SilverWook said:
Mithrandir said:
The way I see it from this corner of the world, is Hollywood has declined because (don't take it personal here) the north-americans have culturally declined. Ofc, speaking in a general way
When you have someone to compare (culturally), you've got to tell out the deep differences you got with those ones you are being compared with. When you're lonely in the cultural run, you just don't have to prove you're better than the other, 'cause there's no other. Pretty much the same thing that happens when you have no competition in the market.... you're not forced to make good products since you're the only offer. Now immagine this in a even bigger sphere, the cultural one.
That's a point where the cold war was useful. American culture (and capitalism btw) had to show its best image to the world, as well as the soviets did (or intended to). And what's more, they had to convince people that their respective sides were the "good" ones, so the culture in some way manifested that. From 1990 to 2008 (before the 2008 crisis), with only one global superpower, everything's more "light" haven't you noticed? (music, cinema, fictional literature, society, the union's struggles were quieter and even the perspective on life, love, etc.) As if there was nothing to discuss anymore.
I just can't believe from here how is it that a cheesy, repeated to death in sitcoms story such as the hangover gets more press than the king's speech had (at least that's what north-american TV channels show here) when there was a time you used to make many excellent movies every year.
Ofc there still are excellent (I really mean excellent) american movies (and about TV series, well you're the fricking kings of it), like someone said up here Chris Nolan's movies are very good. The guy even managed to make of a comic (Batman TDK) a deep enough story about moral values, instead the plain good vs bad guy.
Another thing that I see is that hollywood has developed an excesive taste for war or fight, rarely seen years before. And in war movies things often are presented in a very light way, while in a good drama you actually get to make that catharsis with the characters or the situation. And that makes a movie or play good, we know it from Aristotle.
From the commercials or movie trailers that reach these shores, it's like everything that's thought to be good is instantely adectivized as "epic". But epic is stupid, epic feels like nothing, unless there's a good quote of drama in it. Unless you see and feel they're fighting for something you yourself would fight for; not for a country nor a flag, but for a moral value. Again, good epic movies are the ones that have deep stories, and since today "deep" is a weird word in storytelling... Even the PT suffers from this.
I think that Thirteen Days for instance is a deeper, and more epic movie from a certain point of view, than Troy. And it's far from being an actual superproduction.
Another epic movie that worked in part because it had a deep story? The Lord of The Rings. When was it written? 1953.
Besides there's always a lot of militarist people that are so in favor of killing people or invading just because "my country's better than yours" or the classic "we're the freedom" that if you expose in a screen that phrase of Tolkien:
"It was Sam's first view of a battle of Men against Men, and he did not like it much. He was glad that he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man's name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace-all in a flash of thought which was quickly driven from his mind"
Well, some people wouldn't agree with that, some others would see the flaw of their own simple, lineal thoughts on that paragraph and would reject the whole movie, arguing that it's "not entertaining" while inside they don't like it because loosing the "general", the "national" sense of war to a more particular, human, sense of war (involving every fallen personal story, interests and name, etc) would just be too hard.
Even Lucas could have used this perspective. Showing Anakin as a "great warrior", a great general of the clone wars, just to show it as Yoda said, was don't make one great
In the U.S., The King's Speech was impossible to escape hearing about, especially at Oscar time.
Plenty of movies showing the dark underbelly of the American dream were made during the Cold War. Whether they were shown overseas I have no idea.
Hollywood's decline has been pinned down to everything from the end of the studios system in the 50's, the popularity of television, to blaming Spielberg and Lucas for inventing the blockbuster. ;)
I said I was speaking in a general way. Cinema is both an art and a cultural industry. I was speaking about the industrial side, never said there hasn't ever been any Woody Allen or Michael Moore here or there...
"Plenty of movies showing the dark underbelly of the american dream were made during the Cold War."
This is still what I said; putting aside what the cultural industry was making; the situation of the Cold War per se made you think, or reflect about values, economy, etc, just because you had to "choose" a side. And that was reflected in some movies that showed the pros or cons of the western culture.
What I mean is, it doesn't matter whether the movies showed the dark underbelly of the american society or the best of american society. The fact is that some movies brought to consideration some aspects of society that today aren't so often questioned.
Before 1990 it was:
"USA does it like this. URSS does it like that. Why does USA do it like this, or why does URSS do it like that? We better? They better? Why? How?".
(It doesn't matter what personal answers you had to those questions, but I think everybody questioned that at least once during the Cold War. Just like padmé in EPIII (?))
The 90's and early 2000's it was:
"We all do it like this. No questions."
So it was rather weird to see a strong critic to society during those days; since western culture proved to be better than the other option; thus we all believed the dream everything was perfect. And stopped questioning (culturally) whether we were right or wrong; and that's the kind of lightness I see in cinema (as a cultural massive industry).
The lack of depth in characters in most of movies about good vs. evil