What is wrong with the movie industry?

[4RM3D]

It's a comedy, it's not really meant to be taken seriously. It's supposed to be funny, and have jokes, and that's about it. Comedies don't get good reviews because they lack substance...

There are actually good quality comedies out there. The thing with comedies in general is that comedies are the easiest movies to make. Compared to sci-fi/fantasy or action movies, you don't need a big budget or a fancy script. Just put a few dudes together in one strange situation and throw in a few jokes. That is why comedies have the lowest average score (followed by horror movies).

Then a personal problem I am having is that I just don't find most comedies funny, regardless of whether the movie is actually good. For example I don't have the Coen brother's humor, but most of their movies are pretty good nonetheless. I can respect that.

 

[Rockchimp69]

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It doesn't matter what the smarter side of the population think about movies unfortunately because all opinions are just preference. None are right, there is no overall quality to any art.

Everything is fucking subjective, but at the same time life is pathetic when you think like that.
I guess we just don't like to be explained or analysed so it's easier to lie to ourselves that things are just straightforward childlike matters of good/evil, good/bad and such.

Getting a bit off topic but basically what I mean is that your whole argument is invalid because it doesn't matter how intelligent or well made a movie is, it's easier for us to just forget reality and delude ourselves.

I personally found it a fun movie, but it's also not original enough.
I'm so stuck in the fucking conflict of both sides of this thread.

I'm gonna take what he said because the movie was enjoyable but it's really just the same movie.

Also, that's pretty much my opinion on life/existence in general

Nice to meet you, me too. It means I basically have a kind of guilty feeling whenever stuff goes well because I know that my views and attitudes would be different if things were different.

 

[Rockchimp69]

Jesus Christ, I can't believe how thick some people are. The Hangover 2 is a non-effort film whichever way you slice it, and no, opinions aren't completely subjective. There are always some objective criteria to judging any form of art. Just so happens that, being a non-effort, The Hangover 2 fails on probably each and every one of them when compared to the original. The people watching this and enjoying this are the definition of the lowest common denominator and, in turn, are a cancer on this and every other industry.

Your implying that there is some law above humanity which decides if a movie is good or not.
That's not true at all, all a movie does is excite a mind with it's content or subtext, it doesn't adhere to some set of universal rule of quality. People have different tastes because different things appeal to them and it just happens that certain things appeal to the majority or all people.

 

[Okamipsychonaut]

Not that I do this, but when gas costs close to 4$, you lost your job, your rent goes up, your house in in foreclosure....you wont go see the Road, or Brazil. you go see a mindless comedy. Film critics see formulaic dreck all the time and therefore prefer uniqueness in a sea of mediocrity, so all but the most staunch mouthpieces for corporate conglomerate media empire will gravitate towards novelty vs sameness.
And seriously, I don't get the point of this thread....Hollywood knows they can produce for the lowest common denominator...and get a return. There are times of the year far from the Summer blockbuster season where one can be stunned by what is number one in the box office.

 

[Malfy]

I used to be one of those "critics knows what's best for me" guys. Then I realized that critics can be just as dumb as your average moviegoer. It's kinda interesting how many critics will love a movie just because George Clooney is in it, or that it has french-speaking parts, or because Kubrick coughed on the film reel once, etc. I didn't see Hangover 2 myself because I didn't feel the first one was that funny, and I didn't wanna spend $11+ to see it, but I'll try not to look down on those that did pay to see it. It's what they wanted to see, they got their enjoyment out of it, they had a good time. If a good number of people want more sequels with the same jokes, let em have it.

 

[Rockchimp69]

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No, I'm implying there are qualities agreed upon by anyone who can consider themselves serious. Furthermore, you simply can not defend a piece of art, whatever it is, on the basis of relativism, because relativism is completely and utterly meaningless. Approach relativism and you lose any argument ever.

I'm not saying that everything is objective, far from it, but for God's sake, how thick do you have to be not to realise that the biggest reason movies like this get watched or games like the latest CoD's get played is the functional ineptitude on that form of entertainment of its audience.

Consider themselves serious? What the fuck does that mean? Anyone who has views thinks their views are correct! That's what an opinion is!
There are qualities which the majority of people think make something "good" but unless they appeal to everyone they aren't universal and they sure as hell aren't the "right" qualities by some magical law of art quality.

Art is an idea made my sentient life not a natural law of the universe so it's therefore ALL ABOUT personal preference.

The only reason anyone could seriously think of it as objective is if you were to unintelligent to realise that the so called "quality" of a movie is just how we react to it.

And when did I bring relativity into this? Everything is relative to something but that hardly applies to quality of art.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

The movie industry would rather re-tread than innovate.
The public would rather see something they've seen before.
Summer Blockbusters turn this up to 11 - and bring in the most money.

Then they have test audiences. Who specifically like things they've seen before - especially with actors, directors they know - and being test audiences, will vocally cheer the obvious while decry the hidden.

It's a REAL clever film that can slip past all the meddlers - and then they label it "cult", which kills it for everyone except students.

See They Live!

 

[ChildishLegacy]

In one word picture? This (The Hangover Part II score):

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A little explanation here: this is taken from rottentomatoes.com; one of the most popular movie websites (along with IMDB and Metacritic). The left side are the critics, the right side are the (other) moviegoers. 35% of the critics liked the movie with an average score of 5 (out of 10). 94% of the audience liked it with an average of 4.6 (out of 5).

The US Box Office is $185.8 million, making it the biggest movie hit this year.

What is wrong with the movie industry? Correction, what is wrong with you guys? You all went to the movie theater to see it and loved it? This movie is an exact replica of the first movie; no originality, no improvements, no story, no nothing. It's a dumb and senseless movie only made to extract as much money as possible with as little effort as possible. This is a 100% cash cow movie.

To be honest I find it kinda depressing that a movie like this does so well. This will give a green light to another sequel. Heck, this has painfully proven you can just copy old successes to make easy money. We will not see the end of this when people keep going to movies like this and keep liking it.

Discuss

I've never found films like the hangover funny in the first place, I like my comedy abstract and witty. But I agree the last 5 years or so have produced very little in terms of good movies . I am very disappoint.

I think the last film I came out of thinking 'that was actually really good' was The Dark Knight, and that was god knows how long ago. I just stick to listening/going to see stand up comics I like if I want a good laugh, and watch movies on DVD that are recommended to me, I can't stand going to see any more disappointing films -.- (Avatar springs to mind)

 

[Rockchimp69]

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Relativism can be brought into anything, in this case this is you saying that everything is subjective and there's no definite value in any of it.

Yeah, I worded it wrong. In fact, upon second thought what I said sounds straight up moronic. I meant 'could be considered' serious. After all, any fool can consider himself serious.

I appreciate the admission.

To answer the point you made about definite value of art quality, what I said was that it's only about personal preference and just because the whole of the world cares about say.. lighting doesn't mean that lighting would bother a completely different form of life which also had movies, necessarily.

Something having a definite value means that some peoples views are correct and others are not, but how can you decide which one is right? It might just be me succumbing to the difficulty of that task but to be honest I don't think any view is. When you think someone is wrong you're actually just frustrated that they would indirectly insult the things that make a movie good.
As many anti-hipsters have said (and I am not one of them), often it's just snobbery to defend their own views about something.

And people can't be wrong with opinions about the quality of art, they can only have views which you consider to different to your own.

However that doesn't mean I think there isn't something definite about movies, I think that there is a kind of level of intellectual depth to everything. And attributes of a movie make up that level, but that doesn't mean it can only be defined by that quality.
However that doesn't appeal to everyone so it is not universal. Those people just have standards which are geared towards easier to digest entertainment with less depth.

P.S. While writing this post I actually had a sort of crisis of faith (lol) where I realised that to some extent depth could be thought of as the definite value for quality of art. However if you think of movies like the Hangover as a different sort of art then what I said still holds true.

 

[4RM3D]

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You both mentioned some interesting points.

You need a foundation on which you base your opinions. It is something you can define yourself with. And not just that, you need it to find some "common ground" where your definitions match those of the people you talk with about art and stuff, so you will understand each other.

However in reality that will rarely happen. Heck, we can't even agree on what art really is. Sure, we have a definition for it, but if you ask if games could be art you get another never-ending discussion.

In the end I don't believe everything is relative, because if you would think so, nothing would really matter.

 

[Goofguy]

Sure, there's a lot wrong with the movie industry nowadays. We live in a day and age where if a movie made a f***load in revenues, then the studios will pump out sequels devoid of innovation, creativity and charm in favour of making the next quick buck.

I have contributed to this cycle on many occasions because I liked the premise. Do I think the Avengers movie is going to be a cash cow? Absolutely but I have an inherent trust in Whedon that he will put some sort of integrity in to it. There is a good chance this trust (which is the same I've put in to countless other movies) is completely misplaced but I will still watch the movie in theatres.

I haven't seen Hangover 2 but I will eventually. Whether it's in theatres or in the comfort of my own home is up in the air at this point. I enjoyed the first one and if I enjoy the second one, I won't be ashamed. You can't fault me or anyone else for being amused and entertained by a movie no matter how juvenile or inane it may be to your tastes.

 

[Rockchimp69]

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You both mentioned some interesting points.

You need a foundation on which you base your opinions. It is something you can define yourself with. And not just that, you need it to find some "common ground" where your definitions match those of the people you talk with about art and stuff, so you will understand each other.

However in reality that will rarely happen. Heck, we can't even agree on what art really is. Sure, we have a definition for it, but if you ask if games could be art you get another never-ending discussion.

In the end I don't believe everything is relative, because if you would think so, nothing would really matter.

I think you might be confusing bleakness with things mattering. Life doesn't have to matter in a logical sense because the only foreseeable aim in life is to make yourself feel good, however that may be (which sounds selfish but it's not because the way you might do that is by helping others).

The main problem with what I said was that (ironically) it seemed like some sort of bleak, vague point which was as 1 dimensional as the view I disagreed with.

As for what you said about common ground, I agree, I tried to touch on what you said but it was a bit far removed from the point I was making which was that art quality is about how you react to art's content and so is different for everyone.

 

[Henkie36]

One thing you have bang on is most movies yet to come out recently have come out is that they are all sequels. That doesn't necessarily has to be a bad thing, but the movie needs to either have a completely open ending, or a complete outcry for a sequel and most of these movies do not have that.

The 2007 Transformers movie somehow made 700 million dollars, so they wanted to do another one. And that movie was terrible! It felt cheap, while clocking in at 200 million dollars it was anything but, the story was stupid even when compared to the first movie, there were slightly more explosives used then in WWII for no apperant reason, the focus was on the wrong characters, for which I cared less then my toothbrush. But it made 800 million dollars! How the hell did it manage that?

Now the third installment is coming up, I'm seriously wondering if Micheal Bay wants to make movies, or if he just wants a new sports car.

 

[4RM3D]

One thing you have bang on is most movies yet to come out recently have come out is that they are all sequels. That doesn't necessarily has to be a bad thing, but the movie needs to either have a completely open ending, or a complete outcry for a sequel and most of these movies do not have that.

The 2007 Transformers movie somehow made 700 million dollars, so they wanted to do another one. And that movie was terrible! It felt cheap, while clocking in at 200 million dollars it was anything but, the story was stupid even when compared to the first movie, there were slightly more explosives used then in WWII for no apperant reason, the focus was on the wrong characters, for which I cared less then my toothbrush. But it made 800 million dollars! How the hell did it manage that?

Now the third installment is coming up, I'm seriously wondering if Micheal Bay wants to make movies, or if he just wants a new sports car.

Transformers also falls into that category of cash cow movies. But Transformers had the advantage (amongst others) of using a brand name. I have always been a fan of Transformers, so I just had to check out the movie. Unfortunately I was disappointed. Mostly because of what you described: focus was on the wrong characters. It should not have been on 2 teenagers screwing around, but on the Transformers themselves. Then the second movie came out and I had hoped Micheal Bay would have made improvements on the first movie. Damn... And now the third one is coming. Actually I didn't really expect Micheal Bay could pull it off. Can we please reboot Transformers with Christopher Nolan directing? Pretty please?

 

[Rockchimp69]

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Yeah I understand what you mean, as you see more movies you start to lean more towards the intellectual side of movies, that's called maturing. I didn't disagree with that point, it's just that if movies were as simple as "good" and "bad", then a good movie would be universally liked.

You can't say that certain people's views are wrong and others are right because movies are not something which exist beyond sentient life.

Also the matter of us not talking about different life forms, I completely disagree.
Why would this topic be limited to humans just because we are humans? I'm pretty sure this topic is universal to any life form which has art.

 

[Mavinchious Maximus]

Average Consumer=Stupid
Average Summer Movie=stupid
most people who love movies don't seem to go to the movies which depresses me, LOTS of people loved Scott Pilgrim but no one saw it in theaters. why is that?
I'm starting to think that piracy is effecting movies in weird negative ways since it appears that many people who love movies tend to just pirate them or wait for the DVD while the average consumer will go to the theater and pay to see an awful movie.
DVD sales do not effect the movies that get made since the studio makes money from box office gross.
so people, GO TO THE MOVIES MORE!!!

Well I don't have a movie theater in my town! And furthermore, I am not willing to drive to New Vegas to watch a movie in theaters. Ill pick up a dvd copy any day.