Discussion
Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis
chuckadams: I put more stock in the the Sundance and Cannes jury prizes: even if they're comprised of the elites who can afford to go to these festivals, they've still got far more artistic sense than the ossified corporate board that the Academy has always been.
woeirua: $100 to go to the movies for a family of four. No thanks. There’s no mystery why the movies are dying. They’ve priced themselves out and then they give away the product on streaming several months later anyways.If they want theaters to come back then they’ll have to put movies behind a paywall again.
lotsofpulp: I doubt increasing the price of their goods will work when the supply of alternative ways to spend time at almost zero cost is near infinite.
awongh: The cultural relevance of movies, and American made movies isn't going anywhere anytime soon, but I think the economics of streaming is finally playing out in the loss of the geographical concentration of power in Hollywood and California.This is the endgame of the feedback loop of streamers causing industry consolidation... the direct connection of dollars people spend to sit in a theatre seat was slowly declining, but now I think it's gotten so small that it no longer matters- and once the whole box-office feedback loop disappears a lot of the economics of how films are produced are being forced to change.One of the reasons that people have loved to make fun of Hollywood for literally it's entire existence (besides the fact that the meta talk is self-indulgent artist stuff) is that making movies with so much money and waste is fundamentally ridiculous.The optimistic viewpoint is that maybe new AI production tools will trigger a re-democratization of creative movies in the next wave, like in the 70s and the 90s indies.
mpalmer: Another victim of the efficiency of the market.Market forces know no culture except what consumers pay for. Absent real care, stewardship and focused investment, the product will always get cheaper.And of course consumers' tastes are under attack from another direction: their attention spans.Some load-bearing pillars of human culture are weakening.
morkalork: Is this article a weird cut-paste of older content? This passage makes no sense in the rest of the context, the tense is all wrong.>Starting in 2029, the Oscars will also be streamed globally on YouTube, which the academy hopes will attract new audiences and reinvigorate the ceremony’s popularity after years of declining viewership.
iammjm: Actors being this wealthy and famous has always been a mystery to me. Oh so you are a good looking person that recites other people's words for money while faking emotions? And you can take as many takes as you can and your fuckups will be corrected in post-production anyway? Well I guess the work you do totally merits the hundreds of millions of dollars you've amassed. Like even kicking a ball or whatever makes more sense to me because there is an objective measurement of what it means to do it well, while with actors its mostly about sympathy or preference
artyom: Nobody else to blame but themselves. Of course, Hollywood is full of narcissists so they'll blame everyone else, e.g. streaming, prices, etc. but the reality is of the last 10-15 years of mainstream US cinema is:- Scripts that sound more like an HR meeting than a good story.- Blockbuster superhero movies that are all the same movie.- Lots of remakes that added modern CGI flare and destroyed the artistic value of the original.- As consolidation of studios happens, way more "safe" stories that aim to not offend anyone. I think the only one able to get away with it right now is Tarantino.Prices, streaming, theaters, etc. -- they're all accessory to the problem. People went to the movies for enjoyment, why would they go to endure them? There's no cultural collective experience anymore in the sense of going to see Lord of the Rings or Matrix with your friends for the first time.Also this is happening throughout all media. Music and video games have the same kind of discussions.
fullshark: Cultural relevance of movies is already greatly diminished. Maybe these AI tools will trigger a reversion of movies to the days of the nickelodeons where plot, story, and character are irrelevant and people just shell out money (attention) as long as the moving image looks cool.
awongh: Can't it be both? In Marvel movies the plot, story, and characters are irrelevant and it's still the current greatest American cultural export.
pkorzeniewski: I haven't been in cinema in the past ~10 years and to be honest I wouldn't care if there would never be another movie made, simply because there are hundreds, if not thousands, amazing movies made since the beginning of the cinema that I didn't watch. Most of the new movies are crap anyways, so why waste time and money when I can watch a classic movie instead which has a much higher probability of me enyjoing it.
rurban: Cannes is free to attend for film professionals. Always was. You only have to find a hotel.At Sundance you could stay in Salt Lake City or Heber City and have fun. Free busses.Oscars are not about the arts, nor about quality. Never was.
rdtsc: There just aren’t as many good new movies. Most movies we watch at home are from decades ago. If we didn’t have streaming maybe we’d go to the movies more often, but it’s hard to say.A few movies we watched are not worth the money. To stay afloat they have to raise ticket prices, but if we’re paying so much, the movie better be absolutely outstanding, and the are just not usually, so we stopped going.
fullshark: There will be some creative people that can now tell stories they couldn't before with AI, but I think by and large the major use case is to create short form video clips to get attention on the internet (advertising). I don't foresee a "movie" (meaning narrative story told via visuals and sounds in 1-3 hours) renaissance happening, in part because I think the form is fully mature and there's not really much more that can be done with it. It's essentially gonna be where Jazz music is today in 40 years, it will have its fans, and there will be talented practitioners, but every year it will be more and more culturally irrelevant.
sbarre: As much as I support unions and labour rights, the last SAG-AFTRA strike mostly just helped the big studios realize they could do more with less.Hollywood is a factory town at the end of the day, and we all know what happened to most factory towns in America. This one is just getting there a few decades after the others.
awongh: This is definitely another case where a union could either understand where the bigger economic forces are headed (in this case globalization, IP licensing, residuals that no longer make sense, attention economy fracturing the marketplace etc) and adapt to how people will consume content in the future, or double down on an economic model that is one generation behind.In theory the union is the only org capable of standing up to the streamers' buying power, but it has to make sense within a business model where consumers pay one monthly fee for content. I'm not even sure what that really looks like in the end.Maybe it's also that the FTC allowed all this monopolization to happen, and turns out that having three media companies in the US is bad.
embedding-shape: What exactly doesn't make sense? The Oscars are moving to streaming the event globally on YouTube (bunch of TV channels has said they'll stop broadcasting it in 2029), and the viewership of the Oscars has been declining for years. I'm not sure I see what's wrong in there.
stavros: Hm, what's wrong with it?
philwelch: They might have been in the last decade, but now it’s just yet another franchise audiences have stopped caring about.
paulryanrogers: It's celebrity. People want to imagine themselves like these icons they've built, even if only through the laziest of efforts. I wonder if it's an innate human trait to aspire to be like those we admire.
embedding-shape: > To stay afloat they have to raise ticket prices, but if we’re paying so muchWhat are you paying when you go to the cinema? Just went to the cinema today to see Hoppers, and was slightly surprised that the tickets were only 8 EUR per person, then we spent maybe 5-10 EUR per person on snacks too, so ended up paying maybe ~15 EUR per person overall. This was outside a metropolitan city in South-Western Europe, maybe that's why, or I've just lost track of what's expensive/cheap.
the_af: > The optimistic viewpoint is that maybe new AI production tools will trigger a re-democratization of creative moviesI don't think so.Part of the downfall of movies -- blockbusters movies anyway, the kind where being a box office hit matters -- is that they have seemed produced like AI slop even before AI. Making it easier to produce more slop isn't going to fix this.Then there's one thing making noise in my brain. It's not polite to say it, but here it is anyway: should movies be democratized? And art in general? Maybe people without the means of making art that reaches millions shouldn't be enabled by AI. Maybe it's ok that not everyone can produce this kind of art. Maybe the world is saved from a crapton of, well, garbage. More than what's currently being produced, anyway.As for non-blockbuster art, it's already democratic. Everyone can grab a phone camera or a paintbrush and create art for their friends and family. And that's ok.
awongh: In the end people have limited number of hours to watch content, and only a few things bubble up to the popular attention.What I meant is that I don't see truly indie-produced feature films reach the zeitgeist anymore.I don't mean AI slop, but the next gen of creative tools that will allow people to make cool and creative and compelling stuff without the backing of 100's of millions of dollars.It seems like movies are just another cyclical creative industry and this has already happened multiple times before- with each new technology and distribution platform there's the potential to get a wave of creative output that wasn't possible before.Another aspect could be that the hollowing out of the top / polarization of the industry is another catalyst.It could be enough that people who don't work on 100's of million dollar budget films get funding to do the next 1 million dollar film that looks great and is amazing.That's more analogous to the SaaS startup boom that happened in the previous gen of tech startups. Initial costs went down and platform access went up.
the__alchemist: My 2c: They should stop concentrating on appealing to the broadest audience. Formulaic heros' journeys, franchises, predictable characters acted by the same narrow set of the the most-attractive people etc.Safety and mass-market appeal over creativity.For contrast: Books, non-AAA video games, and movies from smaller studios still produce high-quality, creative efforts I continue to be excited about. Big-budget movies (and games), and Netflix shows are mostly bottom-feeder stuff.
cyanydeez: not appealing to the masses is DEI; perfect robotic formula are just common sense.Obviously.
echelon: Young people are going to prefer content that caters to their worldview. This is why new media is continually made and we don't all just listen to Mozart.Everything changes and evolves. Fashion, music, games, young adult fiction, memes.You wouldn't limit yourself to your grandparents' taste, would you? (I didn't say parents because some kids are instilled with parental preferences.)You don't understand youth culture because you grew up before them and have different tastes.
jt2190: [delayed]
eitau_1: Here's a great video-essay on adjacent topic: Why The Movies Don't Feel The Same Anymorehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoldOz5YyAw
awongh: Except that pretty much as soon as movies started being made, people have said this about movies :)
soared: Just checked AMC - $18.50 in the app for a normal adult ticket. ($16 + $2.50 fee for using the app). An icee and popcorn would be ballpark $18 as well.
xp84: About the same where I am. A matinee used to be cheap, now it’s the price you said, and more like 20 for the full price show.You don’t have to pay the app “convenience fee” but they added assigned seats to pressure you to do so. If you wait till the day of and buy on the big kiosk in the lobby, what if all the good seats are gone? (Hint: they won’t be, the theaters are always mostly empty)
raw_anon_1111: We pay $6 tickets for first run movies on Tuesdays at the Studio movie grill as a cheapish date night with movie + dinner + drinks and reserve seatingMovie theatres hardly make any money from ticket sales with 80% of the ticket price going to the studio during the first two weeks and then declining. They make money off of concessions
jl6: Anton Ego in Ratatouille gives this take on what democratization should mean:Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere.
the_af: That's a pretty good take, I think.What I object to is this notion that everyone should make art, and that AI empowers them. As in (and yes, I've read this, I'm not making this up) "people without writing skills can now write novels". That seems wrong to me. People without writing skills (or drawing, or movie making) should not be making those things.
mentalgear: I would distinguish: they could make them for their own entertainment, but should not market them. But come to think about it, how much non-AI slop is out there that has become popular from entities with no or mediocre talent in it: generic Hollywood blockbusters, supplements, yellow papers, influencers ... all slop that became popular not due to its quality but secondary resources in form of marketing, placement and persistence of the propellants.
SamuelAdams: The same argument could be made for the book industry, where there are centuries of content available. And yet, people still read new books.
PaulDavisThe1st: I think book sales are significantly down compared to most periods in the last 50-100 years? Still a culturally significant thing, but economically not what they used to be ...
ndsipa_pomu: There's certainly a lot of actors that seem to just phone in a performance and are mainly hired due to their looks and high profiles, but don't forget about the actors that can elevate just about any role that they're in due to their skills and artistry.
Larrikin: This is a boring opinion. It's the equivalent of what happens to many older adults when it comes to music. All of the best songs came out in their teens to about 30 so what's the point of listening to anything new? It assumes there is no innovation and the person just traps themselves in the past.You could say there hasn't been any good new music since 1970 and humans have been making music for thousands of year. Or you could try out the many new genres and eventually find something new and exciting.it just seems like a very boring way to live out your life.
pkorzeniewski: I didn't say there're no new great movies coming out, I simply stated that there are enough of great old movies than I PERSONALLY don't need new movies.> it just seems like a very boring way to live out your life.Quite the contrary, I constantly discover interesting old movies from a wide variety of genres and different parts of the world.
