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by gnaritas 5592 days ago
> I think its more that no one is taking the time to write great and compelling stories.

Seriously? Pick up a book, that's so far from true it isn't even funny.

> It takes time and patience and a lot of effort to create a story like the The Lord of the Rings.

Sure, and there's a ton of them already out there in the form of books.

> Hollywood seems to be just mining stories from the past. Its gonna run out at some point and all we'll get are sequels.

You can't run out of mining stories from the past; more great stories have already been written than will likely ever be able to be put on film.

> There needs to be some infusion of creativity. "Contemporary" creativity. Ie new but compelling and interesting stories. It seems to be a lost skill.

Or you're simply misdiagnosing the problem. Perhaps movies just suck more recently because exec's have gotten really good at shooting for the lowest common denominator to gain the largest audience and thus revenue.

Making money is not a guarantee of a great movie and great movies are quite often box office failures because they're too niche, by necessity.

The more the business folks pull the strings, the worse the movies will be artistically, but their goal is money, so they don't care, nor should they.

Movies will become great again, when Avatar style technology drives down the cost of making one to the point that making cheaper niche movies can be profitable.

1 comments

Watching old movies like Star wars, Indiana Jones, old Bond movies, you get the sense that a lot of work was put in to creating the scenes. It must have been very expensive to make, was it because revenue was very high back then?
Movies used to be the only game in town; now there are actual games and the gaming industry surpassed Hollywood a while back. Besides, blockbusters have always been profitable, but with so many other entertainment options these days, viewers have choices they didn't in the past.

That Michael Bay movies continue to make big bucks is a travesty, but that's today's market. I'd much rather watch Man from Earth than any movie he's ever made, but one can't deny his movies make execs lots of money by being dumb and going for every cheap laugh, big explosion, overdone effect he can think of.