What's the reason for the steady decline of movie quality?

[Bornstarch]

What do you think is the reason for the decline of movie quality in the last decade or so? There's some gems here and there, but overall the quality of movies has been freefalling.

 

[Pliny Pete]

42 posts complaining about the MCU incoming...

 

[Aegon Spengler]

HBO taking great writers and using them to make long running series started a trend where a bunch of top writers went to TV instead of film. That, along with the rise of streaming services caused an explosion in the size of the film industry. Writers made more money creating lots of new content rather than a slow stream of quality content.

Good stuff is still made but there is an ocean of stuff being made alongside it, to the point that it floods and dilutes the market.

That's my guess anyway.

 

[Hog-train]

HBO taking great writers and using them to make long running series started a trend where a bunch of top writers went to TV instead of film. That, along with the rise of streaming services caused an explosion in the size of the film industry. Writers made more money creating lots of new content rather than a slow stream of quality content.

This is spot on.

 

[Get To Da Choppa]

What do you think is the reason for the decline of movie quality in the last decade or so? There's some gems here and there, but overall the quality of movies has been freefalling.

I blame it on the bean counting accountants and MBA running the movie studios. Movies have gotten more and more to produce, so the minimizing risks becomes a paramount objective. This is why you are seeing so many remakes and sequels because you are guaranteed a fan base. It's also the reason why big movies have become formulaic because studios are just trying to copy what worked once and milk the same formula dry

 

[Plutoburn]

Streaming is a big one.

There are some good movies made by streaming studios, but a significant portion of them are just not good, even with very high budget. Lost sales from dvd/blurays means studios are less willingly to take chances on risky movies, so the blockbusters you get are more Fast and Furious, more mission impossible. You hardly see movies like Good Will Hunting or Forrest Gump anymore.

 

[Berserker13]

pirating/ not making a killing for doing nothing

 

[Plissken]

Too many decisions coming down from the corporate ladder, most of whom have not had any experience in making films in any respect.
Too much sanitization of the product where even the filmmakers are making a paint by numbers product, either just trying to copy what someone else has done, trying to shoehorn things in there in an unnatural way, or just making bland/poor films without any heart put into them.
The filmmakers have too many tools that makes things easy for them now which leads to laziness. Things that can be a big help have turned into a crutch and the filmmakers just aren't educated enough in all aspects of filmmaking like older generations so they further lean on this (all the guys from the film school auteur era of the late 60's to 80's had to know how to direct, edit, know their way around cameras and lighting, sound, photochemical color timing, etc.). Also when you read about the behind the scenes of so many of the great films filmmaking was a struggle and relied on improvisational thinking and perseverance to make it work. I think most of us have heard that Jaws was originally going to feature the shark more and because the mechanical shark barely worked when they needed it to it became a different film as a result as Spielberg and the crew had to reshape the film around that issue; nowadays all those issues would be fixed in post production with cgi and you'd never have had the film Jaws turned into.
There are still plenty of good or interesting films being made though, but few of them are coming from the big studios, and a lot of them aren't going to be everyone's cup of tea since the indies are where more experimentation and oddities come from.

 

[gatchaman]

Again

 

[Adamant]

Most studios seemingly want to check boxes and push messages above all else. Telling a good story is not really factored in. And rather than hiring the genuinely best person for the job, it's all about ""DEI"" with stooges who have no business being there.

Tom Cruise, Tarantino, Fincher, and a few others do not apply.

 

[Gene Tunney]

It happened during the 1990’s.

The new crop of creative talent rejected the old guard. They had to do it their way, especially in response to creative experimentation.

The leadership was corporatized. Instead of 10 or so quasi geniuses influencing output, they were replaced by the hive mind…leading to isolated environments where everyone agrees with one another.

 

[Bagatur]

same as with the steady decline of UFC events - quantity over quality.

 

[LEWIS540]

Still lots of interesting films being made, but most people are too lazy, or don't have the inclination, to look past the latest over-hyped blockbuster.

 

[moreorless87]

It happened during the 1990’s.

The new crop of creative talent rejected the old guard. They had to do it their way, especially in response to creative experimentation.

The leadership was corporatized. Instead of 10 or so quasi geniuses influencing output, they were replaced by the hive mind…leading to isolated environments where everyone agrees with one another.

I do think the 90's is really the period were Hollywood execs started to take back the power they had lost way back in the late 60's/early 70's, yes we';d had "blockbusters" since the mid/late 70's which focused on entertainment but those films tended to be driven mostly by the creative side, there wasnt a formula for sucess. In the 90's though I think that started to change, films with big CGI showpeices and films which pandered to cheesey Americana started to become consistent box office winners.

Honestly I think part of the problem was that the "old guard" themselves started to become safer, the difference between say Back to The Future and Forrest Gump but that the "new wave" who followed very often tended to be inferior, quite generic directors because Hollywood mostly didnt care about anything more ambitious or people who might threaten execs.

For me really the MCU at its best(around 2013-19) actually stood out because it wasn't so generic, wasn't just cinema by committee but something that often had a bit of spark to it which stood out from Hollywoods regular formula. Now its dropped off I think were seeing in what a bad state things are really in.

I would say as well I think a big issue is Hollywood has become almost totally focused on big blockbusters in the last 20-30 years, mid budget stuff has greatly declined and is often confined only to a few well established names, your Paul Thomas Andersons, Tarantino's, etc. Whats shifted I think is that its now more than ever the arthouse scene were creative cinema really exists so if your only going to your local multiplex you not going to see a ton of it

To be honest I think if you take that into account cinema is actually doing pretty well, far better than the music business. I think the difference is the arthouse cinema scene has quite well established funding from public bodies(less in the US but most other nations have public film funding boards) and a lot of indie production houses. The last 10-15 years have plenty of absolutely great cinema, you just didnt see most of it at the multiplex.

 

[KnightTemplar]

HBO taking great writers and using them to make long running series started a trend where a bunch of top writers went to TV instead of film. That, along with the rise of streaming services caused an explosion in the size of the film industry. Writers made more money creating lots of new content rather than a slow stream of quality content.

Good stuff is still made but there is an ocean of stuff being made alongside it, to the point that it floods and dilutes the market.

That's my guess anyway.

 

[Beechwood]

I suspect the decline of Hollywood is due to their political causes, and taking on DEI. I remember reading that many of the top experienced successful writers in Hollywood have been let go due to them having white colored skin. Race and skin color matter more to them than making good TV shows and movies that people want to watch.

As a result older shows and movies are often more popular to watch than new shows coming out of Hollywood.

 

[Patrick Jane]

Making expensive movies

 

[PBAC]

books

the novel industry has become target market centric meaning the actual innovators have been totally handicapped to appeal to market norms. People think the innovation happens at this level but because written literature is qualified in one of those dying mediums (it's not actually) publishing industries are more adherent to holding onto mainstream promoting standards, so there is this constant desire to repeat to market norms which is why every time there is a successful novel they just regurgitate the same things over and over again.

Art itself has become more taboo and when it gets mainstream attention it tends to be about a royal portrait and a butterfly because did you know a monarch butterfly might symbolise a monarch? Do you understand the symbolism you filthy dumbass urban peasant?

People in this field basically know they are in an outdated market and think they need to keep up with the exterior norm. It's not meant to be like that, art and creative fields are meant to be the innovators not the followers. Society is self consuming itself to appeal to a standard nobody set.

 

[Drunken Meat Fist]

I see art mass produced almost equal to art consumed, every art feels like flash art now. There will always be rare exceptions, but the exceptions to the exceptions are getting buried under the rapidity and bombardment, everyone's a superhero, everyone's a captain kirk, the faculty to distinguish will always be there, but the ability to for that to matter in wave after wave of what "influences," is worn down like river on the rocks. That was always the case, but not to the degree, volume, immediacy and disposibility (how do you spell disposability?) . I've tried, looking through the lenses of other mediums, but it comes to books with me too. Books and just language, fucking communication. What is college anymore (I haven't given up, there are teachers teaching volcanically, and volcanoes still being taught to volcanic souls), ...but it's bad.
As of right now, it feels all the forms of art suck or all "masterworks" and direction are just anti-art for anti-art sake, .... I feel it, I hate it, it's fucking real, but .....

 

[El Panteron]

On a wide scale level, it's the industry becoming so big and making investments so huge they only want to make (what they perceive as) surefire bets, and this means original stuff has given way to a load of sequels and remakes and franchises, and the little original stuff is often unimaginative.