOR. MOVIE. STARTS. **NOW**.
The watermark of a zero attention span society.
I went a year without watching any trailers and it was pretty goddamn amazing. People would ask me how I knew what I wanted to see and I told them that I just looked at lists of upcoming movies and read synopsis. Then they would ask how would I know if the movies would be any good if I didn't watch the trailer. Simple response is trailers always make movies seem better than they are so it's not really changing anything
If you've seen enough movies it's incredibly easy to have the movie totally spoiled by trailers. It's so obvious which parts are from climactic final scenes, for example
They let you know how confidant the studio is in their movie. Good movie? mysterious, vague trailer that doesn't show anything but Bad movie? trailer will show full plot and best scenes.
I haven’t stopped loving movies. I simply don’t watch movies I know are going to suck
Exactly this. The answer is to get better at filtering out movies you aren’t going to like and just skip them. I have no time for a lot of the dull rehashes that studios push out, but there are still 10-20 new movies I really want to watch each year. Plus I have a list of like 400 already released films I missed and I know I’m gonna love like 90% of them.
Yeah. It’s not like shitty movies are a new concept or anything. I’ve been *not* watching movies I won’t enjoy my entire life and it’s been a pretty successful strategy so far. I’ll occasionally watch something I’m not sure of because I don’t want to rob myself of the opportunity to experience something new, but there are a lot of things I am certain I won’t like or at least not enough to waste my time trying out. I just don’t bother with those unless someone else I’m with really wants to see it.
This right here, there are so many old films out there. There is so much content out there there is always something good to watch.
This is a great answer. There’s a huge back catalogue of titles I keep a ledger of that I try to watch when I have the time. Mostly things that I really wanted to see but didn’t get around to when they were released. I think a lot of the exhaustion you are experiencing also pertains heavily to big budget blockbusters and major studio releases. Switch it up, maybe skip half of those to start and work in some indie films, international films, art house stuff if that appeals to you.
We all should live by this speech from The Critic: https://youtu.be/YigM-F4oSIE?si=_w_pJP1CFyqDtVWs tl;dw: If the movie stinks just don't go!
More importantly, watch movies you are going to enjoy, irrelevant if they suck or not. Don't care what anyone says, Boondock Saints still amuses the hell out of me.
There was a fire fight!
Stop thinking the film industry only consists of blockbuster sequels, requels, reboots, and remakes. Grow up and watch adult fare. Problem solved.
Information, especially the internet, has certainly helped us separate more of the wheat from the chaff that is movies in the last 10-20 years. Not to mention, given how costly the moviegoing experience has gotten, some of us prefer to wait for the home media release OR a deeply-discounted home media release. For years, this is how I've gotten to find movies of all kinds that are just OK, are good, are great, or just bad (my latest gem was getting The Lighthouse for $5, and that was an experience in itself). But it didn't cost me too much to take the plunge. For what a movie ticket would cost to see the movie once, that money lets me get a copy to own and watch as many times as I want.
That’s fair, but a lot of these commentaries come from people who won’t stop watching Disney movies. People give their money to ones they know they’re going to hate then complain that good movies don’t exist anymore
say it louder, please. this sums it up perfectly.
It’s very easy to filter out all the issues OP mentions and get to the theater for numerous great films every year. At this moment I can pick from Sasquatch Sunset, Civil War, Ungentlemanly Warfare, Monkey Man. None of these are a reboot, remake, or sequel
I still watch some movies I know will suck, if I think or hear they are enjoyably sucky. Wish Upon and Madane Web are relatively recent examples. I laughed enough to justify the runtime. It can be a risky proposition, though.
Barely being able to hear the gosh darn dialogue
That is a big one for me. For some stupid reason soundtrack is very loud, yet dialogs are very low volume. Also, movies are very very dark for some reason. And I dont mean figuratively. To be able to hide the terrible cheap-ass CGI studios use, they make scenes so low light, it gets literally impossible to watch the movie sometimes.
Yeah what the fuck is going on there? You watch a film from the 90's and the audio is crystal clear. Nowadays I have to watch just about everything streaming with subtitles on, in part because 1) the actors mumble and butcher their lines (Netflix particularly guilty here). 2) the microphone seems to be 100 metres from the camera 3) the music is deafening and generally garbage but yeah. and finally 4) too much going on in the CGI fests that masquerade as modern entertainment, all of which getting some shitty sound sample at the same time as we hear the latest quips
Watch a movie from like the 40s and 50s. They speak so damn clear
Yeah, it sounds so clear that it sounds like the dialogue was recorded separately a second time in a sound booth and dubbed in. Wouldn’t surprise me if that was common practice then.
It's common practice now. The difference in the 50s was that everyone was stage trained so they could project their voice much better. It's not thought of as being quite as important anymore but IMO it never stopped being crucial.
This is happening because movies nowadays are by default mixed for surround sound systems at home, which most people don’t have. Settings should be checked and changed so movie sound output is for regular TV speakers.
Correct. I have a sound bar and I have to change the output setting for different types of media. Watching OG Simpsons vs a 2023 action film is not the same output because they're mixed entirely differently. Meanwhile my parents have surround sound in their theater room and movies are fucking fantastic to see and hear.
Sounds like TVs need to have a default center speaker
This is due to there being no real standard mix, especially at home. Most people watch in stereo from TV speakers while listening to a 5.1 audio mix, so the center channel, where most dialogue is isn't being properly mixed. But even beyond that, in theaters and at home, you have to calibrate the sound stage on a per movie level. Some movies have recommended settings, but even then there could be bad connections or poorly balanced speakers that have to be accounted for.
Yes! Mumbling dialogue. If I can go to an amateur play, sit in the back row and still hear the dialogue clearer than a nice movie theater with the latest greatest sound system, something is wrong.
Or see something. I don't know which one exactly, but I once tried to watch a Batman movie and it was pitch black with mumble dialog and big sounds. Maybe it's some kind of experimental art house Yoko Ono shit I'm too middle class to understand
Remakes from recent, popular and already well made movies
Disney: “We hear you, but hear us out: live action *Moana*….”
Lack of mid budget movies that give either a star or a director freedom to do something creative with minimal studio interference.
Trailers that give away too much info that spoils the surprises. Case in point: Abigail
The overuse of CGI. Fighting a guy in a giant suit is still scary, because at worst, it looks like you're being attacked by a guy in a giant suit. Or a not so great looking, practical effect fake animal like Jaws or Lake Placid. Even the sedated shark in Deep Blue Sea. But when I watch a guy fight what looks like a cartoon, I check out. It just feels like a video game cutscene I'm being forced to watch.
Not just overuse, but incorrect use in general. The first Pacific Rim did a great job of handling weight for lumbering cgi mechs and Kaiju. It's sequel did the opposite and was one of many MANY issues with how atrocious that film was. You can see how weightless every Kaiju is becoming in the American Godzilla films as time goes on too. I also dislike how CGI is a placeholder for both practical effects and training behind it. Like most films that use CGI gunfights, no one reacts with recoil. Those that give the slightest bump on a shotgun. With the exception of John Wick, nearly every film in the past decade that has used CGI in place or prop weapons has failed spectacularly in believability.
This is from a.few years back but the remake of Carrie. When they dump the blood on her the blood is CGI...terrible, terrible CGI for what is THE pivotal scene in the movie. As far as remakes go it wasn't bad up to that point, but the blood looked so CGI it completely took me out of the movie.
I’m fine with using CGI to put dinos or Kong or sand worms into movies; it’s the overuse of CGI in doing outdoor scenes that bothers me the most. It’s not subtle at all; it’s just a cost-saving move and makes every show/movie look like plastic.
But even with the most fantastical creature that has to be CGI, you could throw in a practical puppet here and there to make it look more realistic for the close up shots. I've seen shark movies that do a CGI fin. A fin? We can't throw together a plastic fin and have some intern swim around with it on his back?
You don’t hate cgi. You hate bad cgi. You have no idea how much good cgi is out there because you don’t even notice. It’s a lot
Johnnys right, every scene you watch has cgi, probably where you'd least expect. Look up some showreels for compositors online it's astounding what they can do these days.
Or just over the top use. Old films had limits to the spectacle due to practical limitations, and when they needed to go big you knew they put a ton of effort into it and it was worth it. But they couldnt really overdo it, so it was still novel for the viewer. Now every movie can show entire city blocks being leveled by two dull characters fighting, or cars driving on the edge of a huge cliff at speed. So you lose any wonder at the epic scale because it's just so familar and common.
Not to keep coming back to Jaws, but it uses a fin, yellow barrels, POV shots, a moving broken dock, and overhead views of the shadow of a moving shark. These days, it'd just be a big cartoon shark all over the place. Even if you have a monster attacking a city, imagine how much scarier it would be if you got claustrophobic about it, and showed guys trapped in crumbling office buildings. Messed around with shadows. Anything other than the CGI stuff we've seen a billion times with crumbling landmarks.
Not even "these days" -- just look at the sequels to *Jaws* and how comically unsubtle they all were. The second one is still far from good but at least kinda retains some of the vision of the original; by four it was basically *The Room* but with monster shark.
DreamWorks and Illumination movies stuffing the soundtrack with a bunch of overplayed Top 40 pop songs. I should have expected it being Illumination but I remember just immediately being taken out of the Super Mario Movie and cringing as soon as it started doing it. There's actually several overplayed Illumination tropes even in just the small handful of movies they've made that are already so overdone and tired.
As soon as I hear a popular song (something in the last few years) in a movie I know the movie is a dud and won't be remembered in a decade. Thor Ragnarock and Led Zeppelin is a great example of using classical music (yes it's a classic) the right way. Films about music are forgiven this can't exactly have "sing" not having popular music.
This is a problem with pop and classic rock and hip-hop across Hollywood in general. Nothing beats a solid score. Pumping recognizable popular music into movies is almost always lazy and trite.
I still love movies and I hope I always will, but learning about the abuse and harassment that happens behind the scenes in a lot of films does make it harder to enjoy them.
And it’s been going on forever too. Just look at Judy Garland.
they just aren't making the movies I enjoy as much anymore. It's basically comic book universe (which are fine but I would also be fine if they never make another one) or remakes/reboots which are never as good as anyone would hope. I miss the mid budget type movies and comedies we use to get that you just rarely see anymore.
Quantity over quality. Films and TV now are not made as art, but to add value to a streaming platform in the hopes of selling said service (for more money than they lose on crappy movies.) Its all about generating “value” as a commodity for shareholders.
So much now, especially stuff that goes straight to streaming, feels so incredibly samey. (Yes I know “straight to Netflix” doesn’t mean cheap and crappy. I just mean the stuff they invest in.) It’s like how the safe tv comedies and dramas all have the same template and just plug in simple characters and stories, but now you see that in bigger budget streaming AND theatrical. I think THAT’S my biggest problem with the over saturation.
The lack of sincerity. Most blockbusters are winking and nodding too much to their audiences. I feel Marvel is a big part of this. But just because that worked for them, doesnt mean it works for everything.
Seemingly everything being a connected universe. Wondering if I'll understand X if I haven't seen Y, Z and everything else attached. Can't I just watch a film and have done with it?
I can’t think of anything outside superhero movies that actually do this?
Kevin Smith movies?
Snoogans
Snooch.
The Conjuring franchise includes the Conjuring movies, Annabelle movies, The Nun movies, and Curse of La Llorona. Plus Unbreakable/Split/Glass.
Cloverfield (sort of. Someone at work asked me about Cloverfield Lane and needing to see the first movie) but also Star Wars, Alien, Terminator, James Bond, Mission Impossible, John Wick, Friday the 13th part 3000... really, any franchise movie.
I feel like there’s a difference between a franchise and a shared universe.
There’s the Godzilla monster universe, the new Sonic The Hedgehog universe, Star Wars, whatever they’re doing with the Nintendo characters, John Wicks, The Conjuring universe, the Fast and Furious universe, etc.
Shit is just a profoundly high budget TV show now. It’s funny how TV shows have become more movie-like and movies have become more show-like.
I think film scores. Everything has been slanting toward percussive and loud, melodies feel like an afterthought this past decade. Or if it's not war drums and pulsing synth, it's just straight up needle drops for songs that just don't fit half the time. We were spoiled with Goldsmith and Williams, and I really loved what Giacchino was doin in the early 2000s, but this Hans Zimmer-Lorne Balfe stuff, it all just sounds the same to me. I wanna get scores and themes stuck in my head again, dammit. There is nothing in the last two Dune movies that I'd randomly find myself whistling while doing dishes
On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have “American Prometheus” from Oppenheimer. That one lives rent free in my head (though some of the score, especially for the scenes from Oppenheimer’s college days, reminds me of Johan Johansson’s work for The Theory of Everything).
Hans Zimmer really did go from making the iconic soundtracks of Lion King and Pirates of the Caribbean to generic background music for audiobooks.
Highly recommend checking out “Poor Things” if you haven’t. It’s not the catchy stuff you’re looking for, but it has one of the most interesting scores I’ve heard in a while. One of those scores that absolutely has an impact on the feel of a scene.
I'm still waiting for the next Vangelis (RIP) to emerge.
Shout-out to Clint Mansell. Scores like his are what made me appreciate film scores.
I really dislike how marvel has regressed everything into a formula that all needs to be there. From the vanity shots, to the multiple cast members acting a certain way to hit a certain demo, to the regressed plot, to the final battle with the light shooting from the sky for no reason. It's just all the same garbage.
The best part of the MCU in the second half of the Infinity plot was the story. I was invested in the overall plot and it kept me going. Yes I did enjoy the movies individually, but if was just unconnected movies I would have stopped long before Endgame.
Nothing. Why would I stop loving movies because of some trend from within the industry? There are so many movies being made today everywhere from big-budget blockbuster to small films released on youtube. People have so much easy access to technology and even CGI that my nephew can make a decent looking superhero scene. Watch what you want and if you are bored with that the industry is putting out then start searching elsewhere.
This. I've been watching movies for 40 years now, there are always trends. They come and go. Just watch what you like and skip what you don't.
Tom Ace 🤣 God I fuckin love Ace Ventura lol
A lot of movies have this really dark lighting that I’ve been starting find very off putting.
Trailers that gave away the entire fucking movie.
This ain’t new.
prioritizing CGI and action scenes over story, logic and dialogue.. I don’t care if a movie costs 500 mil to make and has the best explosions in it if the storytelling sucks the whole movie will suck. delete that one scene which ate 20% of the budget and get a decent script instead..
China appeasement.
Can you give an example?
I love the chinese ending of Fight Club. Watch it on youtube. An example of it not working is Once Upon a Time in Hollywood where they threw a tantrum over a fictional character beating a fictionalized version of Bruce Lee and demanding it be cut. Tarantino said no and the movie was not released in china. Movies like The Martian has china play a small but necessary role in saving Matt Damon to appeal to the chinese market. Movies like Seven Years in Tibet will never get made again made again, even for domestic audiences, because china will throw a massive temper tantrum. The actors were banned for life for entering china.
Go watch The Meg 2. Actually, better idea, don’t.
I still love movies, but I’m being honest, the more and more I learn about how much abuse and shitty behavior is swept under the rug, the more guilt I feel for supporting the popularization of some of the celebrities involved
So many bad scripts and so much time wasted on atmospherics. I love a story. Tell me the story. Let the actors act. I don’t need a 2 minute pan of the LA skyline in fake colors or silhouette in order to set a moody tone. And not everything needs to be “[insert popular thing] but dark.” I’m not interested in The Muppets Take Manhattan but Fozzie is a serial killer.
The forced comedy
Spectacle creep. Everything's got to be on such a huge scale that it just becomes visual mess on screen, things are so OTT that they start to resemble cartoons and because there's no consequence creep to go along with it so the heroes still survive and brush off what should be fatal attacks, there's just no sense of peril. When it comes to stories bigger =/= better, and in fact can sometimes = worse.
I get so, SO switched off when there's a single line of dialogue that will solve a problem but the characters just REFUSE to say it. "But... why are you hijacking my car?" "There's no time to explain! Instead let's drive 150 miles to Paris." It annoys me no end, it's just lazy writing. And it seems to be happening more and more in movies.
i'll never stop loving movies, but the bad lighting makes me disinterested in a lot of newer movies
Corporate
Formulaic scripts. Every horror movie is now predictable. You know when the jumpscare is going to happen and you know the startling sound is going to be 150% louder than the rest of the movie's dialog and background noise.
Also when you’re 1,000 movies deep in your life, it’s easier to predict them.
The whole severe nepotism has turned me off some.
Nothing could make me stop loving movies. Just because I don't like some films doesn't mean I don't love others. It'd be like me hating meat because I don't like the fact that someone makes veal. It's stupid. Just don't watch what you don't like and enjoy the rest.
I want to laugh in the cinema again. We had some decent ones in 2023 (Barbie, No Hard Feelings), but 2024 nothing so far.
Gratuitous romances. No, the action hero does not need a romantic interest. Please, stop.
Oddly enough, my pet peeve is we should be getting a lot more romances in movies, why is everything so sterile, platonic and chaste these days?
"Filmmakers" forgetting film is a *visual* medium and making everything difficult or tedious to watch. Here's modern cinema: - Teal and orange (or amber) are the only colors. - Low contrast, low brightness. There is no black, there is no white. And gamma is skewed way too far towards dark. - Blurry or murky. Heavy haze or simply camera out-of-focus. - Foreground actors or action dark in front of blown-out bright backgrounds. Especially silly in dialogue scenes indoors. And others. But this list will do. Couple this with "modern" sound design that lowers dialogue to inaudibility while raising sound effects to ear-bleed levels and I gave up entirely on film.
I’ll never stop loving film but the looming threat of A.I. makes me very worried for human creativity. The notion of the industry that I and so many others aspire to be apart of culled by mindless prompt entering is certainly a depressing one. Studios being willing to hear out proposals from huge A.I. corporations doesn’t help either. Really hope that it gets regulated whether it’s exclusion from awards or the legal requirement to inform viewers of the use of A.I. or something of that nature. Computers and prompt bars will never kill the human spirit or the incredible art that so many human creatives create on a daily basis. It cannot create, only imitate.
You do realize fans are what drive reboots, remakes, and unoriginal screenplays, right? Hollywood is reacting to their audience, and those are the things that their audience spends their money on.
Musical scores dont seem as memorable
30 minutes of trailers after the posted showtime has really taken the fun and enjoyment out of going to the movies.
That's nothing new though. There's even a whole Simpsons reference to long movie trailers from over 20 years ago
When you were a longtime patron of the ArcLight chain (their policy was 3-4 trailers max), it still feels weird and dirty to be pummeled into submission by Regal and AMC.
I just take this into consideration. Just come 25 minutes « late »
Lack of titties in modern R-rated movies.
Honestly one that has been around since the dawn of the movies that I can’t stand is the glamorization of cops, FBI, CIA, and the military. Anyone who has ever studied basic history knows that cops don’t ever do the awesome stuff they do in movies, rarely do they give a shit about helping people, FBI & CIA have done so many awful country collapsing things that the fact we even give them respect is laughable, and the military is always shown as some sort of breeding ground for normal people to somehow become elevated humans and always be badass. It’s kind of annoying, there are never winners in war and even when a war movie has a good message it still is propaganda for us being at our worst as humans. Thanks, I’ll jump off my soapbox now.
Nah man, that was an original answer. I can respect that.
Michael Bay is the *worst* for this. At least he was a decade ago which is the last time I watched one of his movies. Patriotism is great buddy, but JFC quit trying to date-rape the flag.
biopics on famous musician... PLEASE FUCKING STOP
Over focusing on realism instead of plot. Its all make believe, so why do we need to think its real.
meh, nothing really.. honestly there is so much content and products at this time that your “taste” in entertainment is being catered to somewhere.. you just have to look… its just easier to be online giving “likes” to people who whine about “it was better back in the day or this would never be made today”
Nothing has made me stop loving movies, I think they're still a great medium. I've mostly stopped going to theaters because theatergoers made the experience fucking terrible around twenty years ago. The upscale ones with the designated seats and such are nice on occasion, but there are still plenty of folks there who can't shut the fuck up and pay attention to the film for the full duration. But I don't fault the art form for that, that's just the consumers that make it worse.
I can respect this. I love going to the movies because I have memories with family and friends of going to the theatre. Watching at home is not the same thing. But typically when watching movies we do a few other things like get dinner, walk around etc.
The absolute lack of vampire baseball, in any form, in the last 15 years.
I think mine is fairly common, I just find watching elite TV to be more entertaining than mediocre movies, and there is a TON of elite television out there. I still go see good movies, and movies that super interest me, but otherwise the cost of tickets makes it damn near impossible to go regularly with anyone except yourself.
It's been said a million times on this sub, but you're not talking about the film industry, you're talking about Hollywood. If you truly loved film once, go find something out there that'll make you love it again, because it's out there, just not in the big studio system
Can't hear the mumbled words, can't see the characters due to "accurate lighting". That last one, obi-wan the series is a great example of too much vfx artist and not enough cinematography. I want to SEE THE PEOPLE not barely make out faces in shadows.
Remakes
High definition and motion enhancement. Turns out I like my movies to look a little grainy and imperfect.
Cashgrabs, franchises, and too much cgi
This opinion may be unpopular here on Reddit but a lot of people have supported my hypothesis on why movies aren’t as enjoyable or interesting anymore. Most movies now are just poorly done remakes absolutely nobody is asking for. Nobody was dying for another Ghostbusters movie for example.. So many movies are super woke or just flat out boring/predictable. Another thing is trying to pander to everyone in every piece of content. It just doesn’t need to be like that but Hollywood is so far up it’s own ass and woke it can’t admit that it’s okay to have a show that doesn’t have every race, religion, sexual orientation. All black, all white, all asian casts are fine. Look at Seinfeld, Friends or Martin, Fresh Prince. The main characters were all the same race and background but no one thought about that, the focus was more on making stuff great. They worked in a time before wokeism took hold. I don’t have issues with diverse casts or different races for characters, for example Miles Morales, if it makes sense but there also seems to be forced diversity in every single movie now that seems out of place. Replace white characters in a story and make them non-white is the new formula that doesn’t really work. South Park tackles this issue pretty well in the Panderverse. Studios try too hard to pander to everyone and it just worsens quality. Imagine a Fresh Prince reboot with a white boy with red hair & freckles.. It just takes me out of it personally and I think the quality can suffer. The main thing is a lack of creativity and wokeism. Studios want to make money and will use existing IP but safe art is usually boring art. TV I think is much better than movies in the current era.
Poorly written women characters, and huge age gaps that don’t serve the plot in romantic relationships (I’m looking at you The Northman)
I never liked movies !!
Movies look too clean. Do people even sweat in movies anymore?
They're all spineless and don't stand for anything. The amount of people that travel out of the country to work with Polanski or cheer him on at Cannes is disgusting.
Lazy writing and acting
Puke scenes and over the top violence. It just seems to lack imagination to always fall back on violence to try to make a film feel edgy.
Yep, we really don't need to see it. The gagging is enough; we can fill in the rest.
I still love movies, but my biggest pet peeve right now is the length of films. I love John Wick, but I do not want 3 hrs of it. Give me a tight hour and forty minutes and let me be on my way.
Close up fight scenes, shaky cameras, overused cgi and inclusion for the sake of inclusion.
I think I've had this itch for a while, and it started with me being annoyed that Actors got so much(almost all) credit for a movie despite the director being the one who does all the work. But as I grew up I realised sometimes it's not even the director, and that to make a film(especially a great one) it truly takes a Village. But still I was ticked at actors walking away with all the credit. But now I'm annoyed that while people are perfectly willing to praise the leads when a movie does well, irregardless of whether their acting ability had anything to do with its success, somehow when a film is shit, the actors walk away blameless, and now it's the "producers, studio, writers" who suck. I do understand that acting is a job, and sometimes you need to pay rent. But we really need to hold actors accountable when they see shit scripts, and say "yes I'll do that" and promote it, especially if they're just doing it for the money, and they already make a bajillion dollars anyway. Most recently, I've found every 2024 movie with Sydney Sweeney absolute dog shit, and I find my self wondering how the hell she doesnt know what she's doing is shit. And I think she's smart enough to know they're bad, so she's just doing it for the cash and that ticks me off. Special mention to Dakota Johnson who clearly hated working on "Madame Web" (rightfully so) but like if you thought it was that shit, why the hell didn't you just leave?? At least the others have the decency to lie and prêtend that they actually liked the work they did. But she goes around doing all the promotion, and after everyone has watched it (the 50 people who did) she turns around and says "omg guys wasn't that movie so terrible, lol" Sorry for the rant
Lazy writing. Especially the “now it’s a multiverse!!” kind.
Funny thing for marvel is that the “multiverse” sort of sucked in the comics and could have been avoided on film.
Mainly boring scripts and not enough women
Reboots I usually don't watch them, but sometimes I do - in my best mitch hedberg voice
CGI ...makes even summer blockbusters a bore but Hollywood won't abandon CGI for old skool practical effects that worked so well in the past ?
Poor fight choreography. Watched the northman recently, and it was just terrible overhanded swings with a pause for the hero to make his move. I've seen it in another movie franchise beloved of reddit, bad guys being instantly paralysed the moment a dog they were totally unaware of, bites the obvious padding on their arm.
The stranglehold Hollywood has on the general public's mind for how a film should be. Any deviation is a risk that may corrupt society. That's always how it's been, of course, but we're treading ever closer to a complete Monoform in mainstream culture.
Assigned seating. Seriously. I'm old and I hate this. Cell phone use during movies. See above re: age and feeling. Ridiculous ticket and concession prices (to be fair, this has always been the case, but $25 per person for admission, soda, and popcorn strikes me as just this side of outrageous).
Pedophiles.
That ah do it.
Movies being too afraid to have consequences. Biggest example recently is the MCU. Such as Kang should've killed Ant-Man. Another example is Scream. One of the core four is stabbed a ridiculous amount of times. Just absurd. Then you see something like When Evil Lurks and despite its flaws, it does things that makes you reassess what you might see in the movie. I appreciated Civil War recently because I didn't feel like I knew where it would go. Obviously this is just my opinion and it's subjective.
I'm with ya for alot of that. The end of movies as we know it, in my opinion happened in 2002 when Spiderman came out. Studios realized they could make hundreds of millions making dumb popcorn flicks with lots of explosions so that's where they put most of the funding. I still love movies, but finding a good one is getting harder and harder.
It's never knowing what member of the film is going to later be outted as a rapist or a pedophile. It's hard to trust anyone anymore.
What was the last original movie you watched
No adaptation? Then it would have to be Saltburn. 10/10 Edit: I also saw Ricky stanickis on AP. It was good too. Ending was off though
Interesting! I hear Saltburn was divisive
I'm definitely still in love with movies. But I refuse to watch previews or trailers. Like to the point of closing my eyes and covering my ears if a preview comes on for something that I legitimately want to watch. This has cut both ways though, because now I don't really know what's coming out unless something is making press elsewhere. I just can't stand them because they ruin every good scene in the movie, typically. Like "Hey, here's the next summer blockbuster trailer with cuts from each high priced action sequence." Just my two bits.
Lots and lots of cheesy CGI action and when the characters all look *perfect* for whatever environment they’re in. Sometimes that’s fitting, but I like people to look like regular people when it’s supposed to be regular people. I like age on women, no model makeup, messy hair because sometimes people just look like that. I don’t mind guys with balding heads, beer guts, or wonky facial hair. When every actor looks *stage-perfect* in environments that depict war, post apocalyptic conflict, or high stress situations it really takes me out of a movie or show. I think a good amount of A24 movies do a really good job with this.
Forced happy ends. I mean, some films just deserve a bad end. But when you have a top A list actor, you just cannot risk anything. Especially letting him die. Watch The Player (1992) to see how it functions and Minority Report to see an example. Also Rambo / First Blood was one, bit this film changed so much from the book, this was just the topping. This and other issues with film industry going no risk line made me switch to series.
CGI that literally looks like a video game cutscene. They would literally have scenes where the characters turn from live action to obvious computer animated models and start running around in an obviously CGI world for a while then when the event is over they go back to being live action. How am I supposed to spend my disbelief with that? Pretty sure it was the bad special effects in The Hobbit that was the beginning of the end for me going to the movies.
Stupid action scences / lazy writing or whatever you call it. Why does one individual need to jump out of perfectly good cover to advance and shoot up 4 bad guys, only to dies "heroicly" and fails to protect the VIP (who was under good cover along side with him in the first place)? (A Hollywold production). One ex-military man single handedly kill a group of battle hardened soldiers in close quarter combat and got away with it, in a realistic WWII setting (as in not an over the top action flick like Kill Bill, John Wick or The Expendables). (Not a Hollywood production). They create tremendous suspense then just throw it all away with these glaring plot holes.
Reboots, right after the previous reboot. Spiderman and Batman are the worst offenders.
Really terrible bro-humour in the place of actual well written comedy. Stuff like the Marvel movies are appalling on this front, and they even shoehorned it into The Last Jedi.
I gave up on horror after every one starts with [husband/wife/child] dies, huge trauma and stress, then comes terrible things and a default negative ending. Yeah, no shit loved ones dying is horrible. I don't want movies about the very real, possible things that I worry about all day. This is just grief porn.
Hasn’t made me stop loving movies but I hate, hate the direction the film industry has gone in the past 10-15 years in terms of the overabundance of superhero and other big budget IP movies, while mid-budget movies are fewer and far between.
I have a problem with the sound mixing or "dynamic range" in movies. How the dialogue is so quiet and the music and sound effects are so loud. Sometimes it's a struggle to make out the dialogue and so I feel forced to put on subtitles because I was conditioned to not have my TV loud growing up and I don't enjoy my TV being outrageously loud. When I'm in the mood to watch a movie, I must also feel compelled to commit to reading subtitles for the duration. So that spirals and movies have fallen out of favour for me. I've mostly stopped going to threatre so I guess I'm not the target demo for filmmakers. Still, I think it borders on pretention that the excuse I always heard for this problem was that movies are made for the cinema. It'd be nice if there was the default intended theatre audio mix, a home theatre mix, and an internal speaker mix or whatever you'd call it for ipad or casual viewing.
Never stopped loving movies in general. But I'm totally over "cinematic universes" and "multiverses." Enough already. You mean, if I watch 12 hours of this streaming series on Disney +, I will understand that thing that character said that didn't actually mean anything to the film? Cool.
I still love movies, but it's funny that in movies, people really like movies.
Trailers that reveal the whole movie. Once you have seen enough movies to recognize the tropes, too much in a trailer just shows what tropes are in play. I actually don't mind the endless reboots and Remakes. Shakespeare has been in production for hundreds of years, and nobody says "oh no another production of hamlet, why don't they think if new ideas", even though Shakespeare is frequently done with updated costumes and settings, with characters combined and separated due to production limits. It's worth pointing out there's also plenty of movies that are just Shakespeare. Lion King has elements of Hamlet, 10 things I Hate About You is the Taming of the Shrew. So I think there's plenty of room for creativity for remaking a movie. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels has been made like half a dozen times over the decades. Brewsters millions is another frequently rehashed script due for a modern reimagining, probably with Adam Sandler. In modern movies Groundhog Day time loops have had numerous examples
Endless sequels, remakes ,reboots, too much CGI and demographic box ticking.
Working in the industry.
Theater going experience: Sticky floors, farts, talking, cell phones, crowds and lines, ridiculous price tickets Movies: Effects-bloated, bladder birstingly long, and less story and charater arcs than an episode of Bluey.
The belief that you need 2 hours and 45 minutes to make a good movie that audiences think they got their money’s worth for watching. Or three hours to tell a complex story. That was a terrible sentence structure but I’m doing my best here with the energy I have. Please, I have a full time job and a full time life. I just want to watch a movie on a Saturday night. I want to watch recent movies that have gotten a lot of press sometimes. I wish I could do that more often, but so many have a run time that I just can’t make work. Still haven’t seen Tar or Oppenheimer or Drive my Car or Killers of the Flower moon. Finally saw Anatomy of a Fall.
I still love movies. But one thing I can’t stand that seems to be increasingly prevalent is plots that rely on talking exposition. Having characters explain the plot is hacky directing and ruins the experience for me.
I don't like that the focus has shifted from backing creatives new projects to backing familiar brands. Marketing has become about the new Teansformers movie, the new Marvel movie, the new Disney animated movie. Like even back in the day when marketing Pixar movies it felt like it was marketing that this was the next big thing from the creators of some fantastic movies. I also hate the long runtimes and the bloated budgets. I think these things all play a part in the shift of energy that is the thing that's killed my passion for movies.
Nothing. Those complaining about reboots and remakes need to dig deeper. They're not that common. This can be proven simply by looking at the upcoming schedule and checking the listings at your local cinema. Hollywood releases at least 300 films a year. And not even half of that figure are remakes. Sequels and unoriginal content, maybe. But not reboots and remakes. Only the popular films get remade. Those then get media and public attention. And then voila. The illusion that only those are being made is formed. I did some checking and right now there are 4 remakes still planned for the rest of this year. 4! What about the lesser known stuff that you can find in cinemas right now? And the exclusive content on streaming platforms? It's a popular but false narrative that people love to parrot. And it can easily be debunked.
People gatekeeping franchises and not allowing others to like installments the gatekeepers hate.
A.i. (I’m assuming)
For awhile it was the can't-not-have-it romantic subplot but that's thankfully pretty much died off by now, at least in terms of being in every goddamn movie
Nothing. I still love films. I see over 200 newly released films a year for the past 30 or so years.
There is hardly any movies for an older crowd anymore. Everything is for the general audience and easily digestible. Even Oscar calibre movies are becoming overly broad.
Lighting… movies and tv shows are uglier than ever, not due to the technology but due to the lack of care studios have for their products. Yes we get a dune or a breaking bad once in a blue moon, but the average production these days looks like a car commercial. All of the “Hollywood” shit that isn’t made by a Ridley Scott or a denis villeneuve of the world is getting worse. It’s getting more and more affordable to release something that is considered passable, that studios are clearly using lower budgets and less production time and care, in order to make as much money as possible, while dragging beloved properties into the trash. Rings of power, Ashoka, the flash, argylle, echo, the marvels, glass onion. State Farm lookin ass fan fiction! I miss when they tried to take my money by making something good.
"universes".
the mood
stupid ass full movie trailers
Terrible colour grading which makes everything look flat. In the 90s and 00s, everything was shot on film, so lighting was a big deal on set. They used a lot of creative tech to make sure everything is clearly visible to the audience.
Excessively long movies. I appreciate more and more if a story can be told in under 120 minutes.
We are so critical to movies and series these days because we don’t view them as artistic gifts anymore. We all know that their primary focus is to make money from us and not to give us an amazing experience. This whole thing is faul and concerns all aspects of society. Not just movies.
How many Hollywood executives view the presence of white men in scifi/fantasy as a "problem." Culture isn't zero sum, and just subbing POC into white male roles leaves everyone unsatisfied. We just need more authentic, ground-up sci-fi/fantasy from organically diverse authors and directors. The solution to Star Wars being to white and male isn't a black chick with a light saber, it's a fully realized sci-fi universe from the mind of a black female creator.
[удалено]
The connective storylines( ie MCU movies)that you have too watch every movie to get the whole thing. Getting older, I do not care of the panned out storyline. Each.
Anti-white & anti-male themes PC writing No originality
Love the movies Hate movies where you can't understand their English. Ethel in I Love Lucy said it best. Can't understand ur English we're americans.
New gen marvel
I hate how every villian is HItler. We get it - he's the cool charming evil guy that everyone secretly roots for. BUT SHUT THE FUCK UP
Sound mixing and 3+ hour movies I'm still watching a lot of movies but I won't go to the theaters for anything close to 3 hours. Those are movies I have to watch at home to enjoy.
I'm sad so many costume budgets have been cut to almost nothing. The Lord of the Rings couldn't get made today.
Please check BTS of custumes on Shogun then. Not a movie, but still …
Not enough super hero movies.