At Sundance you could stay in Salt Lake City or Heber City and have fun. Free busses.
Oscars are not about the arts, nor about quality. Never was.
We should just have all White males leading movies
If they want theaters to come back then they’ll have to put movies behind a paywall again.
Meanwhile consumers are whining about the increases in streaming cost and diffusion, and low quality content. It had to happen, the math wasn't working out. In the social media bubbles users argue they will "just pirate again", over and over as though those who would care to don't already do so. Its toothless. Average people are not going to pay for a VPN and navigate things they don't understand just to pirate. They will eat the cost, whether it be streaming or renting
So people are much more risk adverse. I've never understood why they don't do tiered pricing based on the type of movie it is. If it's not a mega blockbuster type film, reduce the price a bit to make it easier for people to take a risk and try out a movie without it being a 90%+ rating on rotten tomatoes. I'd personally probably go a lot more if a movie like say Marty Supreme was $10 instead of $20.
>Starting in 2029, the Oscars will also be streamed globally on YouTube, which the academy hopes will attract new audiences and reinvigorate the ceremony’s popularity after years of declining viewership.
Edit: I read 2019 not.. 2029. That's actually incredible. Are they going to get in on tiktok for 2039 next?
Market forces know no culture except what consumers pay for. Absent real care, stewardship and focused investment, the product will always get cheaper.
And of course consumers' tastes are under attack from another direction: their attention spans.
Some load-bearing pillars of human culture are weakening.
This is the endgame of the feedback loop of streamers causing industry consolidation... the direct connection of dollars people spend to sit in a theatre seat was slowly declining, but now I think it's gotten so small that it no longer matters- and once the whole box-office feedback loop disappears a lot of the economics of how films are produced are being forced to change.
One of the reasons that people have loved to make fun of Hollywood for literally it's entire existence (besides the fact that the meta talk is self-indulgent artist stuff) is that making movies with so much money and waste is fundamentally ridiculous.
The optimistic viewpoint is that maybe new AI production tools will trigger a re-democratization of creative movies in the next wave, like in the 70s and the 90s indies.
Hollywood is a factory town at the end of the day, and we all know what happened to most factory towns in America. This one is just getting there a few decades after the others.
In theory the union is the only org capable of standing up to the streamers' buying power, but it has to make sense within a business model where consumers pay one monthly fee for content. I'm not even sure what that really looks like in the end.
Maybe it's also that the FTC allowed all this monopolization to happen, and turns out that having three media companies in the US is bad.
People always think unions are magic when I saw in my small town where I grew up in South GA was that when union demands got to onerous - factories just picked up and left.
Just like software engineers scream unionization when tech companies can just expand departments overseas and as a bonus, they don’t have to worry about H1B shifting policies
It could be that in 20 years the Oscars are like the Jazz awards (the Grammys? - I listen to Jazz but I can't name a single Jazz Grammy winner)
I don't think so.
Part of the downfall of movies -- blockbusters movies anyway, the kind where being a box office hit matters -- is that they have seemed produced like AI slop even before AI. Making it easier to produce more slop isn't going to fix this.
Then there's one thing making noise in my brain. It's not polite to say it, but here it is anyway: should movies be democratized? And art in general? Maybe people without the means of making art that reaches millions shouldn't be enabled by AI. Maybe it's ok that not everyone can produce this kind of art. Maybe the world is saved from a crapton of, well, garbage. More than what's currently being produced, anyway.
As for non-blockbuster art, it's already democratic. Everyone can grab a phone camera or a paintbrush and create art for their friends and family. And that's ok.
Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere.
What I object to is this notion that everyone should make art, and that AI empowers them. As in (and yes, I've read this, I'm not making this up) "people without writing skills can now write novels". That seems wrong to me. People without writing skills (or drawing, or movie making) should not be making those things.
What I meant is that I don't see truly indie-produced feature films reach the zeitgeist anymore.
I don't mean AI slop, but the next gen of creative tools that will allow people to make cool and creative and compelling stuff without the backing of 100's of millions of dollars.
It seems like movies are just another cyclical creative industry and this has already happened multiple times before- with each new technology and distribution platform there's the potential to get a wave of creative output that wasn't possible before.
Another aspect could be that the hollowing out of the top / polarization of the industry is another catalyst.
It could be enough that people who don't work on 100's of million dollar budget films get funding to do the next 1 million dollar film that looks great and is amazing.
That's more analogous to the SaaS startup boom that happened in the previous gen of tech startups. Initial costs went down and platform access went up.
Maybe they shouldn't. Maybe word of mouth from among those in your circle of friends that have good taste is enough. I'm not sure that blockbuster cinema reaching millions is tenable, or a good thing.
As for "watching content"... yuck, I hate the word "content".
A few movies we watched are not worth the money. To stay afloat they have to raise ticket prices, but if we’re paying so much, the movie better be absolutely outstanding, and the are just not usually, so we stopped going.
What are you paying when you go to the cinema? Just went to the cinema today to see Hoppers, and was slightly surprised that the tickets were only 8 EUR per person, then we spent maybe 5-10 EUR per person on snacks too, so ended up paying maybe ~15 EUR per person overall. This was outside a metropolitan city in South-Western Europe, maybe that's why, or I've just lost track of what's expensive/cheap.
You don’t have to pay the app “convenience fee” but they added assigned seats to pressure you to do so. If you wait till the day of and buy on the big kiosk in the lobby, what if all the good seats are gone? (Hint: they won’t be, the theaters are always mostly empty)
Movie theatres hardly make any money from ticket sales with 80% of the ticket price going to the studio during the first two weeks and then declining. They make money off of concessions
You could say there hasn't been any good new music since 1970 and humans have been making music for thousands of year. Or you could try out the many new genres and eventually find something new and exciting.
it just seems like a very boring way to live out your life.
It’s entirely possible that we’re in a period where most of those with creativity have just stopped making movies. Interestingly, I find TV has everything movies are lacking, creativity, originality, even big name actors that used to make movies.
> it just seems like a very boring way to live out your life.
Quite the contrary, I constantly discover interesting old movies from a wide variety of genres and different parts of the world.
Everything changes and evolves. Fashion, music, games, young adult fiction, memes.
You wouldn't limit yourself to your grandparents' taste, would you? (I didn't say parents because some kids are instilled with parental preferences. I grew up around kids in the 00's who said the Beatles were the peak of music - obviously learned preferences straight from their parents.)
You might not understand youth culture because you grew up before them and have different tastes. We're imprinted with preference and nostalgia for our youth, and we can see changes to that as a hideous affront. The next generation is meanwhile going through the same cycle we did.
90% of any content is crap but you're missing out if you like movies and you haven't seen Sinners, The Bone Temple, or NOPE (to name a few recent great theatre watches).
It cost me 50 eurodollars for two tickets. And people complain Netflix is expensive!
- Scripts that sound more like an HR meeting than a good story.
- Blockbuster superhero movies that are all the same movie.
- Lots of remakes that added modern CGI flare and destroyed the artistic value of the original.
- As consolidation of studios happens, way more "safe" stories that aim to not offend anyone. I think the only one able to get away with it right now is Tarantino.
Prices, streaming, theaters, etc. -- they're all accessory to the problem. People went to the movies for enjoyment, why would they go to endure them? There's no cultural collective experience anymore in the sense of going to see Lord of the Rings or Matrix with your friends for the first time.
Also this is happening throughout all media. Music and video games have the same kind of discussions.
Safety and mass-market appeal over creativity.
For contrast: Books, non-AAA video games, and movies from smaller studios still produce high-quality, creative efforts I continue to be excited about. Big-budget movies (and games), and Netflix shows are mostly bottom-feeder stuff.
Obviously.
- Box office optimizes for novelty, streamers optimize for "don't churn" - very different criteria for investment.
- Disney cannibalized the box office with Marvel Star Wars, which killed the mid market and killed innovation. This is your point. Disney's success and tentpole successes in general killed innovation and diversity and made the market more winner-takes-all. Comedy movies barely exist anymore. There are few $50-75M films now. Little original content. Now films are engineered for maximum audience penetration and maximum box office revenue. This changes how films are written and who they are written for. The answer is "everyone", and that means "safe", "predictable", and "repeatable". No gambles. Everything else has to fight for table scraps.
- End of ZIRP puts us back in 2000. Money used to be free. Now it's expensive. It's not as easy to underwrite productions anymore. Less innovation.
- Dopamine machines fit into your pocket and suck up time and attention. Gaming is also huge now. Less people going to the movies because plenty of alternatives exist.
- The $400 80'' plus Netflix versus the expensive theater, concessions, and rude people have made theaters unattractive. Theaters are where film margins come from. Without that revenue, expensive movies will be scaled back.
- Labor costs less in Europe and Asia, even with ample tax subsidy. The LA and American jobs and infrastructure are drying up. These are lifelong careers that are ending.
- Global audiences want global stories. American culture isn't local, and local talent can now make high quality productions. Asia is turning out banger after banger.
- Youth want youth mediums. Movies feel slow and boring. TikTok is where it's at.
- AI is now a thing.
All of the fundamentals have changed.
I will debate one point you raised:
> most-attractive people
Most people prefer to look at attractive people. It's an almost universal preference. Tried and tested throughout time. In film, those attractive people also need charisma.
Thankfully, filmmaking is becoming more and more independent. It's never been easier and cheaper to make a movie and share it to millions of people on YouTube or Vimeo. Why go through Hollywood, investors, or give money to festivals for a chance at success when you can just upload the thing and see what happens?
PaulHoule•2h ago
Hollywood is so used to getting high on its own supply that it really thinks we want to see an AI slop video of Brad Pitt fighting Tom Cruise. People there just don’t have any information at all about what anybody outside their bubble thinks so of course they make samey big budget pictures and samey small budget pictures. Unless they shut down their communications channels and disperse geographically they are going to keep doing the same thing over and over again and be wondering why they keep getting the same results.
And that gets us to why they will never reform, they know their numbers are terrible but think this is (1) cyclical and (2) due to technological changes so they’ll never get it that running ads that make it sound like somebody else cares about Tom Cruise doesn’t really make people care about Tom Cruise, it just makes them ignore advertising messages.
hackyhacky•1h ago
The video you are referring to was not produced by Hollywood, it was created by Irish director Ruairi Robinson, basically as a test of the new Seedance AI.
I'm not saying that Hollywood isn't out of touch, I'm just saying that nothing about Hollywood can be inferred from that video.
fullshark•1h ago
add-sub-mul-div•1h ago