Maybe it’s just me getting older and nostalgia setting in, or maybe it’s my current circle of friends and their taste in action/fantasy/cartoony flicks… but I can’t remember the last time I saw a “serious” blockbuster in the theater in the last few years.
Are there any must-see, adult films that I might’ve missed since, oh, 2010 or so? I don’t mean pornographic, but just thoughtful, reflective, nuanced, etc., not Villain X must be destroyed by hero Y. Seems like there’s been a lot of superhero movies, Hunger Game clones, and Harry Potter wannabes.
Are they still being made for mainstream releases? Or do movies of those types tend to go straight to DVD/Netflix now?
Hollywood likes to produce the action/fantasy/cartoony films that you don’t like because they play well internationally. I think the recent Transformers sequel did better in China than it did in the US. They still produce thoughtful films, but they’re rarely blockbusters. (Can you even name any “serious” blockbusters?)
The best work is being done in indie films and most especially premium cable television channels. “Game of Thrones,” “Deadwood,” “The Sopranos” … and on non-premium cable, “The Wire” and “Breaking Bad” … that’s where the really smart, creative people who want to do something different go. Hollywood makes a lot of money, but creatively, it’s a dead end.
You’ve not been paying attention. There’s been a ton of great, thoughtful, critically acclaimed, wide release films over the last couple of years.
Just off the top of my head:
Boyhood
12 Years a Slave
Gravity
Inception
Django Unchained
Black Swan
Drive
The Wolf of Wall St
Captain Phillips
The Art of Killing
Frances Ha
Dallas Buyers Club
Her
Snowpiercer
Lincoln
And that’s just scratching the surface. There’s a ton more I could probably dredge up with a bit of research.
Just do a search for “Best movies of 201X” to start building up a list.
Well just off the top of MY head, 'Gravity" is a wonderfully constructed film but basically it’s a kid’s space adventure and “Snowpiercer” has such an idiot premise that it spawned a thread on the Dope about its idiot premise. I have not seen or heard much about the other films, but the fact that the only two films I know anything about are not, shall we say, brilliant in every respect, makes me suspect the rest of the list.
That list of films includes several of the most critically-acclaimed films of recent years. Several were nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award. Honestly, if you’re not aware of them, you should get out more.
Looking back at 1963-2013, there have never been a whole lot of “serious” films in the top 10 earners, with a few notable exceptions.
Top grossing films from 2013:
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
Iron Man 3
Frozen
Despicable Me 2
Man of Steel
Gravity
Monsters University
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Fast & Furious 6
Oz The Great and Powerful
Top grossing films from 2003:
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Finding Nemo
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
The Matrix Reloaded
Bruce Almighty
X2: X-Men United
Elf
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
The Matrix Revolutions
Cheaper by the Dozen
Top grossing films from 1993:
Jurassic Park
Mrs. Doubtfire
The Fugitive
The Firm
Sleepless in Seattle
Indecent Proposal
In the Line of Fire
The Pelican Brief
Schindler’s List
Cliffhanger
Top grossing films from 1983:
Return of the Jedi
Terms of Endearment
Flashdance
Trading Places
WarGames
Octopussy
Sudden Impact
Staying Alive
Mr. Mom
Risky Business
Top grossing films from 1973:
The Sting
The Exorcist
American Graffiti
Papillon
The Way We Were
Magnum Force
Last Tango in Paris
Live and Let Die
Robin Hood
Paper Moon
Top grossing films from 1963:
Cleopatra
How the West Was Won
It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
Tom Jones
Irma la Douce
The Sword in the Stone
Son of Flubber
The Birds
Dr. No
The V.I.P.s
At least part of the problem is that making attention-getting films these days is so incredibly expensive that the prime motivator for most major studio projects is minimizing risk, which means following tried-and-true formulas that worked in the past. I read somewhere that major studios like Disney make no bones about the fact that they’re heavily invested in sequels rather than original concepts (apparently we’re going to be getting Star Wars sequels until the end of time!).
Even many of the good recent films like “Captain Phillips” and “Wolf of Wall Street” were basically technically excellent productions of blockbuster entertainment rather than anything that digs a little deeper and leaves a lasting impression. A good recent example of the latter was “Inside Llewyn Davis” which, however, was a bigger hit with critics than with the general public (those would be the ones who actually pay real money to see a film), and someone here recently dissed it as being “boring”. Hence more and more, creative filmmakers are beaten up by the studio bean counters who cater to formulas that have been proven to resonate with the mass audiences.
As has been mentioned before, for decades now the percentage of a Hollywood film’s box office that comes from outside the U.S. has been increasing. Hollywood no longer cares about what you think about a blockbuster film. It can make its money back just from the foreign release. The sort of subtlety (or even coherence) that you want doesn’t translate well. From now on, look for the small independent films and the foreign films. This means that you’ll have to work harder to find what movies are playing and might have to travel farther to see them, but that’s how it is these days.
I think the trope of foreign audiences dumbing down movies may have been true in the late 90s/early 00s but it’s not true today. One of the huge factors in the resurgence of well constructed, critically acclaimed movies has been that foreign audiences have become increasingly sophisticated and demanding. If you compare percentage grosses between the big dumb explosionfests and thoughtful well constructed movies, it’s hard to see a huge difference.
I think a lot of people in this thread simply haven’t been paying attention to what’s been going on with movies over the last few years and are still repeating the same tired old tropes that are no longer relevant.
I disagree. I see producers increasingly willing to take risks on hundred million dollar productions. If you have a look at some of the well made blockbusters of recent years, their pitches must of sounded crazy insane and incredibly risky to the Hollywood system, yet someone believed enough for them to get made:
“Our Marvel tentpole this summer is going to be a comic that nobody’s ever read, featuring a talking raccoon and a walking tree”
“We’re going to give Guillermo Del Toro a boatload of money to make a live action version of the Japanese cartoons of his childhood”
“Let’s give Alfonso Cuarón every CGI tool in the world to make a space movie with no aliens and only 2 characters”
“Let’s give Christopher Nolan a ton of money to make a philosophical mind twister”
“Lesbian Ballet!”
Sure there’s also a ton of big dumb explosionfests but there’s always big dumb explosionfests to be made because they also make money.
If you think Captain Phillips or Wolf of Wall St don’t have any larger meaning or message, then I suggest that maybe you’re not watching movies correctly.