Considering how amazing some television shows are these days, it demonstrates that the world still has good writers and great writers, who are capable of telling excellent stories. Yet, most films seem to be lacking in this department. What gives? Is it just studio interference? Producers favouring to appease certain large demographics thus detracting from the story being told?
shareFear.
Last year they made the fewest amount of movies in 20 years.
Payrolls are too much. Studios are too afraid to take chances anymore.
Sequels and remakes are usually fairly safe bets.
Used to be if a big name actor was in a movie everybody would see it and like it.
Now they can pay a big name a lot of money and the movie sucks.
They're just much more careful now.
That's some good insight, it sounds dead on.
shareI also think because now there are so many cable and online channels doing their own shows
writing talent might be a little thin.
Back in the day people went to the movies no matter what.
Now you can hear if a movie is good or bad the day it's released.
I think a lot of people won't go see a move with bad reviews.
I agree with you. With the money and actors tv shows are now getting. They are making tv shows with big budgets and movie stars.
To me it is just that the movie market now is SOOOOOOOOO over saturated with Super hero movies, it is almost boring. The last movie I saw in theaters was the Disaster Artist, because it was something different. I pay 75 bucks a month for cable (movie channels, netflix, HBO, everything baby) and i love tv. Now if a movie is coming out that looks decent, rather then spend up to 80 bucks going out I say "Meh, it will be on tv in 3 months so I will just wait till then"
I used to go cinema all the time when I was younger, now I maybe go 3 times a year and that's a stretch lol.
shareWhen were dead and Tom Hanks and Tom Cruise and Meryle Streeps Daughters are all dead.
shareMovies still tower over TV... No comparison...
Nothing on TV in 2017 came close to making an audience "feel" the way any of these movies did...
The harrowing immersiveness of Dunkirk, the uneasiness of The Killing of A Sacred Deer, the disorientation and melancholy of BladeRunner 2049, the horror-comic absurdity of Get Out, the joy and abandone of Baby Driver... TV cannot do any of this...
There is more mood and atmosphere in the breakfast scenes in Phantom Thread then there were in the entire catalogue of Netflix series and shows released last year... No comparison... TV cannot compete, because by the time that a particular moment moves an audience, the TV show is off to the next plot point, exposition or episode... there is no room to breathe and feel... You're never sitting in your theatre seat, as credits roll processing what you've just spent the best part of 2 hours watching, then thinking about it on the way to dinner and reflecting on it and discussing it with friends... the themes, the ideas... how you felt... Like sharing a dream, which is the definition, of even the most above average of movies...
So I disagree with the premise in the OP. TV is not amazing in comparison to movies, yet I do agree that movies are missing something... For example, who has even seen Phantom Thread or The Killing of A Sacred Deer? not that many people... Most movies aren't Dunkirk or BladeRunner 2049... Most movies, in terms of what people actually spent their money and time to see, were Jumanji, Star Wars The Last Jedi and various superhero movies, i,e, product movies for kids... Not films for adults or even mature adolescents...
What is lacking in cinema is movies for adults by filmmakers who want to impart their sensibility to an audience, rather than a committee engineerd product to sell toys to kids... but do adults still go to the movie theatre?! I think they stopped more than a decade ago...
I've seen Killing of a sacred deer, I thought that was great. I loved the whole thing, it was one of the few recent movies where I was invested and actually cared about how it would end, I also appreciate there was no cop-out happy ending, the only thing that was a little absurd was the way people interacted it took me a few minutes to get into the world that the movie was set in.
I do agree with your point that there are fewer movies for adults. Adults still go to the movie theatre it is rare, but they do.
I understand occasionally movies nowadays can still be powerful, it was only last year that BladeRunner 2049 came out and it looked beautiful, but when was the last time you saw a movie that captured what blade runner 2049 did?
Anyway, I think TV can be just as thrilling as movies. Game of Thrones definitely gives audiences an immersive experience.
The tv show Hannibal had hauntingly beautiful visuals that were unlike anything else on TV.
Also, Altered Carbon on Netflix has a very similar look to Blade Runner, maybe not as magnificent as 2049 but still very visually pleasing. I think Tv has just as much as artistic value as movies can.
The tv series The Leftovers was phenomenal and is really beautiful in terms of writing and cinematography.
This post is not to say film sucks and every movie that came last year sucked, there are great films, but there's very few and far between, as you said with TV once one episode has been consumed the audience is ready to move on to the next, well, yeah and since TV has gotten so good they will be completed invested in the next story.
I think TV has improved a lot in the past 15 years
But I tend not to like the longer form of serialised storytelling, as I feel that they invariably end up becoming a little bit like soap operas... This happened even with a very good show like Mad Men in the middle and latter seasons...
I think there is an underused form, the mini series, which does it better and is less compromised than the regular ongoing series... Good examples are Olive Kitteridge and The Night Of (in particular the first hour and a half)... Knowing that they have a shorter limit of episodes (4 - 8 max) and no second season means they can really go for it and have a tighter story that works as a whole. They come close to feeling like movies and probably work well as a way to adapt longer novels.
The British original House of Cards mini-series is a good example, as it doesn't suffer from the bloat of the long form American version, especially from season 3 onwards...
In terms of long form series, I like The Crown, because the soap opera aspects of it are not a hinderance as it follows a monarch's journy through the years... It's a good example of how the best TV shows have proper production values these days and are paced without the need to allow for interrupting advertisments.
Yes,the studios have the habit to decide what should be deleted in a movie and that's why - my friend - the movies now days are a mess.
shareI do not know, but I hope the quality cinema will return. Because with those superhero movies and even those new indie movies are generic and it seems like the charismatic actors are hardly get roles and the boring and wooden actors are everywhere and got many roles. I don't even want watch new movies anymore or go to the cinema. I know they will not getting my coins until this "mediocre the new excellent" will trending in Hollywood.
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