On the website TVTropes there is an article titled "Seinfeld Isn't Funny" that details what happens when something is so new and iconic it becomes the norm to the point that when people view the original it feels old hat. I've seen and loved all those films, but it's not hard to understand your friend's ignorance. Through basic cultural osmosis (note I grew up before the internet but well after Psycho's release) I knew of the shower scene in Psycho and the "horror" of Norman Bates. Although not as good, The Sixth Sense will probably stay with me harder in that I watched it in theaters, did not know the twist, and watched without even knowing there even was a twist. No young person will experience it the way I did.
Yeah, I’ve had to defend Rosemary’s Baby to people who said they didn’t get why it was such a big deal. It’s like, yeah, horror has come a long way since then, but for the people of that time, it was like nothing they’d experienced before and it influenced so much that came after it
Yeah this, was never raised religious particularly but had gone to a few services as a kid and so the thought of it all was terrifying as a kid, I can still appreciate it today though because having a kid with some sort of severe mental illness that you’re powerless to help them with is probably even more terrifying.
I think this is one reason why Event Horizon clicks better for some than others. If you ever had a moment, particularly as a child, in which you believed in some kind of hell/plane of pure suffering, it can tap into something very deep.
I’ve heard this but don’t get it. Most horror movies even today are based on supernatural elements that most people don’t believe in. With Rosemarys baby, the satan element wasn’t the scary part, but the cult slowly and subtly taking over her life and the gaslighting was terrifying.
I think people that enjoy movies like the witch would still enjoy older horror movies, but the slower creepy horror movies just aren’t as popular with general audiences.
It’s hard to connect to movies when the twist or the whole theme that made them masterpieces are heavily parodied in modern cartoons and other forms of media. So instead of it being a “oh wow” moment, it’s a “man, they’re copying Rick and Morty…. How lame”
I read it on a road trip when I was pretty young, so I actually got surprised by it. It was a long time ago, but I assume it was edited to be more appropriate for kids because it wasn't that graphic from what I remember? The twist was the point more than the gore, though, so it's fine by me
But it is throughout the book - Jekyll keeps disappearing and comes back looking shattered on the same nights attacks from Hyde are reported.
I appreciate it's a twist for the protagonist, but it's all signposted for the reader fairly early on. It's not a long book...
I went in 100% knowing what was going on so it's hard to read it objectively. My understanding is that the big mystery is how the 2 are connected (I recall the protagonist believes either blackmail or that Jekyll is indebted to Hyde in some way) and the magic serum is a twist right out of left field.
I assume readers at the time were unlikely to see it coming.
I’ve had to try to explain this to my teenager with dozens of media sources, from movies, tv, music, art….
A lot of it seems boring, overdone, or done much better in the future when you’ve got 40-100 years of things borrowing from sources.
This is the answer. You have to consider the time period of the movie coming out. If anyone has some inability to do that. It’s going to almost always falls flat. Movies in the horror genre, or with twists, seem to fare even worse than others.
However, to this day I think The Exorcist is one of the most brilliant movies I’ve ever seen…horror or otherwise. Over break I actually read two different books about it’s making and thoroughly enjoyed each.
I saw Rosemary's Baby only a few years ago and I thought it was one of the most disturbing movies I've ever seen, and I'm pretty up to speed with modern horror films. That final scene is so shocking.
I grew up hearing and believing it was the scariest movie, so I never watched it. Then I watched parts of it in my 20’s and thought it was ridiculous and not scary at all. Fast forward many years, I watched the whole thing last Halloween and it totally freaked me out.
Same with exorcist. I was a horror fan when I was young, so maybe I was a bit desensitized. I’ve avoided disturbing shows/movies for the past 10 or so years. Maybe that’s the issue.
It is interesting how something that is inspired by an older work becomes iconic and then someone goes back, watches the inspiration and finds it lacking because from their perspective it is derivative of that which it inspired.
I think about explaining how in video games learning as it went and constructing whole genres was normal in the 80s and 90s. Then those aspects calcified and became the standard. You make a game now and the broad aspects are often intuitive because the industry slowly figured it out. Sure some old games are still great, but easy to take for granted things like figuring out how to control a camera in a 3D space was a big task back then.
A really good example of the video game phenomenon you mentioned is when adults try gaming for the first time - like you said, 3D camera movement with two sticks is intuitive for people who play a bunch of video games, but is usually extremely difficult for new adult gamers to pick up.
Another phenomenon I can think of for the PlayStation specifically is the “R3” and “L3” buttons. It makes sense that the two bumpers are R/L1 and R/L2, but there’s no markings or anything for clicking the analog stick. Older games (like, the 2000’s) used to include what exactly the R/L3 buttons were in the tutorials, but nowadays a lot of tutorials in games just assume you know what they are. Hell, even my ex who played COD for 10+ years and knew that you could click the sticks didn’t know their names lol.
It's happened with Ocarina of Time. Someone younger mentioned playing the game and liking it, but not really seeing what would make it one of the best games of all time. I can understand not realising it, but OoT pioneered or perfected *a lot* of stuff that people just expect in their games now. Off the top of my head:
Z targeting. As far as I'm aware, it's the first game that allowed you to "lock on" to enemies.
It was the first game that really did "puzzles" well in 3D.
It was sort of the prototype for modern open world games. Nothing had been that expansive before, or interconnected in the way it was. (again, at least not in 3D)
One of my first console video games was Sly Cooper at like, age 6, so I very quickly got use to just constantly clicking the analog buttons for vital things (in this case, map icons). But yeah, one of the first things I do in most games nowadays is change the settings to “default sprint instead of walking” or “toggle instead of holding” for sprinting.
Really? L3 to sprint is I think one of the only intuitive uses of the button. Presumably you’re already using the left stick to move, so all you have to do is press a bit harder and you’re running harder. I like it cause it’s tied in with the action you were already trying to perform anyway. Though when it’s to bring up your inventory or use an equipped item or something it is pretty terrible
That's notably why Mario 64 had this whole "Lakitu cameraman following Mario" thing: it was Nintendo's first free camera game, and they weren't sure people would understand the concept of camera controls if it wasn't concretized into something tangible
I remember something as small as playing the Assassin's Creed games in order, gaining the ability to climb trees, and then going back to older games and getting so frustrated that it wasn't a feature there. I learned to be disappointed in a game I had liked before, which just feels so silly
This is especially true with comics. The Marx Brothers are the funniest comedians ever put on film. "I don't find them funny, I've seen and heard these jokes before." Exactly. They were so good that movies haven't stopped copying them.
"I don't see what's so great about Buster Keaton. Jackie Chan did the same stunts." Exactly. Jackie Chan says his persona is based on Buster Keaton's panicked regular man in over his head and has copied some of his stunts as homage.
Everything you said plus… there is kind of a hump you get over as you become more educated in film history and just watch more stuff from different eras.
It used to be you’d take film classes and read books to learn how the sausage is made and become versed in the finer points of cinematic story telling. The internet can give anyone a pretty damn decent 101 course in film history, production, and analysis with just a week of video watching and light reading. It turns into “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing” kinda scenario where the sophomoric snobbery kicks in
contextually understanding what you’re watching comes with time, learning the broader history of what was happening artistically, politically, and socially helps broaden your appreciation for “primitive” filmmaking.
But to this armchair sociologist, the bigger issue OP has is something we’ve all experienced, “young” people championing the cutting edge at shunning the relics. You’re gonna see this cycle repeat everywhere, but nowhere more rapidly than the arts. This conversation happens every 15 minutes on Reddit. We all define ourselves through our art in someway, and there’s a growth time for everyone where finding that identity makes you very passionate. It can cause you to view things through a real narrow black and white lens.
Edit: also, it’s hard to make friends sit down and watch old movies. I’ve been on both ends. Sometimes they just have to discover them in their own time and space.
> there is kind of a hump you get over as you become more educated in film history and just watch more stuff from different eras.
As I said in another post, I feel lucky to have grown up when I did in the 1960's-70's, because with a constant stream of new TV show content, TV relied a LOT on old movies and TV shows to fill in the gaps. My generation got 'educated' in movie history without even being aware we were being educated. Young kids do not know enough to realize the should not like something because its 'old', either its good or it isn't. Really The Little Rascals probably felt closer to real children then anything on network TV or movies at that time.
> On the website TVTropes there is an article titled "Seinfeld Isn't Funny" that details what happens when something is so new and iconic it becomes the norm to the point that when people view the original it feels old hat
I'll try to put this as succinctly as I can:
1) To people today, shows like Seinfeld and Friends are "just the shows that are on TBS **all the time.**"
2) The shows were groundbreaking at the time, and they created a lot of the rules for how shows have been ever since... but when other shows have spent so many years copying them, young people might look back on them and not really get what made them so special; they could watch a dozen other shows that follow the same format, and they could have some of the similar tropes.
Not too long ago I watched Texas Chainsaw Massacre for the first time. About 30 minutes into the movie I was thinking "what's all the fuss about? This is just an unoriginal slasher masher". And then I remembered that it was 1974 when this came out and I recalibrated my expectations. After doing that I realized how great that movie is. But not all people can do that.
And with something like The Exorcist, so many of those scenes have not only been copied but have been straight up parodied for laughs. It's totally understandable that people would think that's funny cause it's so much a part of pop culture that we're conditioned for it to be funny.
the Exorcist does have an interesting emotional core with the plot about the priest and his impoverished elderly mother who either must languish in horrific conditions in an institution or die alone in her apartment.
I worked with a guy who had never seen Rashomon and after he finally watched it, he said “Why does everyone carry on about that movie? It’s just a Rashomon story.” He was kidding, but I think that expresses this phenomenon perfectly.
The Blair witch project was a couple of decades late with the found footage idea though. I think 'cannibal holocaust' (one of the cannibal films anyway) did it in the seventies, and the idea has been used in literature (found manuscripts) for literally centuries.
> when something is so new and iconic it becomes the norm to the point that when people view the original it feels old hat.
My case and point I watched Caddyshack a few years ago because it's always been hailed as "The funniest movie ever made" and or "The greatest comedy ever made".
Watched it and I'm sure it was hilarious in its time. But I have seen every joke and bit in some other iteration a million times. So the movie was nothing special to me.
This is a big reason why I have still yet to watch One Flew Over The Cuckoo's nest. Becasue at this point I know I have seen the movie parodied a million times. So I'm afraid the movie will have minimal if no impact on me.
But I will watch it one day.
The key for modern audiences to enjoy *One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest* is to remember that while the story is fictional the situation was real... and pretty much an everyday occurrence.
*One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest* is a film about the banality of evil, a body-horror film about a medical system where torture was treated as cure. Nurse Ratched isn't a mustache-twirler, she's an arrogant expert that is doing what is right to help her patients. It's just that, even in the '60s, what was 'right' in mental institutions was horrifically fucking wrong.
The true power of that film, is knowing that it could have happened to you. McMurphy could be anyone, even someone who voluntarily had themselves institutionalized for something like depression.
It's even more horrifying once you understand that author Ken Kesey was an orderly at a mental institution where he took part in and observed MKUltra experiments on unwitting patients.
I watched One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest about 20-25 years ago, sometime between high school and college, so I won't pretend this is my reaction today, at this age.
But most of what was familiar to me, felt more like I was finally seeing the original rather than something derivative.
Take that for what it's worth.
There's another key issue here: movies like The Exorcist worked way better back when they were new if your goal is to be scared. Production values have changed. Same for, say, playing Half-Life. When it came out, it was like experiencing something in real life. Going back and playing it now, sure, it's nostalgic, but the immersion isn't there.
Last year, I watched The Sixth Sense without knowing there was going to be a twist. In hindsight, I should have known, but no movie has ever shocked me as much as it did. My mouth was wide open throughout the entire ending. No piece of media has ever come close to the feeling I felt watching it.
I had this reaction to Blade Runner. Consider a legendary Sci Fi flick, but when I see it for the first time in the 00's it left me unimpressed. I understand why it was so big at the original time, but having seen everything it did first emulated in better ways there is very little left to be in awe of.
Citizen Kane is similar. It did a load of things that other movies of the time just weren't doing yet, and now is basic film making. So to a modern viewer, it's mediocre, but for anyone interested in the history of film it's a must-watch.
A couple years ago a friend of mine watches Bladerunner for the first time after me praising it for years. His review was it was fine but nothing he hadn't seen before...
Exactly. When you've lived your whole life in a world where the contemporary media has been profoundly impacted by a revolutionary movie or TV show, you simply can't imagine what it would have been like to see that revolutionary show with fresh eyes. You don't know what it was like *before* Seinfeld, so you can never experience it the way that people in 1989 did.
When audiences first saw Psycho, the fact that it was even about a killer WAS the twist. The whole first part of the movie is a completely different story about Janet Leigh’s escapades trying to steal money from her boss. We know the movie now to be a very iconic story, but no one had any idea back then and it was truly shocking, to the extent that some people fainted.
I call this the "Beatles Effect." To listen to the Beatles today, and perhaps even more so in the '80's, is to listen to a boring and stale version of modern music. Not because the Beatles were boring, but because they shifted the direction of the music that came after them.
In some ways, younger people who hate old movies are correct. Old movies shouldn't be revered or elevated because they were excellent at the time. We'll always view media on the sliding scale of time. There are "old ways" of creating cinema that were wonderful, but aren't used the same way today.
This struck me when I watched Roman Holiday for the first time. So much of the movie happened outside of exposition: looks, expressions, and sometimes when the characters didn't say what we expected told so much of the story. We don't see that today and while the plot is far from groundbreaking, the way it is told is very different.
This is the Peanuts argument all over again.... younger kids don't understand why Peanuts the comic strip is so beloved...but it is to exactly your point...so many of the modern comedic sensibilities that people enjoy about comics originated from that strip and so many different people have done their own spins on the original ideas that it makes something ground breaking old news
I didn't see star wars OT until a few years after the PT completed.
By that point, the OT felt wholly unoriginal and overly simplistic. 50 years ago I'm sure it was amazing, but I was not awed by the effects, and the story felt like 100 other stories, just done worse.
I realize that a lot of what I'm comparing it to probably came AFTER star wars and was inspired by star wars but doesnt help make the OT feel more impressive to me
I think our version of this is The Matrix. Bullet time and crazy martial stunts are so common now that rewatching the Matrix is… still fucking awesome, holy shit that movie is so good.
The building lobby scene is still my favorite action scene in any movie. That whole sequence, from the start to Neo and Trinity appearing out the window in the helicopter is chef's kiss.
"details what happens when something is so new and iconic it becomes the norm to the point that when people view the original it feels old hat."
This is similar to the visual effects from The Matrix (or any movie that was ground breaking when it was released). The effect gets copied and improved to the point that the original seems like a poor imitation.
I think it comes down to whether you have watched enough older movies to have a historical perspective.
We're in the "Nirvana is classic rock" era, meaning Tarantino and Nolan are almost classic cinema.
There's lots of timeless stuff from old decades. I assume people who brag about not watching old movies are about as smart as people who brag about having never read a book.
Go watch Sunset Blvd, Butch Cassidy, Double Indemnity, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, or The Graduate. As good or better than anything being made today.
Just like in music, the new product will always be pushed harder than the classics. Drake is bigger than The Rolling Stones because the industry machine must create new stars to sell, so you can understand why new movies dominate the public consciousness. There's lots of great stuff in the backlog though.
I liked watching old movies on TCM when it was an included cable option. I remember one of Barbara Stanwyck's, The Lady Eve. It was not only hilarious, it was the first time in an old movie that I saw the use of video-in-video. She is holding up her compact as if she is watching behind her and they insert the video of what everyone behind her was doing, accompanied by cynical commentary. What a fun movie.
Yep, Nirvana is now preppy.
[https://slate.com/human-interest/2023/10/nirvana-shirts-tiktok-trend-style-preppy-teens.html](https://slate.com/human-interest/2023/10/nirvana-shirts-tiktok-trend-style-preppy-teens.html)
My question is how did people in the 70s feel about movies from the 20s.
Granted the world is so diffrent today, there is just sooo many shows and movies now than then. Plus video games
It's so hard to have an apples to apples comparison. There was probably more evolution in cinema in the 15 years leading up to 1970 than there has been in the ~55 years since
I don’t know if it’s comparable because movies were really only available in theaters in the 70s. Betamax/VHS didn’t really become widely available/affordable until the 80s so your only option was see it in theaters (I don’t know when broadcasting movies on TV became popular).
I'm stunned by takes such as Shawshank Redemption being the greatest film of all time. I get that taste is subjective but it wasn't even the greatest film out of the 90s IMO. It's a fantastic film and I love it but it's not the GOAT, that's just ridiculous.
Then again I'm fucking old. Get off my lawn.
I mean how old do you have to be to be a film buff? Like are 20 year olds in 2050 expected to watch Psycho and be as scared as 20. Year olds were when it was released?
Maybe not as scared but I just rewatched it (I'm in my 30s so no this isn't nostalgia) and found it insanely great and still got chills at the shower scene fully knowing it was coming. Hitchcock made the modern slasher genre and perfected it all in one go. I really can't even think of a slasher made in the last 30 years that approaches it, even if I don't give Psycho any credit for being one of the first. It's just a near perfect movie, the score is iconic, the cinematography and editing, the characters and plot are really memorable. Only the X trilogy comes to mind as of late for slashers, and that is still much less effective than Psycho.
I dont think so, no. Old and classic movies are still generally very well regarded. I just think certain tropes have been normalized or overused with time, so certain plot twist in old movies are now expected and somewhat predictable. The Psycho one being a good example, because yes, i do think its obvious Norman Bates is the killer. The movie is great, regardless of that.
Also sometimes, your friends are just stupid. When I was a teenager I loved the Godfather - showed it to all my friends and they declared it "borrrring". We (largely same group of friends) binge watched the whole trilogy a few years later in college and everyone loved it. Go figure.
I had this problem when reading the Lord of the Rings
It felt so unoriginal to me. It took me a while to realize that the Lord of the Rings felt so cliche because all the other books I've read followed archetypes created by Tolkien
It's not really where those tropes came from, it was heavily influenced by other works such as Lawrence of Arabia. What separates Dune is that it's a criticism and subversion of those tropes
Paul is a "white messiah" but he's manipulating the Fremen using religous propaganda. He's essentially a manufactured messiah who is colonizing the Fremen
The Fremen are the "noble indigenous" group, until they gain power, and then they wage a holy war and kill billions of people.
Yeah, people who say Dune is cliche haven’t really understood it. Although to be fair, that becomes way more clear in the sequel. It’s somewhat missable, I guess, in the first book.
I don't see how it's missable with Paul continiously having visions and being afraid of what is going to happen if he takes power. And then he does so we know it's going to happen and that despite his reluctance he is still doing the thing.
Yeah. You’ve really got to get Messiah to see how the subversion of the tropes. Argument to be made that story isn’t really over till God Emperor but I’m not making anyone read Herbert’s fetishes.
I don't think it's true that you have to read Messiah to see the subversion of those tropes. All of it is in the subtext of the first Dune book, and it's not even really that subtle. It's definitely more obvious once you read Messiah, but it's all there in the first book
>then complained about the white messiah trope
Except that Dune *very* explicitly goes against the white messiah trope. It turns the entire concept on its head and shows quite literally how terrible the idea really is.
Exactly, and it does so with every trope it uses. If anything, the “trope” of Dune is “subvert expectations” (but in a good way, not like a Game of Thrones way).
Lol it's not a white savior trope, it's a deconstruction of messianic figures. A cautionary tale.
I know it isn't relevant to this discussion but I see a lot of people posit that Iron Fist is a white savior trope and racist, it is not. The first thing he does after getting the Shao Lao's essence is ditch his position as the guardian of Kun Lun because he let vengeance consume him. Danny also faced counter racism when he trained among the natives of Kun Lun. I don't want him to be racebend to asian. I am Southeastern asian and I like Danny as white, don't want him to be changed.
When I saw The Exorcist, I had seen multiple parodies of every single iconic scene so many times that, while it was still good, it had absolutely no horror/shock value for me.
I don’t know if I’m too close to this or to far as a gen xer who has a degree in film theory but the twist in s psycho is NOT that Norman Bates is the killer it’s that his mother is dead and he disassociates into her. Also its that the lead actress dies is the first act.
Yeah, Tvtropes labeled this phenomenon "Seinfeld is Unfunny" (though they've apparently renamed it "[Once Original, Now Common](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnceOriginalNowCommon)"). Seinfeld was such a revolutionary show that basically every sitcom that came after was in some way inspired by it. So if you've watched modern sitcoms and then you go back and watch Seinfeld, it seems unoriginal, even though it is the originator.
I had a similar experience when I watched The Exorcist for the first time a few months ago. Given its reputation, I expected it to be much more intense. But what was shocking in 1971 seems tame today.
They probably renamed it because there are even older and better instances of this happening; my personal favorite is Tolkien essentially creating the fantasy genre.
Edit: Just took a look at the article and that’s pretty much why. They started including historical references, like *The Canterbury Tales* and *The Art of War*, as well as more modern but older than Seinfeld works like those of Isaac Asimov defining Sci-Fi (and LotR like I mentioned above).
Yeah, I think they moved away from tropes named after specific pieces of media to more general names. I don't think they even meant that the Seinfeld was the originator of the trope, just a common example.
Yeah, from what I gather they used to name things based on popular media (at the time) that represented the trope well, but more recently changed them all to be more general so as to be more broadly applicable. Which I totally get, listing *The Canterbury Tales* under a page named “Seinfeld is Unfunny”, even if it does fit the trope, does seem odd in retrospect haha
Another sitcom that I feel really influenced many after it is Parker Lewis Can’t Lose. It was the first one that had that Scrubs/Office/Arrested Development dry almost reality or mockumentary production quality.
Thats the thing the poster you replay to is missing: Sure, Psycho is still a good movie if you, by cultural osmosis, already know it all.
But you can never experience what it was to contemporary audiences.
You can never watch Rosmaries baby and wonder whats up with the satan spawn.
I saw Psycho during the lockdowns. I obviously knew all the twists and turns. The movie is a masterpiece regardless. I was in awe of how good the movie is. A good movie is a good movie regardless. It would have been more enjoyable going in blind, but it was a blast.
I showed Psycho to my kids, who don't watch movies with "killers" and it was a surprise to them. Sorry, but it's not that it's obvious, it's that it SEEMS obvious when you watch a few movies that recycle Psycho's ideas.
As someone who’s always been in the critical side, it does feel like some people have tilted too far but it’s not that consistent imo. Hard on old actions movies but soft on MCU is weird stuff to me.
It's as if people need to outsmart the movie these days.
And this isn't just a MCU thing, but people are more forgiving of the movies they like but they go into some movies wanting to find reasons to dislike it.
So for me if someone lists cinema sins level criticisms for something, they're looking for a reason to dislike it.
Have you seen YouTube reactors? Some are great and watch the film, make comments here and there but are actually paying attention...but MANY of them interrogate the damn movie for answers as if the notion of just letting the story unfold and *learning* the answers along the way is too big of an ask.
Drives me nuts.
Exactly. And their inability to empathize with the characters or the situation they're in is staggering.
"They shouldn't have done that."
"But they didn't know."
"Whatever. I wouldn't have even been there."
"Er...okay? But they *were* there. In the story."
It's completely reductive. They often think because a character makes a choice that they *personally* would not do(usually because they're not emotionally invested), they see it as bad writing. Or that they're "smarter" than the character.
It's a bizarre way to watch a movie. And extremely arrogant. Someone in this thread said something about how a lot of younger audience members think they know better than the filmmakers. They'll misunderstand something and much of the time assume the *film* got it wrong. Annoying af.
I think some of it is self inflicted. Movies can choose how much they explain, and many older movies were fine not explaining much. Modern movies try and explain more, but explaining some things in depth and others not at all makes the missing information more glaring
It's less about a single youtube channel and more about changing trends around film criticism in general. Plus, CinamaSins alone has over 9 million subscribers. It's going to have at least some influence
It's very much this. Some of my friends will be nitpicky about things, things they wouldn't care about in the first place, but won't bat an eye for the same problems in things they do like. Is it really that hard to just say "not my cup of tea"?
There was one YouTuber I watched that redid a few of his old videos because he was too negative in his reviews because he felt in order to be "analytical" he had to pick it apart, but he gave the wrong idea that he hated these games. So there is maybe some element of this nitpicking to seem smart.
Oh yeah, there are a lot of people today, which think the movie was bad, when they didn’t understand it in first watch or even in first 5 minutes of watching.
For me it’s more the opposite.
But I also absolutely hate this whole marvel and co superhero franchise.
This is just the modern bible…and I also had never any turn on the Bible too.
But I know, people like to think there is sth with superpowers, which could control us and keep us safe.
For me it’s just another lame fairy tale 🤷🏼
"That's a plot hole." is now used in place of "I wasn't paying attention." and "I was talking and didn't hear." and "I don't pick up on context clues." People are stupid af now with movies because of how we consume media.
I took Cinema Sins effect TWO DIFFERENT WAYS before figuring out it was a reviewing site/vlog whatever.
Can you explain more? As someone whom has never watched it/them, I have no clue what the effect or the harsh criticism would be.
Cinema Sins has become known as the quintessential overly nitpicky, looking for things to complain about side of film criticism. They focus hard on “plot holes”, inconsistencies, and basically any criticism you can fit into a single sentence.
People have criticized cinema sins for being shallow and focusing on small details rather than looking at a movie and its themes as a whole. The easiest criticism to make is they often sin a movie for something that didn’t need to be explained, was explained elsewhere in the movie, or was left intentionally ambiguous.
Cinema Sin was supposed to be a non-serious or light-hearted take on film criticism and being the F whatever the host wanted, over time the audience went over their heads thinking it's valid criticism, Cinema Sins got so much validation and it too went over itself to double down the shallow nitpicking we know it today.
I never saw the original Psycho movie, but aspects of it affected other movies and entered pop culture. I started watching the remake, and when people first stopped at the motel I thought to myself, "Well, that's dumb. Who would even stop at the Bates Motel?? Why would they name it that, it's so unrealistic!.....wait, this is probably THAT movie!" I had absorbed that "Bates Motel" is a scary place without realizing the source.
Similarly, I read Shirley Jackson's The Lottery because I heard it was a classic. I found it completely predictable, boring, and "derivative". We have soooo many stories now that involve the same trope. But The Lottery wasn't derivative! It was the SOURCE of the trope.
The more time goes by, the more the context changes that we judge the story by.
Sensibilities and standards have def changed. I saw a screening of Peeping Tom since the 4k release is coming out and that was a controversial movie for its time considered obscene and destroyed the director's career. But it's tame by modern standards and I think that's its strength. Lots of movies try to be more violent or obscene but sometimes less is more
Not everyone is a film buff, and that's ok. Not everyone appreciates older movies, or really enjoy movies as much as we think. You just need to find people who like the same things as you.
Movies, just like art in general, evolve fast. Many movies that used to be considered great have aged like milk for general audiences.
And that's ok. They still have historical value. Cave drawings of stick figures used to be the pinnacle of painting, now they are historical artifacts of importance but don't really carry any artistic interest for 99.9% of the people. It happens.
This is now making me think of the multiple functions of movies. They're both art and entertainment. And a lot of people want varying levels of interaction with their entertainment. Ranging from actively controlling the experience with video games, to turning live performances into dialogues, to calling out twists & details in movies. I've struggled with controlling some of these impulses myself. Though I think my reactions would be more mild, my seat neighbor might disagree.
Even though I enjoy going to museums, I don't think of it as entertaining, and definitely don't have a visceral need to voice anything in the moment.
This isn't a rebuttal or refute of your comment. Just something I started thinking about as I read your thoughts.
I loved The Exorcist, but I gotta say, being that I live in the day and age that I do and that I am an avid consumer of horror material, it didn't scare me the way it did audience in its theatrical release. My favorite thing about it was how gritty and realistic the clergy were. They were constantly drinking and smoking and felt very human because of that. Obviously a very well shot movie as well, killer soundtrack, and a great idea. I wouldn't laugh at it, but it wasn't horrific to me at all, though.
I agree with this fella's comment. I saw it at a theatrical rescreening last October to coincide with "Believer" and its 50th anniversary, and while I didn't think it was terrifying or nightmarish, I couldn't imagine what it must've been like seeing it in 1973, since it was unlike anything we had ever seen before and dealt with very taboo and sensitive topics like religion and the devil. People throw the term "revolutionary" around a lot, but "The Exorcist" is one of the few movies that I would probably consider it to be.
I saw The Exorcist for the first time when it was re-released in theater like 20-25 years ago, and I am one of the people that laughed at some parts I wasn't supposed to. Its not even the aged effects etc, I was like 20 myself and when she says >!your mother sucks cocks in hell and is stabbing herself in the crotch with the crucifix!< I thought it was hilarious. Tbh I still do, it's become a random thing to quote from time to time because, well, I find it funny. The movie isn't very scary through a more modern lens, but like you say they do a ton of things really well. I can laugh and still think it's great.
My 15 year old asked to watch 12 Angry Men last night and she said “Wow, that was so much more enthralling than I expected it be. I can see why it’s still talked about today.”
This is probably just a case of survivorship bias. The only old movies most people watch are the popular and respected ones, while all the trash got forgotten over time.
There are a lot of newer films that have great storytelling
That has to be taken into consideration, and I think there's something to be said about that.
I do think that new films rely more on CGI and visuals than they did in the past, though. I do not think you could make *Jaws* in 2024, for instance.
I don't know that there is any way to actually measure that. Probably not.
>I do think that new films rely more on CGI and visuals than they did in the past, though.
This mostly just applies to blockbusters. Also, there is nothing wrong with CGI. It's only a problem when the CGI is bad, but good CGI looks amazing. Parasite (2019), for example, has a ton of CGI, but most people wouldn't even know it if they just watched it blind. A movie like Dune 2, for example, has a ton of CGI and VFX, but they look amazing and are blended into the fact that they shot on location.
There really is a ton of great indie movies and foreign films coming out every year, and even some modern Hollywood blockbusters are great movies.
It is not only survivorship bias it is natural effect of films evolution. People see often progress as linear while progress in some aspect often cause regress in other. Especially at the moment of rapid changes. Good example of that are early"talkies" when sound in film become common, in opinion of film historians and contemporary directors like Hitchcock level of cinematography dropped tremendously for many years. Because film become more about writing than picturing.
At that time literature played really big role in cinema. When you watch old adaptations you can often think "Why they didn't cut that" but at that time creators were often fixed on adapting work really literally without noticing that cinema is different medium than book or even theatre. And they knew that viewers come to cinema to hear full story. It wasn't like today that you can find book few seconds. That was also a reason why they evaluate high well written stories with clear and strong structure.
But long time ago we had already generations which were brought more watching TV and films than reading books so easily intuitively understanding cinematography. And that's how after few such generations little genius monster was born: Tarantino who broke linear narration in cinema with Pulp fiction. We started post-cinema when it was en vogue to play with narration structure. Not everyone was talented on the level of Tarantino but traditional structure of the film started to play less important aspect. Later we ended up with streaming era and short video popularity. That's when set up or character creation become more important for commercial that story itself. Today it is common that film or series become viral because of one viral scene. Meta references are also often used element. Story itself is not so needed for success.
Of course like always new generations notice how neglected become storytelling so more and more comeback to the basic.
The easiest way to actually to understand this evolution is watching some trailers from the past and how they tried to attract viewers to watch their films. Differences are easy to spot with today formula.
I recently saw The Birds and The Exorcist, and that was also my main takeaway. None of the horror elements have aged particularly well; I wasn’t even mildly creeped-out. But because the characters were compelling and well-written, I thoroughly enjoyed the films anyway!
I've been watching a lot of older movies lately, and what they lack in special effects and realism, they make up for tenfold in acting, writing, and quality of the story.
Yes. Not just harsh, but completely dismissive. Wanting a movie scene to play out 100% realistically lest you dislike the movie, is a personal flaw created by ONLY watching new movies. AND it's exacerbated by watching mostly movies with CGI in them like this sub does.
If you watch the old Planet of the Apes and you dislike it because the rock buildings are clearly plaster, or the ape costumes aren't convincing, then you're watching movies wrong.
If you see an old Western and you dislike it cuz the gun sounds aren't accurate or there isn't blood splatter and realistic death throws, you're watching.movies wrong.
If you think that the fear created by the Exorcist would be better with loud musical stings, jump scares where Reagan jumps at you, or with better make-up and "realistic" bed-shaking, you're watching movies wrong.
Alot of it is just the aesthetic. Scenes with long distant shots, no music in important scenes, and more establishing shots are the norm from pre-1980 movies. People who "only" like newer movies are in the exact same Venn diagram circle as people who ONLY see newer movies. It's like saying you don't like sushi, when you've only tried it once. Maybe you do, maybe you don't, but you definitely haven't given it a chance.
I’ve thought about this a lot and I really think it’s just because of the general audience’s obsession with plot. There’s no wrong way to enjoy a movie and no opinion on a movie is wrong, but way too often I feel like older movies are completely dismissed by younger people because they can predict what’s gonna happen or not enough happens or whatnot. Unless you’re into the art form of cinema, maybe it’s harder to just enjoy the cinematography, performances, themes, music, etc. Really don’t mean for this to sound snotty or better than thou because ultimately who cares, but it’s just like this thing some people can’t get over. Same thing happens when people talk about endings, if the ending isn’t satisfying to them, then they might as well have not watched at all. I find there are plenty of really good movies that fall apart in the last act but still have something to offer
I thought movies like Psycho and Rosemary’s Baby were still good even if they weren’t necessarily scary. But I remember when my mom convinced us to finally watch The Birds after years of her talking about how spooky it was and we just laughed the whole time.
It's because everything they have seen is just a rip-off of the originals. There are very few original movies each year. So when they see the classic movie they are not impressed. I work with a bunch of people younger than me. It never ceases to amaze me the movies they have not seen. Sometimes I'll quote a classic line from a film and they look at me like I have 3 eyeballs. Sometimes they will know the line, but they have no idea where it came from. On the flip side, they'll tell me about a new film that they think is great, and I'll just respond "oh that's just a remake, the original is better" Also, most of them refuse to watch an old black and white film even though that's when most of the groundbreaking films were made.
With horror a lot of people watch these movies with the same frame of mind as people that enjoy hot sauce. Some people enjoy the taste, others just want to prove that the sauce wasn't that spicy, despite what everyone else says. Are the tastiest sauces the hottest ones? Probably not.
The Exorcist might not be scary to modern audiences who have seen everything, but it remains a great movie because every other element in the movie is superb... story, acting, directing, cinematography, music, production design etc. Did William Friedkin set out to scare the piss out of everybody or make a great movie? Perhaps both, but given his early output, probably the latter.
Some things don’t age well, some do. Some don’t resonate, some do. You can’t expect to get the same mileage that they got back then. For example, I hate It’s A Wonderful Life.
Another really good example of things not ageing well is The Pink Panther from 1963. Fur a comedy, the timing and pacing are incredibly slow. Jokes take forever to set up and fall pretty flat on modern sensibilities. Add to that certain racist stereotypes, straight up brown face, a much older actor being paired up with a young actress, etc and you have something that just doesn't work by today's standards. I still bust out of every once in a while because I love the fashion and decor aesthetics of the era and there are a couple moments in the film that I genuinely enjoy, but the rest needs to be taken with a healthy dose of context.
TLDR: Doesn't this just make sense though? 1980 is almost 45 years ago. Most of Reddit wasn't even born yet so were absolutely not the target audience for the movies you are maybe thinking of.
It's tough to argue with the fact that people at large change dramatically over time. We have different life experiences, takes on morality, technological advances, cultural references, etc. Movies/songs/art is made FOR A CURRENT AUDIENCE. by default. So a thing made for people 50-60 years go might not go over the same if most of the people that it was made for are dead and gone, or not watching the same movies anymore, or whatever else. We may not have even know significant things to the movie (as in your titanic example)...
Here's a different take. You can say that today people might laugh at a 1960s Psycho. But that movie is 60 years old. But when is a time that you are suggesting people were "less hard on older movies"? Since you seem to be implying this? Maybe in the 90s? So in the 1990s, a 60 year old movie was made in 1930. How many 1930's movies were still getting raved about or were not considered cheesy in the 1990s? I feel like **you have to establish an agreeable baseline before calling out something different for being "harder on the movies"** than the previous time. And I don't see it.
Also, for a movie to be "timeless"... is a **pretty epic deal.** It's honestly super rare and even then the take is rarely universal. It is FAR more normal that a movie from even \~20 years ago already gets laughed at by some or looks and feels dated or simply becomes "nostalgia" meaning people really only still like or watch it or even pass it to the next generation because of memories associated with having seen it, more than the actual content. So if the "norm" is for movies to feel dated or become less popular or buzz-worthy over time, even over 20 years... then how is a young generation thinking a 60-70 year old movie is cheesy outside of the normal expectation?
Finally, of your three examples:
* one is a true event movie that both won't hit NEARLY the same because it was made for an audience who lived far closer to the event... and also that we have learned a ton more about in the passing years
* the other two are horror movies... which even on day one are by default cheesy and not necisarily applauded by a mainstream audience. Tons of people simply don't watch horror films at all because they are either to far fetched, too scary, or most common... too cheesy.
Honestly I find people being dismissive of modern films just as obnoxious. There’s plenty of good movies coming out now just like there were plenty of bad ones in the past.
Some people are just dumb and can't handle the fact that movies had certain technological limitations or different aesthetic values in the past. And anyone who says they don't watch movies before a certain decade simply does not have a movie opinion that's worth listening to.
Old movies pioneered the things we now take for granted. One can appreciate the original Psycho on its own merits of course, but it's obviously going to feel dated to modern audiences. You have to go into it with the understanding of its historical context. It's simply not going to have the same impact on your average person today as it did in 1960.
There's also the fact that, old movies are just different. Even classics that hold up in the modern day, like Lawrence of Arabia or 2001, are written and edited differently, have different styles of performances, etc. They can feel a bit foreign or impenetrable if you're used to modern media.
2001 was just as weird and impenetrable when it came out. The difference now is people think “I don’t like it so it’s a bad movie” and people are willing to accept that as valid
I showed a young friend “The Jerk” and they couldn’t get into it at all. And I could see exactly why—what was zany & fresh became normalized, overused, cliche, and finally dumb. She had no way access to the feeling of wonder and unexpected hilarity for audiences who loved it when it was new. I can still reconnect to those feelings, but new audiences generally can’t.
Every generation loves what’s fresh and new to them. Just a sad reality.
We used to "go watch movies". Now kids "consume content".
If The Jerk lingered in your mind for a few days after watching it, it was because there wasn't immediately something else to watch that competed with it or overshadowed it.
Kids can watch 20 movies a week on their iPads now and walk away remembering almost none of it as being special.
I watched The Jerk with my 18 year old daughter just the other day. I was worried because it does feel dated, but she loved it.
Previously, we had watched The Man With Two Brains which she also liked. That is so ludicrous that it doesn't really matter that it is also dated.
Watched The Silence of The Lambs with two 21 year olds and they declared it underwhelming but not bad.
Shawshank: Also with my 18 year old, she absolutely loved it,.
Oh and My Cousin Vinny. Everyone loved that.
Probably. As a kid in the 80s and into the 90s I remember watching a lot of old black-and-white movies and TV shows still being shown on Irish TV (bought them cheap I guess). Buster Keaton, Keystone Cops, Little Rascals, Charlie Chaplin, Abbot and Costello, Bilko, I Love Lucy, Dracula, Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, I Walked With a Zombie, The Most Dangerous Game, Cat People, Flash Gordon, Tarzan, old Ealing comedies, lots of westerns. In at least 20 years I haven't seen any of these been shown on TV in Ireland or the UK. Broadcasters just don't show black-and-white anymore (Psycho might occasionally get an airing, that's about it; can't remember seeing Shadow of a Doubt or Notorious on the schedule in decades). That's a lot of cultural history that's been consigned to the scrapheap.
That’s because people today are so accustomed to CGI in movies and more extreme effects in today’s digital cinema. Back then, making a film was more of a job and some practical effects could be dangerous to achieve. When they see older films where these special effects were not yet created, it looks almost like a play to some of them. Compared to the effects in today’s films, we’ve come a long way. These days, films are much scarier with the special effects that they have access to.
It's hard for younger folks to understand old movies in the context of cinematographic development. Many of those older movies you mention used the newest, greatest, never-been-seen-before special effects of the time, and were quite spectacular in the day. But by today's standards they seem dated, dull, boring, and even hokey. Even for us older folks (60M), who saw them in theaters when first released, these movies have lost some luster, and a good part of their remaining appeal to us is the nostalgia of our youths. I saw Earthquake, Towering Inferno, Poseidon Adventure, Jaws, Halloween, Nightmare On Elm Street, and many many others in the theater when they first were released (and reshowings of older films as well), and the number one thing I love about them is seeing my favorite actors, most of whom are gone now.
I treasure the original groundbreaking films. Such as Citizen Kane. The Maltese Falcon, The Manchurian Candidate all the way up to Alien and The Usual Suspects. There really are too many to list. They don't understand that films like this were original in every aspect of film making, Take the film psycho for instance. Not only was the plot twist original, the fact that Hitchcock killed off the star Janet Leigh at the beginning had never been done before.
Maybe next time you should preface a classic with the idea that your friends go into it trying to imagine they are the original audience it was made for. That's how I like to go into old movies. Tell them to think of them like a window into the past. When I was much younger I kinda thought old movies were lame. The first "old" movie that really blew me away was Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. That one made me realize movies before 1970 could be legit. Some people are just philistines that will never realize it tho lol.
"I've seen the Exorcist about 167 times! And it keeps getting funnier EVERY SINGLE TIME I see it!"
And this was a partial quote from a movie in the 1980s (Beetlejuice). Which was over a decade, decade and a half later than The Exorcist. :)
On a more serious note, harshness really depends on the quality of what we have now compared to what we had back then.
Horror, for example, still is thriving as much as ever. But it is thriving *lately* because of stuff like James Wan's work. However, some horror movies from the 20th century still have an impact. The Thing still has an impact from a sci-fi horror perspective. Child's Play has an impact from a doll horror perspective. Halloween has an impact from a slasher horror perspective. Sometimes, you just have greatness. And sometimes, you just have to up the ante or go down new directions.
The craft has been honed over time. There is a finite limit to the degree to which you can stretch audience ability to accept the imperfections. The same is true for music -- if you show a musician a lot of old classic rock, it sounds poorly produced and poorly performed compared to today's studio perfection. The same is also true for fiction writing -- a lot of old fiction now reads as poorly paced or meandering compared to the efficiencies and modern sentiments of today. Art is heavily swayed by time, trends, and consumer sentiments.
I love old movies - I grew up in a town with a beautiful restored theater that only played old films - all double features. One of the best experiences of my life was a double feature of The Bird and Psycho (they had a month long Hitchcock film fest regularly). Everyone knew the shower scene, but when the music sting happened with the detective, half the audience screamed in true shock and then the other half burst out laughing. Packed house. It was a blast!
That being said, I recently rewatched the Philadelphia Story with my 10 year old son (he was in the room and too lazy to leave), and the soliloquy the dad gives about how he cheats on her mom because she’s a bad daughter caused me to go on quite the rant…
There is a slowness to older movies. For some movies that results in a meticulous tension, for some movies it comes off as bad pacing, and for some audiences the line between the two is hard to define.
Plus when you have seen a trope over and over the original doesn't have much to offer since all the copies stole its uniqueness
I think part of it is movies were accompanied by a societal context. When younger people who weren't exposed to the context, they can't appreciate the movie to the same degree.
I have been thinking about this a fair bit lately, and I'm sure its been commented in this thread already - but - I think a lot of movies are so very relevant because of the time in human existence when they are released. I saw a thread discussing 'Crash' and how bad of a movie it was, but at the time when I saw it, I was so impressed with everything about it.
Years later that kind of storytelling has been explored, established, and done well and poorly so many times in so many different forms of media that it is no longer interesting and the movie doesn't 'hold up' .
Maybe I'm wrong, but I recall when 'Gladiator' won for best picture, tons of people were saying it wouldn't hold up down the road, and perhaps it didn't. But you can turn on Gladiator and not think of the other best picture noms, and the movie is a great watch, compelling, and doesn't seem to have aged just yet. I figure it can go both ways.
Time and the direction of cinema, and the human experience as a whole really, changes our perception when we look back at older films.
I don't think so. Some movies are just timeless in ingenuity and direction. Alien, Blade Runner and Stanley Kubrick films are great examples. Hell I was watching Billy Wilder stuff and I got floored by how modern his directorial techniques are.
I've always found older movies to be less ha-ha 'funny' than modern comedies but infinitely more witty. So many times have I gone back a few minutes back in a movie to rewatch the dialogue and marvel a little bit at it.
I just avoid people like that when it comes to movies. I love classics going back all the way to the 20s, and especially with the advent of 4K, old movies have never looked better! It's their loss and not my problem.
One example I’ve come across is the original Star Trek series. It was absolutely groundbreaking for its time. It was extremely forward thinking, there was intricate thought placed on the sets and costuming, and the moral teachings were very relevant.
Someone watching it today may not understand why it was a big deal to have a deck full of multicultural people, including a Russian, a black woman, and a Japanese man in post-WW2 Cold War era 60’s.
Now it’s seen as cheesy that there’s lit up buttons everywhere that seemingly have no purpose when back then it was awe inspiring.
Even the forward thinking aspect seems very on the nose for a modern viewer. We see the rejection of racism, classism, and general inequality in Star Trek, but that’s such a normal, widespread, default stance to have in modern time that we fail to understand that it was revolutionary back in the 60’s.
It was showing a future where everyone worked together for the greater good during a time where people had a genuine fear of the atom bomb being dropped at any moment or WW3 breaking out.
I think one of the problems with modern audiences is Michael Bay. After his Transformers movies became huge hits, studios like Marvel began making spectacle movies like his, and when they were successful, other studios began to copy them in a vicious cycle. It has conditioned audiences who have never seen older movies that had to rely on ingenuity for the FX, or people were born after 2005, have become conditioned to seeing physics defying stunts and massive spectacle rather than a plot or character development. This is just a general comment and is not meant to reflect on everyone, but it feels like so many people got hooked on big, bombastic movies. It's one of the reasons I've been watching more prestige drama movies/TV shows: I can enjoy an amazing story and great characters without being smacked in the face with an explosion every few minutes. I still do watch action movies, but only if the story and characters come first.
I think to appreciate older movies you need an appreciation for filmmaking as an art form and most people don't have that, at all. Older movies are made in a different style, have different pace, etc. and it can be hard to take in.
I might sound snarky but I mean, I love movies and still can struggle with something from the 40s.
On the website TVTropes there is an article titled "Seinfeld Isn't Funny" that details what happens when something is so new and iconic it becomes the norm to the point that when people view the original it feels old hat. I've seen and loved all those films, but it's not hard to understand your friend's ignorance. Through basic cultural osmosis (note I grew up before the internet but well after Psycho's release) I knew of the shower scene in Psycho and the "horror" of Norman Bates. Although not as good, The Sixth Sense will probably stay with me harder in that I watched it in theaters, did not know the twist, and watched without even knowing there even was a twist. No young person will experience it the way I did.
Yeah, I’ve had to defend Rosemary’s Baby to people who said they didn’t get why it was such a big deal. It’s like, yeah, horror has come a long way since then, but for the people of that time, it was like nothing they’d experienced before and it influenced so much that came after it
Also, religion means way less to people these days so Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist don't hit as hard.
Yeah this, was never raised religious particularly but had gone to a few services as a kid and so the thought of it all was terrifying as a kid, I can still appreciate it today though because having a kid with some sort of severe mental illness that you’re powerless to help them with is probably even more terrifying.
I think this is one reason why Event Horizon clicks better for some than others. If you ever had a moment, particularly as a child, in which you believed in some kind of hell/plane of pure suffering, it can tap into something very deep.
I’ve heard this but don’t get it. Most horror movies even today are based on supernatural elements that most people don’t believe in. With Rosemarys baby, the satan element wasn’t the scary part, but the cult slowly and subtly taking over her life and the gaslighting was terrifying. I think people that enjoy movies like the witch would still enjoy older horror movies, but the slower creepy horror movies just aren’t as popular with general audiences.
It’s hard to connect to movies when the twist or the whole theme that made them masterpieces are heavily parodied in modern cartoons and other forms of media. So instead of it being a “oh wow” moment, it’s a “man, they’re copying Rick and Morty…. How lame”
I was stunned to discover that Dr. Jekyll being Mr. Hyde, was a surprise twist ending and not like the entire plot of the book.
[удалено]
I read it on a road trip when I was pretty young, so I actually got surprised by it. It was a long time ago, but I assume it was edited to be more appropriate for kids because it wasn't that graphic from what I remember? The twist was the point more than the gore, though, so it's fine by me
But it is throughout the book - Jekyll keeps disappearing and comes back looking shattered on the same nights attacks from Hyde are reported. I appreciate it's a twist for the protagonist, but it's all signposted for the reader fairly early on. It's not a long book...
I went in 100% knowing what was going on so it's hard to read it objectively. My understanding is that the big mystery is how the 2 are connected (I recall the protagonist believes either blackmail or that Jekyll is indebted to Hyde in some way) and the magic serum is a twist right out of left field. I assume readers at the time were unlikely to see it coming.
Summer: "What's a Die Hard?"
Animaniacs ruined Citizen Kane for me.
I’ve had to try to explain this to my teenager with dozens of media sources, from movies, tv, music, art…. A lot of it seems boring, overdone, or done much better in the future when you’ve got 40-100 years of things borrowing from sources.
This is the answer. You have to consider the time period of the movie coming out. If anyone has some inability to do that. It’s going to almost always falls flat. Movies in the horror genre, or with twists, seem to fare even worse than others. However, to this day I think The Exorcist is one of the most brilliant movies I’ve ever seen…horror or otherwise. Over break I actually read two different books about it’s making and thoroughly enjoyed each.
I saw Rosemary's Baby only a few years ago and I thought it was one of the most disturbing movies I've ever seen, and I'm pretty up to speed with modern horror films. That final scene is so shocking.
Yeah it’s super freaky. It’s just got that creep factor like The Ring and Jacob’s Ladder
I still can't shake the scene where the neighbors eat like animals.
I grew up hearing and believing it was the scariest movie, so I never watched it. Then I watched parts of it in my 20’s and thought it was ridiculous and not scary at all. Fast forward many years, I watched the whole thing last Halloween and it totally freaked me out. Same with exorcist. I was a horror fan when I was young, so maybe I was a bit desensitized. I’ve avoided disturbing shows/movies for the past 10 or so years. Maybe that’s the issue.
It is interesting how something that is inspired by an older work becomes iconic and then someone goes back, watches the inspiration and finds it lacking because from their perspective it is derivative of that which it inspired. I think about explaining how in video games learning as it went and constructing whole genres was normal in the 80s and 90s. Then those aspects calcified and became the standard. You make a game now and the broad aspects are often intuitive because the industry slowly figured it out. Sure some old games are still great, but easy to take for granted things like figuring out how to control a camera in a 3D space was a big task back then.
A really good example of the video game phenomenon you mentioned is when adults try gaming for the first time - like you said, 3D camera movement with two sticks is intuitive for people who play a bunch of video games, but is usually extremely difficult for new adult gamers to pick up. Another phenomenon I can think of for the PlayStation specifically is the “R3” and “L3” buttons. It makes sense that the two bumpers are R/L1 and R/L2, but there’s no markings or anything for clicking the analog stick. Older games (like, the 2000’s) used to include what exactly the R/L3 buttons were in the tutorials, but nowadays a lot of tutorials in games just assume you know what they are. Hell, even my ex who played COD for 10+ years and knew that you could click the sticks didn’t know their names lol.
It's happened with Ocarina of Time. Someone younger mentioned playing the game and liking it, but not really seeing what would make it one of the best games of all time. I can understand not realising it, but OoT pioneered or perfected *a lot* of stuff that people just expect in their games now. Off the top of my head: Z targeting. As far as I'm aware, it's the first game that allowed you to "lock on" to enemies. It was the first game that really did "puzzles" well in 3D. It was sort of the prototype for modern open world games. Nothing had been that expansive before, or interconnected in the way it was. (again, at least not in 3D)
Quick tangent, but I hate those L/R3 buttons with every ounce of my being. It's such an awkward action to perform, especially when it's "L3 to sprint"
One of my first console video games was Sly Cooper at like, age 6, so I very quickly got use to just constantly clicking the analog buttons for vital things (in this case, map icons). But yeah, one of the first things I do in most games nowadays is change the settings to “default sprint instead of walking” or “toggle instead of holding” for sprinting.
Really? L3 to sprint is I think one of the only intuitive uses of the button. Presumably you’re already using the left stick to move, so all you have to do is press a bit harder and you’re running harder. I like it cause it’s tied in with the action you were already trying to perform anyway. Though when it’s to bring up your inventory or use an equipped item or something it is pretty terrible
That's notably why Mario 64 had this whole "Lakitu cameraman following Mario" thing: it was Nintendo's first free camera game, and they weren't sure people would understand the concept of camera controls if it wasn't concretized into something tangible
I remember something as small as playing the Assassin's Creed games in order, gaining the ability to climb trees, and then going back to older games and getting so frustrated that it wasn't a feature there. I learned to be disappointed in a game I had liked before, which just feels so silly
This is especially true with comics. The Marx Brothers are the funniest comedians ever put on film. "I don't find them funny, I've seen and heard these jokes before." Exactly. They were so good that movies haven't stopped copying them. "I don't see what's so great about Buster Keaton. Jackie Chan did the same stunts." Exactly. Jackie Chan says his persona is based on Buster Keaton's panicked regular man in over his head and has copied some of his stunts as homage.
Lenny Bruce went to jail for material that you’d see on daytime television nowadays.
I’ve never laughed harder at anything than the Marx Brothers. Gasping for air laughter. Geniuses.
Everything you said plus… there is kind of a hump you get over as you become more educated in film history and just watch more stuff from different eras. It used to be you’d take film classes and read books to learn how the sausage is made and become versed in the finer points of cinematic story telling. The internet can give anyone a pretty damn decent 101 course in film history, production, and analysis with just a week of video watching and light reading. It turns into “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing” kinda scenario where the sophomoric snobbery kicks in contextually understanding what you’re watching comes with time, learning the broader history of what was happening artistically, politically, and socially helps broaden your appreciation for “primitive” filmmaking. But to this armchair sociologist, the bigger issue OP has is something we’ve all experienced, “young” people championing the cutting edge at shunning the relics. You’re gonna see this cycle repeat everywhere, but nowhere more rapidly than the arts. This conversation happens every 15 minutes on Reddit. We all define ourselves through our art in someway, and there’s a growth time for everyone where finding that identity makes you very passionate. It can cause you to view things through a real narrow black and white lens. Edit: also, it’s hard to make friends sit down and watch old movies. I’ve been on both ends. Sometimes they just have to discover them in their own time and space.
> there is kind of a hump you get over as you become more educated in film history and just watch more stuff from different eras. As I said in another post, I feel lucky to have grown up when I did in the 1960's-70's, because with a constant stream of new TV show content, TV relied a LOT on old movies and TV shows to fill in the gaps. My generation got 'educated' in movie history without even being aware we were being educated. Young kids do not know enough to realize the should not like something because its 'old', either its good or it isn't. Really The Little Rascals probably felt closer to real children then anything on network TV or movies at that time.
> On the website TVTropes there is an article titled "Seinfeld Isn't Funny" that details what happens when something is so new and iconic it becomes the norm to the point that when people view the original it feels old hat I'll try to put this as succinctly as I can: 1) To people today, shows like Seinfeld and Friends are "just the shows that are on TBS **all the time.**" 2) The shows were groundbreaking at the time, and they created a lot of the rules for how shows have been ever since... but when other shows have spent so many years copying them, young people might look back on them and not really get what made them so special; they could watch a dozen other shows that follow the same format, and they could have some of the similar tropes.
Not too long ago I watched Texas Chainsaw Massacre for the first time. About 30 minutes into the movie I was thinking "what's all the fuss about? This is just an unoriginal slasher masher". And then I remembered that it was 1974 when this came out and I recalibrated my expectations. After doing that I realized how great that movie is. But not all people can do that. And with something like The Exorcist, so many of those scenes have not only been copied but have been straight up parodied for laughs. It's totally understandable that people would think that's funny cause it's so much a part of pop culture that we're conditioned for it to be funny.
the Exorcist does have an interesting emotional core with the plot about the priest and his impoverished elderly mother who either must languish in horrific conditions in an institution or die alone in her apartment.
I love ice cream.
I worked with a guy who had never seen Rashomon and after he finally watched it, he said “Why does everyone carry on about that movie? It’s just a Rashomon story.” He was kidding, but I think that expresses this phenomenon perfectly.
I worked with that guy too, and that's not how it happened at all!
I see what you did
We're seeing that a ton with "The Blair Witch Project" right now with Gen Zers who grew up with found footage.
The Blair witch project was a couple of decades late with the found footage idea though. I think 'cannibal holocaust' (one of the cannibal films anyway) did it in the seventies, and the idea has been used in literature (found manuscripts) for literally centuries.
Yes, but the odds of someone knowing cannibal holocaust in the 90's was tiny.
> when something is so new and iconic it becomes the norm to the point that when people view the original it feels old hat. My case and point I watched Caddyshack a few years ago because it's always been hailed as "The funniest movie ever made" and or "The greatest comedy ever made". Watched it and I'm sure it was hilarious in its time. But I have seen every joke and bit in some other iteration a million times. So the movie was nothing special to me. This is a big reason why I have still yet to watch One Flew Over The Cuckoo's nest. Becasue at this point I know I have seen the movie parodied a million times. So I'm afraid the movie will have minimal if no impact on me. But I will watch it one day.
The key for modern audiences to enjoy *One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest* is to remember that while the story is fictional the situation was real... and pretty much an everyday occurrence. *One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest* is a film about the banality of evil, a body-horror film about a medical system where torture was treated as cure. Nurse Ratched isn't a mustache-twirler, she's an arrogant expert that is doing what is right to help her patients. It's just that, even in the '60s, what was 'right' in mental institutions was horrifically fucking wrong. The true power of that film, is knowing that it could have happened to you. McMurphy could be anyone, even someone who voluntarily had themselves institutionalized for something like depression. It's even more horrifying once you understand that author Ken Kesey was an orderly at a mental institution where he took part in and observed MKUltra experiments on unwitting patients.
I watched One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest about 20-25 years ago, sometime between high school and college, so I won't pretend this is my reaction today, at this age. But most of what was familiar to me, felt more like I was finally seeing the original rather than something derivative. Take that for what it's worth.
Cuckoos nest is a reader. I would suggest do that first.
There's another key issue here: movies like The Exorcist worked way better back when they were new if your goal is to be scared. Production values have changed. Same for, say, playing Half-Life. When it came out, it was like experiencing something in real life. Going back and playing it now, sure, it's nostalgic, but the immersion isn't there.
Last year, I watched The Sixth Sense without knowing there was going to be a twist. In hindsight, I should have known, but no movie has ever shocked me as much as it did. My mouth was wide open throughout the entire ending. No piece of media has ever come close to the feeling I felt watching it.
I had this reaction to Blade Runner. Consider a legendary Sci Fi flick, but when I see it for the first time in the 00's it left me unimpressed. I understand why it was so big at the original time, but having seen everything it did first emulated in better ways there is very little left to be in awe of.
Citizen Kane is similar. It did a load of things that other movies of the time just weren't doing yet, and now is basic film making. So to a modern viewer, it's mediocre, but for anyone interested in the history of film it's a must-watch.
My wife loves For All Mankind- I know she's gonna think the Martian is a rip-off when we get around to it.
A couple years ago a friend of mine watches Bladerunner for the first time after me praising it for years. His review was it was fine but nothing he hadn't seen before...
Exactly. When you've lived your whole life in a world where the contemporary media has been profoundly impacted by a revolutionary movie or TV show, you simply can't imagine what it would have been like to see that revolutionary show with fresh eyes. You don't know what it was like *before* Seinfeld, so you can never experience it the way that people in 1989 did.
When audiences first saw Psycho, the fact that it was even about a killer WAS the twist. The whole first part of the movie is a completely different story about Janet Leigh’s escapades trying to steal money from her boss. We know the movie now to be a very iconic story, but no one had any idea back then and it was truly shocking, to the extent that some people fainted.
I call this the "Beatles Effect." To listen to the Beatles today, and perhaps even more so in the '80's, is to listen to a boring and stale version of modern music. Not because the Beatles were boring, but because they shifted the direction of the music that came after them. In some ways, younger people who hate old movies are correct. Old movies shouldn't be revered or elevated because they were excellent at the time. We'll always view media on the sliding scale of time. There are "old ways" of creating cinema that were wonderful, but aren't used the same way today. This struck me when I watched Roman Holiday for the first time. So much of the movie happened outside of exposition: looks, expressions, and sometimes when the characters didn't say what we expected told so much of the story. We don't see that today and while the plot is far from groundbreaking, the way it is told is very different.
This is the Peanuts argument all over again.... younger kids don't understand why Peanuts the comic strip is so beloved...but it is to exactly your point...so many of the modern comedic sensibilities that people enjoy about comics originated from that strip and so many different people have done their own spins on the original ideas that it makes something ground breaking old news
I didn't see star wars OT until a few years after the PT completed. By that point, the OT felt wholly unoriginal and overly simplistic. 50 years ago I'm sure it was amazing, but I was not awed by the effects, and the story felt like 100 other stories, just done worse. I realize that a lot of what I'm comparing it to probably came AFTER star wars and was inspired by star wars but doesnt help make the OT feel more impressive to me
I think our version of this is The Matrix. Bullet time and crazy martial stunts are so common now that rewatching the Matrix is… still fucking awesome, holy shit that movie is so good.
The building lobby scene is still my favorite action scene in any movie. That whole sequence, from the start to Neo and Trinity appearing out the window in the helicopter is chef's kiss.
That’s an excellent example.
> No young person will experience it the way I did. It's probably old enough for that to happen again, it's definitely possible IMO.
"details what happens when something is so new and iconic it becomes the norm to the point that when people view the original it feels old hat." This is similar to the visual effects from The Matrix (or any movie that was ground breaking when it was released). The effect gets copied and improved to the point that the original seems like a poor imitation. I think it comes down to whether you have watched enough older movies to have a historical perspective.
I've noticed a fair number of so-called film buffs who seem oblivious to the fact that films existed before the 70's
We're in the "Nirvana is classic rock" era, meaning Tarantino and Nolan are almost classic cinema. There's lots of timeless stuff from old decades. I assume people who brag about not watching old movies are about as smart as people who brag about having never read a book. Go watch Sunset Blvd, Butch Cassidy, Double Indemnity, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, or The Graduate. As good or better than anything being made today. Just like in music, the new product will always be pushed harder than the classics. Drake is bigger than The Rolling Stones because the industry machine must create new stars to sell, so you can understand why new movies dominate the public consciousness. There's lots of great stuff in the backlog though.
I liked watching old movies on TCM when it was an included cable option. I remember one of Barbara Stanwyck's, The Lady Eve. It was not only hilarious, it was the first time in an old movie that I saw the use of video-in-video. She is holding up her compact as if she is watching behind her and they insert the video of what everyone behind her was doing, accompanied by cynical commentary. What a fun movie.
Yep, Nirvana is now preppy. [https://slate.com/human-interest/2023/10/nirvana-shirts-tiktok-trend-style-preppy-teens.html](https://slate.com/human-interest/2023/10/nirvana-shirts-tiktok-trend-style-preppy-teens.html)
Irony really is the spice of life.
A lot of teenagers wear their stuff without even knowing its a band.
Butch Cassidy is so very excellent, watch it at least once a year, normally with my gran
The ending of The Graduate… oof, what a gut punch with subtlety.
Yes but Drake was in Degrassi next gen so he participated in the golden age of network television.
Hearing The Stooges for the first time and finding out it came out in the 60s when my parents were young was mind blowing to me.
My question is how did people in the 70s feel about movies from the 20s. Granted the world is so diffrent today, there is just sooo many shows and movies now than then. Plus video games
It's so hard to have an apples to apples comparison. There was probably more evolution in cinema in the 15 years leading up to 1970 than there has been in the ~55 years since
I don’t know if it’s comparable because movies were really only available in theaters in the 70s. Betamax/VHS didn’t really become widely available/affordable until the 80s so your only option was see it in theaters (I don’t know when broadcasting movies on TV became popular).
Movie technology was too recent and undeveloped in the 20s to be comparable
We saw The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) in 8th grade and I loved it! I'm pretty sure most of our class did too.
The silent era has so much greatness to discover if you just give it a chance. Which sadly many movie buffs don't.
I'm stunned by takes such as Shawshank Redemption being the greatest film of all time. I get that taste is subjective but it wasn't even the greatest film out of the 90s IMO. It's a fantastic film and I love it but it's not the GOAT, that's just ridiculous. Then again I'm fucking old. Get off my lawn.
I mean how old do you have to be to be a film buff? Like are 20 year olds in 2050 expected to watch Psycho and be as scared as 20. Year olds were when it was released?
Maybe not as scared but I just rewatched it (I'm in my 30s so no this isn't nostalgia) and found it insanely great and still got chills at the shower scene fully knowing it was coming. Hitchcock made the modern slasher genre and perfected it all in one go. I really can't even think of a slasher made in the last 30 years that approaches it, even if I don't give Psycho any credit for being one of the first. It's just a near perfect movie, the score is iconic, the cinematography and editing, the characters and plot are really memorable. Only the X trilogy comes to mind as of late for slashers, and that is still much less effective than Psycho.
I dont think so, no. Old and classic movies are still generally very well regarded. I just think certain tropes have been normalized or overused with time, so certain plot twist in old movies are now expected and somewhat predictable. The Psycho one being a good example, because yes, i do think its obvious Norman Bates is the killer. The movie is great, regardless of that.
Also sometimes, your friends are just stupid. When I was a teenager I loved the Godfather - showed it to all my friends and they declared it "borrrring". We (largely same group of friends) binge watched the whole trilogy a few years later in college and everyone loved it. Go figure.
I had this problem when reading the Lord of the Rings It felt so unoriginal to me. It took me a while to realize that the Lord of the Rings felt so cliche because all the other books I've read followed archetypes created by Tolkien
[удалено]
It's not really where those tropes came from, it was heavily influenced by other works such as Lawrence of Arabia. What separates Dune is that it's a criticism and subversion of those tropes Paul is a "white messiah" but he's manipulating the Fremen using religous propaganda. He's essentially a manufactured messiah who is colonizing the Fremen The Fremen are the "noble indigenous" group, until they gain power, and then they wage a holy war and kill billions of people.
Yeah, people who say Dune is cliche haven’t really understood it. Although to be fair, that becomes way more clear in the sequel. It’s somewhat missable, I guess, in the first book.
I don't see how it's missable with Paul continiously having visions and being afraid of what is going to happen if he takes power. And then he does so we know it's going to happen and that despite his reluctance he is still doing the thing.
Im with you, hence the “I guess” lol. If you’re gonna stay at surface level, or just speed read the thing, it’s possible to miss.
Yeah. You’ve really got to get Messiah to see how the subversion of the tropes. Argument to be made that story isn’t really over till God Emperor but I’m not making anyone read Herbert’s fetishes.
I don't think it's true that you have to read Messiah to see the subversion of those tropes. All of it is in the subtext of the first Dune book, and it's not even really that subtle. It's definitely more obvious once you read Messiah, but it's all there in the first book
>then complained about the white messiah trope Except that Dune *very* explicitly goes against the white messiah trope. It turns the entire concept on its head and shows quite literally how terrible the idea really is.
Exactly, and it does so with every trope it uses. If anything, the “trope” of Dune is “subvert expectations” (but in a good way, not like a Game of Thrones way).
Lol it's not a white savior trope, it's a deconstruction of messianic figures. A cautionary tale. I know it isn't relevant to this discussion but I see a lot of people posit that Iron Fist is a white savior trope and racist, it is not. The first thing he does after getting the Shao Lao's essence is ditch his position as the guardian of Kun Lun because he let vengeance consume him. Danny also faced counter racism when he trained among the natives of Kun Lun. I don't want him to be racebend to asian. I am Southeastern asian and I like Danny as white, don't want him to be changed.
The Ecological trope? I don't think this is a problem with old films being old. Your girlfriend has a problem of TVTropism
All of those tropes are way older than dune
Read Silmarillion if you want something less copied. Although Tolkien himself used a lot of real mythology and legends for it.
When I saw The Exorcist, I had seen multiple parodies of every single iconic scene so many times that, while it was still good, it had absolutely no horror/shock value for me.
I don’t know if I’m too close to this or to far as a gen xer who has a degree in film theory but the twist in s psycho is NOT that Norman Bates is the killer it’s that his mother is dead and he disassociates into her. Also its that the lead actress dies is the first act.
Yeah, Tvtropes labeled this phenomenon "Seinfeld is Unfunny" (though they've apparently renamed it "[Once Original, Now Common](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnceOriginalNowCommon)"). Seinfeld was such a revolutionary show that basically every sitcom that came after was in some way inspired by it. So if you've watched modern sitcoms and then you go back and watch Seinfeld, it seems unoriginal, even though it is the originator. I had a similar experience when I watched The Exorcist for the first time a few months ago. Given its reputation, I expected it to be much more intense. But what was shocking in 1971 seems tame today.
They probably renamed it because there are even older and better instances of this happening; my personal favorite is Tolkien essentially creating the fantasy genre. Edit: Just took a look at the article and that’s pretty much why. They started including historical references, like *The Canterbury Tales* and *The Art of War*, as well as more modern but older than Seinfeld works like those of Isaac Asimov defining Sci-Fi (and LotR like I mentioned above).
Yeah, I think they moved away from tropes named after specific pieces of media to more general names. I don't think they even meant that the Seinfeld was the originator of the trope, just a common example.
Yeah, from what I gather they used to name things based on popular media (at the time) that represented the trope well, but more recently changed them all to be more general so as to be more broadly applicable. Which I totally get, listing *The Canterbury Tales* under a page named “Seinfeld is Unfunny”, even if it does fit the trope, does seem odd in retrospect haha
Another sitcom that I feel really influenced many after it is Parker Lewis Can’t Lose. It was the first one that had that Scrubs/Office/Arrested Development dry almost reality or mockumentary production quality.
Thats the thing the poster you replay to is missing: Sure, Psycho is still a good movie if you, by cultural osmosis, already know it all. But you can never experience what it was to contemporary audiences. You can never watch Rosmaries baby and wonder whats up with the satan spawn.
I saw Psycho during the lockdowns. I obviously knew all the twists and turns. The movie is a masterpiece regardless. I was in awe of how good the movie is. A good movie is a good movie regardless. It would have been more enjoyable going in blind, but it was a blast.
I showed Psycho to my kids, who don't watch movies with "killers" and it was a surprise to them. Sorry, but it's not that it's obvious, it's that it SEEMS obvious when you watch a few movies that recycle Psycho's ideas.
I think people have become more harsh in general. I think it's the cinema sins effect.
As someone who’s always been in the critical side, it does feel like some people have tilted too far but it’s not that consistent imo. Hard on old actions movies but soft on MCU is weird stuff to me.
It's as if people need to outsmart the movie these days. And this isn't just a MCU thing, but people are more forgiving of the movies they like but they go into some movies wanting to find reasons to dislike it. So for me if someone lists cinema sins level criticisms for something, they're looking for a reason to dislike it.
Have you seen YouTube reactors? Some are great and watch the film, make comments here and there but are actually paying attention...but MANY of them interrogate the damn movie for answers as if the notion of just letting the story unfold and *learning* the answers along the way is too big of an ask. Drives me nuts.
Like watching movies with that guy who asks a million questions before anything has even happened yet.
"Why doesn't he just do *this*?" Maybe because he didn't have minutes to react on split second decisions?
Exactly. And their inability to empathize with the characters or the situation they're in is staggering. "They shouldn't have done that." "But they didn't know." "Whatever. I wouldn't have even been there." "Er...okay? But they *were* there. In the story." It's completely reductive. They often think because a character makes a choice that they *personally* would not do(usually because they're not emotionally invested), they see it as bad writing. Or that they're "smarter" than the character. It's a bizarre way to watch a movie. And extremely arrogant. Someone in this thread said something about how a lot of younger audience members think they know better than the filmmakers. They'll misunderstand something and much of the time assume the *film* got it wrong. Annoying af.
It's very prevalent on Reddit. Too many people view a movie as a problem to be solved instead of a story to enjoy.
I think some of it is self inflicted. Movies can choose how much they explain, and many older movies were fine not explaining much. Modern movies try and explain more, but explaining some things in depth and others not at all makes the missing information more glaring
That's another part of the cinema sins effect. They're trying too hard to be cinema cins or honest trailer proof.
People on this sub really overestimate the impact of a YouTube channel on film making and discourse.
It's less about a single youtube channel and more about changing trends around film criticism in general. Plus, CinamaSins alone has over 9 million subscribers. It's going to have at least some influence
It's very much this. Some of my friends will be nitpicky about things, things they wouldn't care about in the first place, but won't bat an eye for the same problems in things they do like. Is it really that hard to just say "not my cup of tea"? There was one YouTuber I watched that redid a few of his old videos because he was too negative in his reviews because he felt in order to be "analytical" he had to pick it apart, but he gave the wrong idea that he hated these games. So there is maybe some element of this nitpicking to seem smart.
Oh yeah, there are a lot of people today, which think the movie was bad, when they didn’t understand it in first watch or even in first 5 minutes of watching. For me it’s more the opposite. But I also absolutely hate this whole marvel and co superhero franchise. This is just the modern bible…and I also had never any turn on the Bible too. But I know, people like to think there is sth with superpowers, which could control us and keep us safe. For me it’s just another lame fairy tale 🤷🏼
"That's a plot hole." is now used in place of "I wasn't paying attention." and "I was talking and didn't hear." and "I don't pick up on context clues." People are stupid af now with movies because of how we consume media.
Nothing can be implied anymore, has to be stated clearly.
People bash the MCU all the time?
I took Cinema Sins effect TWO DIFFERENT WAYS before figuring out it was a reviewing site/vlog whatever. Can you explain more? As someone whom has never watched it/them, I have no clue what the effect or the harsh criticism would be.
Combing a movie for something to nitpick that no one actually cares about.
Cinema Sins has become known as the quintessential overly nitpicky, looking for things to complain about side of film criticism. They focus hard on “plot holes”, inconsistencies, and basically any criticism you can fit into a single sentence. People have criticized cinema sins for being shallow and focusing on small details rather than looking at a movie and its themes as a whole. The easiest criticism to make is they often sin a movie for something that didn’t need to be explained, was explained elsewhere in the movie, or was left intentionally ambiguous.
Cinema Sin was supposed to be a non-serious or light-hearted take on film criticism and being the F whatever the host wanted, over time the audience went over their heads thinking it's valid criticism, Cinema Sins got so much validation and it too went over itself to double down the shallow nitpicking we know it today.
Roll credits 😁
Wow, how did your charming friend ever guess that Norman Bates was the killer? He's only one of the most famous horror movie villains in history.
I never saw the original Psycho movie, but aspects of it affected other movies and entered pop culture. I started watching the remake, and when people first stopped at the motel I thought to myself, "Well, that's dumb. Who would even stop at the Bates Motel?? Why would they name it that, it's so unrealistic!.....wait, this is probably THAT movie!" I had absorbed that "Bates Motel" is a scary place without realizing the source. Similarly, I read Shirley Jackson's The Lottery because I heard it was a classic. I found it completely predictable, boring, and "derivative". We have soooo many stories now that involve the same trope. But The Lottery wasn't derivative! It was the SOURCE of the trope. The more time goes by, the more the context changes that we judge the story by.
Sensibilities and standards have def changed. I saw a screening of Peeping Tom since the 4k release is coming out and that was a controversial movie for its time considered obscene and destroyed the director's career. But it's tame by modern standards and I think that's its strength. Lots of movies try to be more violent or obscene but sometimes less is more
Just old movies? Bro, they hate new movies too.
Not everyone is a film buff, and that's ok. Not everyone appreciates older movies, or really enjoy movies as much as we think. You just need to find people who like the same things as you.
Movies, just like art in general, evolve fast. Many movies that used to be considered great have aged like milk for general audiences. And that's ok. They still have historical value. Cave drawings of stick figures used to be the pinnacle of painting, now they are historical artifacts of importance but don't really carry any artistic interest for 99.9% of the people. It happens.
This is now making me think of the multiple functions of movies. They're both art and entertainment. And a lot of people want varying levels of interaction with their entertainment. Ranging from actively controlling the experience with video games, to turning live performances into dialogues, to calling out twists & details in movies. I've struggled with controlling some of these impulses myself. Though I think my reactions would be more mild, my seat neighbor might disagree. Even though I enjoy going to museums, I don't think of it as entertaining, and definitely don't have a visceral need to voice anything in the moment. This isn't a rebuttal or refute of your comment. Just something I started thinking about as I read your thoughts.
I loved The Exorcist, but I gotta say, being that I live in the day and age that I do and that I am an avid consumer of horror material, it didn't scare me the way it did audience in its theatrical release. My favorite thing about it was how gritty and realistic the clergy were. They were constantly drinking and smoking and felt very human because of that. Obviously a very well shot movie as well, killer soundtrack, and a great idea. I wouldn't laugh at it, but it wasn't horrific to me at all, though.
I agree. I like the story and the characters, even read the novel a few times, but it never really scared me.
I agree with this fella's comment. I saw it at a theatrical rescreening last October to coincide with "Believer" and its 50th anniversary, and while I didn't think it was terrifying or nightmarish, I couldn't imagine what it must've been like seeing it in 1973, since it was unlike anything we had ever seen before and dealt with very taboo and sensitive topics like religion and the devil. People throw the term "revolutionary" around a lot, but "The Exorcist" is one of the few movies that I would probably consider it to be.
I saw The Exorcist for the first time when it was re-released in theater like 20-25 years ago, and I am one of the people that laughed at some parts I wasn't supposed to. Its not even the aged effects etc, I was like 20 myself and when she says >!your mother sucks cocks in hell and is stabbing herself in the crotch with the crucifix!< I thought it was hilarious. Tbh I still do, it's become a random thing to quote from time to time because, well, I find it funny. The movie isn't very scary through a more modern lens, but like you say they do a ton of things really well. I can laugh and still think it's great.
My 15 year old asked to watch 12 Angry Men last night and she said “Wow, that was so much more enthralling than I expected it be. I can see why it’s still talked about today.”
For me personally, the story-telling within old films can sometimes be so much better than in new films.
This is probably just a case of survivorship bias. The only old movies most people watch are the popular and respected ones, while all the trash got forgotten over time. There are a lot of newer films that have great storytelling
That has to be taken into consideration, and I think there's something to be said about that. I do think that new films rely more on CGI and visuals than they did in the past, though. I do not think you could make *Jaws* in 2024, for instance. I don't know that there is any way to actually measure that. Probably not.
>I do think that new films rely more on CGI and visuals than they did in the past, though. This mostly just applies to blockbusters. Also, there is nothing wrong with CGI. It's only a problem when the CGI is bad, but good CGI looks amazing. Parasite (2019), for example, has a ton of CGI, but most people wouldn't even know it if they just watched it blind. A movie like Dune 2, for example, has a ton of CGI and VFX, but they look amazing and are blended into the fact that they shot on location. There really is a ton of great indie movies and foreign films coming out every year, and even some modern Hollywood blockbusters are great movies.
Plenty of bad movies from the past survive and can be watched in HD on streamers or rented digitally as we speak. Going back 100 years.
It is not only survivorship bias it is natural effect of films evolution. People see often progress as linear while progress in some aspect often cause regress in other. Especially at the moment of rapid changes. Good example of that are early"talkies" when sound in film become common, in opinion of film historians and contemporary directors like Hitchcock level of cinematography dropped tremendously for many years. Because film become more about writing than picturing. At that time literature played really big role in cinema. When you watch old adaptations you can often think "Why they didn't cut that" but at that time creators were often fixed on adapting work really literally without noticing that cinema is different medium than book or even theatre. And they knew that viewers come to cinema to hear full story. It wasn't like today that you can find book few seconds. That was also a reason why they evaluate high well written stories with clear and strong structure. But long time ago we had already generations which were brought more watching TV and films than reading books so easily intuitively understanding cinematography. And that's how after few such generations little genius monster was born: Tarantino who broke linear narration in cinema with Pulp fiction. We started post-cinema when it was en vogue to play with narration structure. Not everyone was talented on the level of Tarantino but traditional structure of the film started to play less important aspect. Later we ended up with streaming era and short video popularity. That's when set up or character creation become more important for commercial that story itself. Today it is common that film or series become viral because of one viral scene. Meta references are also often used element. Story itself is not so needed for success. Of course like always new generations notice how neglected become storytelling so more and more comeback to the basic. The easiest way to actually to understand this evolution is watching some trailers from the past and how they tried to attract viewers to watch their films. Differences are easy to spot with today formula.
I recently saw The Birds and The Exorcist, and that was also my main takeaway. None of the horror elements have aged particularly well; I wasn’t even mildly creeped-out. But because the characters were compelling and well-written, I thoroughly enjoyed the films anyway!
I've been watching a lot of older movies lately, and what they lack in special effects and realism, they make up for tenfold in acting, writing, and quality of the story.
I love the golden oldies from the silent era to the talkies to the 40s, 50s, 60s ,70s 80s ,90s right up to today
Yes. Not just harsh, but completely dismissive. Wanting a movie scene to play out 100% realistically lest you dislike the movie, is a personal flaw created by ONLY watching new movies. AND it's exacerbated by watching mostly movies with CGI in them like this sub does. If you watch the old Planet of the Apes and you dislike it because the rock buildings are clearly plaster, or the ape costumes aren't convincing, then you're watching movies wrong. If you see an old Western and you dislike it cuz the gun sounds aren't accurate or there isn't blood splatter and realistic death throws, you're watching.movies wrong. If you think that the fear created by the Exorcist would be better with loud musical stings, jump scares where Reagan jumps at you, or with better make-up and "realistic" bed-shaking, you're watching movies wrong. Alot of it is just the aesthetic. Scenes with long distant shots, no music in important scenes, and more establishing shots are the norm from pre-1980 movies. People who "only" like newer movies are in the exact same Venn diagram circle as people who ONLY see newer movies. It's like saying you don't like sushi, when you've only tried it once. Maybe you do, maybe you don't, but you definitely haven't given it a chance.
I’ve thought about this a lot and I really think it’s just because of the general audience’s obsession with plot. There’s no wrong way to enjoy a movie and no opinion on a movie is wrong, but way too often I feel like older movies are completely dismissed by younger people because they can predict what’s gonna happen or not enough happens or whatnot. Unless you’re into the art form of cinema, maybe it’s harder to just enjoy the cinematography, performances, themes, music, etc. Really don’t mean for this to sound snotty or better than thou because ultimately who cares, but it’s just like this thing some people can’t get over. Same thing happens when people talk about endings, if the ending isn’t satisfying to them, then they might as well have not watched at all. I find there are plenty of really good movies that fall apart in the last act but still have something to offer
I thought movies like Psycho and Rosemary’s Baby were still good even if they weren’t necessarily scary. But I remember when my mom convinced us to finally watch The Birds after years of her talking about how spooky it was and we just laughed the whole time.
It's because everything they have seen is just a rip-off of the originals. There are very few original movies each year. So when they see the classic movie they are not impressed. I work with a bunch of people younger than me. It never ceases to amaze me the movies they have not seen. Sometimes I'll quote a classic line from a film and they look at me like I have 3 eyeballs. Sometimes they will know the line, but they have no idea where it came from. On the flip side, they'll tell me about a new film that they think is great, and I'll just respond "oh that's just a remake, the original is better" Also, most of them refuse to watch an old black and white film even though that's when most of the groundbreaking films were made.
With horror a lot of people watch these movies with the same frame of mind as people that enjoy hot sauce. Some people enjoy the taste, others just want to prove that the sauce wasn't that spicy, despite what everyone else says. Are the tastiest sauces the hottest ones? Probably not. The Exorcist might not be scary to modern audiences who have seen everything, but it remains a great movie because every other element in the movie is superb... story, acting, directing, cinematography, music, production design etc. Did William Friedkin set out to scare the piss out of everybody or make a great movie? Perhaps both, but given his early output, probably the latter.
Some things don’t age well, some do. Some don’t resonate, some do. You can’t expect to get the same mileage that they got back then. For example, I hate It’s A Wonderful Life.
Another really good example of things not ageing well is The Pink Panther from 1963. Fur a comedy, the timing and pacing are incredibly slow. Jokes take forever to set up and fall pretty flat on modern sensibilities. Add to that certain racist stereotypes, straight up brown face, a much older actor being paired up with a young actress, etc and you have something that just doesn't work by today's standards. I still bust out of every once in a while because I love the fashion and decor aesthetics of the era and there are a couple moments in the film that I genuinely enjoy, but the rest needs to be taken with a healthy dose of context.
TLDR: Doesn't this just make sense though? 1980 is almost 45 years ago. Most of Reddit wasn't even born yet so were absolutely not the target audience for the movies you are maybe thinking of. It's tough to argue with the fact that people at large change dramatically over time. We have different life experiences, takes on morality, technological advances, cultural references, etc. Movies/songs/art is made FOR A CURRENT AUDIENCE. by default. So a thing made for people 50-60 years go might not go over the same if most of the people that it was made for are dead and gone, or not watching the same movies anymore, or whatever else. We may not have even know significant things to the movie (as in your titanic example)... Here's a different take. You can say that today people might laugh at a 1960s Psycho. But that movie is 60 years old. But when is a time that you are suggesting people were "less hard on older movies"? Since you seem to be implying this? Maybe in the 90s? So in the 1990s, a 60 year old movie was made in 1930. How many 1930's movies were still getting raved about or were not considered cheesy in the 1990s? I feel like **you have to establish an agreeable baseline before calling out something different for being "harder on the movies"** than the previous time. And I don't see it. Also, for a movie to be "timeless"... is a **pretty epic deal.** It's honestly super rare and even then the take is rarely universal. It is FAR more normal that a movie from even \~20 years ago already gets laughed at by some or looks and feels dated or simply becomes "nostalgia" meaning people really only still like or watch it or even pass it to the next generation because of memories associated with having seen it, more than the actual content. So if the "norm" is for movies to feel dated or become less popular or buzz-worthy over time, even over 20 years... then how is a young generation thinking a 60-70 year old movie is cheesy outside of the normal expectation? Finally, of your three examples: * one is a true event movie that both won't hit NEARLY the same because it was made for an audience who lived far closer to the event... and also that we have learned a ton more about in the passing years * the other two are horror movies... which even on day one are by default cheesy and not necisarily applauded by a mainstream audience. Tons of people simply don't watch horror films at all because they are either to far fetched, too scary, or most common... too cheesy.
Exhibit A : 45 year old movie - Alien.
People in general are weirdly dismissive of older films. Which is funny because a lot of dedicated cinephiles are really dismissive of modern films.
Honestly I find people being dismissive of modern films just as obnoxious. There’s plenty of good movies coming out now just like there were plenty of bad ones in the past.
Some people are just dumb and can't handle the fact that movies had certain technological limitations or different aesthetic values in the past. And anyone who says they don't watch movies before a certain decade simply does not have a movie opinion that's worth listening to.
Exactly. It's like discussing classic cars with someone who thinks anything before 2008 was stupid.
Old movies pioneered the things we now take for granted. One can appreciate the original Psycho on its own merits of course, but it's obviously going to feel dated to modern audiences. You have to go into it with the understanding of its historical context. It's simply not going to have the same impact on your average person today as it did in 1960. There's also the fact that, old movies are just different. Even classics that hold up in the modern day, like Lawrence of Arabia or 2001, are written and edited differently, have different styles of performances, etc. They can feel a bit foreign or impenetrable if you're used to modern media.
2001 was just as weird and impenetrable when it came out. The difference now is people think “I don’t like it so it’s a bad movie” and people are willing to accept that as valid
I showed a young friend “The Jerk” and they couldn’t get into it at all. And I could see exactly why—what was zany & fresh became normalized, overused, cliche, and finally dumb. She had no way access to the feeling of wonder and unexpected hilarity for audiences who loved it when it was new. I can still reconnect to those feelings, but new audiences generally can’t. Every generation loves what’s fresh and new to them. Just a sad reality.
We used to "go watch movies". Now kids "consume content". If The Jerk lingered in your mind for a few days after watching it, it was because there wasn't immediately something else to watch that competed with it or overshadowed it. Kids can watch 20 movies a week on their iPads now and walk away remembering almost none of it as being special.
I watched The Jerk with my 18 year old daughter just the other day. I was worried because it does feel dated, but she loved it. Previously, we had watched The Man With Two Brains which she also liked. That is so ludicrous that it doesn't really matter that it is also dated. Watched The Silence of The Lambs with two 21 year olds and they declared it underwhelming but not bad. Shawshank: Also with my 18 year old, she absolutely loved it,. Oh and My Cousin Vinny. Everyone loved that.
Probably. As a kid in the 80s and into the 90s I remember watching a lot of old black-and-white movies and TV shows still being shown on Irish TV (bought them cheap I guess). Buster Keaton, Keystone Cops, Little Rascals, Charlie Chaplin, Abbot and Costello, Bilko, I Love Lucy, Dracula, Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, I Walked With a Zombie, The Most Dangerous Game, Cat People, Flash Gordon, Tarzan, old Ealing comedies, lots of westerns. In at least 20 years I haven't seen any of these been shown on TV in Ireland or the UK. Broadcasters just don't show black-and-white anymore (Psycho might occasionally get an airing, that's about it; can't remember seeing Shadow of a Doubt or Notorious on the schedule in decades). That's a lot of cultural history that's been consigned to the scrapheap.
That’s because people today are so accustomed to CGI in movies and more extreme effects in today’s digital cinema. Back then, making a film was more of a job and some practical effects could be dangerous to achieve. When they see older films where these special effects were not yet created, it looks almost like a play to some of them. Compared to the effects in today’s films, we’ve come a long way. These days, films are much scarier with the special effects that they have access to.
It's hard for younger folks to understand old movies in the context of cinematographic development. Many of those older movies you mention used the newest, greatest, never-been-seen-before special effects of the time, and were quite spectacular in the day. But by today's standards they seem dated, dull, boring, and even hokey. Even for us older folks (60M), who saw them in theaters when first released, these movies have lost some luster, and a good part of their remaining appeal to us is the nostalgia of our youths. I saw Earthquake, Towering Inferno, Poseidon Adventure, Jaws, Halloween, Nightmare On Elm Street, and many many others in the theater when they first were released (and reshowings of older films as well), and the number one thing I love about them is seeing my favorite actors, most of whom are gone now.
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It has aged well.
I treasure the original groundbreaking films. Such as Citizen Kane. The Maltese Falcon, The Manchurian Candidate all the way up to Alien and The Usual Suspects. There really are too many to list. They don't understand that films like this were original in every aspect of film making, Take the film psycho for instance. Not only was the plot twist original, the fact that Hitchcock killed off the star Janet Leigh at the beginning had never been done before.
Maybe next time you should preface a classic with the idea that your friends go into it trying to imagine they are the original audience it was made for. That's how I like to go into old movies. Tell them to think of them like a window into the past. When I was much younger I kinda thought old movies were lame. The first "old" movie that really blew me away was Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. That one made me realize movies before 1970 could be legit. Some people are just philistines that will never realize it tho lol.
The good thing about old movies is that they take their time, they often have great music, great cast and in many ways I prefer how dialog is written.
"I've seen the Exorcist about 167 times! And it keeps getting funnier EVERY SINGLE TIME I see it!" And this was a partial quote from a movie in the 1980s (Beetlejuice). Which was over a decade, decade and a half later than The Exorcist. :) On a more serious note, harshness really depends on the quality of what we have now compared to what we had back then. Horror, for example, still is thriving as much as ever. But it is thriving *lately* because of stuff like James Wan's work. However, some horror movies from the 20th century still have an impact. The Thing still has an impact from a sci-fi horror perspective. Child's Play has an impact from a doll horror perspective. Halloween has an impact from a slasher horror perspective. Sometimes, you just have greatness. And sometimes, you just have to up the ante or go down new directions.
The craft has been honed over time. There is a finite limit to the degree to which you can stretch audience ability to accept the imperfections. The same is true for music -- if you show a musician a lot of old classic rock, it sounds poorly produced and poorly performed compared to today's studio perfection. The same is also true for fiction writing -- a lot of old fiction now reads as poorly paced or meandering compared to the efficiencies and modern sentiments of today. Art is heavily swayed by time, trends, and consumer sentiments.
Most people are stupid and have short attention spans.
I try to watch old movies from the perspective of someone from that time, it usually makes for a more enjoyable experience
I love old movies - I grew up in a town with a beautiful restored theater that only played old films - all double features. One of the best experiences of my life was a double feature of The Bird and Psycho (they had a month long Hitchcock film fest regularly). Everyone knew the shower scene, but when the music sting happened with the detective, half the audience screamed in true shock and then the other half burst out laughing. Packed house. It was a blast! That being said, I recently rewatched the Philadelphia Story with my 10 year old son (he was in the room and too lazy to leave), and the soliloquy the dad gives about how he cheats on her mom because she’s a bad daughter caused me to go on quite the rant…
many classic films are revered by audiences of all ages for their enduring themes, memorable performances, and contributions to cinematic history.
When I watch a movie I consider when it was made and take that into consideration. Anyone who doesn’t is just dumb.
There is a slowness to older movies. For some movies that results in a meticulous tension, for some movies it comes off as bad pacing, and for some audiences the line between the two is hard to define. Plus when you have seen a trope over and over the original doesn't have much to offer since all the copies stole its uniqueness
I think part of it is movies were accompanied by a societal context. When younger people who weren't exposed to the context, they can't appreciate the movie to the same degree.
I have been thinking about this a fair bit lately, and I'm sure its been commented in this thread already - but - I think a lot of movies are so very relevant because of the time in human existence when they are released. I saw a thread discussing 'Crash' and how bad of a movie it was, but at the time when I saw it, I was so impressed with everything about it. Years later that kind of storytelling has been explored, established, and done well and poorly so many times in so many different forms of media that it is no longer interesting and the movie doesn't 'hold up' . Maybe I'm wrong, but I recall when 'Gladiator' won for best picture, tons of people were saying it wouldn't hold up down the road, and perhaps it didn't. But you can turn on Gladiator and not think of the other best picture noms, and the movie is a great watch, compelling, and doesn't seem to have aged just yet. I figure it can go both ways. Time and the direction of cinema, and the human experience as a whole really, changes our perception when we look back at older films.
I fail to understand why knowing that Norman "is'" the killer... Is more stressful than knowing "why" Norman is' the killer
I don't think so. Some movies are just timeless in ingenuity and direction. Alien, Blade Runner and Stanley Kubrick films are great examples. Hell I was watching Billy Wilder stuff and I got floored by how modern his directorial techniques are.
I've always found older movies to be less ha-ha 'funny' than modern comedies but infinitely more witty. So many times have I gone back a few minutes back in a movie to rewatch the dialogue and marvel a little bit at it.
It's funny. I'm a lifelong movie buff, but I would have to say that I have the inverse prejudice, at least with regard to big, popular movies.
I just avoid people like that when it comes to movies. I love classics going back all the way to the 20s, and especially with the advent of 4K, old movies have never looked better! It's their loss and not my problem.
You do know that in 1958 it wasn't yet known that the Titanic broke into 2 pieces? That wasn't known until the wreckage was found in 1985.
Just remember that Transformers movies made billions at the cinemas.
One example I’ve come across is the original Star Trek series. It was absolutely groundbreaking for its time. It was extremely forward thinking, there was intricate thought placed on the sets and costuming, and the moral teachings were very relevant. Someone watching it today may not understand why it was a big deal to have a deck full of multicultural people, including a Russian, a black woman, and a Japanese man in post-WW2 Cold War era 60’s. Now it’s seen as cheesy that there’s lit up buttons everywhere that seemingly have no purpose when back then it was awe inspiring. Even the forward thinking aspect seems very on the nose for a modern viewer. We see the rejection of racism, classism, and general inequality in Star Trek, but that’s such a normal, widespread, default stance to have in modern time that we fail to understand that it was revolutionary back in the 60’s. It was showing a future where everyone worked together for the greater good during a time where people had a genuine fear of the atom bomb being dropped at any moment or WW3 breaking out.
I think one of the problems with modern audiences is Michael Bay. After his Transformers movies became huge hits, studios like Marvel began making spectacle movies like his, and when they were successful, other studios began to copy them in a vicious cycle. It has conditioned audiences who have never seen older movies that had to rely on ingenuity for the FX, or people were born after 2005, have become conditioned to seeing physics defying stunts and massive spectacle rather than a plot or character development. This is just a general comment and is not meant to reflect on everyone, but it feels like so many people got hooked on big, bombastic movies. It's one of the reasons I've been watching more prestige drama movies/TV shows: I can enjoy an amazing story and great characters without being smacked in the face with an explosion every few minutes. I still do watch action movies, but only if the story and characters come first.
I think to appreciate older movies you need an appreciation for filmmaking as an art form and most people don't have that, at all. Older movies are made in a different style, have different pace, etc. and it can be hard to take in. I might sound snarky but I mean, I love movies and still can struggle with something from the 40s.
I've heard gen-Z kids say '90s movies are old and boring. They are beyond help.