Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis

https://www.theculturenewspaper.com/hollywood-enters-oscars-weekend-in-existential-crisis/

by RickJWagner • 4 months ago

170 540 4 months ago

PaulHoule• 4 months ago

The Oscars are the heart of the problem. One definition of “celebrity” is “person who is celebrated”

Hollywood is so used to getting high on its own supply that it really thinks we want to see an AI slop video of Brad Pitt fighting Tom Cruise. People there just don’t have any information at all about what anybody outside their bubble thinks so of course they make samey big budget pictures and samey small budget pictures. Unless they shut down their communications channels and disperse geographically they are going to keep doing the same thing over and over again and be wondering why they keep getting the same results.

And that gets us to why they will never reform, they know their numbers are terrible but think this is (1) cyclical and (2) due to technological changes so they’ll never get it that running ads that make it sound like somebody else cares about Tom Cruise doesn’t really make people care about Tom Cruise, it just makes them ignore advertising messages.

hackyhacky• 4 months ago

AI slop video of Brad Pitt fighting Tom Cruise

The video you are referring to was not produced by Hollywood, it was created by Irish director Ruairi Robinson, basically as a test of the new Seedance AI.

I'm not saying that Hollywood isn't out of touch, I'm just saying that nothing about Hollywood can be inferred from that video.

fullshark3• 4 months ago

I think it's the opposite problem, they have too much information and data, which means they aren't making lots of gambles on new/different scripts anymore but making very safe bets because everyone is terrified of losing their cool high paying jobs.

add-sub-mul-div• 4 months ago

"Hollywood" thinks we want AI slop in the way that hackers think we want video with unskippable ads.

chuckadams• 4 months ago

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.

rurban• 4 months ago

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.

arrrg• 4 months ago

Berlinale screenings are open to the public and tickets cost between 15 € and 20 €. You have to be quick when ticket sales open every day but when I did that one year I watched about four films every day and could get tickets for nearly all the films I wanted, even if some were in large but truly soulless venues (“Uber Eats Music Hall“, the name alone is disgustingly dystopian). Though I also attended some film premieres with Q&As and all at the great Zoo Palast cinema. There is also an audience award and you can vote for your favorites – but also obviously a jury prize. But juries can be hit and miss and also always idiosyncratic. Unpredictable. And I think that’s beautiful. Including being annoyed about your favorite film not winning.

As always with any kind of film festival you are exposed to the bleeding edge - so yeah, you are going to see some bad films. That’s part of it. Though I noticed that even bad films – especially well made ones that I think are totally misguided in the ideas they express – help me broaden my horizons, understand myself better and maybe also understand the world better.

So yeah, long story short, I don’t think film as an art form is dead and it also won’t be in the next century or so. Maybe certain films won’t be made in the future – I’m currently mostly sad about practically no mid-budget films being made – but I’m totally certain that there will always be great films.

thefounder2• 4 months ago

The main issue was the content the movie industry produced which looked like a lot like some AI slop. I think the DEI lecturing was another nail in the coffin. Unless that changes and they magically add something new to the cinema experience I think they will keep diving into irrelevance because now everybody can produce AI slop.

raw_anon_11116• 4 months ago

Yes they should never had a Black lady playing an orange alien from Tamarin on the Titan TV series. It just wasn’t realistic.

We should just have all White males leading movies

the__alchemist5• 4 months ago

Could you please explain this? I'm having a hard time following. Ty.

thefounder2• 4 months ago

Why can’t we have original stories(I.e Sinners, Black Panther, White Lotus) and instead try to make White Snow black or whatever and paint people racist? I get that people want to make these stories more inclusive but the characters are just too powerful to change them and not expect a backlash.

People prefer new characters or “staying true to the original story/character” instead of lazy remixes.

Or you can create your own remix with AI now. Feed the movie and make the characters as you want. The result may seem a bit weird(i.e like a Snow White being a fat black gay male) for a fan of the movie/character but for you as an activist it will check the marks you are looking for. Just don’t invoke racism if people won’t like your AI slop.

theage• 4 months ago

Do people even want their culture democratized with just anyone being able to produce high entertainment? The recent popularity of "Harry Potter by Balenciaga (2026)" AI fashion parody retelling shows we might actually be stuck in this cultural rut forever with or without AI help.

https://youtu.be/gtnt84CDP-s

woeirua• 4 months ago

$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.

lotsofpulp2• 4 months ago

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.

xp845• 4 months ago

You’re probably right. Big franchises would survive, a bunch of people would pay modestly for each new Marvel movie if it were never coming to streaming. But the films that do still exist that have no marketing, would probably do even worse without having any streaming release.

johnnyApplePRNG• 4 months ago

So do you want to pay more, or less? I am confused.

delecti2• 4 months ago

I think it's more about being unwilling to pay so much when a free version is just a few months away. Streaming is too good and too cheap compared to the theatrical release.

lanfeust64• 4 months ago

The missing middle from 20 years back is rentals. That was $5-10 a pop, people rented almost weekly. The option is there digitally now but its not in the public conscience for the same reason as cinema, people can just wait for the streaming option as the turnover is so short. (And granted, more people went to the cinema back then)

Meanwhile consumers are whining about the increases in streaming cost and diffusion, and low quality content. It had to happen, the math wasn't working out. In the social media bubbles users argue they will "just pirate again", over and over as though those who would care to don't already do so. Its toothless. Average people are not going to pay for a VPN and navigate things they don't understand just to pirate. They will eat the cost, whether it be streaming or renting

FreeKill• 4 months ago

Yeah, I think the prices also have resulted in a massive change in how consumers decide to go to movies as well. With the price so high for a family of four, people rely much more heavily on positive word of mouth/reviews before making a decision.

So people are much more risk adverse. I've never understood why they don't do tiered pricing based on the type of movie it is. If it's not a mega blockbuster type film, reduce the price a bit to make it easier for people to take a risk and try out a movie without it being a 90%+ rating on rotten tomatoes. I'd personally probably go a lot more if a movie like say Marty Supreme was $10 instead of $20.

dgrin91• 4 months ago

And its $100 minimum... at least in NYC. Right now its 20-25 a head and that doesn't include transportation or food.

dominotw2• 4 months ago

thats so much cheaper for a family of 4 for 3 hrs compared to other options.

what are the other cheaper options? going to free parks and museums? i am sure going to free museum will be a big hit with the kids :]

derwiki• 4 months ago

Even not free parks. Our Zoo and Cal Academy memberships amortize down to $50/trip for 4.

lucaspm98• 4 months ago

People are living in entirely different cost of living realities outside of NYC and the Bay Area.

Within 5 miles of me with 2 adults and 2 kids and $100, you could go to a trampoline park, ropes course, bowling, hours at an arcade, water park, race go-karts, several months of pool membership, or 5+ museums. Possibly 2 of those activities.

For free there’s dozens of playgrounds, courts and fields for any sport, community and religious-sponsored events, and after you can get a nice sit down meal with money leftover from your $100 budget.

$100 would be above many families entire entertainment budget for a week.

morkalork• 4 months ago

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.

Edit: I read 2019 not.. 2029. That's actually incredible. Are they going to get in on tiktok for 2039 next?

stavros• 4 months ago

Hm, what's wrong with it?

embedding-shape4• 4 months ago

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.

mpalmer• 4 months ago

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.

meta_gunslinger• 4 months ago

More like a victim of woke propagandizing not being very popular with the average viewer.

awongh11• 4 months ago

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.

sbarre2• 4 months ago

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.

awongh11• 4 months ago

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.

ThrowawayR22• 4 months ago

Ironic that pro-unionization people on HN frequently use SAG as an example of what a software industry union could look like. Ignoring that that's absurd (no other engineering union I know of works like that), just as the parent highlights, unions won't make a difference when the economics of an industry no longer make sense and that is what is happening to software right now.

bradchris2• 4 months ago

Well, Hollywood is not the end all be all of Los Angeles (though that is the image Hollywood projects out onto the world).

It’s not even Los Angeles’ biggest industry. Everything from China enters through the Port of Los Angeles, which is the biggest in the United States. In fact, the top two busiest ports in the USA are both Los Angeles and Long Beach (which directly borders Los Angeles).

This is just one example, but Los Angeles, despite its own external projections and self-mythology to the contrary, is much more than just a one industry town. Aside from shipping and logistics, it’s also a center for auto+aerospace manufacturing, and a major healthcare hub. Downtown Los Angeles, which actually serves as a glorified rail freight hub, is still far and away the nation’s capital of garment manufacturing, with over 80%(!) of the nation’s made-in-USA clothing produced here (this is downstream of being the biggest port in the US). Los Angeles has always existed as a center of industry and agriculture before Hollywood, and while the decline of Hollywood certainly hurts the city, it will not kill it.

SF, ironically, is actually moreso a factory town: if one day its tech champions decided to up and leave, there wouldn’t be much left relative to its current GDP. But one thing that may protect both SF and Los Angeles from ever becoming Detroit are their beautiful weather and geography. People will always want to live here, despite the costs. See Santa Barbara, a real city with no major industry to claim as its own, yet it still boasts some of the highest real estate prices in the world.

fullshark3• 4 months ago

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.

awongh11• 4 months ago

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.

the_af10• 4 months ago

The optimistic viewpoint is that maybe new AI production tools will trigger a re-democratization of creative movies

I 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.

jl6• 4 months ago

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.

awongh11• 4 months ago

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.

SoftTalker4• 4 months ago

For me the "blockbuster" movies use so much CGI that it's impossible to suspend disbelief. They've gone too far and ruined the experience. AI will only make it worse.

ThrowawayR22• 4 months ago

Democratization is a specious argument. The artistry in an AI assisted work is the part that the human contributes as opposed to the the part that the AI contributes. If the human contribution is negligible, the artistry is negligible and there is no meaningful democratization because there was only token artistic intent in the first place.

And what's actually happening with AI? Someone mentioned in another submission that 7500 new books _per day_ are being released on Amazon Kindle. The wave of low quality AI submissions to HN was so severe that the HN mods had to restrict them. Whatever democratization is actually happening is drowned out by those taking advantage of the low cost of AI slop for profit.

jrowen9• 4 months ago

I think the issue is that content creation and distribution has already been fully democratized. How many hours do people spend watching videos shot by individuals on their phones in their apartments?

Combined with streaming, there's just an overabundance of "good enough" content at everyone's fingertips. The moat that protected big-budget feature films is gone. You don't see a trailer for a movie and salivate and wait for it to come out, it just blends in to the stream of 5000 other things you can watch right now.

awongh11• 4 months ago

Like I said elsewhere, I think people still want to watch 1+ hour fiction stories that are compelling. This is a broad category that I think people still want that's differentiated from 30sec vertical video, and that should exist in the cultural conversation.

It doesn't feel fully democratized because if it was, you'd see more indie things in this same format competing with "big budget" movies on the same playing field.

cnobody• 4 months ago

American movies suck.

closewith2• 4 months ago

The cultural relevance of all kinds of American media has been declining as the U.S. is not cool or aspirational anymore.

jrowen9• 4 months ago

Can you comment further on this? As an American it's kind of hard to see that. Is this just kind of a temporary reaction to the Trump administration or a larger trend? What is taking its place? Are there more localized media pockets (e.g. is there a significant German-language Instagram influencer world)? Geographically which areas are you talking about?

HerbManic• 4 months ago

For some nations there is still a sort of paternal fixation with US influence but it does seem to be fading with time. Couldnt point to any one factor than maybe just an overall sort of boredom of it.

awongh11• 4 months ago

It's easy to say that because the whole idea of "movies" has been fundamentally linked to the USA for the last 60-70 years. So if nowadays there are a few other countries who also have "movies", you could say it's true, but it speaks more to the level of cultural dominance and soft power USA movies have held up to this point than anything.

groundzeros20154• 4 months ago

They want to not care but they do. I’ll know when I stop seeing guys in Czech Republic talking about Idaho politics.

epolanski4• 4 months ago

Small but important correction: the biggest issue for the movie industry aren't streaming services or them filming in locations with good tax incentives like UK or Australia but Youtube.

It's hard to compete with millions of videomakers, some of them extremely skilled and able to produce interesting content on a budget.

groundzeros20154• 4 months ago

The cultural relevance of movies, and American made movies isn't going anywhere

It already has. People under 20 do not have the connection to movies. They don’t have a share experience around it - maybe picking up a handful of family movies and the occasional marvel or spiderman.

rdtsc4• 4 months ago

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.

embedding-shape4• 4 months ago

To stay afloat they have to raise ticket prices, but if we’re paying so much

What 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.

soared• 4 months ago

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.

rdtsc4• 4 months ago

About $18 latest price if we go in the evening, and for a the whole family it adds up. Given the HBO subscription is about $20/month for the whole household, you can see the movie has to be really good to be worth it, and most of them are not that good.

raw_anon_11116• 4 months ago

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 seating

Movie 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

vl2• 4 months ago

There just aren’t as many good new movies.

Is this true, or you just can’t discover them anymore because everything else competes for your attention? Arguably in the last decade more great content in both movies and TV shows produced than ever, it’s just so much, that it’s hard to choose.

jrowen9• 4 months ago

I recently watched A League of Their Own and Die Hard. In my opinion, these movies are just categorically different from what's being made today, are still totally compelling start to finish, and really capture the magic and the high art of the golden age of cinema. I truly believe movies were just better 30-40 years ago.

That was the era of "every second counts." Every second has meaning and purpose and adds something to the narrative. The Fifth Element is another good example, and almost 30 years old. Now in the age of binging, where a 2 hour plot is stretched into 17 hours of TV, there is SO much filler and downtime and it's honestly just offensive in comparison.

I kind of enjoyed Pluribus, I liked the concept and what they did with it, but there's way too much forgettable filler that dilutes it into a slog. The movies I mentioned are (again, IMO) absolutely gripping and just lean and mean storytelling vehicles.

olivierestsage• 4 months ago

Whenever someone says online that something's declining (Hollywood movies, video games, UX experiences in desktop environments, etc.), I see a variation on this argument: "actually the options are even better today, they're just buried" (often accompanied by: "you were just younger then and everything was new and that's why you liked it").

Sometimes, cultural decline actually does happen, usually eventually followed by some kind of renaissance. Anyone who has studied the cinema, literature, etc. of a certain country in the past knows that there are "hot" periods and "cool" ones. When we see this phenomenon in the past, it doesn't tend to trigger the same defensive reaction, I guess because it doesn't feel as personal.

rdtsc4• 4 months ago

Is this true, or you just can’t discover them anymore because everything else competes for your attention?

There is an element of that perhaps: from the past we already have a great number of movies. The more time passes the more great movies will accumulate, so newer movies will be judges compared to that whole set.

However, at the same thinking how many times I was exciting about a movie and how much I liked it. There are lot of fewer of them in the recent times.

Arguably in the last decade more great content in both movies and TV shows produced than ever,

I could see the quantity but not the quality. Netflix produced a lot of shows and movies, Hollywood did, but I don't think as many good ones in there as say in the decades of 1990-2000 or 2000-2010. Tastes of course are subjective, you may just like newer movies they make that's fine, too.

khazhoux6• 4 months ago

I can easily name amazing movies in the last couple of years and in the last decade. I think we're actually in a bit of a movie renaissance right in cinematic craft and storytelling.

alternatetwo3• 4 months ago

Recent good movies, just going in release order off my letterboxd, although I have to be careful to include only "Hollywood" here:

- 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple - beautifully shot and a beautiful theme about what humanity is

- One Battle After Another - it's PTA, all his movies are good

- Bugonia - incredible dark comedy

- Weapons - fun little horror comedy movie

- Sinners - just won an oscar for the soundtrack, not a perfect movie but a fun watch with some incredible scenes

- Companion

- Nosferatu - incredibly atmospheric

- The Surfer - total trip with good old Nicholas Cage

- Love Lies Bleeding - just a fun, a bit crazy movie

- Dream Scenario - another trippy Cage movie

- Poor Things

- Oppenheimer ...

- Renfield

- The Menu

- The Banshees of Insherin

- Barbarian (same director as Weapons)

- Prey

- Bullet Train - fun action movie

- The Northman

- The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

- Everything Everywhere All At Once

- The Invisible Man - most effective horror movie I've ever seen

- The Gentlemen

- Joker -how close can you get to looking like Taxi Driver without being Taxi Driver ...

- The Vast of Night - some scenes that really draw you in and pretty nostalgic

in 2019 now, so I won't continue, but there are plenty of good movies made nowadays, and I won't say I've seen even a close amount of them from the past few years. Of course I'm watching these at home, not in theatres, so that's certainly an argument.

rdtsc4• 4 months ago

2000s list:

  * The Dark Night
  * The Lord of the Rings (3x)
  * City of God
  * The Departed
  * Donny Darko
  * Memento
  * WALL-E
  * The Prestige
  * Road to Perdition
  * Kill Bill
  * O Brother, Where Art Thou?
  * Hotel Rwanda
  * 28 Days Later
  * Snatch
  * The Pianist
  * There Will Be Blood
  * Children of Men
  * Gangs of New York
  * The Aviator
  * Minority Report
  * Gladiator
  * Catch Me If You can

It think it's a whole other level. Most if not all of those are in the IMDb top 100 of all time.

shiroiuma12• 4 months ago

A few I think you left out:

- Frankenstein

- Dune and Dune Part Two

- Star Trek: Section 31 (just kidding)

pkorzeniewski2• 4 months ago

I haven't been in cinema in the past ~10 years and to be honest I wouldn't care if no more movies were ever 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.

SamuelAdams• 4 months ago

The same argument could be made for the book industry, where there are centuries of content available. And yet, people still read new books.

bombcar• 4 months ago

IIRC the book merger lawsuits, they don’t really read many new books. Many are published few are bought.

edgyquant• 4 months ago

It often is made, an the vast majority of new books are slop

PaulDavisThe1st• 4 months ago

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 ...

Larrikin2• 4 months ago

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.

Teknomadix• 4 months ago

That's funny. I was having this similar discussion with my 16 year old niece, and I was asking her what she's been listening to as a 50 year old trying to broaden my musical horizons. She pulled out her Spotify and shared some of her playlists with me, and I was astonished to see that most of the music that she had been enjoying was produced in the late 1960s to the mid-1980s. We had a good laugh about it, and bonded over some of the classic music that I love that I was suprised to find that she loves. There were some modern things interspersed, and I did learn about some new artists and experimental genres. Seems like a clear example of the Law of diminishing marginal returns in the cinema and music industries in Southern California — leading to those industries collapsing. AI and generative crap being a big evidence point for the argument.

xp845• 4 months ago

To test whether you’re right, please list 10 movies made in the last 10 years that will stand the test of time as truly great movies. If fewer than one per year is worth watching, it’s a hard sell to say that we should spend our time sorting through the chaff trying to find it.

It’s entirely possible that we’re in a period where most of those with creativity have just stopped making movies. Interestingly, I find TV has everything movies are lacking, creativity, originality, even big name actors that used to make movies.

pkorzeniewski2• 4 months ago

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.

padjo3• 4 months ago

Yeah reading this comment thread really reminds me how dull and disinterested in art so many people in this community are.

vachina• 4 months ago

There is very little incentive to make good movies now, especially when zoomers' attention spans are maximum 2 minutes. I still enjoy a classic movie or two but I'm running out of movies to watch even then.

SV_BubbleTime• 4 months ago

“Second screen viewing” that there is a term for it and they’re writing for it… is a real problem.

shrubby• 4 months ago

Enshittification seems to be the modus operandi in every business. The music and the movies from current era feel like they're made for idiots.

echelon3• 4 months ago

Young people are going to prefer content that caters to their cultural zeitgeist and 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. I grew up around kids in the 00's who said the Beatles were the peak of music - obviously learned preferences straight from their parents.)

You might not understand youth culture because you grew up before them and have different tastes. We're imprinted with preference and nostalgia for our youth, and we can see changes to that as a hideous affront. The next generation is meanwhile going through the same cycle we did.

jrjeksjd8d2• 4 months ago

Theatres don't just show new movies. There's something very special about being locked in a dark room with a big screen to watch Alien or Barry Lyndon. Older movies especially look great in a theatre and some of the magic is lost on a smaller screen.

90% of any content is crap but you're missing out if you like movies and you haven't seen Sinners, The Bone Temple, or NOPE (to name a few recent great theatre watches).

spacechild1• 4 months ago

I regularly go to a nearby cinema that also shows older movies. Watching a movie like "Ran" (Akira Kurosawa) in a restored 4k version on a big screen is quite an experience. (Tickets are 10€ btw.) Often I go with a friend, but occasionally I also go alone. There's something about spending 2 or 3 hours in a dark room entirely focussing on a piece of art.

expedition32• 4 months ago

I went to see Avatar. I only go to the movies once a year its a kinda tradition on New Year's Day.

It cost me 50 eurodollars for two tickets. And people complain Netflix is expensive!

padjo3• 4 months ago

What's a eurodollar?

artyom• 4 months ago

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.

pclmulqdq2• 4 months ago

Hollywood seems to have never realized that the point of works like LotR and Star Wars was to take the ridiculous extremely seriously. The bad CGI didn't matter because every actor took it seriously. A marvel-ized star wars with great CGI is still a bad movie because nobody on screen takes it seriously despite how realistic the graphics are.

iammjm• 4 months ago

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

paulryanrogers• 4 months ago

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.

ndsipa_pomu• 4 months ago

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.

worksonmine• 4 months ago

I don't want fame, but if I did I would want a lot of money to give up my freedom to be chased by paparazzi for the rest of my life.

miki123211• 4 months ago

Actors have a kind of legally-enforced monopoly. They're not employees you hire, they're products you buy.

If you want to make a movie staring Nicole Kidman, you have to pay whatever Nicole Kidman wants you to pay. You're legally forbidden from hiring an "off-brand" person and making her look indistinguishable from Kidman.

If you want to hire a Scala programmer, there's plenty of easily-replaceable people willing and able to do that job. No single person dictates how much money Scala programmers make.

Famous actors are basically a category that they're the only member of, and so they can set their prices. You can switch to a different category )(just as you can switch from Scala to Typescript) if one becomes too expensive, but that too carries some expense.

Franchises have a similar problem. If all your friends are watching Game of Thrones, you too want to watch Game of Thrones, even if there are other shows which are just as good. This means the Makers of GoT can dictate GoT prices, because the government gives them a legal monopoly on GoT distribution.

philwelch2• 4 months ago

They have no one to blame but themselves, judging by the quality of Hollywood movies in recent years.

the__alchemist5• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

not appealing to the masses is DEI; perfect robotic formula are just common sense.

Obviously.

groundzeros20154• 4 months ago

Are you sure?

I thought DEI is making a movie for everyone with one representative from each major ethnic group and then saying only safe non-cultural things. Oh and then localizing for china.

echelon3• 4 months ago

- Theatrical releases are how movies make most of their money, not giving them away for free on streaming. Box office margins are huge, but renting licenses to streamers is limited and fungible with all the other mountains of content they license.

- Box office optimizes for novelty, streamers optimize for "don't churn" - very different criteria for investment.

- Disney cannibalized the box office with Marvel Star Wars, which killed the mid market and killed innovation. This is your point. Disney's success and tentpole successes in general killed innovation and diversity and made the market more winner-takes-all. Comedy movies barely exist anymore. There are few $50-75M films now. Little original content. Now films are engineered for maximum audience penetration and maximum box office revenue. This changes how films are written and who they are written for. The answer is "everyone", and that means "safe", "predictable", and "repeatable". No gambles. Everything else has to fight for table scraps.

- End of ZIRP puts us back in 2000. Money used to be free. Now it's expensive. It's not as easy to underwrite productions anymore. Less innovation.

- Dopamine machines fit into your pocket and suck up time and attention. Gaming is also huge now. Less people going to the movies because plenty of alternatives exist.

- The $400 80'' plus Netflix versus the expensive theater, concessions, and rude people have made theaters unattractive. Theaters are where film margins come from. Without that revenue, expensive movies will be scaled back.

- Labor costs less in Europe and Asia, even with ample tax subsidy. The LA and American jobs and infrastructure are drying up. These are lifelong careers that are ending.

- Global audiences want global stories. American culture isn't local, and local talent can now make high quality productions. Asia is turning out banger after banger.

- Youth want youth mediums. Movies feel slow and boring. TikTok is where it's at.

- AI is now a thing.

All of the fundamentals have changed.

I will debate one point you raised:

most-attractive people

Most people prefer to look at attractive people. It's an almost universal preference. Tried and tested throughout time. In film, those attractive people also need charisma.

ikr678• 4 months ago

What Hollywood considers most attractive (blinding white veneers, botox, fillers, blephs, steroid use etc) is not necessarily what the rest of the world finds attractive, and for some audiences can be distracting and immersion breaking.

xp845• 4 months ago

I think it’s the finance people. They have decided every creative movie made represents resources and time that can’t be used for a “sure-thing” franchise schlock movie.

embedding-shape4• 4 months ago

"Data-driven" decisions seems to drive out any sort of creativity, seems to happen in all industries where metrics and numbers become more important that someone's vision. Same in software too really.

awongh11• 4 months ago

Except that pretty much as soon as movies started being made, people have said this about movies :)

mpbart• 4 months ago

There are some studios who do this already (A24 for example who have produced a number of relatively popular films). But agreed that the big studios have focused on sequels and formulaic content for the most part

madaxe_again• 4 months ago

Sure, but Spider-Man CXXVI is a sure bet for a safe ROI. Nobody knows what Chopper Chicks in Zombietown will yield.

Books are a great example - even popular books will now have a readership in the tens of thousands, at most. Nobody makes money - it’s an art, not an industry.

baxtr• 4 months ago

I miss the inner journeys mostly. The heroic journey is boring if the hero doesn’t change.

amelius2• 4 months ago

Modern youth cannot relate to that. They just browse their smartphones without emotion. Inner journey is not a concept they understand.

eitau_1• 4 months ago

Here's a great video-essay on adjacent topic: Why The Movies Don't Feel The Same Anymore

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoldOz5YyAw

jt2190• 4 months ago

Original:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-13/hollywood...

kmfrk• 4 months ago

A few years ago, someone on Twitter had a really cool proposal for how to revamp the entire format of the Oscars, even taking the importance of commercials into account, but I can't for the life of me find it anymore.

willmeyers• 4 months ago

I mean when you have Larry Ellison and other goons pledging investments in these major studios, it's no wonder people who actually enjoy watching movies don't want to give their money+time to watch some dumbed down bottom of the barrel slime that AI has decided people will sit through.

Thankfully, filmmaking is becoming more and more independent. It's never been easier and cheaper to make a movie and share it to millions of people on YouTube or Vimeo. Why go through Hollywood, investors, or give money to festivals for a chance at success when you can just upload the thing and see what happens?

delichon• 4 months ago

The little dinosaurs are ignoring the great big elephants in the room: gaming. The article doesn't mention it. The market for video games in 2024 was around $225B, compared to movies at around $33B. Hollywood has worked very hard not to realize that their industry has become niche and have succeeded.

My last week may be an indicator. I've watched zero TV or movies but have spent about 40 hours helping a small colony of scrappy hard working beavers survive on post apocalyptic earth. Steam got my money, Hollywood didn't.

the__alchemist5• 4 months ago

Of note here too: There's been a lot of (social media at least) backlash against AAA studios lately. Anecdote: 2025 had a number of great (High quality, popular, award winners/nominees etc), and they weren't from big studios. There seems to be a niche middle-budget level that produces wonders. Just to limit scope to 2025: KCD2, Expedition 33, and Blue Prince were all incredible games. Expedition 33 has my favorite sound track (Or album in general?) of all time. Death Stranding 2 is another great one. By a big studio, but let a creative person run wild with it.

I suspect the problem with AAA games is the same one movie studios face; mass-market appeal and profit-driven-design degrades the experience.

zdc1• 4 months ago

There's definitely been an enslopification of both. Endless sequels. "Franchises" with meaningless stories and common tropes. Maybe it's survivor bias when I think back on older works, but nothing just seems that exciting these days.

no_wizard3• 4 months ago

The difference between games and movies is how easy it is for entrants comparatively.

Indie / small studios have an infinitely easier time going to market than one would with making a film or especially a TV series.

You just make an account on a platform, sometimes submitting some additional information and paying a small fee, and that’s it. You may not even need actors like for text based games (Shovel Knight, Balatro etc)

Movies is so much more. And the cost of production is higher.

Also, the other big thing to realize is by far what games many people play is dominated by a handful of highly successful live service games. I have friends who only play Fortnite and have for a long time. They don’t play much else other than a few casual games when they take small breaks from Fortnite.

It’s not universal but there is a reason they’re always top of charts for revenue. Millions play every day.

The one other thing I’ll say is that seemingly unlike other media there is enough sufficient customer diversity that one business model doesn’t completely choke off all other types. Look at Expedition 33 for example

Trasmatta2• 4 months ago

Didn't The Game Awards receive more viewers than the Super Bowl? It used to be referred to as, like, "the Oscars for video games", but now it's immensely more popular than the Oscars.

zimpenfish• 4 months ago

Didn't The Game Awards receive more viewers than the Super Bowl?

To be fair, barely anyone (in global terms) watches the Super Bowl.

You are correct though - [0] claims 171M for TGA with [1] claiming 125M for the Superb Owl 2026.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_Awards_2025

[1] https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/20...

NeutralCrane• 4 months ago

There is absolutely no way The Game Awards got more viewers than the Super Bowl. I’d love to see a source because I have serious doubts.

alephnerd3• 4 months ago

The little dinosaurs are ignoring the great big elephants in the room: gaming

Partially, but a massive issue has been the offshoring of Hollywood [0].

UK, Canada, EU states like Ireland and Poland, and others match dollar-for-dollar in subsidizes to incentivize local production, and factoring in lower salaries are able to outcompete even Georgia.

After COVID and the WGA/SAG-AFTRA strike, production completely left Hollywood.

Film production is high risk and expensive, so margins really matter, so the double whammy of the COVID shutdowns and then fhe WGA/SAG-AFTRA strike became existential.

California has been trying to reincentivize onshoring [1], but it's too little too late. Hollywood even lobbied the Trump admin [2] for a 100% tariff on foreign produced films [3] which more diversified media companies pushed back.

[0] https://milkeninstitute.org/content-hub/research-and-reports...

[1] https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/06/gavin-newsom-hollyw...

[2] https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/15/hollywood-lobbying-...

[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g78e809zqo

blell2• 4 months ago

That’s because Hollywood makes movies, not videogames. You also spent a few hours driving but Hollywood hasn’t done anything about it because they are not in the business of making cars.

alephnerd3• 4 months ago

That’s because Hollywood makes movies, not videogames

Not true. Most media conglomerates own both video game and movie production. The big players like Disney, Sony, Comcast, Universal, etc all have ownership stakes in video game companies and most TMT funds invest in both as a same bucket.

simonklitj• 4 months ago

Well, sure, but they’re both in the entertainment space.

jonas21• 4 months ago

They are substitute goods. A common failure mode is not realizing this until it's too late.

ronnier• 4 months ago

But when it’s time for entertainment, someone only has so much time in the day to watch a movie, play a game, watch sports, or scroll TikTok. They are all in competition with each other for that little slice of time each day

BeetleB• 4 months ago

The gaming industry has been bigger than the film industry for decades. This isn't new.

lanfeust64• 4 months ago

As I wrote elsewhere, I think TV is what is actually consuming cinema's lunch. The average hours spent watching TV have only gone up over the years, but the same is not true of film. Gaming as a "primary" hobby is also quite male-coded (women tend to play on their phones, but they spend by far the most amount of time watching trash tv and Bridgerton or whatever).

telesilla• 4 months ago

I don't game at all but watch at least one movie a day as my relaxing time: criterion collection, mubi etc. I go to an indie cinema about once a month, often to see older movies as much as new ones. The cinema is rarely full but they have a good café and affordable subscriptions and I'm guessing some municipal funding, they won't ever run out of films to show. Though the day A24 goes out of business will be my sad day.

WastedCucumber• 4 months ago

I don't watch a movie a day, but I'm at my friendly local indie theater at least once a month. It's got a more comftorable audience, more consistently interesting films, and it costs less than the big theater. If I went just a bit more often, I'd for sure get a subscription. There's already so many good films, and so many good indie films being made, I just don't need the big cinemas.

ndesaulniers• 4 months ago

When you buy movie tickets, you go see the movie.

When I purchase a game, I generally don't have time to play it.

We are not the same.

This may be why gaming is a few multiples larger an industry than film.

epolanski4• 4 months ago

The biggest competition for movies is actually from Youtube.

While the streaming business led to a growth of the movie industry, pre Covid and pre strikes at least, it's difficult to compete when millions of people can produce good content for low prices.

On top of that, it doesn't help that movies stopped innovating, 2025 box office was entirely dominated by prequels and sequels.

I don't care about avengers, I really don't, the first bored me enough.

msabalau2• 4 months ago

Maybe one could reasonably blame on-line video and or video games if this were a global phenomenon.

But it isn't. China and India are going gangbusters. Japan is thriving and doing strong work. Nigerian cinema is projected to hit 3 million ticket sales for the first time this year. The UK--is at least stealing work from Hollywood with tax breaks. Korea had a rough patch, which they turned around by doing more mid-market films.

The US studios problems are unique, which at least suggests that the answer lies in the failures of their leadership. Perhaps their long project of abandoning original mid-market films to push bloated huge special effects heavy franchises was ill-advised. It's almost Like having a portfolio of 10-20 reasonable original bets is better than investing everything in a single expensive "sure-thing" sequel it increasingly seems like no one actually wants to see.

So I agree that Hollywood has stopped innovating, but am dubious that any other problems has much to do with Youtube (as much as I enjoy YouTube).

mcphage• 4 months ago

I remember Joel Spoksky talking at a conference when YouTube was new, and media companies were suing it for pirated content, and Joel said that media companies were afraid of users sharing media content, but what they should be afraid of is users sharing their own content and everyone liking that better. Which has steadily come to pass.

ebbi• 4 months ago

The time I used to spend watching movies is now spent on YouTube.

With the high quality cameras and drones at approachable prices, it's amazing to watch individuals create videos at such high quality but also has a bit of that DIY vibe that makes it more relatable and enjoyable.

My current fav is watching 4X4 overlanding videos of people driving along some stunning landscapes.

fraXis• 4 months ago

That game sounds interesting. What is it called? I only saw Beavers Be Damned when I searched Steam.

gbnwl• 4 months ago

Not the original commenter but they could be talking about Timberborn. Don't have it but have friends who play.

natebc• 4 months ago

Timberborn. It's fantastic!

fatuna• 4 months ago

Not OP, but I think they meant Timberborn. It just hit 1.0 release . I tried it a while back, definitely a fun premise for a game.

frmersdog2• 4 months ago

They're trying to avoid thinking (or at least talking) about it because they don't control it. They're hoping that the next downturn (which will almost certainly include a partial collapse of the game industry as we know it) will present an opportunity to scoop up incumbents. At that point, they'll be open about their relationship to, and ambitions, for gaming. Until then, the most you'll hear is A24 stuff, Kojima stuff, and tut-tutting about Ubisoft (almost certainly their first target).

Zopieux• 4 months ago

Timberborn 1.0 is indeed quite nice! Very chill, and the surprise automation feature drop is a god send.

HoldOnAMinute• 4 months ago

If you like movies, and you like scrappy beavers, then you might enjoy this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundreds_of_Beavers

jimbo8082• 4 months ago

Maybe I'm insane or it's my age, but I can't watch new movies/shows without just seeing propaganda agendas at every turn. Really kills it for me.

m-hodges2• 4 months ago

Should art not of a point of view?

gzread5• 4 months ago

Some is reasonable and then some is obviously just what rich people want you to think. Like America paid Hollywood a lot to always show the US armies being macho and always on the right side of wars.

dmitrygr• 4 months ago

Should art not of a point of view?

It can, sure. However, I will not pay to be lectured to on topics I have no interest getting lectured on. I'll keep my money, they can keep the sermon. Let's see who has more to gain from listening to the other. If they want my money, what I want to hear/see matters a whole lot more than what they want to preach to me.

They simply forgot the golden rule: he who has the gold -- makes the rules. Let them rediscover it.

ludicrousdispla• 4 months ago

Should a sentence have a verb?

radiator• 4 months ago

That is the whole point. Since decades, it has a single point of view, failing to represent the majority of the people.

dredmorbius7• 4 months ago

To be fair, there's plenty of that in older films and TV series as well, particularly "golden age" material from the 1940s -- 1970s, which played strongly off WWII, Cold War, and pro-business themes, with occasional ventures into counterculture works for the latter.

The original Top Gun (1986) was describe at the time as the US Navy's most successful recruiting campaign ever, noted in this 2004 account citing 1990 correspondence with then Secretary of Defence Dick Cheney: <https://archive.org/details/operationhollywo00robb/page/180>. Similarly endless war, cowboy, biblical, and rom-com films of that period.

whartung• 4 months ago

The original Top Gun (1986) was describe at the time as the US Navy's most successful recruiting campaign ever, noted in this 2004 account citing 1990 correspondence with then Secretary of Defence Dick Cheney: <https://archive.org/details/operationhollywo00robb/page/180>.

Sure, but was that the intent of Tony Scott when he made the film, or was it just a side effect of watching exciting air wing navy operations portrayed on the big screen?

I can easily see a young man wanting to be not just a fighter pilot, but one of those guys on deck standing in the wind, dancing and pointing and saluting F-14s off the catapult.

Or, maybe they just like volleyball.

msabalau2• 4 months ago

That's certainly why the Navy supported Top Gun.

At the same time, you certainly could reasonably read the film as being very dubious about the military. It opens with the psychological collapse of Maverick's wingman when a MiG locks on to him, Cruise's character has to defy orders to save him, and gets chewed out for doing so.

Maverick's original motivation is clearing his father name, not patriotism. Goose dies in a pointless accident. The final dogfight is random "rescue mission" against an unnamed foe in "hostile waters" in the Indian ocean, and Cruise's character almost abandons the fight due to PTSD.

Yeah, the almost pornographic love the camera shows to the jets probably made the actual story all be irrelevant to the Navy's recruiting success. But it's easy to imagine all the whining from the Fox news personality cosplaying as Secretary of "War" about such a film if it were made today.

Cheney was sensible enough to take the win.

nout2• 4 months ago

I think one highlight is that the old propaganda doesn't affect you in the same way as the "current thing" propaganda. Old propaganda feels sort of cute. So this is an argument for watching older movies :)

stackedinserter2• 4 months ago

Absolutely, when they are trying to lecture and educate me, it's repulsive and breaks experience every time.

alternatetwo3• 4 months ago

It's your age, movies have always been propaganda or had an agenda. Even horror such as Night of the Living Dead, or even Star Wars.

WarmWash• 4 months ago

My fiance mentioned we haven't gone to see a movie in theaters in years and it would be fun to go.

I checked what was playing and:

2 tickets, 2 sodas, 1 popcorn.

$86 dollars.

Don't know if I'll ever go to a conventional movie theater again.

ctkhn• 4 months ago

What theater is that at? Sounds like a mega chain like AMC or Regal. The local indie theater we go to in one of the 5 largest American cities has never been over $15 per ticket and adding popcorn and a drink is maybe $10 more on top.

SoftTalker4• 4 months ago

Do they get first-run releases? Around here AMC has some sort of exclusive on that. And their theatres are disgusting. Sticky floors, dirty seats, just gross.

I haven't been to a movie in a theater in at least 10 years.

femiagbabiaka• 4 months ago

Support small theatres, you won’t get charged like this.

g947o5• 4 months ago

If they exist. None exists the in 15 mile radius of where I live.

bdangubic• 4 months ago

unfortunately they are dying faster than malls… I live in urban area and my small theatre options re dwindling

Jtsummers• 4 months ago

Where is that? Tickets here are only $7-10 each (except maybe some IMAX or similar showings) and two drinks and popcorn would be $15-25 for two people (size dependent). This is in Colorado.

EDIT: I was going off of memory, but matinee/child/senior pricing is apparently $9.75 at the theater I usually go to, evening is $13.25 (I never go in the evening, had forgotten what that price was). They have a two drink and popcorn combo for $22.10. So the worst case of evening prices (again, not considering IMAX, just regular screens and seats) for two with that combo is $48.60. That's not cheap, but it's not $86 either. And if you're willing to share the drink and go to a matinee you can cut the price to $34.80. This is a Cinemark, a pretty big theater chain.

magicalhippo2• 4 months ago

Not op, but in Norway, so includes 25% VAT.

IMAX opening week is a lot, $25-35. After a while it can drop to $20 or so. Regular is more like $20-25 opening week and drops to $12-15.

I don't bother with popcorn and soda, it's grossly over priced. Like $10 for a small popcorn the size of a pint. I buy a 0.5L bottle at the grocery store next to the cinema and some M (our M&Ms), maybe $10.

Though lately I've been going a lot to the local cinemateque. Not only are tickets around $7 regardless, they mostly show classic movies so seldom worse than the new stuff. They show popular movies too, recently saw Heat there, first time I saw it at the big screen since the premiere. Still packed a punch.

czhu12• 4 months ago

I thought tickets had more standard pricing across markets. For a standard ticket here in SF -- (I know we're comparing probably the highest end to the lowset end here) -- its $22. For IMAX its about $30, at your standard AMC. Indie theatres are not cheaper and are often more expensive.

7 dollar tickets I haven't seen since elementary school

socalgal24• 4 months ago

Google claims the average price in the USA is $16 with Wyoming being $9 and NYC being $23. It's $18 at my local theater

acdha• 4 months ago

Here in DC is pretty similar - I just checked the Silver Spring Regal and it’d be $82 plus tax for an 8pm showing tonight. I think part of this is the push to promo/membership programs — if you’re price sensitive, you’re not paying $9.54 for a medium soda (not making that up) so they make their margin on the people who just pay and everyone else gets some kind of discount program which gives the company data mining / ad revenue opportunity.

Detrytus• 4 months ago

You can watch a movie without popcorn, you know. Not only cheaper but also healthier. This American obsession with popcorn always seemed weird to me.

drstewart• 4 months ago

Do Europeans know you can watch soccer without drinking beer? It's cheaper and healthier. Absolutely bizarre obsession you lot have with it.

sdoering2• 4 months ago

German here. I have never not had popcorn when going to the movies in my younger days. It is just part of the experience.

But in my days it was around 12€ for a ticket, popcorn and a coke. And there were cinema days with special deals. Or cheap sneak previews.

I would never go when paying for me and my SO is equivalent of one of my subscriptions for a year.

lanfeust64• 4 months ago

Honestly the stench of theatre popcorn, and all the masticating around me, grosses me out. Fortunately it usually subsides.

sowbug• 4 months ago

Good point! At home you can watch a movie without being judged on your choice of snacks.

nradov• 4 months ago

There's nothing unhealthy about plain popcorn with a little salt. The added "butter" or other toppings may be problematic.

skeeter20203• 4 months ago

I mean you can stay home and have zuchini slices with cottage cheese instead of nachos too; that's not really the point.

g947o5• 4 months ago

Then I guess you aren't familiar with the 20 minutes of trailers, 1 minute of Cocacola ad and 2 minutes of other completely irrelevant content before the movie actually begins.

reidrac• 4 months ago

I hate this. Like the ticket is not expensive already, they also feel like feeding you ads.

And then wonder why people don't go to the cinema and wonder if they can increase the amount of ads to compensate...

gs17• 4 months ago

And worse, it's not even consistent, they show different amounts of trailers based on the movie/showing! If you show up 20 minutes late, you might miss the start for some movies and yet still have another 15 minutes of trailers for others.

Cerium• 4 months ago

Now that reserved seats are the norm, I leave my house at the specified starting time and never have missed even a minute of the feature film.

skeeter20203• 4 months ago

Calling them trailers is a bit of a stretch; and only 3 minutes of ads? We go to different screenings!

cycomanic• 4 months ago

Well at least it's not Amazon prime where they now interrupt the movie for the same ad/trailer 3 for weeks unless you pay extra again.

Fwiw I always enjoyed the trailers at the movies, no the other ads I could very much do away with (and I used to purposefully come late to shows to miss the ads).

amelius2• 4 months ago

Just bring your smartphone and a headphone.

desireco42• 4 months ago

I can confirm this, it is stupid how much just basic outing to watch a movie costs. I have 3 kids... I am in Chicago but it is like this everywhere

nipperkinfeet• 4 months ago

It is surprising that such a large number of people continue to fall victim to fraud at the cinema. High-quality televisions and sound systems are now available at a reasonable price. It has been 12 years since I last attended a movie screening. All content will be available on-demand within a month of the theatrical release. Popcorn maker at home and drinks.

sfoley• 4 months ago

That's not what fraud is.

AIorNot• 4 months ago

Unless you have a private theater room its not quite the same thing as watching first run movie in a darkend crowded theater - and even that misses the social aspect for an anticipated picture

The communal experience is special

On top of that most people don't have the attention span to sit through a film without opening their phones - film is supposed to be about capturing your attention not just entertainment

Otherwise watch it on your laptop for all I care

tyjen• 4 months ago

The last movie we attended people were incredibly disruptive throughout the film, to the point that it was difficult to focus on the film. Some people enjoy screaming, laughing, and talking as part of the experience, but it's apparently been normalized beyond my tolerance threshold. Add in the cost and overall movie quality decrease of Hollywood productions, and it's difficult to justify.

Presently, we watch foreign movies at home 95% of the time and maybe a Hollywood production when they manage to find their roots and create something worth watching.

alwa• 4 months ago

The last time I chose to watch a movie in a theater instead of the comfort of my home, I went for the raucous audience aspect of the experience.

ozim2• 4 months ago

With current TV setups or projector technology I basically have cinema in my living room.

As a kid who grew up in 90’s I would say it is easily better than what cinema had back then.

I don’t have that high expectations of sound/video as many people will point out that streaming kills the quality but for all its worth still much better than what I need to enjoy a movie.

bloomingeek• 4 months ago

Sort of off topic, but almost the same can be said for music concerts. During slower or softer songs, people can be heard talking and laughing loudly. I get it, they paid their money, same as us, but we didn't pay to hear them.

dboreham• 4 months ago

In the US there's also a non-zero chance that you'll be shot in a movie theater.

alsetmusic• 4 months ago

This is why I strongly endorse buying a projector if the space allows for one. Changed the home experience. I thought I might be making a mistake when I bought my first (720p) years ago but I'd never go back to a traditional television.

next_xibalba• 4 months ago

This is why I no longer go to the theater. The norms around how one behaves in theaters have been destroyed (at least to my preferences).

mark_l_watson• 4 months ago

Well, rude behavior stemmed from lack of empathy for other people who have to listen to them. I am sorry you had that bad experience.

Off topic, but since I retired a few years ago, I go to movies all the time but I go during the week and catch movies between 11am to 3pm. Theaters are almost empty, but just enough other people in the theater to feel like a shared experience. I see about five or six movies a month, and my wife goes with me about half the time. I worried that my local theater would go out of business until we went to a Saturday night movie and all 16 theaters seemed busy, will wall to wall people in the huge lobby area.

So, I hope the movie industry survives in close to its present form. I share your fondness to foreign films, BTW.

justinclift• 4 months ago

If you haven't seen it already, then Wind River (from 2017) is pretty good: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5362988/

Well, it suited my tastes anyway. :)

onlyrealcuzzo• 4 months ago

You can see live theater (albeit without concessions) for less than that.

I'm not sure who is going to the theater or why, but I hope they are enjoying themselves!

jghn3• 4 months ago

For a long time now I've felt that there's only situation where it makes sense. That's movies where it is something about it would make it much more enjoyable on IMAX or similar with a professional sound system. So something in the visual spectacle category.

For any normal movie I'd rather just watch it from my couch. But for the once in a while, over the top, blockbuster I'll still go to a theater.

no_wizard3• 4 months ago

Avatar is a good example.

I enjoyed each one in the theater but I tried watching Avatar: The Way of Water at home and despite having an entire media room devoted to good sound, proper lighting well calibrated projector and such it was not all that great. The movie fell a little flat without the theater experience to go with it.

I saw the limited run in advance to the 3rd one coming out in theaters again and it was good in that setting, as a reference point for my experience

Swizec• 4 months ago

2 tickets, 2 sodas, 1 popcorn. $86 dollars. Don't know if I'll ever go to a conventional movie theater again.

We almost never go to regular theaters anymore. IMAX feels worth it for something like F1 or Top Gun where it’s all about the visual spectacle, otherwise meh.

We go to Alamo Drafthouse a lot tho. A little pricey but the experience of watching a movie in comfy seats over a fairly decent restaurant dinner is fantastic for certain kinds of movies. Peaky Blinders was the most recent. Tommy Shelby paired with a good cocktail or two, fantastic.

Also I don’t know how Alamo achieves this, but people there are really good about noise and other bullshit. I think it’s because they do in fact kick people out for being annoying.

uncletammy2• 4 months ago

They no longer prohibit phones during the film. In fact, now they require one to place an order. This has just started and is rolling out to every market. It completely undermined their entire value proposition. Alamo Drafthouse is a walking corpse.

bena2• 4 months ago

Our local AMC theater would be $13 a ticket, $8 a drink, and $11 for popcorn (rounding up and assuming the largest sizes, although the prices are in a narrow band so the price difference between the least and most is under a dollar).

So, we’re looking at $53. Which is $33 less than wherever you’re at.

I also don’t know how standardized prices are across all AMC venues. So while Pokopia costs $70 everywhere, the same may not be true of theater tickets and concessions.

But yeah, it’s typically why we try to avoid theater concessions, because they’ve always been overpriced

longislandguido3• 4 months ago

Most if not all the ticket price goes directly into the studio's pockets.

So the theatres stay alive by selling concessions.

I'd wager everyone here complaining about prices would also wax poetic about how theatres don't "pay a living wage" to the kids scooping popcorn and would immediately drive home in their $100k Rivians or Teslas so they can give a one star review on Yelp or complain on Reddit about the bathrooms or floors being dirty or sticky.

These same people wouldn't bat an eye at paying $14 for a food truck grilled cheese and leave a tip.

You can't have it both ways.

socalgal24• 4 months ago

Correct, you can't give customers a horrible experience at the theater and expect the theater to do well.

wat100002• 4 months ago

Why can’t I have it both ways?

If all of those things are true, then the conclusion is that theaters can’t operate in a way that wins my business. That would be unfortunate, but it’s not contradictory. It also seems to be that pretty much true, as I see a movie in a theater maybe once a year.

datsci_est_20152• 4 months ago

These same people wouldn't bat an eye at paying $14 for a food truck grilled cheese and leave a tip.

This seems weirdly condescending, especially since I think these two things are very related.

There are two types of $14 food truck grilled cheese in my experience:

The first type is usually found at farmer’s markets or free city events where the cheese will be local and artisan, and the bread will be local and artisan, and it’ll be pretty freaking good, and remind you that you can make incredible food with simple ingredients.

The second type is where there’s a captive audience, like a music festival or a brewery patio. This is no free market: you are hungry, and you’re about to be exploited.

I find American society increasingly reflected in the second type of $14 grilled cheese. Movie theaters, sporting events, music events, video games, tipping culture, hidden fees, etc. etc. Exploitative business practices to extract profit at the expense of the customer. It’s like walking around being shown the middle finger at all times. And people complain about the breakdown of the social contract…

tombert9• 4 months ago

The reasoning doesn't particularly matter to me, honestly. Whether or not it they need to charge a second mortgage to cover the cost of the theater isn't really my problem; these are for-profit companies, I don't need to do them any favor.

Popcorn cost basically nothing to make at home, especially if you buy the raw kernels and pop them yourself, and I can rent a 4k version of a movie for like three dollars on Amazon. My 85" 8k TV cost me $1200 (refurbished, but still). For the cost of going to the theater with my wife 15 times, I can buy that TV to watch movies but also use that same TV for many other things.

Even cheap shitty TVs are pretty ok nowadays, certainly better than the stuff when I was a kid, and after I have to question the point of going to an expensive physical theater where there's a risk of some teenagers talking over the movie and I can't pause if I need to use the bathroom. The theaters might not like it, but regardless of whether its fair, they are competing with TVs now.

coderjames• 4 months ago

And you'd lose that wager.

I complain about movie costs while I watch movies at home, drive a VW that was under $40k new, live in a state with a minimum wage over $17 an hour, and refuse to pay $14 plus tip to a food truck that doesn't provide seating when I can pay $12 and no tip at a fast food restaurant that does provide dine-in eating.

Some of us live our principles, we're not all just whinging hypocrites.

jbm• 4 months ago

Side note - My 2019 Tesla Model 3 is worth 8000$. Canadian.

A rich person does not drive a Tesla.

remarkEon• 4 months ago

There's way more middlemen then when people went to the movies in the 1950s, it's not that complicated. Back then, the theater got the film roll in a USPS delivery, and the people that manned the popcorn were high schoolers. Over the years we have injected lots of lawyers at every level of this and, alas, everything about "watching a movie" is more expensive.

g947o5• 4 months ago

Well, the system either needs to change, or it will die. As simple as that. Probably the latter.

jasonlotito2• 4 months ago

$20 for the tickets. $20 for 2x soda and popcorn, but they've always been on the expensive side compared to tickets.

Tickets are a bit more for IMAX.

Less than an hour outside Philly. The theater is recently renovated too and has nice recliner seats, and everyone has their own armrest.

embedding-shape4• 4 months ago

Seems crazy to me, always had to (presumed) view that cinema was cheap in the US, otherwise how is the business so big there?

In Spain I went to regular cinema this Sunday, 8 EUR per ticket per person, + ~10 EUR per person for snacks, so ~20 EUR per person for me and my wife.

Also got tickets to see Project Hail Mary at IMAX, 2 tickets for the premiere, and I paid 29.80 EUR for two tickets, thought it was expensive, but seems we're luckier than I thought :)

Tadpole9181• 4 months ago

It's not even price for me - I'm happy to pay for an experience. I'm more annoyed that the theater is basically the worst place to watch a movie now.

The silver screen has a contrast ratio in the hundreds. A $300 consumer TV now looks significantly better than the blurry, muted, and muddled projector image.

Then the audio at theaters is always totally blown out and overly bassy and siblant. Fine for action, I guess, but it makes listening to dialogue exhausting.

And unless you get your favorite seat, you have to watch the movie skewed. God forbid you get a seat in the front and have to crane your neck the whole hour.

Meanwhile I can stay home, not deal with driving 20 minutes and interacting with the public, pay less, eat better food, get blitzed with friends, talk with my wife, have better visuals and audio, etc. Other than nostalgia, there's just no reason at all to go to a movie theater. It's become kind of outdated in an era of modern TVs to me.

khazhoux6• 4 months ago

I enjoy going to the theater to hear the guy next to me eating popcorn with his mouth open and maximum mandibular crunch. Also, I do enjoy the woman behind me that with her constant non-stop vocal reactions to everything onscreen (anything mildly sad --> "awww"; anything vaguely surprising --> "oooh"; ...).

Other highlights include the super bright EXIT signs flanking both sides of the screen -- helps me get immersed in the scene. The occasional loud bass rumble from the action movie playing one theater over also helps.

AbstractH24• 4 months ago

I still go to arthouse movies regularly, mostly because it forces me to give them undivided attention

Although, I’ll admit I go way less often than two years ago when I was full time WFH. Which begs the question if I just went for a reason to leave the house

projektfu• 4 months ago

Where I go it's about $33 for two tickets bought online and probably $20 for those snacks, though we usually share a drink and a popcorn. The theater is still usually empty.

The market-clearing price is nearly zero except for some new releases. Oppenheimer was sold out in its first weekend, for example.

Anyone who went to movies before about 1999 remembers them being a lot more popular.

lordmoma• 4 months ago

if you love cinema enough

fhdkweig3• 4 months ago

I don't know where people get these crazy prices. Try to find a little hole-in-the-wall theater. I like the local Landmark Cinema. It is about $8 a ticket and I skip on the junk food.

There is another theater on the other side of town that does midnight showings of Rocky Horror Picture Show. Those kinds of places are also cheap.

wombat-man2• 4 months ago

I think it's more relevant to talk about theaters showing current new movies because that's kind of what Hollywood is focused on. I'm in a more expensive city where a weeknight non-matinee will run $20 a pop for a current release. Comfort is average but food is pretty solid. Not Alamo, but similar service level. Not unusual for a couple to leave paying more like 80 after concessions.

bradlys• 4 months ago

The people going to movies regularly are playing a different game.

The prices you see upfront like this are for "suckers". People who come in, don't think about price, and just pay whatever the cost is. McDonald's is like this now too.

People who are concerned about price though - they use the app, they get deals, and so forth. I've gone to movies and done the same thing - two tickets, two drinks, 1 popcorn and it was $30. This is because these movie theaters run "deals" all the time for this stuff.

You'll have to get used to this paradigm as it's the main way everything is priced now. There's not going to be a "one price for everyone" thing anymore. It's going to be dynamic and different pricing for everything.

freetonik• 4 months ago

Here in Finland this would cost about 50 euro, which is still a lot, but for me the main reason to never go to a movie theater again is that even after paying all of this money, the first 15 minutes is filled with advertisement, then 15 more minutes of movie trailers, then some "IMAX" or whatever intro video. By the time the movie starts, I feel like I've been watching tiktok for a day.

pants2• 4 months ago

Movie theaters around me (even the high end ones) have 30 minutes of commercials and previews before the movie, so I typically arrive 25 minutes after showtime, no problem.

However it is still frustrating that they expect you to tolerate 30 minutes of commercials after paying so much money.

khazhoux6• 4 months ago

Do you not have reserved seats?

We simply arrive late.

JoeJonathan• 4 months ago

Not a conventional theater, but I recently went to Vidiots in Los Angeles and enjoyed myself so much I went back a week later. The location I went to has two theaters—37 seat and 270 seat, both with comfortable seating and an excellent picture/sound. Most people who go are kind of movie nerds, so everyone was super respectful. And they don't really play blockbusters, so you don't get that kind of crowd. They seem to be doing well, and I really hope the model works and is reproducible.

Oh, and it was $11 for one of the tickets, $13 for another. I don't remember how much a beer cost, but it was on par with (and maybe less than) local bars.

mentalgear2• 4 months ago

they don't really play blockbusters

This seems key, the more comments I read here about cinema theatres and their crowds. Maybe the local (indie) cinematheque is the best movie theatre for money/quality ratio.

jayd16• 4 months ago

At least in LA/Hollywood movies still hold a little bit of respect. People are in here complaining about trailers before a movie, like it's not a 100 year tradition.

LightBug1• 4 months ago

WTF? Where are you based?

Cheapest tickets are £2.50 where I am in London. Maybe £4.50 at a stretch. £10 worse care scenario.

Granted, I don't know about sodas and popcorn, as we always bring or eat beforehand.

Having said that, home theatre is hard to beat but I'd still check a cinema every so often just to experience the group vibe. Nothing beats the collective vibe around a great movie - and worth the risk of shitty neighbours. Maybe I just love cinema.

jdprgm• 4 months ago

Where do you live? I'm in a HCOL area and just checked that same combo for a Friday night premiere and it's more like ~$70.

The markup on concessions has always been a thing but it really is just insane to think the unit economics on 2 sodas and a popcorn must be like 50 cents and selling it from $26 (in my area). Clearly they must make the most money this way but it is just crazy that anyone outside of significant disposable income even considers buying concessions. It's priced in such a way where anyone outside of the top 5% income brackets should just laugh at the price and view it as an extreme luxury good and not ever even consider buying anything.

stackedinserter2• 4 months ago

And out of 2 hours experience, 30 min is ads.

khazhoux6• 4 months ago

Can you break down the prices?

Because my local AMC has tickets right now at $20, and soda+popcorn is another $20.

treis• 4 months ago

This isn't why Hollywood is dying. Hollywood is dying because it's cheaper to make movies elsewhere. We're (probably) still going to have movies for a long time. In the same way that we still have cars long after Detroit "died".

dyauspitr3• 4 months ago

I wouldn’t even say that. It’s dying because people are spending a lot of time watching YouTube, instagram and TikTok. A lot of people now just don’t watch a lot of long form content.

shiroiuma12• 4 months ago

Yep, there's lot of great movies and series coming out of other places, like UK, Europe, Japan, Korea, and many more. And a lot of stuff people think is "Hollywood" is actually being made in Canada.

nabbed• 4 months ago

I stopped going sometime mid-2000s, not because of the cost or the quality of movies, but because of the quality of my fellow movie watchers, who were pretty awful to be honest (at least in Silicon Valley at the time):

- Lord of the Rings: a family came in after the movie started with a cluster of helium balloons, each of which eventually got loose and floated around the theatre. A small balloon creates an outsized shadow on the screen when it floats in front of the projector (e.g., sometimes a third of the picture would disappear).

- A Beautiful Mind: Several guys, in different spots in the theatre, would wait for a quiet moment in the movie and say loudly "Oh my beautiful mind". One guy had a squeaky seat, so each time he said his bit, he would squeak his chair 5 times.

- Panic Room: Two people directly behind us just laughed hysterically at seemingly every line in the movie.

Also, the advertisements went on too long (20 minutes maybe?) and were also rock-concert loud.

Last night, I watched Wolfs (Apple TV) in my living room with my spouse and we enjoyed it. It's not a great movie, but it's good, there are no ear-splitting advertisements, and the audience is well behaved.

Edit: Later in the 2000s I did see a few Coen brothers films in the theatre, and those were good experiences, but I still avoided the theatre for the most part.

m463• 4 months ago

we did the same thing and had to sit far right 2nd row because you need reservations long ahead of time to sit far enough back somewhere near the middle

meanwhile I saw a 50-inch tv at costco for $239, and a 98-inch tv for $1299

raydev3• 4 months ago

I remember my parents complaining about how expensive concessions were when I was a kid in the 90s too, and sometimes we would hit the gas station first and stuff snacks in my mom's bag to sneak them in to the theater. They also complained about prices if we couldn't do the Tuesday matinee.

Not sure anything's changed. The movie theater experience has always been expensive and I think your bill is pretty much in line with inflation.

seanmcdirmid2• 4 months ago

The movie theater experience has always been expensive.

I don't think they were that expensive in the 1930s and 40s, maybe into the 50s. Supposedly, in the 1930s, they were around 25 cents, which $5 in today's money.

We've just seriously gone of the rails on pricing for some reason, but it probably started before I was born (in 75) and has just gotten a lot worse over time (so in the 90s, they were expensive, but are even more expensive today).

goatlover• 4 months ago

Eat somewhere cheaper right before watching the movie in a theater. The concessions are way overpriced.

shiroiuma12• 4 months ago

No, because then you need to use the toilet in the middle of the movie.

mancerayder• 4 months ago

Personally, I don't understand why people go to see films with a bunch of strangers and a nod to the HN crowd: with potentially disruptive or reactive people that distract the enjoyment. Unless it's some sort of film festival or a premiere where the director is there, movies are for teenagers and parents with children.

I'm not talking about the 1990s Times Square theaters with a whole other 'type' of audience, eh, member.

the_af10• 4 months ago

2 tickets, 2 sodas, 1 popcorn.

Skip the sodas and the popcorn. Go eat before or later. It still won't be cheap, but at least the meal will be better!

jemmyw• 4 months ago

I don't mind the higher price. The place near me is a small cinema and not a chain, the food is excellent and they bring it to your seat. And if you go during the week it's pretty quiet. I'm sure they make most of their money from the restaurant anyway. There's another place like it a bit of a further drive but it to be even quieter, most times we've been it's just us.

snthpy• 4 months ago

Different currency, same conclusion. Plus add on the cost of the baby sitter and the fact that TVs now provide a home Cinema experience.

tomcam• 4 months ago

Fine. You get to miss the novel pleasures of filthy floors, constant use of bright cell phones, and vigorous conversations during the movie

pjmlp• 4 months ago

That is the problem, everyone complains about Netflix, Prime and co, but going to cinema currently can pay for a couple of months in subscriptions.

I get the experience and that there are employees to pay, and such, but if companies want people to still go the movies, they need to ramp those prices down in some way.

In Europe I only go to alternative cinemas which happen to be part of the movie pass network, called Gildepass in Germany.

xadhominemx• 4 months ago

I spend much less than that at a chain theater in Manhattan.

pheouk• 4 months ago

Regals unlimited pass and their snack saver has made movies a no brainer for me and my friends coupled with their monthly themed events showing older movies we almost always have multiple things we want to see and often go multiple times a week, especially during the gloomier winter months!

At last check i was at almost 25 visits this year, just saw F1 again on saturday and off to see Project Hail Mary tonight

opan• 4 months ago

I don't wanna come off as defending any of this, but even 20 years ago I'd bring my own snacks or eat nothing at the movies, the stuff they sell was always considered overpriced. So I'd definitely skip the sodas and popcorn.

That being said, I don't go to theaters anymore either. I'd rather watch stuff from the comfort of my home, at any hour of the day. If I have to wait a few months for web/BD releases, no big deal. I have plenty to watch in the meantime.

rishabhaiover• 4 months ago

So many more products are competing for finite attention now. And the solution to that problem is not to productize your commodity imo, art created for the sake of selling is not art.

gzread5• 4 months ago

If you don't productize something you won't make money and then you'll starve and die.

beedeebeedee2• 4 months ago

Then UBI. This is a failure of our economy, which creates perverse incentives. Clean air, clean water, good food, plentiful housing, and opportunities for sport, contemplation and art are the things we need, but our economy incentivizes people to pollute, sell slop, restrict housing, and exploit ourselves and others.

t1234s• 4 months ago

Most recent in theater movie I was was "F1" because I thought the audio experience would be worth the ticket price. While the audio was good, seat quality was sub par, popcorn stale and soda was from a Freestyle machine (YUK!)

bdz2• 4 months ago

I watch a film every single day since Covid. There are great films everywhere every year. I'm not american but the sooner you ignore the american cultural imperialism is the better (or at least the films that don't premiere at competition festivals). There is a whole world outside of America.

HelloUsername• 4 months ago

Can you tell me your top 3 of every year since Covid?

boca_honey3• 4 months ago

When compared to the nascent asian cultural imperialism, I'd rather have american media, to be honest. Over here in the global south, Hollywood was a pretty good influence compared with what I see around the anime/Kpop crew.

There is a whole world inside America. You can say that about every single country on Earth, but not every country on Earth produced The Godfather, Citizen Kane and Toy Story 2.

rimbo7893• 4 months ago

Good riddance. It won’t be missed. Very little of Hollywood benefited humanity - it was mostly a tool of the rich and governments to propagandize. It was just an another opiate for masses. It was built on ruthless exploitation of labour and consumers.

boca_honey3• 4 months ago

Hollywood produced some of the most influential pieces of art of the last century and it permeated global culture in a way only comparable to Renaissance-era Florence. Even if your simplistic take stained by marxist propaganda is true, you shouldn't just casually dismiss the labor of hundreds of thousands of artists and technicians over a century simply because you've become jaded by Marvel slop.

taftster2• 4 months ago

Agreed. To say "good riddance" to Hollywood scares me. Like we are giving up and accepting generated slop and influencers from now on. There's a lot of bad movies, but just as you said, very few mediums have thusly pierced through across cultures and societies quite like Hollywood.

rimbo7893• 4 months ago

Influential? Yes. Was that influence for the betterment of humanity? I’m not sure. Beyond the slop many of the classics were deeply racist and built on immoral exploitation. Yes all those artists did great work but they did it in terrible conditions for where near enough pay.

Take apocalypse now: a great piece of art. Was it worth the pain and suffering of its production? Absolutely not.

heresie-dabord• 4 months ago

some of the most influential pieces of art of the last century and it permeated global culture in a way only comparable to Renaissance-era Florence

Not just comparable; easily greater than. US movie business has easily been more influential than Romanticism. That said... TFA makes undeniably valid points:

"Morale has been battered by tens of thousands of layoffs, the exodus of production from California to lower-cost territories, the waning cultural relevance of cinema versus social media, declining attendance at theater chains and fears that artificial intelligence will displace traditional moviemaking.

[...] this year’s Oscar race has been overshadowed by rival Paramount Skydance Corp.’s $110 billion deal to buy the company. It’s the third time Warner Bros. has been sold in less than a decade.

[...] Hollywood’s anxiety — the local industry’s challenges are often compared to the decline of automaking in Detroit — isn’t misplaced. The crisis has grown to such magnitude that last year, California doubled the annual assistance it gives to film and TV productions to $750 million to stop them from fleeing the state."

Rover2222• 4 months ago

This is such a college freshman worldview take, IMO.

simianwords3• 4 months ago

for what it's worth, I agree. there's a lot that hollywood contributed and a large part of our culture can be attributed to things that stuck from hollywood.

As an example: I know that the particular type of sitcoms like Friends or How I Met Your Mother are very popular in third world countries. They are the first real window into western culture for many people in such countries. A lot of ideas like promiscuity, dating, career and the western way of life are primarily introduced to people through such media.

Its hard to overstate the impact this brings. Once you have enough people exposed to such ideas, the mindset changes and the ripple effects are pretty huge.

Third world countries would still be in their old and primitive lifestyle if not for the propaganda of Hollywood which I very much welcome.

mapotofu• 4 months ago

That’s great. Your opinions are important, regardless of how well formed they are. What grade level should we assign your worldview?

ks2048• 4 months ago

Everyone is complaining about movie theater prices. But, I'll also complain about streaming prices. I want to watch The Secret Agent and it's $9.99 to rent on Apple TV. It doesn't seem to make sense in comparison to month all-you-can-watch subscription prices.

dredmorbius7• 4 months ago

Presumably, the business goal is to steer you toward (recurring) subscription rather than (one-off) pay-to-watch activities.

cloche• 4 months ago

This is one thing I really despise about the streaming world. When rental stores were a thing you could grab older movies from the bargain bin to rest for $1 or less. Now all movies are the same price no matter if it's new or 30 years old.

vivzkestrel• 4 months ago

never brought a streaming subscription to anything in my life and never will. been torrenting all my life from 2000s

cubefox• 4 months ago

The most interesting part:

North Americans are going to the movies about half as often as they used to a decade ago, based on the number of tickets sold at cinemas in the US and Canada.

50% down in just 10 years is massive.

everybodyknows• 4 months ago

... California doubled the annual assistance it gives to film and TV productions to $750 million to stop them from fleeing the state.

750M/38.9M = $19.28 per resident

Why can't we call a taxpayer subsidy by its right name?

socalgal24• 4 months ago

If Sinners and One Battle After Another are up for movie of the year then it's no wonder no one is going. One is a fun but ultimately forgettable horror action movie. The other is a movie that just based on its major theme would attract less then half the country and even in those remaining is a very polarizing movie. It's up for best picture because to preach, not because it's actually good.

Apocryphon2• 4 months ago

F1 is also nominated what’s your explanation for that picture

ascagnel_• 4 months ago

Two organizations that love money (Apple & F1) collaborating to make a ton more money.

The tech for in-cockpit capture and presentation of the races themselves was great, but the dialogue and basically everything off-track was boring or rote.

jmugan• 4 months ago

I just didn't think that either of them were very good. Sinners was okay, and One Battle After Another was just kind of silly, I think regardless of your political views.

crabkin2• 4 months ago

The obvious political stance of One Battle After Another notwithstanding, given how much the film succeeds as an exercise in using the language of cinema to tell a compelling story, it comes across (ironically) as idealogically motivated to say the movie isnt nominated in part for its merits with regard to craft and construction.

No doubt it appeals to people at the Academy in its persuasion, but if we were to strip it down to film technical aspects it would no doubt still be a frontrunner for film of the year.

hitekker• 4 months ago

Your first sentence is confusingly worded. Do you mean the GP is ideological for saying the movie is unpopular? Or that he's ideological for saying the movie isn't good?

I haven't seen the movie in question but it looks like it underperformed pretty badly (-$90M) at the box office.

fsloth• 4 months ago

I’m also in the camp ”I respect the authors but here am not impressed”

Regarding wider adoption ”One Battle Another” is incomprehensible mess unless you are familiar with US. I understand the white supremacist conspiracy but nothing else makes sense _at all_. I trust when people say it’s super intelligent but I just don’t have any of the context.

Sinners is a cool music video that is about 5x too long - the few dances are really nice, some of the characters have very strong presence and few dialogues really are strong but … I would not categorize it as industry leading in anything unless the industry reference points are super low

bradchris2• 4 months ago

I can’t agree with this statement because One Battle After Another is actually a movie about fatherhood and the lengths you go to to raise a child, and very explicitly makes fun of how many “fight the power” movements are often ineffective or devolve into making the problem you’re fighting against worse.

It’s a movie about family loyalties transcending and persisting through all else, which is a pretty universal message.

wvbdmp• 4 months ago

I agree that it paints both sides as silly, but it does so incredibly badly. This is evidenced by, eg., the comments on Letterboxd, who all seem to either think their outgroup is lampooned (yay 5 stars) or their ingroup is slighted (grr 1 star). The movie set out to combat division and failed catastrophically. At least that’s my charitable interpretation. It’s also too long, lol.

spicymaki• 4 months ago

The other is a movie that just based on its major theme would attract less then half the country and even in those remaining is a very polarizing movie. It's up for best picture because to preach, not because it's actually good.

I am not sure why you see "One Battle After Another" as preachy. It was ultimately a chase movie, perhaps you did not like the intent of the revolutionaries who kicked off the chase, but there was no lecturing as far as I could tell. All of the characters were flawed and broken. Moments where characters could do the "right thing" many ended up doing things out of self interest. The movie was deeply cynical and piercing critique on radicalism left and right.

The movie also has a metacritic score of 95, so you are objectively wrong.

Did you even see the movie?

chairmansteve• 4 months ago

There was a bubble when all the new streaming services started making content, now there's a bust.

Attendance drops at movie theatres is irrelevant. Most people have watched movies and tv shows at home for years.

Hollywood will be fine.

throwaway81523• 4 months ago

I can hardly wait for "vibe cinema". Type in a prompt and a 2 hour epic AI slop film comes out. Not much different from Hollywood is now making the hard way.

bdcravens2• 4 months ago

We're already seeing that in the format of short-form serials on TikTok.

xyzelement• 4 months ago

I started watching 1960s era movies with my kids and I understand why Hollywood had the power at the time. Entertainment and solid values crafted into a "picture".

I can imagine back then eagerly awaiting a new release. Now, who cares. Some depressing trauma story of someone I can't relate to or rehashed superhero flick. Yawn.

Animats• 4 months ago

One new problem for theaters is that entertainment now comes in other time formats than the 1-3 hour movie or the hour-long TV show. Netflix is not constrained by the need to push groups of people through a movie theater.

Apocryphon2• 4 months ago

Every time there’s an article about the “good ol’ days of Hollywood” I like to trot out this comic strip- looks like last time I posted it was five years ago:

https://web.archive.org/web/20201112024059/https://www.gocom...

Hollywood has been a franchise and licensed IP sequel/remake/reboot farm since the ‘80s, since Star Wars and Jaws blockbusters killed off the experimental period of New Hollywood. And even before that it was Cecil B. DeMille bombastic productions and westerns and musicals everywhere. The movie industry has always been characterized by crowd pleasers.

bryan0• 4 months ago

The only reason I like going to the theater now is to see movies in "4dx". It's a ridiculous format where the seats move and there are other special effects including air, water, and smoke which are custom edited for each chosen movie. It's like a combination between a movie and one of those amusement park rides. I think most people hate it, but my kids and I enjoy it. Tickets are ~$30 each though.

Otherwise I would just rather watch a movie on the couch at home. They come to streaming so quickly there's no problem waiting for it.

righthand3• 4 months ago

The promise er sorry propaganda used to be “attend the big blockbuster movies so they can spend the extra money on riskier indie films”. Essentially trickle down for the movie business. Here we are.

beepbooptheory• 4 months ago

One small thing I noticed.

The best movie of this year, a film called Sirāt, was in part funded by a grant from Spain's Institute of Cinematography and Audiovisual Arts [1]. Another incredible one this past year, a Brazilian film called The Secret Agent, was funded by various grants and institutes as well [2].

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir%C4%81t 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Agent_(2025_film)

Firehawke2• 4 months ago

I was already complaining about the price when it was only $30 for two tickets, two drinks, and popcorn. To think it's more than double that now!

Add in the fact most anyone can have access to a pretty good quality 60" display. It's not as large as the theater, but it's pretty good-sized, has better color reproduction than a lot of older (read: less-maintained) theaters' gear, and you don't have to deal with people using their phones or talking over the movie.

Lastly, let's just consider that for most people the number of movies you'd actually want to watch on a yearly basis has probably decreased in general while the cost of actually producing those movies has skyrocketed-- it's the same problem with AAA gaming. Your costs are so high that if a movie/game isn't an immediate massive hit, you're doomed.

Yeah, the bottom has dropped out of that market entirely. Gaming will be saved by indie and AA games, but I'm not sure if there's anything like that for movies; sure, smaller films exist but distribution, etc. doesn't really have anything like Steam.

ravenstine• 4 months ago

This is something I already knew, but I realized it even more upon seeing the film Wendy and Lucy.

Yes, it's an arthouse flick. No, it won't be everyone's cup of tea. No, it's not blockbuster material. But, what it does show is how filmmakers can do a lot with very little. It's a simple story with a bittersweet ending and no VFX. I'm certain it cost relatively nothing to make. And it's unfortunate that we don't get anything like it in mainstream theaters.

Hollywood has been pricing itself out of existence but they still have the surprised Pikachu face while things decline.

I had a conversation with a bunch of Hollywood people last year. Some were writers, actors, etc. A handful of film personnel. They were all quabbling about what was going to win at the Academy Awards, who was getting good and bad attention from the Hollywood Reporter, and so on. Simultaneously, they were lamenting about how bad things were in their industry.

I then asked the group if the industry had thought about making a good movie for a change instead of giving a shit what the Hollywood Reporter has to say. They were dumbstruck, probably due to a combination of my rudeness and not having a good counterargument. If people are losing their jobs and not making money then it's hard to deny how self-congratulatory the entertainment industry is.

Firehawke2• 4 months ago

Yep. I'd just about kill for a decade where we go back to 80s flicks. Some of the best quantity and quality we've ever had for mass-appeal movies, and they didn't cost anywhere near what the average cost is today.

And I'd have at least 2-3 movies a year I'd really WANT to go see, probably more.

Back to the Future, Lethal Weapon, Arnie's action flicks, Ghostbusters-- I could go on for quite awhile, maybe the last decade where we had that kind of movie output.

tonetegeatinst• 4 months ago

Iv had some movies I wanted to see but had to wait for them to appear online via youtube, apple, PBS, or DVD.

Niche films / indie films don't get shown everywhere and unless your sometimes willing to drive over 150+ miles you just have to wait.

danpalmer3• 4 months ago

People like to point at prices and bad audience behaviour for the downfall of cinemas, but I'd suggest that it also comes down to availability and home experience.

When I was growing up we went to the cinema regularly, but the only options for watching a film were VHS rentals and the cinema, both of which required going out. Films were rare. Sometimes there would be a film on TV, but it would have ads every 20 minutes, and our TV was a relatively small CRT.

Now I have nearly every film made available to me to watch within minutes on a huge screen, in a quiet room, that doesn't smell, with no ads, at the time I want, without going out, and I can pause it to go to the toilet or get a drink rather than having to hope I don't miss anything. And I don't have a home cinema setup, I have a <$1k TV and <$200 speakers, no surround sound, very basic, very accessible.

The only time I go to the cinema now is for IMAX because that passes the bar of better than I have at home as a whole package.

Cinemas just suck.

JKCalhoun• 4 months ago

And yet I have no interest in watching any of the current few decades of superhero crap that Hollywood has been grinding out—at home or anywhere else. Maybe movies also suck these days.

danpalmer3• 4 months ago

I think it has always been true in most media that the mainstream is boring and devoid of artistic value while the fringes are interesting and valuable. There are plenty of excellent films around at the moment.

bitwank• 4 months ago

I totally get how much more convenient home viewing is, but there’s something about going out and watching something in a group that is special, like we do with opera or theater, sporting events or concerts.

danpalmer3• 4 months ago

I'm not sure I agree. If I'm there to enjoy the film I don't want to notice the audience, much like at the opera or theatre. If I've seen the film before and want to enjoy the atmosphere (like a concert or sport) then a cinema would often be a bad place for that (I've had that experience once in my life).

dwd• 4 months ago

As a kid I often went to the drive-in with my family. Completely different experience to a theatre, but one that I remember fondly.

The sound was always tinny and in mono from the small speaker you hooked on the window, but it was fun and very cheap.

cadamsdotcom• 4 months ago

What if all the good stories have been told? I conjecture Hollywood is out of ideas but there’s plenty new if you look elsewhere.

Recently watched a fantastic Chinese movie: Upstream (2024) - a dramatized view of a culture driven by algorithms where everyone is plugged in but opportunity does exist if you work hard. Optimistic and pessimistic, with an underdog you want to see win, and a bunch of beautiful human and touching moments. Highly recommended.

Hollywood will keep going maybe in a smaller form. It’s ok for industries to change or run out of steam, and it’s ok for new to replace told. It’s ok for a place to run out of stories to tell, because new stories will get told by others in other places.

mianos• 4 months ago

I feel something like this. All the popular movies are very similar, like all cars look the same. They have optimised it for efficiency to the lowest common buying denominator.

I have started watch movies and series in foreign languages, particularly Korean and some Thai that have very novel story lines.

groundzeros20154• 4 months ago

Maybe run of out stories that fit the criteria for mass marketing.

dinkumthinkum• 4 months ago

Hollywood has been going through a similar cultural problem that gaming has. They have been extremely woke, and I'm sorry that people won't like that, and they have made movies to make far left critics happy instead of audiences. Not all are like this but this has dominated the industry. There have been some big moneymakers in recent years an the industry could try to make movies for audiences again but they have gotten into this space where they have to make the Academy happy. There was those Danish filmmakers at a press conference talking about their movie set in the 1700s, or something like that, and the press were whining about the lack of diversity in a historical Nordic film. I think if they decide to make movies people want to see and stop using Millennial vernacular in all script writing, they will see people wanting to watch movies again.

ideashower2• 4 months ago

I went to the recent re-screenings of the Lord of the Rings movies -- and maybe 30 minutes into the first film, I realized I'd never actually seen it in a theater before. It was glorious.

There seems to be a lot of gloating in this thread from people who haven't been to a theater in many, many years -- lots of disgust at the idea of a movie ever being a communal, social experience. I get the annoyance of other moviegoers talking or otherwise disturbing the movie, but you have no idea what we're missing when big films don't have big individualized social moments to match.

We can't go two hours without picking up our phones. We don't deserve the great experiences movie theaters once gave us.

the_af10• 4 months ago

I fully agree that, when it works, the cinema is a wonderful experience. It's amazing, very different from watching something on a home screen.

Yes, it can get ruined by obnoxious movie goers, but wow...when it works it's amazing.

My main criticism is mostly aimed at the kind of movies that do reach the big screen where I live (big theater franchises, small arthouse cinemas are dying and almost completely gone, and their screens and sound were never good to begin with). I don't even complain about the price of the ticket. And the food, who on earth needs popcorn and soda to watch a movie? Go eat after, or before.

ideashower2• 4 months ago

Yeah. I feel like I recall Matt Damon or some similarly famous actor saying that the reason there's been such a shift is largely due to the loss of physical media. It would give every movie a second "push" with reach and sales.

Related (a little): I recommend everyone go to a film festival at least once in their lives. Doesn't have to be a huge one, something regional works. It's a great opportunity to experience some of what I'm describing.

bananamogul• 4 months ago

As if the world needs more video content.

There's already enough movies and TV shows to keep me busy for the rest of my life. If they stopped making movies and TV shows tomorrow, I wouldn't get through everything I would be interested in watching before I died.

And neither would you.

niemandhier• 4 months ago

Hollywood moved into the “exploitation” phase of its optimisation problem: Sequels, prequels, spinoffs, remakes.

If a movie costs O(Billion) to make, you need to be sure to at least earn back 1.x times the investment, the only way to do this is to play it safe.

andrewstuart• 4 months ago

It’s because most movies are shit and boring - to be blunt.

fuzzfactor• 4 months ago

The red carpet wasn't even as red as it was during legendary times.

Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis

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