I remember when the first Avengers movie came out, a lot of my industry friends repeated some nonsense line about how we need to see Blockbusters so that the money can trickle down to independent filmmakers and riskier ideas. 10 years later and the market is saturated with super hero films, the independent directors are all directing Disney blockbusters, and the riskier ideas only get a spotlight during Oscar season (unchanged).
That's because all the riskier ideas are on television and TV-emulating streaming services (if you make a series divided into "seasons" and "episodes", I consider your series television even if it's straight-to-streaming).
The traditional roles of TV and film have been inverted. Film is now mindless entertainment aimed at the widest possible audience, while television has become a medium for plumbing the depths of artistic possibility.
I chalk this up to two things:
1) Film is increasingly internationalized in ways that television isn't. A movie has to appeal to a wide variety of cultures, all of whom have different mores. Ultimately, the only thing the whole world can agree on is that explosions are fun.
2) Television offers a more flexible format. You can only sit in a theater for so long without a break. Television lets you do sprawling, drawn-out epics with hours of content a year. Television lets you mix serialized and episodic storytelling as you please: your series can lean into one or the other, or it can offer a mixture of both with the showrunner using the balance of serialized and episodic content to carefully control the pacing, set up expectations, and then possibly subvert them. This has always been true, but television has historically been beholden to FCC regulations, network BS&P, advertisers who panic when faced with anything unconventional, rigid time slots, and linear programming. The rise of non-linear consumption (e.g. DVRs), premium cable, and direct-to-streaming series have completely blown the doors off what's allowed on television (or "television"), and showrunners are taking advantage of it in a huge way.
Yes, but it only works with the trickling of the validation of good movies. Big studios will buy up indie productions and/or take a chance on making something not-a-super-hero film only if they have the extra cash from the super-hero film.
In which, this argument disregards the Internet and it’s effect on media distribution disruption in it’s entirety.
I was definitely spoiled by movies when I was growing up. Because of industry circumstances, 1999 was a very good year for movies. I can't think of recent movies that would be considered this generation's "Fight Club," "The Matrix," or "Office Space." On the plus side, there's currently a plethora of adequately entertaining movies for long-haul flights.
Tv is a better format for visual story telling then movies could ever be. now that we have streaming its not bound to time limits or irrelevant commercial pacing. The stories are longer and can be more in depth.
Does TV get the best talent though? For some reason I thought they get paid less despite doing alot more work. All those actors from got went on to try movies afterwards.
Compare the size of the story to another medium with different constraints. A 13- or 26-episode TV series can usually make a decent adaptation of a novel. A movie always has to cut a lot of stuff out.
> For some reason I thought they get paid less despite doing alot more work.
Are American TV shows as big of money makers globally as the movie industry? How much do American TV shows make in China vs Hollywood? Are they even shown? I don't know, but have never heard of it but have heard quite a bit about how much Hollywood makes in China.
I don't think it's the amount of work that dictates lower salaries for TV acting, but more likely the size of the market that the respective products are sold in and where that market is located (locally vs globally).
> 3. huge emphasis on TV series in the last decade, again sucking up all the talent
Some stories are just better when they are told in a serial format with more room to breathe. Even if they need to take a budget cut.
A recent example being Tomorrow War[0]. It had WAY too much shit happening for the 2h 18min runtime. The same content as a, say, 4 hour miniseries? That would've been fucking amazing.
Same budget, same plot, just add more character development (talky bits), a bit slower pacing. Perfect.
Or it will just come from outside of Hollywood. La Casa De Papel (aka Money Heist) is so good I am probably going to cancel Netflix since it's taking away from my nightly reading time and affecting the quality of my sleep.
> How about hollywood starts making GOOD content again?
Well I'm expecting a new surge of great movies coming out after everyone's vaccinated. Looking forward to the 2021 version of Dune, although I don't think that was spurred on because of the pandemic (maybe I'm wrong?). Expect some epic movies to come out in the next few years.
What element of Dune do you think would suffer by not having an ‘R’ rating? It’s not as if the book is reliant on anything exceptionally violent or obscene. Probably the darkest element is the reference to The Baron’s rape of young people. Frankly that’s better off as something to be implied and not depicted.
I think you can get away with enough in a PG-13 to suit the tone of this story. Watching the recent trailer you can catch a glimpse of what appear to be prisoners of war strapped upside down on troughs that will collect the blood from their slit throats. That’s pretty dark. And seemingly it’s an addition by the filmakers. It’s not an element from the book.
It’s not the R rating necessarily, it’s how they’ve sanitized the story. The whole book is rife with islamic/arabic and at least from the trailer they’ve anglicized everything, which doesn’t give me much hope. I really don’t see a reason for it.
Gotcha. I know that the first trailer substituted the word “jihad” with “crusade”. That rubbed me the wrong way as well. But as someone who has pored over every bit of available information about this movie, I’ve come across an interview with someone who saw a test screening AND was already familiar with the book. They were directly asked if the word jihad was used in the film and they said that it was.
It seems that the ommission of jihad in the film’s marketing may have been a strategy to side-step any potential negative press in the lead-up to the film’s release. That seems wise given the way that American media likes to sensationalize every last detail that can be mined for potential outrage/eyeballs.
Eh, Barely. Saying Dune is about drugs is like saying Back to the Future was about plutonium. It’s more of a plot element that facilitates the novel’s themes. It’s a resource that shapes the world and gives the characters something to compete over and control.
The story revolves around spice but it’s not ABOUT spice.
In any case, it still doesn’t strike me as the kind of fictional drug that’s calling out for restrictions. It’s depiction can be mild enough to circumvent an unwanted movie rating and still not compromise the story.
Narcotics featured heavily in Batman Begins and that movie still had a PG-13. Again, I don’t see what about Dune’s story is crying out for an R rating in order to be true to the story.