Movies have changed a lot the past few decades, though no one seems to agree on why. I find it hard to believe Americans don't like going to the theater because it's too woke or some bullshit like that, there's surely something more complicated at play. There are many things we can blame this cultural shift on. Perhaps it really is the phone this time. I think the cultural system surrounding movies is simply unable to exist in the modern world, for better or worse. The system that used to work existed before you could pay less than a movie ticket to have access hundreds of movies, possibly even thousands depending on the platform. If paying for the movies isn't for you, you can just stream them online for free, either legally (through peacock or youtube) or illegally (online piracy). There's just so many movies that it makes it hard to stand out. Why watch a new movie that might suck when you can watch a movie every day for the rest of your life and never run out of content made before you were even born? The trash has already been sorted through, there's not anywhere near as big of a risk of a stinker sneaking through. In a time where people have access to nearly everything ever made, it's hard to expect them to get excited about something new, especially when the popular perception of movies is that they're all regurgitations of the past anyways. Most people would rather just stay at home, even if they have the time and money to go out
There is definitely much we can blame on the studios. Many people talk about the danger of AI as it relates to the arts, particularly movies. I think this concern has merit, but the fact this is even a worry exposes a deeper problem. An entirely AI-generated movie is boring and uninspired and without intentionality, yes, but so is a generic Hollywood blockbuster that was developed by committee to maximize profit. Many of the issues surrounding AI movies are just accelerated forms of the current problems. Movies developed by committee with the least involvement possible from the people that actually make movies interesting (actors, directors, cinematographers, etc.) are ultimately without intentionality and serve little purpose if they don't print money. With how much the budgets behind some movies have ballooned, some movies need to make a billion dollars to be seen as successful. AI films will reduce the cost of production by a lot in theory (though I suspect the companies that control the models will collude to keep the price of using said models artificially high), but there's nothing backing them anymore. Movies will become completely worthless schlock. Why the fuck would you ever pay money to watch an AI-generated movie when you can watch literally anything else for essentially free? There are some people that won't care directly about the movie being AI, but it seems as if AI movies can't really live in the current model. People will know that AI movies are cheap and they probably won't be willing to pay much of anything to see them. There will always be a market for doing things the hard way, but I think that the mainstream film industry will kill itself if it pivots to AI movies. People are barely even willing to pay for a subscription to an AI that will generate their prompts for them, so why would they be willing to pay to watch two hours of someone else's prompts? The economics are illogical in the long-run without pretty substantial changes in society. Either that or most people are deeply unintelligent slaves. That might be the case. We'll see...
Watching movies, which was once just a thing most people did, has become a cultural identity, much like the role reading books has in our society now. The general artistitry of mainstream cinema has gone down as they have become "luxury" products of sorts, as seen by the soaring price of tickets and concessions and the discourse surrounding them that has followed. Watching a movie was simply a thing many people (especially Americans) did in the past, but it's a hobby now. This has had a few effects on the culture of movies. As soon as something becomes a subject one can become an "afficionado" (or, god forbid, an "expert") in, the parade of fools will come pouring in and they won't ever leave. There are certainly people with advanced knowledge of cinema and I respect the truly knowledgeable, but the people that pretend to be at that level massively outnumber the people who have some claim to it. Even if they possess that knowledge, you can't always trust their judgements as being reflective of your experience with a piece; this observation is certainly not original, but specialists can be out of touch and fail the novice rather often. If you would prefer to not make being a cinephile part of your identity, finding a decent movie to watch becomes much harder than it would've been in the past, at least as far as I can tell. All the places for movie reviews that normal people use like Letterboxd and Youtube are often tinged in this jargony bullshit that can make the whole process feel very irritating. This wouldn't be a problem with a more niche hobbyist activity, but movies are largely meant to be just another thing people do, like what watching TV used to be like. There's whole subcommunities behind certain movies and directors and it can honestly be rather irritating to penetrate through that to find genuinely insightful or illuminating content made about film.
The first 3 popular reviews for my favorite movie, the Shining, are illustrative of this point. The first one reads: "why is the T so big". They didn't even bother to give a star ranking, which is already a pretty useless metric anyway. The second post is a joke about the use of the cello and the third one says: " if it was me i would have simply not gone crazy ". Not everything has to be serious and academic all the time, but this seems a cut below what should be normal. I had to go to the second page of results to find something that wasn't a text macro or an otherwise bland joke on the page of one of the most critically acclaimed horror movies of all time by the most praised director to ever live basically. There's nothing wrong with having a little fun here and there, but I wish there was some more actual discussion of what's going on, even if it had a humorous energy. There's a few genuinely funny comments but most of the reviews are worthless digital trash that the writer probably forgot about writing by the time the day was done. Why did we let being a movie fan become this bullshit redditor gatekept thing and then all the people that want to just casually enjoy movies and want some kind of guidance on what's worth watching are left to rot and listen to the least funny people on the entire planet tell them which director is the best? It's just kinda embarrassing. Being a mindless contrarian is worse than being a conformist because you have to go out of your way to be annoying with it. You can just like normal things and not mind the mainstream, but being a stupid contrarian still shackles you to it and you know but just don't care. If humans were pigs this kind of contrarian would be rubbing themselves in piss because shit and mud smells too bad for them. If this is the best the movie social media can do I think it tells you a lot about social media as a whole and how productive it really is as a force. I've been trying to cut back on it quite a bit, it all gets rather tiresome. Trying to watch more movies really does give a pretty good look at how completely useless 90%+ of the internet has become. I keep a letterboxd for personal use and to see what my friends have watched but using anything other than the logging function and reading what people I know have said is totally without worth to me
Movies are great and I like watching them, but I feel like it's impossible to really engage with others about them in an interesting way online consistently. Internet spaces do everything they can to sap the wonder from everything. I enjoy analysis and speculation, but I think the internet has really discouraged a lot of people from being able to accept that some things just don't have a clear answer. What's the deal with the man behind the diner in Mulholland Drive? What's in the Pulp Fiction box? I don't know and that's fine. Not knowing makes it more interesting, don't you think? If we knew everything there was to know I think a lot of people would kill themselves. It's perfectly fine - desireable, even - for certain details to be left up to the imagination, to be strange and be speculated upon. If a story doesn't leave you with questions, I don't think it's all that interesting. We try to squeeze more and more juice from the lemon until our damn fingers break and the flies start swarming. It's good to critically interpret media, but a lot of media simply isn't receptive to our market-centric value seeking and "scientific" attempts at analysis. The empirical is secondary to the subjective in such an experience and we ought to accept that. Art works in dreams, in loose associations and strange games between creator and consumer; I'm honestly rather glad I never went into formal study of music, I think it would have made the whole experience something of a bore, made it another barchart with a legend that needed interpreting. I would never discourage someone from spending time making sense of their favorite movies or games or songs, but I think that some of the magic is lost in the process from time to time. The disenchantment spoken of by some sociologists is rather clear in this space. There's videos that claim to explain everything you need to know about movies and games and books. Can you imagine an hour long video that was meant to genuinely explain the Bible or the Quran, and could do so without missing any of the beauty and joy of the original text? I think not. Yet somehow we treat everything as if it can be explained in a convenient way, even something so subjective and personal as the arts and the spirit. I generally don't enjoy making claims about human nature, but I think an interest in the unknown is pretty undeniable. Every civilization has had people who would venture into the wild, enter the uncharted territory. I think that living in such a "rational" age that claims to have effectively answered the basic questions of existence has had a negative impact on many people. If we can't even bear to not understand a movie we saw, how can we bear to not understand the reason behind our own life and the way we live it? Perhaps all this rationalism has led us down a rather irrational path all things considered. Humans are emotive things that die and get sick, not computers that execute commands. The push towards a more rational world denies the fundamental irrationality of humans, especially once they've all gathered together in what we call a society. An allegiance to rationalism and "logical" thinking is what has led us to deaths of despair rising to alltime highs and a social malaise that you can feel in every corner of society. This allegiance to rationalism and a vaguely defined "progress" is a rejection of being human and an embrace of becoming the machines we allegedly made for our own benefit