I’ve seen a fair amount of porn in my days, and I’ve noticed that it all seems to be the same. I realize that there are only so many ways to insert tab A into slots B, C, or D, but still, there seems to be a fixation on a series of specific sex acts, always in the same order, and always with the same ending. Are my tastes just not broad enough, or is there a reason for this lack of creativity?
It’s partly the reason why porn doesn’t do anything for me.
That and I get the feeling they are not really enjoying the act, that they are just doing their job.
They need better music, too. If you’ve heard one “bow-wow chicka bow-wow”, you’ve heard them all.
I’m thinkin’ this is a cafe society topic.
Oh yeah, Uke is gonna just love this one!
I think that perhaps you’re expecting too much from the people who make these movies. Do you rent the same type of movie each time? Ever watched one with a “story line”? Maybe they’ve made so many of the silly things that they’ve done it all, and now they don’t know what to do? 
Why? Because the sex act is formulaic.
Find me a man who engages in two hours of foreplay after orgasming. Yanno?
There is a rhythm ( heh ) to the sex act and most porn adheres to the more basic rhythm. While it’s not overly engaging on an intellectual basis, it’s porn. It’s not William Styron. [ Aside. Those readers who may believe that William Styron IS porn, this isn’t the place for that debate. 
]
What is more interesting is the rare porn film/video that has something approaching a real story that is intersting to watch. I saw the first Emmanuelle in a theatre in about, oh say, 1981. It was pretty mesmerizing. The dynamic of the older man, the younger woman, the series of encounters that he orchestrates. It actually had a subtext that was interesting.
Today, sadly, subtext has gone the way of…of…of…plot.
Cartooniverse
Blame the Mafia.
Back when the porn business was developing, organized crime controlled the money aspect of the business. They fronted the money for production, then they handled distribution and collected the profits. Back in the 70’s there was a brief period when porn appeared to be on the verge of breaking into the mainstream. However, the “businessmen” involved quickly stepped in and told anyone who was thinking of getting artistic that they should control themselves and get back to work making more of the same stuff that they made before. While the mob’s hold on the porn business has faded, the mentality remains. A reliable market exists for a reliable product and nobody wants to take risks. People who want to get involved in creative filmmaking stay out of porn because it has ironically become one of the most conservative sectors of the movie business.
A couple minutes of clicking around brought up this list of links - links obviously not included, mods.
Somehow I just can’t believe that they all have “a fixation on a series of specific sex acts, always in the same order.”
And I haven’t even clicked on them.
WetWomen - Babes in the bath tub, shower, pool, lake, pond, etc.
WebCam - Sites that offer real live video & camera feeds.
Watersports - Collection of sites that specialize in the "yellow" side of sex.
Voyeur - CAREFUL! There may be a camera on you!
Unusual - "Hairy preggo in latex blows a horse" stuff in here.
Uniforms - Come and play dress up with these babes.
Toys - Sites that have pics of babes playing with toys/objects.
Teens - All models are of legal age (we can't stress that enough!)
Swingers - Sites that list personal ads, info on other swingers & clubs.
Stories - Sites that offer those erotic text stories.
Smoking - Come and puff along with these sexy smokers.
Shemale - Chicks with dicks - boys with boobs.
Shaved - Nothing beats a bald beaver.
SexChat - You said: "I too like dildos covered with grape jelly!"
Sex - Your basic hardcore stuff over here.
Series - The same person/people with the same background in the pics :)
RedHeads - Are they natural RedHeads? Does it really matter? :)
Products - Viagara, Porn Movies, Dildos, Penis Enlargement & More
Pregnant - Expecting mothers & their big 'ole boobs.
Pornstar - Ron Jeremy is my favorite, too :)
Petite - The closer to the bone the sweeter the meat.
Pantyhose - Smooth and silky and so kinky.
Panties - Sites that have either upskirt or panty pics.
Oral - Pussy eating & blowjobs galore over here!
NakedMen - It's all hunks & well hung studs now - for the ladies.
Movies - No, not "Deep Throat"! Those avi & mpg & mov things.
Misc - Sites that have many different areas (pics, movies, stories, chat)
Midget - The litte people love to fuck too.
Mature - Are they gray all over? Do boobs get wrinkles, too?
Live Feeds - The final version of the Live Feeds you guys tried for me
Lingerie - Lingerie, bikinis, stockings - erotic clothing if you will.
Latina - Sites that specialize in soft & hardcore Latina pics.
LargeLadies - BBW's got more love to give!
Interracial - Blacks & whites showing that we all can get along :)
India - We are not talking about the cowboy type.
Humor - Greenguy & Ampland's humor archive - time killing at it's best :)
Hirsute - You got to love hair with you meat!
Herbal - Herbal drugs for sale - read more aobut it on the next page.
Groupsex - Nothing but sites with pics of three or more on this page.
GirlGirl - "Lez be friends."
Gay - Nothing but gay males loving each other
Fuckshots - Nothing but sites with "dick in pussy" pics.
Feet - Be careful you don't lick any toe jam :)
Email - Questions, comments, add a link, dead sites, etc...
Drunk - Nothing beats drunk naked chicks.
CumShots - "You'll shoot your eye out, kid!"
Cheerleaders - Rah Rah Sis Boom Bah!
Celebs - Sites with naked pics of your favorite celebrities.
Categories - The sites on here have ALOT of good categories to choose from.
Butts - Just sites that focus on the backsides of beautiful babes.
Brunettes - These dark haired chicks are bleach free.
Broadband - If you have a cable modem or DSL, click here.
Boobs - These sites offer nice breast pics (big or small, firm or droopy)
Bondage - She can't come to the phone, she's all tied up.
Blondes - (insert your favorite blonde joke here)
Black - It's all pink on the inside :)
Bisexual - For those who love both sides.
Big Cocks - I can't believe they take the whole thing.
Babes - Sites that have some fantastic softcore/babe pics.
Asian - "Me fucky-sucky you long time, Dr. Jones!"
Anime - I'm sorry, but I can't help but call this "erotic cartoons"
Anal - Sites focusing on sex in the "poop chute".
Amateurs - Neighbors, wives, girlfriends, themselves, their mom....
Story and plot require some sort of script.
Scripts require writers.
Writers expect to get paid.
Porn is shot on video for a reason, you know. Maximum profit, minimum expenditure. People who buy porn will buy durn near ANY porn in their given area of fetish, so why waste money on plots and stories?
Perhaps the reason there’s no good “porn” is because as soon as it achieves some legitimate production value, it suddenly becomes “art”, or “erotica”. “Porn” almost seems to include in its definition “crappy acting, crappy cinematography, idiotic script, boring, repetative music, absurd scenerios” and so on. Once somebody actually aspires to telling an engaging story, with dialogue that doesn’t make you whince, etc., you’ve left the realm of porn. You can show your flick at Sundance. In fact, from what I remember, “The Brown Bunny”, which made quite a stir at said film festival, featured a five-minute long scene of Chloe Sevigny blowing the director/lead actor (Vincent Gallo), who happened to have a monster cock. I haven’t seen “Bunny” but from “Boys Don’t Cry”, it’s clear Ms. Sevigny can act. And another Gallo film, “Buffalo 66” is brilliant, so it seems to me “Bunny” could actually be a legitimate work of art. And it’s got a Hollywood class actress actually sucking a guy’s erect, gargantuan dick for several minutes. If that isn’t porn-class onscreen sex, I don’t know what is.
My conclusion is that the lines between art and porn are going to erode rather quickly over the next few years, and in a decade or so, it might not be all that unusual to see flicks in regular movie theaters that just happen to have people engaging in real sex acts during the course of the story. Expect some creativity and real art value.
I remember that’s what everybody was saying back around 1974.
Loopydude’s suggestion seems on target. There have been a number of non-american movies that contain fairly graphic love scenes, but are not pornographic. A few examples: Sex and Lucia, Baise moi, Y tu mamá también. Once the makers are aiming at something else than sexual gratification of the viewer, it becomes an art movie.
Why there are no movies that aim both at stark arousal and intellectual stimulation, I don’t know. It may have to do with the fact that the blood in your body can either go up or down, but not both at the same time. 
The most entertaining thing about “vintage” porn (stag movies from the 20s and 30s) and porn directed by women is that they aren’t saddled with the same specific conventions of, say, anything featuring Ron Jeremy.
I remember watching Judge Judy once a few years ago and they had a porn actress suing her producer. The producer smirkily claimed that he was working on an “ultimate reality series” that showed “what’s really going on in people’s bedrooms.” And I remember thinking, the only sex act he’s ever shown to completion is coitus interruptus, which is seldom anybody’s first choice in the real world.
Britain’s Channel Four did a show on the history of motion picture porn and it made an interesting point: there really isn’t any. Porn flicks made in 1910 are pretty much the same as those made in 2000, taking into account changes in technology and fashion.
This only makes sense. Porn (as opposed to erotica) is made for only one reason, and it ain’t to stimulate the intellect. It’s not like the act itself has undergone great revolutionary changes in the last 100 years.
The one exception to the no-history rule was the 60s and 70s, when movie porn came out of the underground and into the local theatre. As a sop to courts who demanded “redeeming social value,” porn movies went through a brief period where they actually had plots and characters, however flimsily conceived. But these period came to a screeching stop in the 80s with the advent of video, as shown in Boogie Nights. As porn left theatres and went into homes, it reverted to the same wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am format it had used in the earlier days.
Well apparently gay porn is the exception because most of the videos I’ve seen have at least some rudiment of a plot.
Ironically, back in the days when I rented such materials, I would actively look for anything with Ron Jeremy in it. Why? I certainly wasn’t interested in looking at him. I liked his videos because he was an engaging “actor” who actually makes scenes work through his dialogue. He had a personality, and was quite funny. He wasn’t the wooden actor (pun intended) that so many of the other male porn stars were and are. Most male stars in straight porn are really no more than living, breathing dildoes. Ron “Hedgehog” Jeremy was actually a character.
Now, my own question would have to be about Japanese porn. I’m trying to figure out why the actresses in those videos always go through “the act” with their eyes closed and their head turned to one side. It doesn’t seem to matter who the actress is - they all do it. And I can’t determine, from facial expressions and vocalizations, whether I’m watching a scene of rape (apparently a popular theme in J-Porn) or consensual sex.
Oh, there are J-porn where the girl is into it, just that there are so many more similar to what you describe. Two words: Cultural expectations. As in, demureness is valued, and “only sluts would get into it”, or something to that effect. Remember, in Japan The Pill was not widely released for everyday use ‘til the late 90s, yet Viagra was cleared just as soon as Pfizer could get the patent translated (or so it seemed).
As to the formulaic porn – as mentioned before more subtly: hc porn is wankin’ fodder. Enough of the potential consumers of such product are, erm, motivated enough by “hey, look, bodily parts in contact and fluids flowing” that there is no evolutionary pressure, as it were, to make better ones for those who require a little something extra to, uh, react. Selling many, many items of mass-produced cheap product is more profitable than selling a few items of well-crafted product.
Porno starts with: let’s put on screen three blowjobs, two girl-girl 69s, a FMF 3-way, a MFM 3-way, and an upside-down reverse-mount anal with the girl wearing a nurse uniform. Then figure out how to bookend all that.
The not-technically-porn erotica flicks that are mentioned above are characterized by going at it in the opposite direction: there’s a plot, this plot requires sexual situations; how much of that sex can we show and get away with it? That drives creativity.
Who makes this shit up? And then I had to do it. I had to find out how big a horse’s dick was. For your reading pleasure:
I somehow doubt that people are waiting for the porn crossover hit movie. Most porn videos are made for the home market and its doubtful that anyone will ever make a movie with a plot for this. If you remember Caligula that should give you reason enough why no one will make something like that. I think that movie lost a lot of money.
That’s one of the benefits of porn, you never hear a viewer saying “gee…i didn’t think it would end like that.”