When will a decent film be made again?

[.db.]

Watched an excellent Christmas film this year called The Holdovers (2024). Should be a Christmas Classic in years to come.
Another film I’ve enjoyed in recent years was Jojo Rabbit (2019). Original, both funny and heartfelt. Really good.

But the OP is right. Cinema isn’t what it once was. The money and talent has gone into series on Netflix and Disney etc. and all those terrible superhero and elves+wizards films have taken over cinema.

Also, a big thing with modern cinema is the very poor graphics. CGI was better 20-30 years ago than now.



Cool British cinema from decades past is almost obsolete. Remember the 90s and 00s quality of films like:
Trainspotting
Human Traffic
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
Snatch
Dead Man’s Shoes
Nil By Mouth
It’s All Gone Pete Tong
This Is England
Slumdog Millionaire
Shaun Of The Dead
Hot Fuzz
…among others

Where has this quality of cool British Cinema gone?

Films are more difficult to discover than music. Mainstream music is abominably bad, but you only have to scratch the surface and get on YouTube or Apple Music and listen through recommendations to find great music under the radar, plus stations like 6Music (even though nowhere near as good as it used to be and plays far too much mainstream music that would have been on Radio 1 from decades past).
You can’t do that with films, you have to be told about them, word of mouth.

 

[Blue Since 76]

A bunch of old farts moaning that they don't make things like they used to.

So let me join in.

I do think CGI has had a negative impact on the quality, as they just shove loads of post-production at things, potentially after the initial screenings go badly. When you see how they made the original Star Wars, the effort required shone through in the film, but that also concentrated on the characters, story etc. Jaws would be terrible if made today, as it would all be about images of the shark, whereas in the original, the bits with the shark are the worst aspects. And whilst I can appreciate it will be difficult to justify a dangerous stunt when you can CGI it, they just look so much better.

I enjoy a Marvel film - not high brow, but entertaining and, the original ones had decent characters you felt were relatable regardless of super powers or alien locations. As an example, I'll give the original Ant Man which certainly has special effects but had a storyline and could have worked without special effects by making it into a burglar / mafia style film. The last one was just a couple of actors in front of a green screen whilst all sorts of CGI happened around them. No idea what the story was supposed to be and not sure there was really one, it was just an attempt to make money from a franchise.

Anyway, enough of that, back to watching The Godfather II on iPlayer.

 

[Le Havre Oswald]

Too woke now. Casting is fuckin shite.

 

[Tuearts right boot]

In answer to the OP, probably never. They've run out ideas and stories and the only thing left is AI. I cant wait for Kellys Heroes, The Return.

 

[ballbag]

There have been some great films over the last decade or two. But it does feel like a drought of them every now and then. And I can't recall being in pure anticipation for a film to drop for some time.

I don't think I'll see another film that revolutionises cinema in a way like The Matrix did. Would love someone to do an adaptation of Hyperion or Left Hand of Darkness (or something of that ilk) to prove me wrong. I'd probably only moan that they'd fucked it up somehow though.

 

[BLOOMUEN]

Looking forward to this next summer:

 

[Blue Maverick]

The Odyssey will be the film of the year in 2026, although money wise it will be Avengers Doomsday next Christmas. Personally by 2030 I think cinema will be dead, this coming from a filmoholic, I hardly ever go now and used to do at least once a week if not more before Covid. Twats at the cinema have killed it for me so I enjoy it more at home and I’m not the only one it seems, this has led to where we are now, the films been turned out are for a short attention span audience or an easy money grab. Sadly AI will get involved on a large scale and the it will be proper shite.

 

[Marlo]

Not see a truly great film since 3 billboards

That's one that slipped by me. Will check it out.

 

[Marlo]

I think while some people have rightfully been citing films from the last 20 years that have been good (and I agree there are many) I do think there is a decent point under the sentiment in the OP. The thing is, I don't think it's specific to film media. I think this is another aspect of what I think of as a sort of internet-driven popular cultural homogenisation. You see similar things across other domains like music. Things in the mainstream increasingly feel safe and a bit lacking in originality.

I'm not claiming this as original thinking, I've seen many people talk about it. Back in the 1990s and the decades before that, cultural events were very much a kind of Darwinian phenomena. There was a finite set of films, music and TV that was available to the popular masses, and so if one thing caught on and gained popularity it would quickly become a shared experience of that generation - think how back in those times, you could reliably assume that everybody had seen what was on TV the night before, which songs they heard on the radio or what they had gone to watch at the cinema that weekend. The "best ideas win" and they gain the space.

We don't have that any more, and the reason why is because the internet has done two things - firstly, it has led to people being able to find their own "clique" or "in-group" among the masses. People making niche content can strictly market and sell that content to the niche target audience, and they can be successful without ever having to touch or interact with mainstream media channels and mechanisms. This makes it less likely that somebody who isn't into... metal music, for example.... will ever experience or hear metal music. It has completely siloed people off into alternative cultural baskets, and there is very little cross-pollination going on. The second thing, which is what the OP is noticing, is that because of this hyper-fragmented cultural landscape, the big media companies e.g. Disney, WBs, Netflix or whoever else - have found that their viable market has shrunk, and so to achieve the same results they market their work to the widest possible audience. All of those alternative folks who might have watched a TV show 30-40 years ago because there was very little choice, are no longer viable target audience members. They're off watching their niche indie cinema on some obscure film-buff website.

The result of this is that those who enjoy niche interests are in their fragmented pockets enjoying the niche interests. Those niche interests never end up coming into contact with mainstream interests. The mainstream interests become increasingly beige, vanilla and safe to ensure they're capturing the widest audience. IP that is based on the tried and tested e.g. sequels, prequels, reboots, become the order of the day. Never take a risk, because risks no longer work.

This is all very general observation, and I think there are probably lots of good counterpoints and exceptions to what I've just written. I write this because this explanation feels like the one that best fits my anecdotal experience.

That is all true. I would add in relation to movies, the death of the video store, followed by the death of DVDs means a huge chunk money that movies used to make is gone. There is a really good interview with Matt Damon below detailing how that has changed the industry.

 

[SamTheGuru]

Watched an excellent Christmas film this year called The Holdovers (2024). Should be a Christmas Classic in years to come.
Another film I’ve enjoyed in recent years was Jojo Rabbit (2019). Original, both funny and heartfelt. Really good.

But the OP is right. Cinema isn’t what it once was. The money and talent has gone into series on Netflix and Disney etc. and all those terrible superhero and elves+wizards films have taken over cinema.

Also, a big thing with modern cinema is the very poor graphics. CGI was better 20-30 years ago than now.



Cool British cinema from decades past is almost obsolete. Remember the 90s and 00s quality of films like:
Trainspotting
Human Traffic
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
Snatch
Dead Man’s Shoes
Nil By Mouth
It’s All Gone Pete Tong
This Is England
Slumdog Millionaire
Shaun Of The Dead
Hot Fuzz
…among others

Where has this quality of cool British Cinema gone?

Films are more difficult to discover than music. Mainstream music is abominably bad, but you only have to scratch the surface and get on YouTube or Apple Music and listen through recommendations to find great music under the radar, plus stations like 6Music (even though nowhere near as good as it used to be and plays far too much mainstream music that would have been on Radio 1 from decades past).
You can’t do that with films, you have to be told about them, word of mouth.

The CGI situation I genuinely cannot get my head around. If you thought cinema was going to thrive anywhere then surely you would think it would have been through CGI. It has gone noticeably backwards since the 90s and early 2000s!

 

[blueparrot]

I don’t get to the cinema much these days, but my son does,a lot. Not just the big blockbuster films smaller films too, he says theres loads of great film making.
Sounds like another old men thinking it was all better in their day thread to me.

 

[give it to gordon]

Think its an age thing.
At 65 I'm sick to death of American films in which they save the world, or won ever war on their own. I see American films more as propaganda, then entertainment.

That said I enjoyed the Green mile, which ironically is about the Americans executioning an innocent black American.

I can't really judge as I am not real a film watching person nowadays. I guess for the reasons I mentioned !

 

[Blue Maverick]

I don’t get to the cinema much these days, but my son does,a lot. Not just the big blockbuster films smaller films too, he says theres loads of great film making.
Sounds like another old men thinking it was all better in their day thread to me.

Ask him to name them, I only ask because in the past the so called great films have been art house shite or specifically films to win awards rather than for the masses.
i suppose many films are whatever floats your boat, say superhero movies are, well nearly all have been shit since Endgame, Star Wars franchise has fallen off a cliff, the only big blockbuster of the year was MI 8 but many don’t like Cruise so won’t entertain it.
F1 was entertaining in a feel good way and House of Dynamite although many didn’t like the ending got people thinking about what if?

 

[blueparrot]

Ask him to name them, I only ask because in the past the so called great films have been art house shite or specifically films to win awards rather than for the masses.
i suppose many films are whatever floats your boat, say superhero movies are, well nearly all have been shit since Endgame, Star Wars franchise has fallen off a cliff, the only big blockbuster of the year was MI 8 but many don’t like Cruise so won’t entertain it.
F1 was entertaining in a feel good way and House of Dynamite although many didn’t like the ending got people thinking about what if?

I will may not know them myself, do know he enjoyed Oppenheimer, Dead of winter, the Knives out film as well.

 

[Jazzman]

Guy Ritchie makes them all the time

 

[urban genie]

plenty of decent films being made, it is whether they are the films you want to watch or not though

 

[City Hobgoblin]

There are still good films being made, but I'm reading about a biopic of John Woolyback Bishop on the horizon which suggests some barrel scraping for ideas...