American audiences are no longer the sole demographic for Hollywood. The audience is global, and high budget films are planned with that in mind. The lowest common denominator is the result.
During his Academy Award speech, Cord Jefferson (who won for the American Fiction screenplay) argued for more low-budget films at the cost of a single big-budget mess. More movies means more types of stories, allowing more niches to be filled. It also creates more industry jobs, and deepens the bench with talent development.
The best way to come up with good ideas is to figure out how to have a lot of ideas in the first place.
The movies of the late 90s are great examples of this. Dozens of different types of new stories made on what are now considered very low budgets. The problem is that without the home video and TV markets those sorts of movies don’t make any money. So many 90s classics didn’t make much at the box office but made bank on home video or with licensing.
Market conditions have changed, and the product needs to change with it. Just like how MTV hasn’t been “music television” for a long, long time.
Gen-X here, we do too
Your generation only speaks when spoken to!! /s
Who are you and how long have you been there???
Can confirm. I’m 38 and I cringe every time I see a remake of some 20 or 30 year old movie or show. Come up with something original instead of going for the low hanging fruit. Also, use less CGI and more practical effects.
Too much bad cgi now days.
Look at top gun 2. I wasn’t excited at all to see it. I left the theater pumped and saw it four more times.
A good story is a good story. Lots of CGI or no CGI doesn’t change that fact. There are lots of movies with no CGI that are just garbage.
The issue is studios trying to avoid having to write a good story trying to mask a mediocre story with lots and lots of mediocre CGI. Why? Because it’s faster to create lots of computer effects than to come up with a great story. It’s also a lot easier to create an assembly line for CGI than it is to create one for great stories
Top Gun 2 was full of CGI…
True, what people want is seamless VFX.
I watched Argylle and everything looks so fake. Most of it was shot on a green screen. Half the charm of an extravagant spy movie is taking us to exotic locales.
But also a ton of practical effects. The CGI was mostly there to help the practical effects, the movie wasn’t full on CGI like Avatar.
None of the planes shown in the film ever left the ground.
It was a damn good movie.
I thought I was going to hate it. It seemed like a cash grab. I’m not a huge fan on Tom cruise. It was just a damn good movie. Movies have forgot they’re supposed to be entertaining. It was entertaining.
And adaptions that adhere to pre existing lore… Witcher, Halo I am looking at you
Oh come now. If Halo had to stick to pre-existing lore we wouldn’t have seen Master Chief’s ass.
When you make 9 hours of video, but the only redeeming portion of it is 3 seconds of ass.
*Looks at Millenials and Gen-Z queuing round the block for the latest mediocre Marvel horseshit*
You can say you want one thing, but you’ll cheerfully pay for whatever the adverts in your tiktoks tell you to buy.
I’ll have you know I don’t queue up for Marvel horseshit. I put it in my Radarr list like a civilized human being.
From what I understand this keeps happening because “Hollywood money” is afraid of untested “formats.” Everyone wants easy money, “no one” (read: investors) wants to create art, they want an “easy” jackpot.
This kills the medium. I haven’t watched a new movie in I can’t even say how many years, possibly a decade.
I watch a lot, and can say there’s plenty of stuff out there that’s still good, whether it’s arty (Killers of the Flower Moon, Oppenheimer, Poor Things) or fun (M3GAN, Barbie).
There’s a fuckload of money being squandered on absolute bollocks though. Aquaman 2 cost over $200 million. Expend4bles cost $100 million. Both should have been scrapped before filming.
What the fuck is this article smokin? Is it AI?
…of these young kids,
Ok goddamnit, enough with the millennials r kids n shit. Im 45. Millennials are adults. Adults! Kiss my pucker, fucker
If you’re 45, aren’t you technically Gen X? My understanding is that the Millennial generation starts in the 1980s, with Gen X being between 1965 and 1980.
Generations aren’t about hard lines of division. For example, if some was born in December 1979 and another in January 1980, they would have more in common than with someone born in 1975 or 1985.
I was born six months before the millennial cutoff, but I find many of my touchstones align with millennials than with Gen X and then I have some that line up with Gen X.
Ultimately, the utility of generational analysis is degraded with pieces like this. There seems to be something useful about looking at how certain aged people relate to events, but trying to ask about “How millennials are ruining the work place for Gen X” isn’t a good use of that analysis.
Ok goddamnit, enough with the millennials r kids n shit. Im 45. Millennials are adults. Adults! Kiss my pucker, fucker
I think they meant in emotional terms.
So Boomer actually means that they have the mental state of Lead Poisoning?
I wonder how many times in my life I will get to see Batman’s parents die? Or James bond play poker? Or star wars get ruined?
I don’t see anything wrong with serialized media, the problem is people are not also taking chances on more novel stuff. Even when it gets made. “Moon” came out fifteen years ago and I thought it was really good but damn near every time I bring it up I’m the only one who even heard about it. “Knives Out” was great, “Glass Onion” was alright, we get weird stuff like “Pig” and “The Menu” and that’s all stuff with big names and decent budgets. There’s tons of smaller stuff coming out too but if you don’t pay attention or seek out film festivals, or know someone who does, it might as well not exist.
Are theaters just too expensive for casual audiences? Is the opportunity cost too high? Or is it just a marketing failure?
I love moon. It is a shame it is not better known, great movie.
Yes theatres are too much for a cash strapped general population. But we also see streaming get ruined all the time, the last time netflix had a show I liked (I am not OK with this) they cut it after one season, and for what? We have a situation where movies/shows should be easier then ever to make but we instead have next to nothing worthwhile out and advertised.
I also hate when they remake movies that don’t work with today’s production companies. Remember what they did to Old Boy? Why did they even try? And why did they think removing the big shocker (the whole point of the movie) would work?
My girlfriend and I still use yes chef because of the menu. Even in non cooking situations
Personally I feel like we must be due for another Batman movie, they feel the need to make a new one of them every five or six years.
And another Hulk and Fantastic 4.
Here’s what people want… Good movies and good television. Yeah, originality is great, but remakes can be good too.
I liked the remake of Infernal Affairs (The Departed), Scarface, Cape Fear, Ocean’s 11, The Fly, King Kong (Peter Jackson), True Grit, Judge Dread, and The Wizard of Oz (1939) was also a remake. The Fall Guy looks good too.
For TV, there’s Battlestar Galactica, Westworld, Cobra Kai, Sabrina, and Wednesday, though different, could fit in there as it’s still based on another property.
What people don’t want are obvious cash grabs.
Honestly sometimes we’re fine with cash grabs too, aslong as they don’t require much attention. For example John Wick is a really fun and easy series of films to watch but you don’t need to have 100% attention throughout
I have to say, I recently realized there was a fourth and I hadn’t seen the third, and I didn’t care for those two. The first on was amazing. The second was good, but started introducing too much gun-magic the third and fourth had lost all the authenticity the first one was known for. The first everyone talked about how it was somewhat realistic and people moved and behaved in a believable way. In the third and fourth everyone is just running around using their jacket to block bullets while firing blindly but perfectly accurately. It got really dumb.
Hell some of those remarks are better than the original IMO the True Grit remake is infinitely better than the original one, mind you I dont like John Wayne movies and this aint even me being political I fucken love Clint Eastwood movies.
I think it’s funny you use Clint Eastwood to prove you’re not politically motivated because he talked to a chair to entertain conservatives while John Wayne on the other hand was a Nazi. Like I get it, you can absolutely disagree with both it’s just funny the difference in egregiousness.
One went out to campaign for nazis, the other was one. I frankly don’t see a difference.
Not even remakes… Remakes of remakes made 3 years before The latest remake
Spiderman: Recursion
:raises hand: Gen-X too please!
I am interested in that new Roadhouse NGL.
Seems like one of those things everyone would say in the abstract, particularly on a survey. Then when the studios go for safe projects and the thing they remake is among someone’s personal favorites they’ll watch it anyway, validating the strategy.
Movie studios pay unimaginable money to learn what people want. It is a constant, year round expenditure for them. Their information and data suggests that while a vocal minority may be fed up with remakes, people still fervently buy them, have very short memories and seem to go bananas for any shred of nostalgia bait.
Remakes are as a result an incredibly safe bet, they are less expensive and less risk, which in financial terms is a green light. Until they aren’t either of those things and they carry more risk, they will continue to be pedalled out.
False. They pay unimaginable money to find out the least amount of money required to make the most profit. Which means reducing risks on unknown properties, repeating trends that have been successful. So original stories represent unknown risk even if it’s something the public wants.
If you ask people what they want it makes sense you’ll get a lot a sequels.
Like if you asked people what they wanted 200 years ago they would say faster horses, not a car.
I want trains.
Say it to a survey but then when the movies come out the dollars come in for the remakes and reboots
Kind of like 90% of Americans disapproving of Congress but then votes for their incumbents.
There’s also the financial risk to be considered. A mainstream film release from 1970 might have been produced by fifty people, cast and crew combined. The crew for Barbie as per the image above was close to a thousand people. That’s expensive. Have to put in twenty times the ante to be in the game, and all the payoff is in established properties that you already know have an audience? It would be foolish to do otherwise.
Like you say, if people actual did what they said they wanted, and go and take a punt on the new stuff rather than going to watch the same-old, then it would be different. But you can’t complain about it when that’s what you spend your money on.
There were major blockbusters earlier in Hollywood as well, like Doctor Dolittle.
Yeah, maybe that’s cause we don’t have nostalgia for any of the adapted properties they keep choosing over and over. The original star wars came out in 1970-something. Maybe some older Millennials have some nostalgia for the prequels, but even most of them tend to know that it sucks pretty hard. I feel like a lot of the millennial childhood movies, the nostalgia-bait, is gonna be stuff that are bad remakes or sequels of older movies. Gen-X had predator, Millennials had alien vs. predator: requiem. Maybe early Millennials had heathers, but mostly, Millennials have mean girls, which recently got a 1-to-1 musical remake, which wasn’t that good. Last two times they’ve tried to adapt avatar, it’s been pretty bad, as well. I just don’t have supreme confidence that anyone will really understand the appeal of any of these works or realistically be able to replicate them.
I think probably a primary driver of this is that a lot of these works’ appeal is rooted in their specific aesthetic, and hollywood as of late has felt very homogenized to greenscreen soundstages where everything is set in a concrete cityscape with overcast noonday lighting, because all the non-unionized CGI patsies are subject to a bunch of crunch time pressure where they just have to churn out garbage over and over. Also not helped by the amount of this which is done overseas, and can’t actively take any co-ordinated input in the middle of production. Mergers, leading to ballooning budgets, leading to shittier, more controlled, more generic products. Same shit has been happening in gaming, too. Easier to sell a committee decision on a remake, adaptation, or sequel, too, something that’s “proven” as a property, instead of an original IP.
That’s not even really to talk on how many Zoomers probably have nostalgia for early youtube videos, and shit like that, rather than mainstream movies or franchises. They don’t need to watch a remake of like, an old markiplier video, they can just tune into him doing basically the same thing he’s done for the last 15 years if they want a shitty nostalgia hit. I don’t need a remake of homestar runner, they’re still releasing shorts that I can watch occasionally. You can watch most of the same old guys because they’re still doing the same stuff they used to do. For the most part, anyways, lots of them got cancelled for being shitbags, or have had severe mental breaks. Still, point stands that, at the lower end especially, I can just go online and watch a bunch of amateur artists destroy their craft, I don’t need the movies or TV for those niche hits anymore.
