Is it our complete lack of originality and obsessive wholesale rehashing and incessant rebooting and remaking of already existing movies that's to blame?
No, it's the children who are out of touch.
this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2025
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I’m 54 so not that young but I find myself watching more very specific videos of subjects I’m interested in than more mainstream movies or tv shows. I mean occasionally I’ll watch a movie or show but probably 90% of the time I’m watching content creators on YouTube or the like.
Same age and my wife and I tend to watch old movies or YouTube. When there are free channels for any well-produced fiction you care for like Omeleto, why bother with Hollywood?
Personally I find real people and everyday life more interesting than the bland reboots and sequels of movies from my youth.
I think it also makes me a more aware person to watch content from people whose lives are totally different than mine, in different countries, with different abilities.
The only good movies and shows I watch are based on sci fi books or computer games that already did the work of building a plot and characters. And there’s a few really comedic writers that do great work- mostly on Apple TV.
Lil younger but same. I should cancel Paramount.
Stop making junk, and start making good content, and we'll watch it. But, as it stands, Creators with zero budget are making better content that the studios with nearly unlimited budget.
Honestly most recent movies and tv shows look like scenarios were generated by AI or some barbie sweet happy life generator so there is nothing entertaining. Creators on the other side, I feel like they do the stuff without script, just making their raw videos without asking if they can put something in the video, it's entertaining because they make mistakes or have controversial opinions that you can't see in modern tv.
I think people feel more connected because they feel something when watching person talking on the screen whatever they want to talk about instead of person reading from script.
Honestly most recent movies and tv shows look like scenarios were generated by AI or some barbie sweet happy life generator so there is nothing entertaining.
A lot of slop has wide appeal. And let's not pretend soap operas and sitcoms and trope genre fiction don't routinely have wide appeal. The theory that AI can seamlessly replicate pulp fiction / scripted reality TV seems to have held up for the most part, because so much of this content is a canned and formulaic to begin with.
What AIs lack, more than anything, is a face and personality that is distinct to the line of work. There is no real AI "House Style" that gets adhered to. I can pick up a dozen Brian Sanderson novels and get roughly the same experience. But if I ask a Chatbot to "write me a chapter of a Brian Sanderson novel", what I'm really going to get is a generic jumble of Harry Potter, Star Wars, and Marvel with a few Brian Sanderson tropes thrown in.
I think people feel more connected because they feel something when watching person talking on the screen whatever they want to talk about instead of person reading from script.
So much of the "spontaneous" content is still heavily scripted and acted on delivery. What makes professional acting impressive is the range - a single person embodying a wide range of personalities and mannerisms. I don't watch Gary Oldman or Daniel Day-Lewis because I'm looking for unpolished delivery.
But the Auteur experience is what draws people in and makes certain works rise above their peer materials. AI has no real artistry. All it does is cut, copy, and paste from a grab bag of established popular materials, hoping it'll trigger enough nostalgia to be recognized as good.
As styles and tastes shift, I have to wonder what AI is going to look like, given how rooted it is in the moment of instantiation. The long tail will drag, while younger and historically unburdened artists will be out experimenting.
You're right that good actor makes a difference in average movie. I just want to add that Gary Oldman and Daniel Day-Lewis are 67. So those old guys started in theaters where you need to improvise to make people imerse in the play. All they had was a text and their own imagination.
Maybe this lack of improvisation is killing movie industry as I think smaller creators need to improvise a lot and maybe young actors are just like puppets, don't have this background where they need to put themselves in the role without all this technology around where you can look on everything how other people did it.
Number of technology stimulants these days are insane.
Let's go fediverse!
I feel like creator content isn't about quality, but form. People watch the same TV shows from decades ago because they are familiar. Creator content is kinda like that, it's cozy. It's something you can just put on and zone out to. It's interesting and entertaining, but it's not very intense. Its usually people sharing their passions, so it feels very human and relatable too.
But also there's probably something to be said about how much it cost to get started on YouTube vs how much it cost to produce a TV show or movie.
I can't remember the last time a movie came out that made me want to go see in theatres. Tickets are so expensive that I only want to go to one or two movies a year. Then with TV I find every show these days has "netflix syndrome" with lazy writing, exposition dumps, dummed down dialogue, I'm just not interested in what they have to offer most of the time.
I can't remember the last time I wanted to go to a theater. My choices are:
-
Go $20/person to go to a theater and hope I get there early enough to not be in a terrible location, sit on hard-ass uncomfortable seats, pay out the nose for shitty popcorn and candy and hope the people around me aren't dicks texting on their phones, scrolling IG, or just generally being a nuisance.
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Pay $20-30 total for a 4k BluRay and sit at home with filet mignon and a nice scotch, lounge in my reclining sofa without distractions. Also I own that movie forever.
Sure the theater has a dope screen and sound engineering but it's not worth it.
Careful about mentioning the "Netflix syndrome", people here are touchy when you call out low effort writing in movies/games. Somehow studios/publishers have been extremely successful in having people establish para-social relationships with their characters and stories regardless of how poorly written they are. This results is very strong antibodies every time anyone calls out the utter lazyness in dialogue, set pieces and exposition.
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Perhaps because Hollywood's attempt at formulaic content to generate maximum revenue loses it's charm after you've watched the same story over and over? Hmmm .. Nah, let's keep doing it.
The last Marvel offering I saw in a cinema was Avengers: Endgame.
Literally nothing since then has looked like it offered anything different or better, so at most I've watched a couple on D+, or torrented them. I just don't give a shit about any of that stuff any more.
The last Marvel thing I watched was Agatha All Along, which I only finished for the sake of completion. The moment we learned the identity of the kid, I pretty much stopped giving a shit, because at that point it just dropped into being yet another MCU property being used as promotional material for whatever they've got coming next.
I really enjoyed S01 or Andor, but I can't be sure I'll bother with S02 because I don't trust them to keep it self-contained, basically requiring me to watch 3 other series so I can have some idea of what's going on. They pulled that shit with S03 of The Mandalorian, so I never finished it.
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No one is pointing out that this was inevitable result of having more options.
When I was a kid, sure we had TV and video games, but they weren’t much. There was no big library, all the better graphics games were recent, and realistically you got a few games a year.
Me and my friends went to the movies cause there honestly wasn’t much better things to do. Having a home theatre meant having a tiny screen and a handful of movies you’ve seen many times if you happen to have a VCR. TV reruns were super old and had 5 mins of ads every 15 mins.
Did they really expect teenagers to be desperate to see a new flic when it’s no longer the only way to see new content?
Let's not forget cost, either. Most movies back then, even in a theater, were dirt cheap. A summer job or allowance would be enough to pay for a movie, popcorn, drink, and you'd still have plenty leftover for arcades or the mall. Some tiny theaters in small towns would be a dollar or less for admission.
Now? You're talking $20+ per person for the same experience. Why would anyone spend that kind of money, when that's three or more hours of work at minimum wage?
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Others have touched on this but this also feels downstream from the capitalist hellscape. Most people don't have a lot of spending money. Movies are pricey and a bad money:time ratio.
I bet if wages were up, more people would go to the theater. I don't want to spend $40 to watch a movie and eat popcorn, but I'd consider it for $3.
And if they actually produced and marketed original movies rather than generic superhero movie #69
I was going to say something similar to that too. Specifically, the consolidation of power means there's less smaller companies taking risks. You'd think a big company with Disney money could afford to be weird and experimental, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
I say this despite enjoying superhero movies
People are buying the tickets for the sequel slop. If no one bought them then they would have to be weird and experimental but that will only happen if enough of us said no more to these live action remakes and sequels.
That's another result of people not having enough money to be experimental with their movie choice. If movies are too expensive for you to go regularly, of course most people would choose those that they know are gonna be safe for them to enjoy instead of giving unknown original movies a try.
That's a bingo! I'm only taking the time and spending the money for a movie I know damned well I'll enjoy. Guess I'm part of the problem.
Any plan that depends on "and then the common person develops discerning taste" is doomed to fail. Especially considering that even people who are usually picky might enjoy something basic from time to time
I'm far far far from a younger consumer, and I find that I too have moved almost entirely to online content, mostly in the form of True Crime podcasts and YT channels, History Documentaries, etc...
Especially in non-fiction content, there's pretty much nothing that paid TV can offer that Social Platforms cannot. It's the only place where I think this whole internet experiment is actually working as intended; the democratization of knowledge.
True Crime podcasts and YT channels
Female detected! I joke, but I don't know any men into that content, and I'm ceaselessly amazed at the variety of women who love it. My wife will soon be home, in bed and totally absorbed in watching white trash confess (while trying to lie) to cops about their heinous acts.
I would make one hell of an ugly woman....
I was an archaeology major, hence the history thing. And I'm fascinated by the psychology of crime.
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What's crazy to me is that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of great old movies that are mostly forgotten.
Look up a movie called "Sorcerer." Incredible action, fantastic acting, impeccable script.
Full movie.
Can't show you the old stuff, if we show you the old stuff you wont watch the new stuff
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I've said it before: there's good and then there's good enough. Content that's "good enough" but easier to access will overshadow content that's maybe light-years better but harder to acquire. That and attention spans are getting shorter. My kid has the entire Disney library at his fingertips but he'd rather flip between YouTube channels.
I can testify on that.
In the last two years, I've discovered VTubers and streamers in general.
I've discovered Geega's tech talks, Deme's videogame playthroughs, Michi Mochievee's amazing (and shocking) IRL lore, VShojo group gaming sessions, Dokibird's third wheel viral video, Ironmouse's gremlin moments with Connor, Melody getting raided at the most inopportune times, Henya's Minecraft trolling exploits, Vedal and Camila's hopecore video, Neuro-sama's singing and otherwise general roasting comments on human VTubers, and wholesome gaming streamers like Beacon of Nick.
Not to mention a number of woodworking youtubers teaching about, or otherwise making mistakes when building or restoring furniture.
There's content for everyone, and traditional TV doesn't even come close.
It's like stepping out of a boring office into Alice's Wonderland.
The creativity is out there and it's a joy to see what can be without corporate meddling.
The problem with corporate meddling is that they're increasingly larger and larger percentage of the total wealth in society and the average person doesn't really have the money to directly pay any of these people so they're dependence on the women's Corporation because they're the only ones who have any money
The problem is that this applies to news and information. People are listening to Joe Rogan, who doesn’t try to report the facts, not journalists.
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Yay, my 50 something butt is a younger people.
No it isn’t … 😂 (I’m in the same boat by the way).
If you can injure yourself sleeping, you are NOT younger… 🤣
Sleeping? You should see me get out of bed, stumbling around hunched over for 10 minutes until all my parts agree that, no, it's not that painful, and, yes, we'll all start playing nicely soon enough.
I can totally relate to this.
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