JCC The Triple A Fatigue and the Soul Draining Disappointment of Being a Modern Filmgoer

I hate movies. Almost, anyway.

Over the last couple of years, western filmmaking had grown into this huge pulsating, grotesque, soul-sucking, joyless mass of cold business decisions that's killing all enjoyment I used to have for going to the movies.

The motion picture theatre used to be this magical place where you could go a few times a year to escape reality. To distract yourself from the obvious fact that you have no real life at all and would rather watch other people act out great fantastical adventures on screen so that you won't ever have to.

Now, it's become a ****ing endurance round. Every movie that's coming out is so mind bogglingly big, bloated and obtuse with their ludicrously expensive marketing campaigns and production budgets equivalent to one quarter of a small island nation's yearly GDP.

Let that sink in for a moment.
THAT. IS. RIDICULOUS.

Nobody has new, fresh, or interesting ideas anymore. Nobody cares to create new fictional universes filled with fascinating concepts, daring, genre-breaking ideas and multi-layered characters. Nobody wants to break the rules.

Everything has to be by the pocket book and stock numbers. If you have an original idea for a film that does not have anything to do with a previously successful and established product, no one will find you because nobody wants to take ****ing risks.

I hate this single-minded mentality that has taken over all facets of art and creativity now, from movies to music, to video games, and beyond. But then, we do live in a disgusting free market capitalist zeitgeist, so I guess I shouldn't expect anything more.

If you feel at all the same frustration I do, I implore you to PLEASE support the little guy. Small filmmakers, writers, artists, game studios, the works. These are the people with new ideas and fresh products. You're not gonna find that in the movie theatre anymore.

Let me know your thoughts on the subject if you have any.

Rant over. Thank you. Goodbye. The end.

 

Man goes to wrong theater

 

I agree that many films are vacuous, leaning almost entirely on snappy dialogue in place of character or plot. That said? You sound quite overwrought. There are plenty of quality films still being produced. Eye in the Sky is one recent entry.

Then, too, older pictures were never really that profound. It's a bunch of photos pushed across a screen real fast. Let's get a grip here.

 

I have seen many great films in recent years. It's an overly pessimistic post in my opinion.

 

Maybe you're right. Maybe I'm just so jaded that I can't even be bothered to check any new films out anymore.

 

So you don't like the films you haven't bothered to check out?

 

I don't know what Triple A fatigue is, but I'm glad I don't have Triple H fatigue.

 

Just expressing a personal opinion here, buddy. But then, I sometimes forget that it's not okay to have any opinions on the Internet, especially if they deviate from the dominant view on any given subject.

 

ArtSchmo, just stop going to superhero movies. Voila, cured.

 

I'm not going to superhero movies. I haven't seen a single superhero film since 2008's Dark Knight.

 

It's always the best of times and the worst of times.

In any given year, the sci fi entertainment genre is at least 80% crap. And yet, once in a generation, we get the Battlestar Galactica mini-series/pilot, or World of Tomorrow, the best sci fi movie of the last 20 years.

Recently, there's been craptastic stuff like Ridley Scott's Prometheus and fantastic stuff like Under the Skin or Ex Machina.

On the one hand, there are terrible, vastly overbudgeted empty-headed comic book superhero movies like eveything that Marvel does. On the other hand, there is true garbage like Batman vs. Superman on the D.C. side.

So. There's always something. You an depend on that.

the SuperW always writes exactly the right thing at the exactly the right time. He's like the script of The Graduate.

 

The smaller artists can make stuff that is just as derivative and unoriginal as their big studio counterparts. You brought up game studios as an example. There's a whole load of trash coming from indie game developers every year.

 

I agree that most big-budget films are empty and cynical cash-ins that make use of whatever IP the studio bought, but I think there are plenty of smaller movies that are good (though no, nowhere near all of them). And the big-budget films can be good if they're driven by someone who's ambitious and capable.

 

Movies have always been about the bottom line. every once in a while the execs somehow manage to allow someone enough freedom to make something decent, or someone scrapes together enough funding to do it themselves, but that's in spite of the system.

 

Look at the young film makers and writers out there. Mommy and daddy will pay for everything when I'm in school and still pay for everything when I'm done with school. Just like the films, no accountability.

 

sometimes I worry that the logistics of making Very Big Movies gets in the way of telling a good story. I remember watching all those amazing production videos about the making of the Hobbit "trilogy." You could almost see the moment when the movie got buried under all the frenzied and tactically intricate things going on to get it made.

 

I hardly even watch stuff in theaters these days, the last one I saw was TFA over Christmas, and I wasn't impressed at all. The last one before that was Deathly Hallows Part 2, which disappointed me due to the rather frustrating deviation from the books at the end. I have generally been enjoying the superhero stuff, at least from Marvel, but I haven't been worried about following them very closely.

 

We have to teach ArtSchmo the art of schadenfreude.

 

Who was it who was promoting the idea that we owe it to the studios to see these $250 million budget action adventure movies because so many people worked so very hard and spent so much money to make them? Not buying a product hurts the feelings of its manufacturer. I think that was the argument.

 

I remember that, but I do not remember the who. Whom?

 

I'm pretty sure it was in the Batman vs Superman thread.