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Millenials will never have a Stanley Kubrick

posted 4 years ago by Redsfan001 (6004)
36 replies | jump to latest

The Greatest generation had- John Ford, Orsen Wells

The Boomers had- Stanley Kubrick, Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorecese.

Gen X had- Quintin Tarentino, The Coen Brothers.

I submit that the Millenials will have no director of the caliber of the previous three.

Millenials, before you jump down my throat, I am a Xer, and I really appreciate some of the things your sensible generation has accomplished. McDonald's food is actually not as bad for you as it was in the 80's, your commitment to making the earth a more sustainable and compassionate place really puts my cynical generation to shame.

However, your generations tendency to be hyper-critical about EVERYTHING is doing you a major disservice in the movie field.(Mojo's 'Ten things wrong with' seems to be a big hit) Budding young directors of your generation are just getting POUNDED for doing something creative.

Not all of it is the Millenials fault, new technology, giving everyone access to bitch about EVERYTHING is making movies today more homogeneous then ever.

I hope the dynamic changes soon...

[–] Bugin (42) 4 years ago

I've been lurking on this forum for a while and figured this looked like a good opportunity to jump in. I am a millenial myself so my perspective might be biased, but I might as well give my perspective on this anyway.

Firstly, I think it might be too early to say that there will never be a great millenial director, many millenials are still pretty young and haven't had the experience required to "mature" into a great director or been in the movie industry long enough to have enough clout to pull together a visionary piece since so much of the industry is still in the hands of the older generations, and secondly it might be an issue of "Everything is bad now" that everyone seems to go through where pop-culture peaks around the age they are 12 and declines ever since, so hopefully we will be able to look back at the "millenial days" and think that they maybe weren't so bad since we tend to remember what was good about different times of culture and forget what wasn't.

However, I do think that you are right in that many millenials think that being hyper-critical and self aware are the hallmarks of intelligence, and this certainly seems to be reflected in modern films, though I'm not sure if this is the "millenial influence" or they other way around, many films I see nowadays just seem to be made with the idea that they don't want to be made fun of, so either take the "This is all silly and you shouldn't take it seriously" route like any of the big Marvel movies, or take the opposite route and take themselves so seriously that there's no room for levity and if you make fun of it, you "just don't get it. I definitely think there's room for both types of film, but I think both have suffocated out the middleground films that are just an earnest expression that the director put to film.

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[–] Bugin (42) 4 years ago

Additionally, I think that the film-making environment isn't really conducive to new and experimental film-makers, so many movies today have massively ballooned budgets and demand huge global box-office returns, there doesn't seem to be as big an interest in smaller scale and riskier films. I think this is also diluted by the fact that so many films aim to be PG-13 as a way of maximising their audience size that has cut some vision out of a lot of films in order to keep the ratings low, resulting in a lot of films that just kind of fit into the "bland and mediocre" genre that are heavily restricted by their audience. Though I guess there will always be derivative, generic films that are forgotten over time and the truly great films are what we remember.

Ultimately, I think it's just too soon to cast out Millenials as "not having it" in regards to great directing talent, and I think if cultural and industry attitudes change a little, we'll get a chance to see them (us?) shine, and I really just want to see the kind of films they want to make without being scared of what audiences or critics or the rest of the industry thinks. Though, you should probably take my (long-winded and rambling) opinion with a grain of salt since I have no real insight into the movie industry outside of occasionally watching films.

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[–] Redsfan001 (6004) 4 years ago

Excellent post!

I did not originally post my thoughts taughting generational superiority.

For the love of film, I hope the dynamic will change, and my OP can be thrown back in my face someday.

[–] BillHicksFan (10092) 4 years ago

Nor will they have a Vittorio De Sica, Robert Bresson, Frank Capra, Akira Kurosawa, Ken Loach, Mike Leigh, John Cassavetes, Ingmar Bergman, John Huston, Elia Kazan, Luchino Visconti, Robert Altman, Billy Wilder, Aki Kaurismaki, William Wyler, Paul Mazursky, Sidney Lumet, Abbas Kiarostami, John Ford, and no Stanley Kubrick.

No Marlon Brando, Steve McQueen, Humphrey Bogart, Robert Mitchum, Kirk Douglas, William Holden, Henry Fonda, Gregory Peck, Gary Cooper, James Cagney, Orson Welles, etc etc

[–] Redsfan001 (6004) 4 years ago

Thank you, and my apologies to all these fine directors I did not include in my OP.

[–] McQualude (4231) 4 years ago

Kubrick & Coppola weren't boomers so how does that play into this? Spielberg & Scorsese are barely boomers.
I agree with your statement but Millennial were raised mostly by boomers and live in a world built by boomers. Whatever they are, isn't a flaw in their generation it's a flaw in the boomer generation.

[–] KD637 (488) 4 years ago

Whatever is a flaw in their generation that is actually a flaw in the boomer generation is actually a flaw in the greatest generation.............is actually a flaw in................the first generation of humans that ever lived.

[–] McQualude (4231) 4 years ago

Exactly.

[–] Kawada_Kira (7269) 4 years ago

I think the much bigger reason for this is that the film industry is so much more commercialized than it was back then. It's harder for unique talent to squeeze in and do something original when the film industry is all about marketing now, producing the same few things over and over again because they're guaranteed moneymakers, with little room for anything unique and "risky". I don't think being critical about things really has much, if anything, to do with it. I don't see what that's really supposed to mean in concrete terms anyway. Is it that people are more critical about things like racism and sexism in the industry? I don't see how that harms the prospects of talented people. If anything, I think the greater progressive social consciousness of our time would actually improve the prospects of talented people who might have been ignored and shunted out in the past, like women and non-white people. So, yeah, I think commercialization is the real problem. And it's not like that's new but it's much worse now than it used to be.

[–] Redsfan001 (6004) 4 years ago

For art to be great, you have to have no chains binding it. Art has to push boundaries, offend, offer new ideas.

Great art works in the past did this.

The what I call a 'sanitation process' that Hollywood puts movie through these days puts a incredible amount of shackels on a directors vision. These shackels are a result of social media, fear of offending.

A very small example of this is a little noticed scene in the latest QT movie that shows a woman snoring.

Such a small little thing but really it is quite huge in the larger picture.

Scenes of a woman snoring are just not seen today in a non comedy movie. Why? Because Hollywood does exit polls on what movie patrons think. A women snoring offends some (I don't know the percentage but it is large enough to cut the scene).
QT is one of the directors who has the juice to override the exit polls.

Directors with lesser juice are aware of audience tastes and cater to the 'offend nobody' ethos that movies of Hollywood have today.

Unless this dynamic changes we are going to have a very long list of mediocre, forgettable movies for the foreseeable future.

[–] Kawada_Kira (7269) 4 years ago

I don't buy that that movies have to offend for the sake of offending in order to be real art. To be quite blunt, I think that's bullshit of the first order, an edgy teenager philosophy. Not least because the typical idea of what "offends people" is stuff that punches down, stuff that portrays people of color, women, disabled people, other religions, etc in derogatory ways. I don't see that that's necessary at all. And I call bullshit on the whole concept because I never see any of these people calling for movies that attack real sacred cows. How about a movie that goes after the US military, that criticizes Americans' worship of the troops and war, and shows how the US's wars affect the people of the rest of the world, from the perspective of the people whose countries are bombed and destroyed? Or make a movie about some worshiped US president like, say, Reagan funding fascist death squads in Central America, or Truman carpet-bombing peasants in Korea, from the perspective of Salvadoran villagers and Korean communists. Make a movie like that, and all these people who say movies are supposed to offend will get up in arms shrieking and crying about anti-Americanism and evil leftist Hollywood traitors and how America is a good wonderful country and you should either love it or leave it. It's only the marginalized and downtrodden who are supposed to be insulted and offended, for the amusement of the white middle-class majority, whose views are never to be challenged and whose sacred cows are never to be touched.

I say again that what you're talking about comes down more to marketing and commercialization. This business of people not liking a woman snoring is news to me, and sounds silly if true, but yeah, this is about studios trying to make as much money as possible. I highly doubt people care enough about something like women snoring for it to affect a really good movie. You're putting the cart before the horse, blaming the public instead of the studios and marketing.

[–] Redsfan001 (6004) 4 years ago

Studios and marketing don't want to offend the public, they do want to make money. There are 1000's of these little questions they ask the audience during pre-screening. Thousands of little questions like snoring that give a hint to what they like, kind of similar to a recipe that appeals to the masses.

These movies are like a McDonald's meal, good tasting but forgettable.

Clockwork 🍊 could not made today as is. The movie has two gang rape scenes. It was highly controversial when it came out, now it is regarded as a must watch for movie buffs.

Godfather I and II also, studios would be hesitant in putting so much money in a movie that stereotypes a ethnic minority in 1920's New York.

The Deer Hunter, could not be made today. Studios would be fearful of the outcry of the depiction of Asians in the film.

I could go on, but you get my point.

Real life can be ugly, with ugly people, ugly endings, ugly motivations.

Sanitized movies are a 'safe space' that don't want moviegoers to be triggered by anything.

Kubrick and all of his generation did not know the phrase 'safe space' or 'trigger warning'.

Millenials need to support directors of their generation, they need champions. Only high profile directors with juice to call their own shots can break through. By deeming certain things taboo, offensive, off limits, we all just stay in our safe space.