Modern motion pictures are made for people who temporarily or permanently lack the mental capacity to understand deeper plots. The other audience is too small to bother with.
It’s ironic that the word choice and structure of this article feels overly embellished in that very chatgpt style… I miss the old days of people writing their own content.
Good movies aren't created often, while movies in general are now produced more frequently, so unimpressive movies are much easier to bump into. I just saw a chart showing over twice as many movies were released in 2018 as in 2000. It would be interesting to see for each IMDB decade what percentage of films are rated 8 or higher.
In my experience it’s that set lighting has changed enormously.
Modern digital cinema cameras can capture dark scenes far better than the film stocks of the 90s and earlier. So set designers don’t need to blast light everywhere to have actors be visible. Now, we even have AI Denoising that can make ISO 12500 look like 800.
Go watch a 90s movie and look at a night or interior scene. You’ll see that everyone is actually lit by blue lights. Not natural darkness. That’s a major change.
This also shows up in porn. A playboy photo was expertly lit and beautifully so, with angles and bounces and shade filters and gobos.
Since the 2000s the market has expected the “DV Cam” which became “Smartphone” recorded look. Which means natural lighting all the time. It’s lost the “glam”.
> Maybe I'm just nostalgic. Maybe I'm romanticizing the past. But when I finish a good movie, I can sit there thinking about them for hours, even days depending on the movie. When I finish most modern blockbusters, I'm already thinking about dinner. And that difference, I think, says everything.
I don’t watch modern most blockbusters because I don’t enjoy them in general. I watch a few that I know I will likely enjoy.
I think we have some bias too.
We remember better the good experiences. The Netflix catalog is full of not so good movies, and the video rental shops in the 90s were too.
A big part of this is that modern movies are carefully calibrated so that you can follow along while sitting on your couch focused on your phone. Movies in the 1990's didn't need to have so much clanky dialog explaining, in careful detail, why we were someplace. The writers and directors could presume that the audience was actually paying attention to the movie, and so would make the necessary inferences. Modern movies are mostly terrified of doing because the audience is also swiping on Tinder and scrolling Instagram at the same time and would never realize that he just stopped walking with a limp oh my God was everything he said in the entire movie a lie?
There is recency and survival bias, yes. But a sizable fraction of movies are remakes or series extensions. The Marvel Overextended Universe has taken this up to 11. That it's still working, mostly, leads other studios to make movies in that style.
One problem, of several, is that there just was more point in doing things, meeting people, and going places up until a decade ago.
If you make a movie set in 2025, the screenwriter has to jump through hoops to avoid real life, which much of the time is someone quietly staring at a screen.
> I think the difference comes down to this: older movies took risks. They trusted audiences to pay attention, to feel something, to think. Scorsese and Tarantino had visions and the freedom to execute them without endless studio interference. They weren't chasing demographics or worrying about franchise potential. They were making films, not products.
By risks, you mean they weren't just following tropes, but subverting them, inventing their own, not rehashing exist IP.
I think that's the difference. Execs have run out of ideas, and so hedge on the familiar.
I think some of it may be that everything is too big now and they all have too many options they can, relatively, easily take. When special effects became easy every movie turned into an action movie. Special effects are everywhere creating scenes that don't actually help tell the story or develop a character. It just seems like there aren't hard choices being made to force a movie to be its core best self. Every scene should matter. Of course we can't go back though. I don't think many people would pay to see the something like Jaws again.
There's that incredibly funny/sad clip of the old actor playing Gandalf getting frustrated with talking into thin air.
Half of modern movies literally only exist on the special effects laptop.
But movies have always been about technology. I am sure Fritz Lang was considered a hack once.
Important distinction: This specifically applies to Netflix movies; these are explicitly aimed at people watching in the background, or listening without watching. The conclusions don't apply to modern movies as a whole.
The biggest thing for me is the cinematography. 80s/90s movies were filmed as if you're standing alongside the cast.
* Many more shots from eye level
* Significantly less jumpcuts
* People actually cast shadows onto the environment, and filmmakers would fearlessly shoot scenes with full bright or full dark elements in them without trying to make everything dark and bright visible simultaneously
* Waist-up or even full body shots of multiple (3+) characters talking and/or walking around with few if any jump cuts
I'm not even from that era but I find movies from that era to feel the most "real", like I can almost reach into the screen and just "be there" together. This aesthetic is perfectly doable in the modern age, even with digital cameras, it's just not the trend currently.
Modern writing for films is terrible is my feeling. I can’t remember any weekend in the 90s an first decade of 2000s where I could not find one or more movies that I wanted to watch. These days neither me or the kids can find anything and we have been going to Sunday matinees and watching old 80s, 90s and even silent movies with Buster Keaton and they are better than the slop that made today. Frankly I’m hoping gen AI lets new and exiting storytellers end the industry.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 48.2 ms ] threadWhy movies just don't feel "real" anymore
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45949863
Modern digital cinema cameras can capture dark scenes far better than the film stocks of the 90s and earlier. So set designers don’t need to blast light everywhere to have actors be visible. Now, we even have AI Denoising that can make ISO 12500 look like 800.
Go watch a 90s movie and look at a night or interior scene. You’ll see that everyone is actually lit by blue lights. Not natural darkness. That’s a major change.
This also shows up in porn. A playboy photo was expertly lit and beautifully so, with angles and bounces and shade filters and gobos.
Since the 2000s the market has expected the “DV Cam” which became “Smartphone” recorded look. Which means natural lighting all the time. It’s lost the “glam”.
I don’t watch modern most blockbusters because I don’t enjoy them in general. I watch a few that I know I will likely enjoy.
I think we have some bias too.
We remember better the good experiences. The Netflix catalog is full of not so good movies, and the video rental shops in the 90s were too.
Take a movie like When Harry Met Sally — there are basically four on screen characters, giving more time to build chemistry and relationships
If you make a movie set in 2025, the screenwriter has to jump through hoops to avoid real life, which much of the time is someone quietly staring at a screen.
By risks, you mean they weren't just following tropes, but subverting them, inventing their own, not rehashing exist IP.
I think that's the difference. Execs have run out of ideas, and so hedge on the familiar.
But movies have always been about technology. I am sure Fritz Lang was considered a hack once.
There Is No Evil (شیطان وجود ندارد) 2020
Drive My Car (ドライブ・マイ・カー) 2021
The two Dune films
Alcarràs 2022
Suzume (すずめの戸締まり) 2022
Monster (怪物) 2023
Fallen Leaves (Kuolleet lehdet) 2023
The Holdovers 2023
Perfect Days 2023
The Substance 2024
Bugonia 2025 (even though it's a remake)
When you have to let the writing carry the story, the movie works much better.
* Many more shots from eye level
* Significantly less jumpcuts
* People actually cast shadows onto the environment, and filmmakers would fearlessly shoot scenes with full bright or full dark elements in them without trying to make everything dark and bright visible simultaneously
* Waist-up or even full body shots of multiple (3+) characters talking and/or walking around with few if any jump cuts
I'm not even from that era but I find movies from that era to feel the most "real", like I can almost reach into the screen and just "be there" together. This aesthetic is perfectly doable in the modern age, even with digital cameras, it's just not the trend currently.