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Why does Hollywood make terrible movies?


workingcinderellaman
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I came across this entertaining video that got me thinking about this.

 

 

I think this is a great subject because it boggles the mind at some of the crap that ends up on the big screen. I wonder what the actors making the movie are thinking while filming it. They have to know it's a big stinking pile of crap while making it. But when the actors go on their late night tours, they make the lies convincing about how wonderful or artistic their movie is. They have to know better.

 

I know much of the reasoning behind why bad movies get made. Many bad movies get made because of the way Hollywood movies are financed. Financial institutions that give out loans to movie production want guarantees on their investment. It can be calculated how well a sequel will do at the box office no matter how bad it is based off the original's performance. This is why we see so many sequels. Good or bad, they will make money.

 

This same reasoning applies to hit novels, comic books, and even remakes of old hit movies.

If a project has some historic success behind it, then it can be presented to the guys who write the loan checks as a safe investment.

 

Another financially driven process in movie making is copying a formula of a recent blockbuster. The problem with this is that Hollywood typically doesn't understand why the original movie was successful so the formula they copy doesn't work. This is why Hollywood isn't creative. Creativity is financially risky.

 

I get all of this. What I don't get is that a lot of the movies that are made that follow one of these financially- sound models are really bad, which is something that Hollywood doesn't seem to think matters. The one thing that the vast majority of box-office disasters have in common is that they genuinely suck.

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I was watching a show last night (60 minutes?) and the amount of analysis that goes into making sure movies will be successful overseas (especially China) and not be possibly offensive to any groups and it's easy to see why a lot of movies are bland these days.
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Because you have no talent morons trying to restage classics.(e.g. Ben-Hur, Ghostbusters, The Magnificent Seven, the upcoming Death Wish, etc.)

This has been going on for quite awhile now dating back to the late '90s when Psycho was remade (and that was a failure in and of itself) but I do take your point. I think it's becoming a huge problem now.

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The same reason that Ke$ha and the like make millions.

 

I love Tik Tok

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Jeez. The entertainment industry has always produced pulp. It's the nature of the beast. This is nothing new.

 

This I agree with . . But the difference now is that there is no balance

 

In the past there were always truly great films being made - Dog Day Afternoon, Taxi Driver, Annie Hall, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest - all some of my favorite films .. ( not sure what the definition of a "Hollywood" film is though ... )

 

But for every great film of the past, there was crap - as ReRushed said, it's nothing new

 

I do think the atrophying of people's attention span and desire for depth has taken its toll though ...

 

And I am aghast at the absolutely repetitive garbage that is churned out - how many f***ing times can people watch the same slo-mo bullet dodge or leap from the oncoming explosion ??

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Jeez. The entertainment industry has always produced pulp. It's the nature of the beast. This is nothing new.

 

This I agree with . . But the difference now is that there is no balance

 

In the past there were always truly great films being made - Dog Day Afternoon, Taxi Driver, Annie Hall, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest - all some of my favorite films .. ( not sure what the definition of a "Hollywood" film is though ... )

 

But for every great film of the past, there was crap - as ReRushed said, it's nothing new

 

I do think the atrophying of people's attention span and desire for depth has taken its toll though ...

 

And I am aghast at the absolutely repetitive garbage that is churned out - how many f***ing times can people watch the same slo-mo bullet dodge or leap from the oncoming explosion ??

Jeez. The entertainment industry has always produced pulp. It's the nature of the beast. This is nothing new.

 

This I agree with . . But the difference now is that there is no balance

 

In the past there were always truly great films being made - Dog Day Afternoon, Taxi Driver, Annie Hall, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest - all some of my favorite films .. ( not sure what the definition of a "Hollywood" film is though ... )

 

But for every great film of the past, there was crap - as ReRushed said, it's nothing new

 

I do think the atrophying of people's attention span and desire for depth has taken its toll though ...

 

And I am aghast at the absolutely repetitive garbage that is churned out - how many f***ing times can people watch the same slo-mo bullet dodge or leap from the oncoming explosion ??

I think it's balanced by television. There are a ton of great television shows. Take Breaking Bad as an example. It's epic. And it's spin-off Better Call Saul is also fantastic. There are tons of great show with great writing, great acting, great directing. And multiple viewings reap rewards. It's a streaming world now. We witnessed a massive paradigm shift in visual story telling.

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Jeez. The entertainment industry has always produced pulp. It's the nature of the beast. This is nothing new.

 

This I agree with . . But the difference now is that there is no balance

 

In the past there were always truly great films being made - Dog Day Afternoon, Taxi Driver, Annie Hall, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest - all some of my favorite films .. ( not sure what the definition of a "Hollywood" film is though ... )

 

But for every great film of the past, there was crap - as ReRushed said, it's nothing new

 

I do think the atrophying of people's attention span and desire for depth has taken its toll though ...

 

And I am aghast at the absolutely repetitive garbage that is churned out - how many f***ing times can people watch the same slo-mo bullet dodge or leap from the oncoming explosion ??

 

That is the crux of yet another subjective thread subject. There are lots of good movies. If you or others don't like them, that's on you. Just from 2015:

 

Ex Machina

 

the Star Wars thing (I don't care for those but it was a good movie)

 

Room

 

Straight Outta Compton

 

The Martian

 

The Big Short (my favorite but so infuriating)

 

Spotlight

 

Mad Max: Fury Road

 

There were many more but hopefully you get the gist. There are a lot of good movies that come out every year. Sometimes you have to dig a little to find them, but they're out there.

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Jeez. The entertainment industry has always produced pulp. It's the nature of the beast. This is nothing new.

 

This I agree with . . But the difference now is that there is no balance

 

In the past there were always truly great films being made - Dog Day Afternoon, Taxi Driver, Annie Hall, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest - all some of my favorite films .. ( not sure what the definition of a "Hollywood" film is though ... )

 

But for every great film of the past, there was crap - as ReRushed said, it's nothing new

 

I do think the atrophying of people's attention span and desire for depth has taken its toll though ...

 

And I am aghast at the absolutely repetitive garbage that is churned out - how many f***ing times can people watch the same slo-mo bullet dodge or leap from the oncoming explosion ??

 

That is the crux of yet another subjective thread subject. There are lots of good movies. If you or others don't like them, that's on you. Just from 2015:

 

Ex Machina

 

the Star Wars thing (I don't care for those but it was a good movie)

 

Room

 

Straight Outta Compton

 

The Martian

 

The Big Short (my favorite but so infuriating)

 

Spotlight

 

Mad Max: Fury Road

 

There were many more but hopefully you get the gist. There are a lot of good movies that come out every year. Sometimes you have to dig a little to find them, but they're out there.

 

That is true .. much the same as music - there are always worthwhile things being made, sometimes it is a matter of finding them ..

 

My digging for films has been lax lately .....

Edited by Lucas
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Jeez. The entertainment industry has always produced pulp. It's the nature of the beast. This is nothing new.

 

This I agree with . . But the difference now is that there is no balance

 

In the past there were always truly great films being made - Dog Day Afternoon, Taxi Driver, Annie Hall, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest - all some of my favorite films .. ( not sure what the definition of a "Hollywood" film is though ... )

 

But for every great film of the past, there was crap - as ReRushed said, it's nothing new

 

I do think the atrophying of people's attention span and desire for depth has taken its toll though ...

 

And I am aghast at the absolutely repetitive garbage that is churned out - how many f***ing times can people watch the same slo-mo bullet dodge or leap from the oncoming explosion ??

 

That is the crux of yet another subjective thread subject. There are lots of good movies. If you or others don't like them, that's on you. Just from 2015:

 

Ex Machina

 

the Star Wars thing (I don't care for those but it was a good movie)

 

Room

 

Straight Outta Compton

 

The Martian

 

The Big Short (my favorite but so infuriating)

 

Spotlight

 

Mad Max: Fury Road

 

There were many more but hopefully you get the gist. There are a lot of good movies that come out every year. Sometimes you have to dig a little to find them, but they're out there.

Of those, I've seen Star Wars (fun and easily better than any of the crap prequels), Room (powerful, very good), Straight Outta Compton (excellent), Martian (entertaining, good), Mad Max (much better than I expected, good, imho better than Thunderdome [a decent movie in its own right])

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Jeez. The entertainment industry has always produced pulp. It's the nature of the beast. This is nothing new.

That's true, and it probably won't change in the foreseeable future.

 

But I believe there are tons of great stories out there that don't get made into movies while horrible stories make it onto the big screen. The main reason for this is the way movies are financed. I think that those who make these decisions should probably take into account the quality of the story/screenplay over the historical success of the prequel, original, novel, comic book, of formula from where the story comes from.

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Writers Don't Come Up With the Ideas

 

"There are no original ideas! Look at the top-grossing 25 films of the 2000s -- 23 were remakes or adaptations! How lazy can these writers get?"

I don't think it's the writers. It's the ones paying the writers.

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Interesting that "television" is now the field of good more original entertainment.

Is it all that "interesting" though? Is it "original"?

Walking Dead is from a comic book.

Game of Thrones is from a book.

Shows are cheaper to make than movies.

 

((Note: I like those two shows btw))

Killjoy, next you'll tell me that Discovery is based on a fifty year old show and has been delayed till May.

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Writers Don't Come Up With the Ideas

 

"There are no original ideas! Look at the top-grossing 25 films of the 2000s -- 23 were remakes or adaptations! How lazy can these writers get?"

I don't think it's the writers. It's the ones paying the writers.

To some degree that's true. There's also the likely reality that sometimes (but not all the time), producers, studios, etc. aren't willing to get behind and/or put $$$ into adapting what could definitely be amazing original screenplays, ideas, etc. in favor of going ahead with continuing milking movies of established franchises, remakes, whatever just because in their eyes (and history can bear me right on this to some extent) they know that they can easily make a quick $$$ to recover revenue.

 

There are exceptions of course, one only needs to look carefully at the Oscar category for Best Original Screenplay to know that there are "original ideas" out there. And I'm not just referring to films with "original ideas" in the sense that Star Wars was (and still is) thought of as "original" when it originally released almost 40 years ago, but also of films that were based off of real events that were adapted specifically for film: case in point, the current winner of Best Original Screenplay, Spotlight.

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Interesting that "television" is now the field of good more original entertainment.

Is it all that "interesting" though? Is it "original"?

Walking Dead is from a comic book.

Game of Thrones is from a book.

Shows are cheaper to make than movies.

 

((Note: I like those two shows btw))

Killjoy, next you'll tell me that Discovery is based on a fifty year old show and has been delayed till May.

Nah. But yeah.

 

"They don't make 'em like they used to"...sure they do, they still make shit! Not much has changed. We just got more shit due to the high production of movies and shows.

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Interesting that "television" is now the field of good more original entertainment.

Is it all that "interesting" though? Is it "original"?

Walking Dead is from a comic book.

Game of Thrones is from a book.

Shows are cheaper to make than movies.

 

((Note: I like those two shows btw))

Killjoy, next you'll tell me that Discovery is based on a fifty year old show and has been delayed till May.

Nah. But yeah.

 

"They don't make 'em like they used to"...sure they do, they still make shit! Not much has changed. We just got more shit due to the high production of movies and shows.

Which reminds me I need to Google search the progress of the new Battlestar Galactica movie.

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