[speedgoose]

> Maybe I'm just nostalgic. Maybe I'm romanticizing the past. But when I finish a good movie, I can sit there thinking about them for hours, even days depending on the movie. When I finish most modern blockbusters, I'm already thinking about dinner. And that difference, I think, says everything.

I don’t watch modern most blockbusters because I don’t enjoy them in general. I watch a few that I know I will likely enjoy.

I think we have some bias too.

We remember better the good experiences. The Netflix catalog is full of not so good movies, and the video rental shops in the 90s were too.

[EA-3167]

I think you're hitting the nail on the head, but the corollary is that there's so much MORE now. More of everything, and since most things are crap the gems are proportionally harder to find. I look at reality tv and wince, but I also feel that way about soap operas, it's the same itch being scratched the same way for a different generation. But the nature of reality tv (dirt cheap) means that it's been made in vast quantities, dwarfing the reach that soap operas ever had.

Soap operas weren't choking out late night comedy, they were totally different products serving different needs, at different times. Reality tv changes that equation though, with the aforementioned cheapness, and perennial popularity. A lot of the old norms are gone too, around residuals, the "one for them, one for me" system, stars vs brand... and the result is often entertainment geared at cheap production and nothing else.

The other issue is that CGI, while it empowers amazing things, also empowers the creation of real trash. It's allowed Marvel movies to film without a complete script, figuring out the ending in AVR and CGI work... and it shows. A lot of old blockbusters were crap, but they were crap that at least had the requisite craftsmanship to be made and distributed to theaters around the world.

That barrier is gone, the gates are open and that means that hidden voices are emerging (hooray!) and also that a lot of people are so inundated by noise that they disengage.

[snicky]

> The Netflix catalog is full of not so good movies, and the video rental shops in the 90s were too.

I subscribed to Netflix for a year or two when the platform became popular, but I quickly realized it resembles those old school rental shops too much. Yes, you could get some popular classics like The Godfather or Goodfellas, but apart from that you were stuck with another crime story or a comedy with Steve Martin or John Candy. Actually, my analogy may not be 100% fortunate, because I still have good memories about watching these comedies as a kid with my dad. Now I wouldn't have time and patience to go through movies of "that" quality. Anyhow, my point is that you were very unlikely to get there anything that wasn't already proved to be popular. Forget about anything more niche / arthouse. Netflix has produced plenty by itself, but how many of those movies are actually any good? I remember a handful of them: Marriage Story, Roma, Don't Look Up and a movie for kids called Okja.

[TitaRusell]

Netflix is the replacement for cable television. Their job is not to make movies like the Godfather. It's to make CSI.