Largely feels the same good-to-bad ratio as in the past, to me. This is all subjective, of course.
If you go back x amount of years, pretty sure the feeling was the same then. The years have a way of filtering out garbage, which down the road gives the impression that the past was superior to the present.
Outside factors, such as the covid lockdown, the writer's strike, cultural agendas, etc. definitely impacted the overall output, but I think the percentage of garbage to sift through is still about the same.
I agree and just to expand on that, let’s look at what really changed. The writer’s guild strike did impact cinema a lot, but this is only one small reason compared to the bigger picture of the industry changing as a whole.
It’s really not the same because society is no longer the same. Overall, American values have shifted from the 80’s and the 90’s where a lot of really good movies were based off American ideals. In that, I mean that society as a whole now spends more time absorbing entertainment through televisions and through phones rather than through real life experiences, which is where stories are conceived and lessons are learned which are then shared through story telling.
But that’s just one of the elements and one of the reasons that things have changed. Not only are movies based on different ideals, such as different points of view, different levels of skill in storytelling but the way movies are produced and shared has changed as well.
Netflix also had a huge impact on American television because instead of a major studio like Weinstein Corporation, which actually went bankrupt following the arrest of Harvey Weinstein, so that major studio no longer even exists, but also, nowadays a lot of movies are being produced by these streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon.
The biggest factor is that social media had a huge impact on human beings in general, Netflix and Amazon have shifted to in house production of their movies, and Tik Tok changing the entire dynamics of the entertainment and music industry. Tik Tok actually reshaped the way singers wrote their music which made music worse, and even more artificial.
That also is coupled with the fact that social media made it easier for the average person to become somewhat well known on the platform and so these people who would have likely otherwise pursued careers in entertainment are now (or were, following the ban) on Tik Tok making money. This actually changed the entire dynamic of the music industry and the way music is made as well as the way celebrities and talent are found and cultivated in America.
Yes, the writer’s guild did have a huge impact but also shifting away from DVDs and Blu Ray changed a lot too, you will hear actors mention how streaming services basically killed cinema. Cultural shifts and our whole society shifting to the internet also changed things.
I would also argue that the skillful raconteurs of the 20th century were skilled because they weren’t too busy absorbing brainrot on Tik Tok or Instagram.
This post was edited by NoCap on Feb 6 2025 12:53am