[throwaway894345]

When can I expect 2010s movies to feel as good as 90s and early 2000s movies felt 10 years ago? Is there going to be a future golden age when this decade’s churned-out Disney / Marvel / Star Wars reboots and sequels feel inspired?

[smallmancontrov]

It took ten years and twenty movies for the Marvel franchise to go stale and years more for hating on it to become cool ‡. That's an accomplishment by any metric not specifically designed to facilitate the latter.

You will never be 10 years younger again, but the kids who grew up with those movies will carry forward their fond memories of the good in them and when they find their voice on the adult stage they will reclaim them, making hating on them uncool again, just as we did for the Star Wars prequels. Whether you embrace or reject the backlash-to-the-backlash will be up to you but I'd like to put in a word for the psychological benefits of trying to see the good in things. It's much more fun than ruminating on the bad, both for yourself and those around you.

‡ Yes, I'm sure you were doing it before it was cool.

[throwaway894345]

How did you make the leap from a critical passing quip about Marvel movies that I “ruminate on the bad”? I’m glad you like Marvel movies, the point of my comment wasn’t to cause offense.

[zorked]

You will forget the bad movies, remember the good movies, and describe the 2010s as a great era.

[throwaway894345]

Is the supposition that I also forgot that I disliked movies in earlier decades? I don’t find explanations that require people to deny their own memory to be particularly convincing.

[speedgoose]

Poop doesn’t get better with age. But you have good movies in the 2010s.

[phantasmish]

I have seen tons of great movies made after 2010, but must admit I’m having trouble thinking of any blockbuster-type movies that stand up to the best of the 70s, 80s, and 90s.

Does Fury Road count? I dunno. The closest I can get aside from that are a couple Tarantino movies. Jurassic Park, the first Mission Impossible movie, Aliens, Jaws, hell even Independence Day. Nothing’s quite up there. Lots that are a kind of janky B-movie sort of good, but nothing as solid as those. Almost all are marred by lots of CG that might look ok at the time but seem dodgy and very distracting within 5 years max, for one thing (to be fair, Jurassic Park suffers from that in a couple scenes, too)

[throwaway894345]

I struggle to even think of many post-2010 films that stand up to the casual flicks of the 1990s, never mind The Matrix, or Gladiator, or the others you mentioned.

[phantasmish]

Horror, action-horror, and comedy-horror are in a really great place and have been for a while. Drama’s doing fine. Comedy’s been a bit weak for many years IMO. All the good ones I can think of are comedy/something—like, Red Rocket is very good and quite funny but also… damn dark and leans drama often enough that I’m not sure just “dark comedy” covers the difference between it and a straight comedy, it’s more a dark-comedy/drama. Or, uh, is The Art of Self Defense a comedy? Like… sorta? I can think of a couple alright ordinary comedies but nothing that stands out.

[aceazzameen]

Fury Road definitely counts in my book.