Anybody else go to the movie theater a lot? Have you noticed how dead they are?

A lot of cultural stagnation comes in waves, and some periods are in fact, creative.

I think the mid-2000s are creative time in visual media; sitcoms and in the theatre. It seems like media companies were pivoting away from the musical entertainment industry, because the revenue was falling off steeply due to Napster-type influences.

Just my $.02c, but good movies are pretty rare, maybe one a year.

a reply to: 777Vader

I think the music problem is most people prefer music from before 2000. Mostly 80's and before.

Teal’c: There is an old Jaffa saying, General Hammond. “They do not build them as they once did.”

I find that applying to entertainment in general more and more lately.

I was immersing myself in animated movies from the 70s I had gone to see at the theater as a kid, particularly Ralph Bakshi. I started with "Fritz the Cat" (1972), Wizards (1977), The Lord of the Rings (1978), and then ended with Fire and Ice (1983). Now, considering that Fire and Ice was a collaboration between Bakshi and Frank Frazetta, both of whom were big names back then, I found that movie lacking in many ways. I remember thinking the same way when I saw it in the movie house, fairly disappointing.

Wiki - Fire and Ice

I won't go into the details of what I thought about Fire and Ice, but I will say that even though it was a hand-drawn animated movie created by the masters, it was produced cheaply for sales. The story and characters were just as cheap as the production, all to make a buck from a dying genre, and it showed. Some of the revues from back then were of the same opinion I was as a kid and even now as an old man.

The point I'm trying to make is about the motivation of producing the movie. Was it to push the media to the limit to make an inspired masterpiece, or was it just to sell tickets as cheaply as possible? I think that things like CGI will cheapen a good movie, but it goes back to making a buck over creating art IMO.

a reply to: Shoshanna

Morn'n Shoshanna. The new ad for Planet of the Apes talked of intensity, fxs etc.....but?

Those multi $1,000,000 movies.....HAVE to get to theatres, to charge a high price, to pay for the production. And of late....its not.

I get international quarterly Royalties for music ...hit records sold btwn '59'-67. But I get PENNIES....some as little as 1/4 cent- per 100 plays worldwide. Not what folks think.

That being said....it's nearly IMPOSSIBLE to recoup album singles, videos, movies....and their production costs...when the public cannot afford to go or purchase them.

God bless ya, Ma'am!😎✌️

why pay 12.00 for a mediocre movie, 10.00 for a coke 12.00 for popcorn etc when you can stream at home.
We go once in a great while just to get out but its easily been a few years since we watched
anything we would consider 'good'. In our opinion, 98% of the movies coming out these days are
somewhere between disappointing and horrible

a reply to: TheMichiganSwampBuck

If CGI reduces the cost of making movies then why don't they put the savings into getting a good story written and told? Something new, innovative if possible. But no, they stick to the same type of movies with new elements that make them worse. They also need more consultants with technical understanding of the subject matter. I did a couple of reviews about that, ISS, and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. Both technically inept at best.

From what I have seen recently, they don't know how to tell a good story. They just follow what they did last time even though it did not work well.

Having said that, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire was pretty good. Some production companies learned from franchise failures.

originally posted by: Shoshanna

I think the ending of movie and movie theater culture is really one of the quiet signs our society is failing. And rapidly.

Curious to know if anyone else goes to the movie theater a lot and have you noticed this trend? Or is this localized to my area I dont know.

That's a bit overdramatic.

I have years of experience working in movie theaters and equating the end of movie theater culture to the failing of society is like saying, "Nobody's using payphones anymore, it's all over."

I remember a time when you had to get to the theater early, get in line, buy a ticket, then had to get in another line and wait 20 minutes to an hour before they cleaned up from the last show, just to get good seats.

Something happend around 2010 called NETFLIX.

And nights at the movies became Netflix and chill.

Then more streaming services popped up until the brand new movies came out on those services as did theaters.

I can crack open beer after beer, pause for piss break, pass a joint, scream BS at the freshly released movie, all in my underwear. Can't get that at the movies.

Movie theaters don't make money from ticket sales until the film has been out for about a month (majority goes to the studios). That's why they have to price gouge at the concessions.

People simply have more options now. We aren't bottlenecked into getting our entertainment solely from the cinema and cable these days.

It may seem like society is falling but in reality, society has options.

We're not all flocking to the same screen anymore. We can choose what we want. Choose what culture we want to be a part of.

Mainstream society may be dying. But we're seeing more movies being made because of that independence, hence more culture is being made.

How did no one mention films are worse now. They're deathly cringey, forced far-looney-left plots/actors, rehashed ideas etc. I feel like films had more grit/depth.

Maybe i've got older, and would rather watch things that aren't far-fetched, like most films.

I see a trailer, and my farts could sum it up.

I simply think films are silly. Life is very boring, good luck getting ideas from that, unless you delude yourself to the film's concepts being a possible real case, then the film is a captivating wonder. I could have a film based on my thoughts, that could be made to be captivating i suppose. To me, not delusions. Of course the arena we have here, there is no talk. I wish to abandon the internet. Rigged nonsense. I don't trust people on here or on this rock, nor anything in the afterlife, people are either a non-starter or a threat.

Film industry can tank. F it.

originally posted by: BeyondKnowledge3
a reply to: TheMichiganSwampBuck

If CGI reduces the cost of making movies then why don't they put the savings into getting a good story written and told? Something new, innovative if possible. But no, they stick to the same type of movies with new elements that make them worse. They also need more consultants with technical understanding of the subject matter. I did a couple of reviews about that, ISS, and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. Both technically inept at best.

From what I have seen recently, they don't know how to tell a good story. They just follow what they did last time even though it did not work well.

Having said that, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire was pretty good. Some production companies learned from franchise failures.

I had hoped that my comparison of old-school animation and the intent of production could be applied to CGI animation today. Think of the devotion to the project when every frame was hand rendered, then hand drawn on a cell, hand-painted for color, and each cell created for a number of frames per second. Today they use 24 FPS as a standard for video, but animation goes from 15 fps to 60 fps. That takes a lot of time and effort to produce something that is more like fine art compared to today's AI-assisted computer-generated graphics. However, if the people producing a CGI movie are pushing the limits to create art rather than taking a shortcut, that would be OK to use, just like hand-drawn animation and comic books were being pushed into an art form then. Of course, the story and characters have to be created as art as well, we must remember that the movie is a whole package, otherwise, you get a low-budget crappy movie that may never break even at the box office or from other sales.

A bit of clarity on my earlier post about CGI. CGI has a time and a place, but it seems anymore like that time is 'always' and that place is 'everywhere'. There are some things which require CGI, but there are also times when CGI diminishes the movie. So, for example, take the movie franchise Fast & Furious (w/Vin Diesel); every one of those movies is packed full of CGI when they could probably do much of them (albeit not as dramatic) with props and stunts. When you see it, the value of the plot is almost instantly diminished (when a car sails over a building, or flies down a mountainside). Sure, in a franchise like Guardians of the Galaxy, and other science fiction franchises, CGI is expected and it doesn't take away from the movie. Same for other fantasy movies like say Avatar. And, obviously, cartoon based movies are exempt as well.

I remember a while back my wife rented one of the John Wick movies. It started out as a decent movie, but then progressively more completely unrealistic and impossible CGI started showing up. It was like the carpet getting yanked out from under my enthusiasm for the plot. If it's Superman, okay, throw all the CGI you want in there...because Superman is pure fantasy from the comic book series. No one is expecting reality, but when you have normal human characters who all of a sudden start doing completely unrealistic things, well, it's a turn off.

Thanks for your time.

originally posted by: BeyondKnowledge3
a reply to: TheMichiganSwampBuck

If CGI reduces the cost of making movies then why don't they put the savings into getting a good story written and told? Something new, innovative if possible.

That's a good idea...I'm sure you have something new and innovative!

We use this....

www.finaldraft.com...

or...
www.celtx.com...

UNSUNG HERO'S is not WOKE the story was real and the story was set in Australia and Nashville TN. I just went to the theater while on vacation and that movie was real nice and no cursing or sex in it at all.

a reply to: Shoshanna

Thanks for reminding me about the free movie tickets .

I was offered free tickets every month for the movie theatre from my sister who gets them from her work and totally forgot about it until I read this thread, it has been a lot of years since I last was in a cinema as it is stupidly expensive to watch .

With my home cinema system and liking for a ciggy I prefer the home experience, sad but it is the way of the world now