The Truth Why Most Modern Movies Are Terrible

hey 42 here in late 2019 Empire magazine run an interview with Martin Scorsese that for a brief moment said the internet on fire discussing Scorsese's filmmaking kiss to me the great director was asked for his opinion on the current state of cinema in particular the Marvel Cinematic Universe his response angered a lot of people equate 'uncle movies to theme park rides he stated they aren't cinema and went on to say they aren't the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional physiological experiences to another human being this is of course a nice way of saying they're at best shallow entertainment at worst nonsense only good for watching when you want to put your brain into sleep mode when it came to putting in the effort to watch these kinds of movies the best he could muster was a mere I tried the response was fairly emphatic people argued on the news the head of Disney was so angered he arranged to meet up with coursezi to convince him he was wrong various actors and film industry professionals commented but Scorsese doubled down stating in the New York Times that the Marvel movies were devoid of genuine revelation mystery emotional danger and that nothing was at risk and they were inhospitable to art so in general statements were flying this way that way and all over the place and you know what Scorsese was right but he was right in perhaps more ways than he knew or even liked to admit modern cinema especially that encapsulated by the MCU and similar franchises does suck we've gone from the fort provoking visual masterpieces of the Godfather trilogy Citizen Kane a Clockwork Orange and Apocalypse Now and hundreds of us but each in their own way advanced the cinematic medium and artistic human achievement to modern tribe such as transformers white chicks 50 shades cats and dare I speak its name the emoji movie and an absolute slew of endless animated and superhero franchises that handles terrible sequel after terrible prequel after terrible spin-off occasional gems do surface from the cesspit just to name a selection of my personal favorite recent releases of course yours may differ the grand Budapest hotel darkest hour joker almost everything by Christopher Nolan and much by the Coen brothers and Scorsese's own the Irishman but on the whole cinema is in a very dark place right now and has been for some time now a lot of this video may come across as the grumblings of someone whose generation is being replaced with a younger one with different more spandex Laden tastes I'm man enough to admit that it's been shown that there's a certain age your taste in music set in stone so it's perfectly possible it's the same for movies and therefore my tastes are just set in the past and I'll never get what all the fuss is about so maybe I'm just a mustache commotion who can't get with the times that's possibly true no it's definitely true don't get me wrong when I watch modern blockbusters I do enjoy them I feel a frill a Scorsese suggested it's as if I'm on a ride in an amusement park I laugh anticipate and sometimes shed a tear and it's all good fun however I certainly don't find myself salivating at the prospect of seeing another one nor do I derive any deeper meaning from them so maybe it's just me oh maybe just maybe the movie industry has been debased to a deluge of detritus and my viewpoint has some veracity and I'll tell you why I think this is the way I see it there are two main reasons why modern movies are on the whole fairly awful and those are business and storytelling for simplicity I'm going to split this video into these two sections let's start with business first we need to establish how the movie business has now become an almost perfect engine for producing garbage why because every element of it is designed to do exactly that rather than make something spectacular the movie industry is inherently inclined to make something mediocre and more often than not that's exactly what they aim for because mediocrity sells there are several reasons why mediocrity is actually the industry-wide goal one of the most glaring and absurd is that movies are frequently made for no other reason than to preserve the rights to characters characters are essentially assets that can be utilized by the company ie Disney or Sony to produce income if the company does not use the character in a film the rights to that character often revert meaning they lose the asset ever wonder why there was a Hellraiser movie that was filmed in just two weeks countless spider-man reboots Fantastic Four reboots or even insanely a Jason Bourne movie that didn't actually star Jason Bourne the studio wanted to put something out to preserve the rights and in the latter case Matt Damon was busy so bafflingly we got some of the guy who wasn't Jason Bourne am I the only one who thinks that's insane these movies are made essentially in the hope that keeping the right will pay off later down the line in the meantime here's your crappy half-assed movie enjoy or not we don't care characters should operate as artistic apparatus that aid storytelling express meaningful emotion and ultimately a - the movie experience enabling the viewer to connect with it on a more personal level but today characters are just base assets that can be monetized no actually is more than that characters are now entire brands and characters like Batman James Bond Harry Potter or Superman are brands that in and of themselves bring in hundreds of millions of dollars through games merchandising licensing toys and films spider-man the most popular superhero in the world brings in over a billion in other words these characters are as profitable to their parent companies as Air Jordans are to Nike or the iPhone is to Apple think about that for a second and there's nothing wrong with these characters becoming brands so long as the quality of the movies doesn't suffer but it's essential that these brands are kept alive in the public consciousness to keep them earning money and keep those assets profitable how do you do that through a constant bombardment of new mediocre movies it's also imperative that these brands as the ad agency Young & Rubicam declared become the new religion which is something I'll leave you to process but given the visceral Martin Scorsese was subjected to I'd say marvel at the very least have been very successful at spawning a devout following if I'm being cynical this is no doubt one of the motivations behind the shared universe craze that has gripped movie studios in the last decade if you take a gamble on audiences responding positively to a brand new character you can buffer the audience's expectations by inserting an already well-known character brand into the narrative that way you get a new and existing audience all in one go regardless of whether it benefits the story in any way for example Batman V Superman was rammed full of tacked-on superhero introductions spider-man - not the recent sequel order Tobey Maguire one the other one no not the animated one the one with the guy of the long nap yeah that one that Spiderman - tried to set up a universe of villains Tom Cruise's The Mummy tried to set up a universe of monsters the issue was that none of the producers stopped to think perhaps we should actually make this one a decent movie why characters equals assets equals brands equals franchises equals money money money but why do all studios these days have to be like this why is it always the same regurgitation recipe well movies are an incredible financial risk complete with thousands of moving parts that are incredibly unlikely to succeed you can have a great director and great actors but if the script sucks you're going nowhere you can have a great script but if the marketing blows you'll get no return and so on it's incredibly easy to fail so Hollywood has become extremely adept at predicting what works and sticking to it don't take my word for it here's Fight Club director David Fincher talking about moviemaking within the studio system he said if you want to make studio movies you stay in their lanes which are romantic comedy affliction Oscar bait spandex summer superhero tentpole moderately budgeted sequel and aside from how hilarious affliction Oscar bait is that shows how constricted the largest engine of moviemaking the studio system has become and more often than not filmmakers need these kinds of engines or their idea won't see the light of day filmmaking is an incredibly expensive art form unlike almost all the others it requires hundreds of thousands if not hundreds of millions to see a vision come to life when novelists need a vocabulary persistence and a word processor filmmakers need a crew of hundreds and a blank check so it's completely understandable why most movies end up being semi repetitive rubbish they have no choice but to be from a financial perspective and if the studio is fronting the cash why shouldn't they make good on their investment I'd want to the poor sod whose original idea the film was has to let the studio tear it apart and feed it into their brand the creation mass market money-making machine because the alternative is that the film doesn't get made but for the film lovers out there like you and me we get what a trash year after year but don't worry it gets worse because the market itself has changed and he's had some ugly consequences you see in the past when it came to film there was America and a few smaller international markets but America was by far the biggest single market if America didn't like a movie it tended to flop now however things have seriously changed the China's market size is rapidly on the rise rivaling America's and this means one thing if a movie is going to ensure its financial success it needs to translate across many different cultures this means intellectually and morally complex dialogue heavy plots like there will be blood and dr. Strangelove aren't ideal but flash special effects heavy action entertainment who have easily translatable simple themes ie good guys versus bad guys is the ideal product choice and the bigger foreign markets gets the more this trend will continue most character brands such as James Bond spider-man and Superman are already established images you don't need a complex plot to recognize them you need a wealth of PPK a web shooter and the red cape people recognize this image that instantaneously pulled into the story incan now kick back watch a load of stuff blower enjoy the ride in other words the brands translate across cultures through visuals alone ever wonder why superhero movies are everywhere these days because they are simple images with simple themes that anyone of any culture can understand they won't challenge your preconceptions or improve your life in any way but they go down as easily as the film equivalent of Big Mac and Fries but for your health but damn does it taste good how movies are marketed has also become an issue the social media has changed the game more than ever with a movie living or dying by how it is received on social media in a few minutes everyone can know how much your film stinks and bad reviews can go viral in the past a bad movie but stay hidden long enough to make it four turns relying solely on the revenue from the weekly cinema guru who picks around the movie market but that market is now all but dead this has only increased the risk of moviemaking more than ever and thus the need for studios to predict and control the outcome this is an all-time high so today the first question asked by movie studios is not whether the film is good but can it actually be sold but this isn't the long-term definition of sold is to short term definition that being the opening weekend because of how movie financing works a movie needs to double its costs in grosses to even break even films cost hundreds of millions to make Plus even more hundreds of millions to market and distribute a tentpole blockbuster like Iron Man a free for instance would have to gross over 750 million just to land on its feet spoiler it did to make matters worse movies have a crazy drop-off weekend to weekend and the vast majority of profits are made on the opening weekend sure occasionally home like Avatar come along that eat weekend grosses over and over and over again but by and large movies have a punishingly narrow window of one to two weekends to see big returns oh go bust so it's essential new movies have the widest appeal possible that means recognizable characters simple plots are not too much dialogue at least not of the complex or intelligent variety but there's another reason Studios wants as much predictable revenue as possible today movies aren't just competing with other movies they're competing with books Netflix YouTube social media video games they're competing with your time and all the other things you have to spend it on short form entertainment such as Instagram or YouTube are eating traditional methods of entertainment alive film is no exception this means you have to sell your audience something you already know they are going to want how do you know what that is well you simply find something that already worked extremely well in another medium such as books and turn it into a movie franchise ie let's make a movie about the boy wizard so to briefly summarize largely due to the financial constraints of moviemaking the need for huge and instant returns and a modern environment where everything competes for consumers attention every modern filmmaking has become a wellspring of repetitive trite garbage that pushes whatever talent is in the industry into narrow predictable yet marketable storytelling avenues and then fine Tunes to product for mass appeal mediocrity one sort of positive side effect is that more and more top talent flees to Netflix and HBO where they feel more rewarded and creatively free which is why the quantity of top quality TV series has skyrocketed over the past two decades but it's a double-edged sword for film lovers because movie studios are left with second stringers making second-string movies meaningless viewer engagement which means less money and more and more crap and so on it's a snake eating its own tail make sense I'm good now let's move on to storytelling and this is where everything really falls apart for a story to have wide-reaching financial success it needs to be easily understandable one way to do this is to have it use a simple familiar story structure that has been proven to work though there are exceptions the vast majority of modern blockbusters can be boiled down to a couple of simple self-evident and totally worthless messages a team is stronger than an individual if you believe in yourself you will succeed movies will drape their story in other themes to provide diversity between releases some of which are worthwhile but when you really analyze them they simply repeat these same messages that we've been repeatedly told and have internalized since childhood we already know these axioms to be true we don't need 20 movies a year to remind us within these overarching themes writers usually follow predictable free out structures that screenwriting experts such as Syd field have been promoting and making money off there's nothing new here they're all largely rewritten and simplified versions of Aristotle's Poetics and Joseph Campbell's hero's journey whether or not it has any artistic merit is irrelevant what matters is that it sells the free act structure goes something like this act one person is in the ordinary world feels X receives invites to adventure or a challenge leaves the ordinary world act two encounters obstacle or enemy fails multiple times keeps trying fails things are at their very worst act free comes up with a new plan rallies his strength overcomes obstacle and or enemy feels y returns to the ordinary world forever changed if you really think about it most of Hollywood's output can be boiled down to this structure even if they play around with the way the acts are presented or the timeline it solar this alongside the repetitive childish themes bring us back to Scorsese's point what's not there is revelation mystery or genuine emotional danger nothing is at risk the pictures are made to satisfy a specific set of demands and they are designed as variations on a finite number of themes this is a more intellectual way of saying predictable meaningless crap the point is perhaps reinforced when breakout movies like black panther come along and are heralded as some sort of divine seminal achievement representation aside was it he followed the same simple structure had the same simple ideas and any other interesting concepts such as the responsibilities of those in power to their brothers without weren't explored in any detail they were icing on a simple cake hinting at complexity was offering nothing than approaching substance don't get me wrong some of cinema's greatest movies exclusively used the hero story from the matrix to Fight Club but in these examples and others the writers added complexity and depth through intelligent dialogue and unexpected plot devices a Fight Club especially takes the hero's journey and turns it upside down so much so that spoiler alert the protagonist turns out to be a schizophrenic terrorist leader what I despise is when writers rely solely on a pre-established talk show with little added depth or complexity to make a movie yet this isn't even the worst sin in hollywood's playbook that's award goes solely to one thing Bay foes forever shall its name be cursed 18th century poet Alexander Pope coined the phrase BAE false in his essay perry bay fox or the art of sinking in poetry Pope used baitfish to describe a technique where a poet would suddenly change from serious to trivial for the sake of making the reader laugh even if it were at the expense of the poem itself Pope despised this as he felt it the based poetry and prevented the art form and topic of the poem from becoming something greater and more transcendent thank god they're not he didn't live to see modern movies because beef us is their favorite writing tool of all it's incredible today how many movies no matter their subject matter function almost equally or even more so as comedies they are riddled with jokes often easily translatable the visual gags as if the writers and directors are terrified that the audience might take their story seriously for a second one example that immediately comes to mind is in Avengers infinity war where Bruce Banner trips over like Looney Tunes cartoon in what is the build-up to a save the universal we're all doomed battle that's like Michael Corleone competing his satanic journey into becoming the new Godfather only to cap it off with him loudly breaking wind as he renounces the devil the subject matter is extremely serious well who cares he is a joke why is beef are so popular because humor sells more accurately humor sells better than art it's a sad truth but most of your friends and family are much more likely to go see a film if you recommend it to their mouths it was funny it gave me a lot of laughs it's a great day out for the whole family rather than the cinematography was exceptional the acting was moving and the story was gritty cast your mind back to their recent releases you've seen from the Hollywood movie machine and you'll find it hard not to find examples where Bay Falls is running wild often at the expense of the pathos that is the sincerity that evokes pity or sadness necessary to a moving scene and if you don't believe me just consider that the average Marvel movie shoots out a joke every 1 minute 18 seconds on average considering that they're the benchmark most of the Studios want to hit and that their parent company Disney is replicating their efforts at over 20 movies releasing this year it's going to be a great year for undercut sincerity and weak emotional integrity this approach is really nailed home by a quote from Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator and Avengers director Joss Whedon who said make it dark make it grim make it tough but then for the love of God tell a joke I don't have a problem of humor in non comedy films in fact I love it when it's done with class but I'm a strong believer that it has to come naturally or it just doesn't work and it has to be appropriate to the tone of the Sene Tarantino has a particular knack for this the opening scene of Reservoir Dogs in the diner is speckled with funny lines overwhelmingly about dicks and wanting to shoot each other and it works because it's just a bunch of criminals shooting the [ __ ] over breakfast even though they're about to pull off a jewel heist you can imagine a similar conversation happening in a similar situation with similar people in real life in Pulp Fiction when Vincent shoots Marvin in the face even though they were having a serious conversation about Jules's retirement the comedy originated from a slip of the finger an accident but importantly it's one that seems completely natural and appropriate to these two low-budget hitman for hire the way Vincent says oh man ah shucks Marvin in the face is a hundred percent befitting to his irreverent character and it doesn't in any way detract from the film's more serious underlying message whereas there's nothing more out of place and jarring than protagonists making cheap jokes during an intense knife fight to the death let me paint another picture for you to demonstrate how BAE Fox can ruin an otherwise great film take 1987 predator starving Arnold Schwarzenegger it's a blockbuster so it's comparable to today's fair and perhaps one of the most quotable and beloved action movies of all time predator tells a story of a team of commandos who found themselves being hunted and killed by a mysterious alien warrior the movie is filled with one-liners little notes of humor and the reverence from the characters early on but here's the thing as soon as they start being slaughtered by a mysterious invisible alien the characters cut that [ __ ] out just like you I or any sane human being would in fact one of the most memorable lines from this part of the movie is there something out there waiting for us a lady no man we're all gonna die uh hardly a side-splitter but entirely appropriate to the new mood and events of the story this sincerity and adherence to the appropriate tone leads us to take the story in the situation the characters are in more seriously we see the villain as more of a threat and it makes the final showdown a lot more thrilling the result the creature has become an indelible mainstay in popular culture despite the fact it's only been in one good movie to hammer this point home the series was rebooted in 2018 filled with inappropriate Bayfest and irreverence and the characters throughout and was a commercial and critical failure go figure even when Hollywood is shown in consumer trends that Bay foss isn't necessary to succeed they try it anyway can you imagine if in Titanic Kate Winslet listening to Leo DiCaprio as frozen impassioned final words told him to chill I don't think it would have quite the same effect the conclusion from this is that not only are movies simplistic and repetitive but they're devoid of the necessary resonance to make them achieve any kind of meaning or engagement sure you might enjoy the spectacle you might even enjoy the jokes but at what cost because there's little more damaging to the art of cinema than Bey false and the abusive reliance on repetitive themes and structures except perhaps how politically minded executives are cramming so-called progressive political agendas into movies but that's a whole other topic on that note all I have to say is if you have an agenda don't shoehorn it in at the expense of the story anyhow Ricky Gervais is already doing an absolute sterling job of making a laughingstock out of the woke Hollywood elite so I don't have to I could also join on about CJ Ivers practical effects but I won't because the story comes first the orcs in Peter Jackson's The Hobbit may have looked like rubber sex toys but at least it was redeemed by Tolkien's time story and Martin Freeman's acting because whether you like it or not stories are a form of communication and they are in some way shape or form edifying they are trying to teach you something valuable but what do most modern movie stories teachers the answer is absolutely nothing they're shallow fun that goes nowhere and leaves you with nothing of value sure you might feel like a rush to see The Avengers band together to defeat the villain as Alan Silvestri's music swells but what are you left with what did you feel what did you think or were you just left wondering what will happen to these corporate brands next this isn't to say you can't make a large budget blockbuster interesting The Dark Knight is about resolving who you think you are others who you need to be the Empire Strikes Back is about how the evil we see within others is just as much inside us the Lord of the Rings is about how meekness sacrifice and brotherly fellowship can overcome the vices of power and greed we can't help but be affected by these themes when they're well told as they are in these examples but most modern movies don't do this they're just commercials for the next revenue generating insert studio brand here adventure they're promoting a brand that one's popular enough once enough people have been to the cinema and experienced us Scorsese said a visual theme park ride they can be turned into an actual theme park ride that can make even more money so skip your next trip to see Avengers parts 10 and gonna meet war and peace instead you'll get much more out of it thanks for watching unfortunately I don't have a blockbuster budget so if you enjoyed this video then please consider supporting me on patreon to help me to continue to make these videos you'll find a link in the description also you could get your hands on a first edition signed copy of my new book sticker fly get it by heading on over to unban publishing the links in the description i'm pre-ordering your copy today thank you

Channel: Thoughty2

Views: 1,200,697

Rating: 4.8751421 out of 5

Keywords: cinema, film, films, movies, movie, critique, critic, marvel, disney, sony, studios, production, filmmaking, film theory, film review, movie review, film theorists, hollywood movies, nostalgia critic, film theory disney, disney plus, movie reviews, disney movies, cinematography, disney theory, marvel comics, avengers

Id: VI9RSlHqu-w

Length: 30min 5sec (1805 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 24 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/lePurpleboom]

Eventually he’s just going to morph into Stalin with that fuckin’ moustache

[u/LovesickInTheHead]

Using cats 2019 as an example of post 2010 cinema is really unfair

[u/WindamEarle]

I heard that after she saw Cats, Judi Dench sat down and had a long talk with her agent.

[u/Receiver527]

Next from him. "Why All Modern Food Sucks"