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#choice between a giant douche and a turd sandwich all over again lol
katyspersonal · 1 year
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Movies should return to looking like cheap theatre plays
I feel like the biggest problem with the decline of quality of the movies is capitalism. I mean, obviously, but I just want to talk about it a bit. The huge problem with the movies is that they cannot be treated like a usual job; a company that creates them HAS to show the positive dynamics in profiting - more money with every next year. So they can convince their investors to stay and still pay them. Because otherwise they might not have enough money to MAKE more movies!
That’s why the quality of the products is dropping - to lessen the production costs. That’s why you often can see the case of ‘but this is a completely original story, it did not NEED the name of [popular brand] to be attached to it’ - to sell more tickets, because investors decided that original concept would not bring as much money (the recent animated movie about Buzz Lightyear off the top of my head. Same with endless reboots that are so tone-deaf to the original it’d be more honest to just make new universe and characters entirely.
Like... in a way, making movies is just a job like others. It is entertainment at least, education at most. Except it isn’t because people that make the movies cannot simply earn stable amount of money every year or god forbid earn less than the previous year. Studies just have to violate beloved and classic franchises and violate the art as a concept just to keep existing- I mean, Disney is the quickest examples of severe decline in quality I can recall. And like, I still think nerfing Strange World with a complete absence of advertising had to be a planned sabotage. Like a somewhat expensive way to gaslight people that ‘hey, you see, new and original universes do not sell well, we constantly make reboots or force [brand] into irrelevant stories not because we want to, but because people ONLY buy that :)))))))’
And like? The alternative is if government was to fund the movies (kind of the case in my country). And that, of course, means heavy censorship and involving propaganda of the ideas that the government wants to spread, so yet again, movies cannot be a truly free form of art.
I do not really see any legit way to escape the loop of movies being very troubled as art, because people need money to make them. If investors pay for them - they’ll be garbage and constantly torment popular brands with whatever they think is cool these days instead of telling original and interesting stories, if government pays for them - they’ll be infected with propaganda and only “approved” ideas and stories will make it through.
The only at least somewhat optimistic way out I personally see is to drop the visual quality bar very low. Like... to come back to shitty cameras, environments made out of tinfoil and wallpaper (seeing this in Star Trek TOS), very shitty low polygon CGI... all that. Because it will cut the production costs a LOT but crappy visual quality will NOT be able to ruin the good story, interesting concepts and well-written characters that’s what. The worst crappy visuals will do is to create a lot of memes in the internet - and that is even GOOD because it can draw a lot of attention. Investment of simple rich guys that want to be even richer feels like lesser evil when it comes to the movies than government funding because of lacking censorship and propaganda; companies and individual studios can do whatever they want as long as it will bring STONKS! Art must be free in expression and what it wants to tell.
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But the visuals at this rate feel like a useless leech because people need to justify before the investors that the astronomical money they’ll give will pay off. And why they’re astronomical? Right, because they need the most realistic CGI and the coolest assets.
I just... I think most people can agree that ‘pretty picture’ is not only not everything there is, but also the lowest priority. People would, in fact, look at awful animation or crappy effects as long as they are being told exciting, meaningful, or simply fun story. Basically, what is making movies worse is the same shit that puts even us, simple visual artists and writers, into lasting creative block; once a masterpiece is created, it raises the bar to this level, so now everything else has to be not worse, preferably better, but it is not EVERY time a masterpiece can be created. If anything, it might be once in a lifetime deal.
TLDR; I think movies should return to looking crappy so the original, interesting, eccentric ideas do not scare the investors away with demanding too much money, because at least this way new stories will more likely see the light. And won’t have to cheat by just slapping names of a previously known brand over completely unique and new story that we’re all sick of. Visual quality is just the lowest priority, so if something to cut production costs it can only be this.
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