Why modern movies suck - they teach us awful lessons

[Jer]

And yet so much film criticism today is about how we should return to the 70s where directors were auteurs, because modern film is too safe and corporate. So turns out that people will always complain about film these days, finding different reasons to do so.

Those complaints really want to return to the days when money was flowing freely to fund any weird project that you might have in Hollywood rather than it being a tightly controlled stream of money from corporations looking for a good ROI when they invest in a film. I'd like that too, but it involves an economy that hasn't existed for 50 years.

(Those complaints miss that a lot of the free flow of money back in the day was because producing films was a great way to launder money from criminal operations and as law enforcement figured that out the money hose got cut off and Hollywood had to become more corporate to keep producing films...)

 

[darkwillow]

Some of the best writers in Hollywood today ARE directors : Christopher Nolan, James Gunn, Quentin Tarantino, the Cohen Brothers, Guillermo del Toro, etc. etc.

Sure, but the rest who are good at directing, bad at writing scripts probably shouldn't emulate them.

 

[darkwillow]

Saying modern movies suck is like saying modern music sucks. It's all subjective and usually based on cherry-picking There are great movies today, and great movies from decades ago. Just like there are crappy movies today just like there were crappy movies before. Unless one wants to argue Highlander II, Speed II, and Jaws the Revenger were good movies...(don't get me started on the Sci-Fi movies from the 70s and 80s lol)

Yeah he didn't say all modern movies suck, many he reviews he likes. His point was around specific examples about how the originals told good stories, and how the modern version told poor life lessons.

 

[Umbran]

Likely it's the sort of arrogance that results in may indie film directors thinking that they can do a spectacular job as producer, writer, director, camera 1, and crafty.

Many indie film directors do not have the budget to have separate writers, producers, directors, camera operators, and so on.

 

[BookTenTiger]

Yeah he didn't say all modern movies suck, many he reviews he likes. His point was around specific examples about how the originals told good stories, and how the modern version told poor life lessons.

So it's not "modern movies suck," it's "modern remakes suck?"

Can you say more about the life lessons?

 

[darkwillow]

Yeah, yeah, more of the "Rey's a Mary Sue" BS.

I mean she was perfect at the start of the trilogy and perfect at the end. idk what you think a mary sue is, but her character arc was non-existent so thats the main issue.

 

[J.Quondam]

Near as I can tell, linked video doesn't have anything to do with the writer/director question. It just yammers about how a few recent-ish movies are destroying morality or something.
Oh, and all those movies just happen to have female protagonist/heroes. Kinda strange.

 

[darkwillow]

So it's not "modern movies suck," it's "modern remakes suck?"

Can you say more about the life lessons?

The life lesson of the first mulan movie was that hard work pays off, life is hard but stick with it, being smart pays off, etc.
The second mulan movie lesson is you don't have to work at anything, you automatically succeed at everything because you are special.
I've seen asian reviewers complain about this too.

 

[Ryujin]

Many indie film directors do not have the budget to have separate writers, producers, directors, camera operators, and so on.

I completely understand that, as I have a number of indie film makers as friends. There are, however, a subset who do it all because they think that they can do it all. I remember that Frank Miller famously said that he didn't want someone else to do "The Spirit" because they would "f*** it up." Look what he did with it.

 

[darkwillow]

Oh, and all those movies just happen to have female protagonist/heroes. Kinda strange.

You have to look a little deeper than that... nothing to do with male or female, its about lack of character arc. He reviews lots of amazing female heroes on how to do it well.