The Death of Movies

Well, Modern ones, anyway

It’s been a bit. Welcome back!

I hope you've been having a great summer. The weather around here has ping-ponged quite a lot, but it's currently very pleasant out so I want to use the opportunity to talk about something fun. Well, something that can be fun.

Everyone is well aware that movies are not quite what they once were. Newer movies suffer from production bloat, terrible casting, broken sound design, muddy visuals, poor costuming and dress, confused and mumbled acting, and writing that can do little but repeat the same tired tropes of the last two decades. No one really argues with this knowledge, but there is disagreement about where the industry should go next from here.

No one wants to see movies anymore. How do we get out of this rut?

If you want a really detailed account about how bad things have gotten, I recommend the above video from Red Letter Media. The fact of the matter is that the movie theater, once the hub of human activity in the West, is on its last legs and no one has any answers on how to fix it. If the audience doesn't care what you're selling, no manner of price cuts or killer deals are going to lead them back in again. The obvious truth is that mainstream audiences have no interest in movies anymore and they haven't for a very long time.

Yes, part of the problem is streaming explosion from the 2010s that culminated in lockdown world, but that's only part of it. What we've come to realize is that before streaming even became feasible, most people were only really going to movies out of habit and little else. Aside from the big tentpole releases like Pixar and Marvel (before they became the tired punchlines they are today), one would be hard-pressed to think of any movie from the last 20 years that made any sort of impact on the wider cultural sphere. The industry just wasn't what it used to be.

This also goes in well with the fact that when boutique movie labels advertise the decades of the films they release on Blu-ray and 4K UHD, there is a hard cutoff around 2000 when the number of movie re-releases drop off a cliff before outright disappearing by 2010. People get excited when a movie from the 1980s gets put on a 4K UHD--no one cares when a 2011 movie does. The obvious conclusion is that this problem isn't recent, and film has been bad off for quite some time. No one just cared to really take stock in it until the issue became blatantly obvious. The fumes in the tank have just finally run dry. We can admit it now.

At the same time, CG no longer wows, studios have been indulging in AI to the point that people only realized it when they become bored enough to look closer, and star power and charisma is completely lacking in the newer generation of actors brought in either through nepotism or taking the ticket. In other words, everything now is objectively worse than it used to be. Entropy is the undefeated king of modernity, now and always. There is no reason to be excited for new things that aren't as good as similar old things.

So then, what do we do? How do we bring back the film medium in a way that makes it matter, that makes it vital again? The answer is simple, but it's not easy. You already know what the solution is, we just need to say it louder. The way forward, is backwards. It's looking back and reclaiming what works while ejecting what doesn't.

For an example of what I mean, I suggest the below video from GoodBadFlicks talking about the "remake" of the 1950s movie called The Blob. I put remake in quotes because aside from the idea of the monster, nothing else about the movie is the same. It's a completely original movie otherwise. This is, in fact, how one creates a remake--not just to cash-in on something old. It's also why modern remakes are such trash.

But I digress: you can watch the video here:

It's a great video, showing exactly what film once was and can be again.

Now, did you take stock of how much effort was put into the above film? From writing, to casting, to stunts, to special effects, to even the setting, all of it had tremendous thought and ambition in regards to everything involved.

Computers were minimally used to enhance what already existed. Both sets and real locations contributed to create the world of the movie. The monster itself had a detailed process in order to be brought to life that clearly had much thought put in. There was no committee or chart involved in telling everyone what arbitrary lines they were or weren't allowed to cross. Everything about the movie exists the way it does because it was made before the focus-testing corporate culture Hollywood began constructing in the 1990s.

No movies are made like this anymore. It just doesn't happen anymore. If you want movie made like this again, you will simply have to throw away everything the industry has done since movies like Mannequin were made through strict focus-testing demographics, movies like 3 Ninjas were edited down to reach a G rating that it should have already had in the first place, and Marvel products were slapped together through formula guidelines. In order to reverse all the problems of today, all of the above has to go away again.

Do you want to compete with AI, with the fact that eventually everyone will be able to use it to make their own Hollywood slop in the near future? The only way to compete with this unavoidable future is to do what a computer simply can not--to do what cannot be automated or processed through computer software.

This means stunts, practical effects, real locations, built sets, creativity, real scripts based on personal anecdotes and ideas, and casting with a vision beyond greased palms. It means going back and starting from zero again before moving in a new direction, away from this dead end mutation we've let ourselves fall into.

If you want art to feel real again then it has to be real. It has to be made with purpose for the reason of communicating with the audience, to reach and grow. There must be more to it than finding and monetizing formulas and tweaking them to get slightly fatter wallets. Art doesn't exist to make the line go up--it exists to help people go up.

This is the case with every art form. In order to move forward, you need to be continuing on from something, on a path already laid out before you by those who came before. When you stumble off the trail and get lost, the only way back on is to go back and retrace your steps. That requires a level of humility we're going to have admit going forward-- we have to first admit we even went off in the wrong direction to begin with.

Don't worry too much about art forms, they never really die, but they can be lost or warped beyond recognition by those who have lost their way. As long as we're here we can always bring it back around again.

And that's because, to quote an old chestnut, nothing ever really dies. It just goes away until the right moment to be brought back again. And this is the right moment! All we have to do is finally knuckle down to do it. That's what these new alternative industries are all about, after all. The energy is with us now.

Hop on in and start digging with the rest of us. We're going to strike oil eventually. But you can't do it if you never start in the first place.

Have yourself a good rest of the week and I will see you next time.

Chapters 5 and 6 of Phantom Mission and episode 2 of the podcast are up on the Patreon! Join to access them today!