I have to vent: this has been the worst decade for movies . . . EVER!!!!

Cafe Society
1

I can’t take it anymore. Just got done watching Captain Marvel and while it had its moments it encapsulates the biggest money making trend in Hollywood that I have suffered through for the past 9 years: action hero movies. I’m about to go full IDIOT here so forgive me because I CANNOT TAKE IT ANYMORE!!:mad:

A confusing opening plot; a passable mid-plot with some humor that wastes the talents of some of the greatest actors in the business, including Samuel L Jackson, Jude Law and Annette Benning, here for a quick payoff for minimal effort. And an ending which devolves into a clusterfuck of CGI effects and plot devices so ridiculous you think you are actually just watching a cartoon.

Which is what these hero moves have become: glorified, bloviated cartoons of little or no true cinematic value boring their audience with CGI effects that may have reached their peak.

How about the other cartoons, the Pixar inspired animated movies? Monster Factory 12, Toy Story 6, Ice Age 5----ENOUGH of this crap! It was cool in the late 90s and 2000s, but the train has left the station. I’m sick of it!

Then there’s the final annoying subgenre usually found in the dreck on On-Demand: the regurgitated horror movie. A family moves into a new house(with the father usually being played by a now B-level actor desperate for a “Dad” part), their bratty 6-year old who magically communicates with ghosts, who then go Poltergeist on the entire family. Often, sickly, the child dies. Movies like “It Follows” are one of a handful that scare the shit out of me. 95% of them are predictable borefests. We’ve seen it all before: when will a new Hollywood director step up and scare the shit out of the audience?

Is this what is left Hollywood? (Arguable) Gems like 12 Years a Slave, Revenant, and Whiplash seem to be far and few between. I have to be honest with you: in the past 9 years, I could count these types of movies on one hand; in the 2000s, 1990s, 1980s, even the 1970s when I was a kid, that was not the case.

I understand if I sound like “they don’t make ‘em like I used to” and get these superhero movies do blockbuster business.

But I’m sorry to me this is the first decade I’ve been alive

  1. Where TV is better than the crap being shown in movie theaters
  2. True movie making has been set BACKWARDS by the overuse of CGI technology

I have a suggestion for Hollywood producers and directors as we go to the 2020s: write a script, get talented actors to read the lines, and professionally (not with shaky cameras, another pet peeves) shoot them doing so. Its amazing how often this works!:cool:

I’m sure 'm missing many many good movies from this decade and have already acknowledged I might sound like an idiot: but its June 2019 and one of the last movies I’ll see this decade and this movie just set me off. I cant take it anymore!!!

LET THE DEBATE BEGIN!

2

Mystery Science Theater 3000. Best Of the Worst.

Empires built on shitty movies from all decades.

3

I’m certainly exhausted with all the superhero movies. I only watch a few of them, mostly for completionist’s sake, but they have been quite entertaining most of the time. Also there have been rather too many sequels, failed reboots remakes, and failed attempts at Cinematic Universes, even though I root for them when they’re announced and have every intention of watching them until the reviews come in and scare me away.

The problem is the cinema now has only a small drawcard that makes it unique, and that’s a spectacular canvas for blockbuster action films. It’s not necessary for comedy, romance, drama, or indie films. Even animated movies aren’t always better served by the big screen. We now have streaming services and huge TVs at home that are equally as good and sometimes improve the experience for those films. This means there’s a battle going on to draw in the big crowds who spend money, and that’s the nerd contingent. And Studios know you have to spend money to make money, so they do.

It is absurd. What they make are largely simplistic and superficial, full of empty whiz bang nonsense. But it works, time and time again, and nothing suggests it’s slowing down any. The box office returns on Marvel and Disney movies is still phenomenal, and profits are all that seem to matter.

4

True, there have been crappy movies ever since motion pictures began coming out.

I submit, however, that crappiness has now been elevated to completely new levels. And with great pride too, all in the name of “progress.”

5

So it’s accurate to the source material, is what you’re saying.

6

The 2010s has a ton of great movies. There are something like 500 movies made every year, and only a few dozen of them are the big blockbusters you’re complaining about. Try watching some of the other 400.

Incidentally, the big blockbusters for any era could reasonably be complained about in the same way superhero movies are now.

However, we are seeing the disappearance of the mid-budget movie. I would bet that the average budget for non-blockbusters is much lower, since it seems like the only two choices for budgets are $200 million or $2 million, with little in between. If one were to argue that Peak Television has contributed to this, I could buy into that.

One casualty of the loss of mid-budget movies is romantic comedies, which seemed to disappear by 2010.

7

Not a hijack, since the OP mentions it, but I’m also pretty exhausted with shaky cam, particularly when the POV is obviously not intended to represent a handheld camera. Human eyes and stereoscopic vision are pretty amazing. We can run and even shake our heads while maintaining an (apparently) fixed and stable view of an object. (I say “apparently” because I realize that our brains are actually doing some pretty fancy work to make it seem stable to us.)

In any case, I have to paraphrase a movie critic (Ebert?) who was talking about “Dutch angles” in a certain movie: “The director often uses shaky cam, but apparently doesn’t understand what it is meant to represent.” Hate it, hate it, hate it…

8

I think there have been some really good mid- and low-budget movies.
Romantic comedies - The Big Sick (2017) was genuinely excellent, and is highly rated by both critics and audiences. The great thing about it is that it doesn’t come across as glib or fake, and the storyline and ending are not predictable.

In the superhero line - Kick-Ass (2010) - fun, funny, and original.
Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom and The Grand Budapest Hotel - both superb.

The Florida Project - moving, brilliantly acted, and authentic.

Anime - Your Name (Kimi no na wa)
I could probably think of a few more.

9

The trouble is there is no good writing anymore. Or those that can write aren’t being used. Or just churning out lazy boring predictable crap. Perhaps they are all working for television now, who knows.

I agree with everything the OP says.

10

It makes sense - character-based drama is a better fit for TV, where it has more room to breathe. Maybe we should just recognize the fact that mid-budget non-spectacles never belonged in movie theaters in the first place.

11

The 2010s has been a golden age for horror movies though. Quiet place, babadook, witch, Jordan Peele’s work, sinister, it follows, hereditary, etc.

12

I can get behind this. We looked at the Redbox offerings the other day, not a damn thing worth watching.

13

Apparently true. Unfortunately I don’t like horror so I don’t get to benefit from its improved quality.

14

The past decade has also been unusually kind to serious science fiction. And even unserious science fiction like most of the superhero movies have at least been attempting to put good science in. I guess Hollywood has finally realized that science advisors work for cheap.

15

The issue is this:

  1. Cost. Movies are more expensive to make than ever, so studios have to move to known properties – sequels and remakes.

  2. Ticket prices. As they go up, people are less likely to take a chance. Thus they will go to sequels and remakes where they have some idea what’s they’re about.

  3. Spectacle. Why spend money in a theater when you can see the same movie at home? Because action is more impressive on a big screen. A simple drama is not.

  4. Star Wars. It showed two things: people will go to movies over and over in the first run, and those people are usually teenage boys. So you make movies teenage boys will like.

  5. Animation. Relatively cheap to make these days. An automatic audience for kids and their families.

Ultimately, all these trends ensure that studios will want to make big blockbusters that are based on things the audience already knows. In the 1940s, this was about books (though not the blockbuster mentality, but best-sellers were turned into movies). Now, it’s comic books, old TV shows and movies. It’s been there as one of the factors in moviemaking since the beginning, but it’s become overwhelming.

16

I think it depends on what you like. I haven’t noticed any decline in quality. Then again, I have never seen a horror movie or a single one of the current crop of interconnected superhero movies. I also don’t watch movies that are very violent.

My favorites of the past decade:

The King’s Speech (2010)
The Artist (2011)
Midnight in Paris (2011)
Les Miserables (2012)
Lincoln (2012)
Rush (2013)
The Theory of Everything (2014)
The Martian (2015)
Room (2015)
Spotlight (2015)
Steve Jobs (2015)
Lion (2016)
The Shape of Water (2017)
Green Book (2018)
Rocketman (2019)

17

Yeah, there’s a certain truth that a lot of better writing has ended up on television. Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, The Good Place, Black Mirror and such are all extremely well written and thought provoking.

But to say that all movies are no good is just to ignore the facts on the ground. It’s to look at the obvious candidates and not take the time to really look for quality. Paterson was a great, well-written movie of the last few years. Some others:

Inglorious Basterds
Carol
Spotlight
Arrival
Nightcrawler

There’s more. But to rant on what’s bad is, again, to only show that you’re not properly looking.

18

There were three MCU films in 2018. There was one DCU film in 2018. Add in Venom, Deadpool and Spider-Verse and call it seven major superhero films.

There was something in the neighborhood of 270 films released in 2018. Obviously of different levels of distribution and quality but we’re still talking about superhero movies making up ~3% of the 2018 output. They take up an outsize amount of the public’s interest and energy but there’s still a lot of other options.

19

I’m confused; you voluntarily attended an action hero movie and then come here to complain that there are too many action hero movies? If you don’t like that type of film, don’t go. The National Board of Review of Motion Pictures publishes a list of the top-ten independent movies for each year. Here’s the list for 2018. No action hero movies among them. So I recommend seeking out the independent and original movies if you want to encourage more of them and fewer action hero movies. (Although of course tentpole movies like the action hero movies are, in part, how the studios afford to make the independent movies.)

The Death of Stalin
Lean on Pete
Leave No Trace
Mid90s
The Old Man & the Gun
The Rider
Searching
Sorry to Bother You
We the Animals
You Were Never Really Here

20

Since 1995 or so (and not just in movies), there has been a peculiar obsession with giving audiences history lessons on past entertainment, especially from the 70s and 80s. And I do think that more interesting types of movies have been choked out as a result.