Modern cinema

[Lizerd]

I have one very good question, are films these days only made for the marketing? I know I am going somewhat anti- unregulated capitalism but is it still just me or have new innovative movies that start their own large franchises have not come out do to watered down recycling of old movies like this? Im going to watch it anyways

[Minmiminime]

I'd say you'd pretty much hit the nail on the head, there..! Says a fellow cynic 😊👍

[Lizerd]

Im not alone in my views of modern cinematography! yay! 

[PumperKrickel]

deleted

[Lizerd]

True, but what I would be referring to is the fact that no new movie franchises have risen to take the niche that the old ones would.

[PumperKrickel]

deleted

[Minmiminime]

I do find myself wondering if it's got to the stage where everything has been done before, so any new film is basically a rehash...their success often depending on sales, hence being often aimed at children ("pester power", to squeeze even more sales out of merchandise), often inflated with overblown SFX and action aimed at increasingly short attention spans. Films that were rated 15 or 18 when I were a lass would be rated a 12a these days after a bit of editing to remove gore and most of the swears 🙄

I honestly think we'll probably not see anything innovative becoming popular for a fair while, short of cultural revolution

[Lizerd]

P @SuperiorSpider You do have a point there, even though I am not one for super hero movies.

[DinoToyForum]

  On-screen live-action depictions of the characters of the Marvel cinematic universe go back to before I was born, and I'm nearly 40! http://www.denofgeek.com/us/tv/marvel/183238/before-the-marvel-cinematic-universe-we-had-marvel-live-action-tv-shows The characters themselves, obviously, go back way before that.

[Lizerd]

On-screen live-action depictions of the characters of the Marvel cinematic universe go back to before I was born, and I'm nearly 40! http://www.denofgeek.com/us/tv/marvel/183238/before-the-marvel-cinematic-universe-we-had-marvel-live-action-tv-shows The characters themselves, obviously, go back way before that.

wait a moment, you bring up a good point, but weren't we talking about fallen kingdom? Off topic conversation is fun!

[DinoToyForum]

On-screen live-action depictions of the characters of the Marvel cinematic universe go back to before I was born, and I'm nearly 40! http://www.denofgeek.com/us/tv/marvel/183238/before-the-marvel-cinematic-universe-we-had-marvel-live-action-tv-shows The characters themselves, obviously, go back way before that.

wait a moment, you bring up a good point, but weren't we talking about fallen kingdom? Off topic conversation is fun!

Yeah, it is semi-relevant to the topic at hand, but I'll probably need to create a new topic for the off-topic discussion if it continues. Which is easy to do.

[Lizerd]

do it. -Darth Sidious, Lizerd

[PumperKrickel]

deleted

[Lizerd]

Now modern mass market products and unregulated capitalism is for a whole other thread, but quality vs quantity is interesting as well. But yes there has been a personal drop in modern cinema, (Thor Ragnarok, Joshua and the promised land, and almost every franchise that is still alive). My bet is that it no longer focuses on much on quality and more on getting the most amount of money as possible. Rather interesting, question is why the change?

[DinoToyForum]

On-screen live-action depictions of the characters of the Marvel cinematic universe go back to before I was born, and I'm nearly 40! http://www.denofgeek.com/us/tv/marvel/183238/before-the-marvel-cinematic-universe-we-had-marvel-live-action-tv-shows The characters themselves, obviously, go back way before that.

That was mostly Tv shows, but I see your point. Maybe the Lego movies would have been a better example.

Well, I suppose, but even Lego movies are taking something that already existed in a different form, that many people of all ages have nostaligia for. If it exists already and has a large audience, it is 'safe'. Nothing wrong with that per se, but it means truly new endeavours might struggle to get the green light.

Here are some examples of blockbuster-type films that were new at the time, so far as anything in pop culture can be considered new, and spawned a franchise (or sequels, at least) on the strength of the first installment. Many are based on books.

Jaws
Alien
Back to the Future
Indiana Jones
Jurassic Park
The Matrix
Harry Potter

Maybe there is more creativity and freedom in TV these days?

[Lizerd]

Those movies all take a sort of niche, likely in its early history or without a really big block-buster that dominated it yet. Take say Jurassic park, the dinosaur niche had some pretty awful movies (1,000,000 years bc, it should be BCE and so many issues) , but the original Jurassic Park and Lost World were very good movies with for the time radical interpretations of the animals. This meant it was highly profitable, so it continued on making more money. Since populations have still been rising this meant that in most western nations the population(who lets be frank, are not critical on the world around them) will have watched these films many times. This means that for at least now profits are rising. And now we have 3rd party knock offs like the meg. What a weird world...   

[PumperKrickel]

deleted

[paintingdinos]

I don't want to start a geopolitical debate, buuuut I'm going to leave this snippet from wikipedia here:

In 2012 the country became the second-largest market in the world by box office receipts. In 2016, the gross box office in China was CN¥45.71 billion (US$6.58 billion). The country has the largest number of screens in the world since 2016,[8] and is expected to become the largest theatrical market by 2019.[9]

Nowadays, a lot of films make their profit overseas. Films that can easily be adapted to and that are exciting to international audiences are going to turn a bigger profit, which I'm sure is very attractive to most studios. This surely is no small part of why we're seeing movies dump more into CG and visual effects vs. deeply fleshed out characters, meaningful political/social/whatever commentary, amazing dialog, and unique stories. Why bother? The less work studios have to do adapting films for international audiences (who are inherently going to relate to and be interested in different things than American audiences), the better. Which isn't to imply that well-written "big budget" films that don't rely almost solely on visual appeal aren't getting made- Mad Max Fury Road was a film that managed to skirt by with having excellent visual action sequences, little dialog, and still managed to tell a poignant story and brush up against some current social issues.

Those films DO exist, but they aren't going to appeal to everyone. I was really just poor luck that the JP franchise went down the road it did, but really, it makes sense. The original novel was a suspense/thriller that fell into the hands of the right people at the right time.... but great direction, good actors, and a wonderful musical score was never what got butts in seats. "Dinosaurs" is the draw, and as long as there are "dinosaurs" in the film, I'd argue that anything else hardly factors in getting those ticket sales.

[Lizerd]

That makes sense, more profits, more sales, etc. But you have a point that dinosaurs are key to jurassic park. Then the question is, how will these huge franchises die?

[PumperKrickel]

deleted