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I honestly don't know how I feel. Most content feels like 'consume our product/content and give us monthly fee' instead of nice shows and movies. Everything seems to have a point where it pulls me out and I find myself questioning if I'm crazy or if everything feels like shit.
There are some amazing gems, but for years it feels like Hollywood has cared less and less about making cool and engaging media and are instead of focusing on manipulating people.
I'm sure the problem is coming from the top, but writers and actors have been pretty shit too
I think that's in part due to nepotism. It seems like everyone who's successfully in entertainment is the child or grandchild of someone else who was successful in entertainment. The same is true for the music industry and its starting to become true in the AAA gaming industry.
When people start to get those jobs because of their family connections rather than their ability everything goes downhill. The most obvious example outside of entertainment is politics.
You're worried about the 1%, this is about the 99% behind the scenes, doing supporting roles, building sets, etc . Don't let movie execs take your eyes off the prize, that's what they want.
I'm interested to see how Hollywood evolves post strike. Hoping that this will allow Writers and Actors more agency when making their products rather than having to conform to whatever shitty money grubbing practices that the Execs usually force on them
Oh boy at this point most of them are just fighting for their jobs, not even worried about actually making the work they want to be. If thats the kind of change you want to see in Hollywood, its gotta come from the consumer.
Hopefully the number of bombs this year is the message the consumer needed to send.
This is one of the reasons why I strongly believe that if you want to do any kind of art and are passionate for it, you should never make your income depend on it. It's why even though I've studied Masters in game development and was always passionate about games, I work as a Red Teamer in cybersecurity instead, and then work on my games as a hobby.
And especially if we're talking about games, where you can just get a regular IT job as a programmer that pays more than you will ever make (assuming you don't get to work on a AAA project, but the you basically have zero agency about the game and are still just a code monkey), the best course of action (which I regret not doing, but my classmate did and is a lot better for it) is to just take advantage of the fact that IT pays comfortably, but instead of just making more money just work parttime for a "regular" pay, and use the free time for your projects.
But every time an art becomes business, it will inevitably suffer for it. There are rare cases of small indie studios getting lucky to be able to uphold their vision and still earn enough to afford paying their employees comfortably, but sooner or later you get into a point where you just have to start considering stuff around marketing that's totally unrelated to the art in itself, but usually forces you to compromise your vision
I'm actually pretty glad that generative AIs will probably really soon replace most of the artists required for mass production of such big budget commercial titles - because then the only option of someone who wants to do that kind of art will be a smaller indie studio or a hobby project, which may not be as successful and will probably end up as a niche, but it will also mean that a lot less artists end up with their passion sucked out and destroyed by execs forcing them to do shitty generic money grubbing stuff - because that will be done by AIs, and keep on being as generic as it is now.
Gonna offer my two cents as someone who entered the industry during the last writer's strike. You'll see some interesting creative divergence as said creatives crave expression and reach out to new venues like YouTube for the first time. It was one of many changes to the industry at that (and now this) time. I use generative tech because it's part of this exploration of the taboo. Back then, YouTube was the taboo because it was effectively working for free and with no insurance or protection by comparison to a stable studio gig. Take away the studio gig, anything and everything could be opportunity for change and especially so the longer this goes on tbf.
Having 20 writers so you don't have to pay them as much really dilutes any narrative structure.
Actors and writers use what they're fed, this is 99% on movie execs.
Everything is shit. Quality is down and prices are up.
People gladly have been lowering their standards for years so those profiting off of them can make even more money.
Most actors are awful these days. Like, look at Chris Pratt lmao. That guy is terrible but very popular among children and manchildren.
We don't have this generations' Tom Hanks yet.
The only way to watch live action stuff that isn't kiddie-bullshit is to watch things in other languages. They still have integrity and aren't just loading their actors up on cocaine to cover up bad acting.
This is probably the worst take I've ever heard. It's actually amazing how much i disagree with almost everything you've written here.
And, Tom Hanks is still acting, Tom Hanks is literally this generations Tom Hanks.
There's so much excellent acting and directing in the world at the moment i just can't fathom how you have come to your conclusions.
Banshees of Inisherin? The Whale? Everything Everywhere All At Once? Succession? The Bear?
There's loads of great acting out there. Maybe the issue is you're buying tickets to Chris Pratt instead of other things?
But are those the things that get marketing? I'm with you on loving that content, but none of the main theatres in my area (a city of 7 million) even show them. A couple will put them into the standard screen theatres at oddball times to fulfill their contracts, but the good content is in the local dollar theatres where, of course, the movie gets less traffic.
I think what they're saying is that the movies that you're "supposed" to watch are things like those god awful Harry Potter prequels (literally any fanfic amateur could have written them better), the ten thousandth Marvel movie (seriously, just stop), or those Adam-Sandler style low effort white trash movies that run solely on the recognition of the probably male and supposedly "so talented" lead actor.
When most people pick movies to watch in a theatre it's typically based on which movie no one will object to. So it needs a bit of action, a bit of romance, a bit of comedy... It also needs to have brand/actor recognition. So you get Marvel. There's nothing wrong with this, but it's a different market from the one you're in.
But are those the things that get marketing? I'm with you on loving that content, but none of the main theatres in my area (a city of 7 million) even show them. A couple will put them into the standard screen theatres at oddball times to fulfill their contracts, but the good content is in the local dollar theatres where, of course, the movie gets less traffic.
I think what they're saying is that the movies that you're "supposed" to watch are things like those god awful Harry Potter prequels (literally any fanfic amateur could have written them better), the ten thousandth Marvel movie (seriously, just stop), or those Adam-Sandler style low effort white trash movies that run solely on the recognition of the probably male and supposedly "so talented" lead actor.
Chris Pratt is definitely not a great actor, he's mediocre at best. However, he's in tons of blockbuster movies so that's why he's popular, not necessarily because people think he's talented.
The other stuff you said is just nonsense. There are tons of great, well written, acted, and directed movies. You just have to look outside the mainstream/blockbuster releases. If you only focus on the big releases from major studios like Disney, then yeah you'll think that it's nothing but shallow garbage. But there's way more content nowadays, so it's harder to sift thru the massive diluge of content out there.
As a gen X I can tell you that quality is not down and that you have tunnel vision. Go watch some 80s/90s shows lmao. Most are garbage, with only a few gems. It has definitely gotten better as competition increased.
There's a bit of a point there, though. As summarized by Futurama,
Fry: Married? Jenny can't get married.
Leela: Why not? It's clever, it's unexpected.
Fry: But that's not why people watch TV. Clever things make people feel stupid, and unexpected things make them feel scared.
Hollywood caters to what people want. What people want is often not "good".
We remember the good movies and forget the schlock. We remember 1976 as "Taxi Driver" and not "The Gumball Rally".
Um. So watch other languages. They have integrity and.no coke. Cause coke actors.. they are low paid and have to stay up and beat their bodies down to get paid.
Got it. This is fascinating fabrications Your imaginations almost rivals your thoughts.
Ok. Believe what you want and watch what you want.
I've barely even noticed this writers strike because I've hardly even bothered to watch any new Hollywood movies or TV shows in literally years. Everything I have seen recently has been complete garbage. So I find myself watching older shows again and again, more YouTube content, educational and history stuff like that...heck, I've been following some modern film critics like Red Letter Media and just watch their commentary vs the real thing, and it's usually much more entertaining.
I think Hollywood is going to use this opportunity to replace the writers with AI. If it works great, if it doesn't work, nobody will notice or care.
Other than the nightly shows, you won't be seeing the impacts of these strikes for months. Films and shows take a lot of time to go from inception to finished product. For movies I wouldn't be surprised if the impact doesn't happen until next year.
To wit -- we're just now, seeing the tail-end of a lot of the COVID-19 shutdowns percolate up through the delayed releases and shortened seasons for a bunch of shows, and most of those shutdowns were gosh, almost 2 years ago now.
I subscribed to Britbox and find the writing and acting of much higher quality. Plus, the stories are generally more interesting with more feeling. I mainly watch that, watchTCM, and certain YouTube channels.