Why Movies Just Don't Feel "Real" Anymore

[whitecoast]

I watched an interesting video essay by a media analysis and philosophy youtube channel on why more modern movies don't feel as realistic as those in previous eras of cinema. When I first saw the essay, I immediately just assumed it was all about bad special effects. That is an element, as anyone who has seen modern blockbusters can see, but the author also brought so many more elements of film-making into it, such as how their production is organized, how directors are less interested in making shot decisions during shooting a film, how critical camera work is, "haptic" vs "optic" visuals in film, and the loosening of our perception of a film's "indexicality," which is the unconscious confidence we assign to how media storage (like a film role) accurately conveys a reality that feels perceptually "real" and faithful to how we objectively interact with and see the world ourselves.

This topic came up at an interesting time when AI is taking over more and more content creation, and how mass production trends seem to be uncoupling mass content consumption from accurate perception of reality. The essay clearly identified things that I was starting to sense in a lot of movies I've seen over the past ten years, but couldn't clearly put my finger on, other than to just say something "didn't feel realistic."

I didn't see a general thread on film studies and trends in cinema here, so I thought this would be as good an occasion as any to start one.

 

[Sybil]

There are no original ideas surfacing anymore. Not because they don't exist, because they have been suppressed by AI. No real authors for best selling books, not many anyway, no original scripts, all remake. the whole world became fake. Including people themselves. The Grand Proud To Be Ignorant World. Imitating real feelings but in reality lie to themselves and everybody.

 

[987baz]

The way I see it is, movies these days are all about “the message” made for “modern audiences” and the whole woke thing, they don’t care about making good movies, just getting their “message” out there and virtue signalling. Add to this the fact that big movie companies don’t want to risk new idea that might fail, better to by an IP (like Disney buying Star Wars) and making endless variations of it, in their “modern” way. Even if the don’t make a heap,of money they make their money back and the endless tax dodge cycle continues.

I’m sure he has been mentioned before but if you haven’t checked out the critical drinker he has a great YT channel which talks bout just this.

Why Modern Movies Suck

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[Ricardo]

Somewhat touching on what Critical drinker also says , but more than that ,there´s deliberate social engineering which is not usually spoken about openly ( ie Thor´s Pantheum likely connected in some way for sure , one reference in Session 23 September 2023). Short clip from X , but there´s a whole lot of examples for about ~20 years worth of this being deliberate and "in our faces" so to say.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1991804566325838070

 

[ApotheosisMMC.]

The film industry has become a rather saturated market where certain tools are overused and some elements are prioritized over others. There is still some creative freedom, but films in general often have to be adjusted and modified to meet certain sales standards. Production times are shorter, and CGI currently dominates many productions in an overwhelming way. Not to mention that, due to the aforementioned time constraints, the application of CGI is often mediocre; films from 15 years ago easily have better CGI than many current productions.

 

[unkl brws]

The way I see it is, movies these days are all about “the message” made for “modern audiences” and the whole woke thing, they don’t care about making good movies, just getting their “message” out there and virtue signalling. Add to this the fact that big movie companies don’t want to risk new idea that might fail, better to by an IP (like Disney buying Star Wars) and making endless variations of it, in their “modern” way. Even if the don’t make a heap,of money they make their money back and the endless tax dodge cycle continues.

I’m sure he has been mentioned before but if you haven’t checked out the critical drinker he has a great YT channel which talks bout just this.

Why Modern Movies Suck

Share your videos with friends, family, and the world

youtube.com

You should also check out "The Dave Cullen Show" on YT. He has similar takes on the film industry.

The Dave Cullen Show

This channel is dedicated to Movie Reviews, Film critique, discussion of TV Shows, Pop Culture and Video Games in my usual caustic and sardonic manner.

www.youtube.com

 

[Nević Nenad]

Watched the same video just couple of days ago. He did great analysis. There is more good videos on that person chanel, not just about movies. If you have a time, I recommend it.

 

[brandon]

To me it seems like older movies were more willing to start off slow.. I notice there was often a long time spent establishing the world and characters, and then the actual climactic parts are surprisingly short. In my memory, the action and climax seemed much longer than they actually were, I guess because those are the exciting/intense bits. (I'm thinking of all the stuff I loved as a kid, like Ghostbusters as a random example. When I watch films from the early 90s and before, I'm often surprised by how little time is actually spent in the most memorable exciting scenes).. I feel the more modern style is to do away with that slow build-up and just jump straight in to the action, acting like the viewer should already be familiar with and caring about the characters etc.. It's like the film makers wanted more action and excitement, but had to trade that for a proper establishing of the film's world...trying to be all excitement all the time, leads to the whole thing feeling small and fake.. unmemorable... Almost the same thing as the "loudness wars" in music production - where in wanting music to sound louder and "better", they lost the quiet bits, leading to all parts of a song sounding the same - except with storytelling instead of sound.. Or maybe I'm just getting old, I dunno :)

I feel like the buildup->climax->ending ratio of films used to be, in general, something like: 75%->20%->5%. And now it's more like 10%->80%->10%.

 

[Nević Nenad]

Facebook just showed me this. Some guy is asking "why all the colors disappeared from our lives?". He has some good questions, also mentions the modern movies.

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