What do you feel is the biggest problem with modern entertainment

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I feel like I've heard the movie attention span thing before as well, and it was measured in time between cuts. That was probably before the digital camera/editing era*, which probably would have invalidated any comparison from before and after just due to ease of adding cuts.


*: I also do not have a source of something I think I heard 20 years ago.



I think it's pretty tough to measure, yeah. 90 minutes of Terrance Malick can strain a teenager's attention span a lot more than 150 of the Avengers. I love me some hard data but I'm skeptical any can really exist on this point.

"Can't handle" isn't how I'd put it, anyway, both because that makes us want to think about individuals (when this is, if true, an aggregate trend) and because it implies inability rather than disinterest. "Can't" implies more than "Won't" which implies more than "Doesn't."
But then what are we actually talking about here as a problem of modern entertainment? I was responding specifically to a comment that said "good luck getting [the TikTok youth] to sit still for a main feature".

I agree that big budget movies these days are bigger and louder, but I disagree that this change is driven by the attention spans of children or what kids are willing to engage with. I think it might be driven by cynical assumptions about their attention spans. Kids can, will, and do focus on what engages them, and that's not always explosions and bright colors and mile-a-minute dialogue.

It's like, give most kids a candy bar and they will be happy. A healthy sandwich might seem like more of a risk in comparison. So I'm not surprised that the default is to go with the junk food approach. (And that junk food approach seems to pull in plenty of adults as well).

Like you say, this is hard to measure.



Whoa now. I don't know how much John McClane cares about you publicly sharing any watersports escapades you may have had.



.....I agree that big budget movies these days are bigger and louder, but I disagree that this change is driven by the attention spans of children or what kids are willing to engage with. I think it might be driven by cynical assumptions about their attention spans. Kids can, will, and do focus on what engages them, and that's not always explosions and bright colors and mile-a-minute dialogue.....
I would guess that part of the impetus to have bigger and louder is to make a theater be a desirable option to get the full effect. Think of trying to watch the LOTR trilogy on a phone. There has to be some motivation to get butts into theater seats and spectacle seems to be one answer.

What comes to mind was last week's Jurassic World Dominion viewing....in our local theater with the huge sound system and big screen. While the movie (IMO) was awful, what it did have was size, it's best on the big screen. I'd even guess that what I didn't like about it, the way it seemed so disjointed and quick to cut to a different scene, was in part a sop to an audience with a 30 second attention span. Just keep cutting to a different dinosaur.



I would guess that part of the impetus to have bigger and louder is to make a theater be a desirable option to get the full effect. Think of trying to watch the LOTR trilogy on a phone. There has to be some motivation to get butts into theater seats and spectacle seems to be one answer.
Undoubtedly.

But spectacle has been a draw for decades. I guess it depends on what you consider "modern entertainment".

I've actually had a hard time with many of the supposedly "attention grabbing" films. Fights in Marvel movies last for like 15-20 minutes. It's exhausting. The new Thor movie might be the first Marvel film to get me into a theater since Guardians of the Galaxy.



Undoubtedly.

But spectacle has been a draw for decades. I guess it depends on what you consider "modern entertainment".

I've actually had a hard time with many of the supposedly "attention grabbing" films. Fights in Marvel movies last for like 15-20 minutes. It's exhausting. The new Thor movie might be the first Marvel film to get me into a theater since Guardians of the Galaxy.
"Modern entertainment" - For sure, spectacle has been a big reason for seeing movies since the beginning, but it still is, right up to this moment. Looking at the schedule for my local theater, The Senator, an old school 900 seat, giant screen theater, it's Doctor Strange, Top Gun and Jurassic Park, all of which are some sort of spectacle.

I spend a lot of time in these movies giving myself a headache by rolling my eyes and groaning so much.



Im gonna speak about movies, and music, it just doesn t have that authentic feel, the replayability is just not there, for example i could watch Speed over 100 times and still like it and i could never watch the new star wars films more than once.....it s just not authentic, and the editing has to do with it aswell
Same thing with music, i could easily listen to Modern talking-my heart my soul as many times as it can be but i could not listen to r& b music of today more than once



The whole notion of spectacle isn't really the issue either. It's how the spectacle is rendered. One of the revelations about a movie like the sequel to The Raid, was how it made clear you can give an audience exactly what it wants, but it can be done in a way that inspires awe. The way that Spielberg could do it. The way the Shaw Brothers could do it. The way James Cameron can do it. There can be pure art in pure action. In the right hands, at least. And it's these kind of hands that are seemingly on short supply these days. Action is now mostly rendered in a completely functionary way. Everything is designed on a filmmaking level to make the actual filmmaking invisible. It is just a tool to convey the kicks and punches as cleanly as possible. To make sure the audience can follow what is happening. It has no insight, no personality, no art. And it's this very specific kind of spectacle which I think has very little value.



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Well whenever I ask people why movie stories aren't as risky today as they used to be, I keep being told because filmmakers spend a lot more on them compared to before. But if that's the case and there's too much money at stake can't they just spend less money on a movie if anyone to take less risk but have a riskier story?



Well whenever I ask people why movie stories aren't as risky today as they used to be, I keep being told because filmmakers spend a lot more on them compared to before. But if that's the case and there's too much money at stake can't they just spend less money on a movie if anyone to take less risk but have a riskier story?
Some people do. I’m very much a Thatcherite capitalist at heart, as in, things have to be profitable etc., but some of my favourite films were made by Moorhead & Benson on a shoestring budget. In fact I love all of their films in one way or another and in a sense, no “modern” entertainment connects with me more than their stuff does. So, yeah, there might just be something to that idea, actually.

But also, you’re asking people to resign themselves to making less money. Not gonna happen.



Well whenever I ask people why movie stories aren't as risky today as they used to be, I keep being told because filmmakers spend a lot more on them compared to before. But if that's the case and there's too much money at stake can't they just spend less money on a movie if anyone to take less risk but have a riskier story?
Some do (I'm thinking about Robert Eggers here) but part of what drives bigness is that, ultimately most movies are an investment strategy. A bunch of rich guys put up money for a movie, expecting to get back more millions in return. The people behind the scenes on all this have expectations about how much they will make in theaters, streaming, physical media, etc, and it's the film's writers, directors, etc, who need to make that happen. Plenty of times, I recall reading stories written on a Monday, pronouncing a movie that hit the theaters on Friday to be a failure because it didn't make enough millions in the first weekend. The financial wizards assume that, based on the first showing on Friday, every subsequent day and weekend and DVD sales, etc, will all follow the pattern. Investors are jumping out of high rise windows. Investors don't give a crap about quality or plot or anything else, especially political correctness. It's just a gamble for them....who will buy stuff.

Once you're in that mode of thinking, all of the demographics come into play, whether this group or that will relate to character A or B and whether the movie covers enough demographic slots to, again, make lots of money.

In my socialist paradise, however, none of this will happen. Movies will be funded by The People, only quality will count, and crew and cast will be selected, based solely on merit. Unfortunately, I don't know exactly when that will happen and my judgement on quality and merit has been a bit off lately.



some of my favourite films were made by Moorhead & Benson on a shoestring budget.
I’ve never heard of them.
__________________
I’m here only on Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays. That’s why I’m here now.



In my socialist paradise, however, none of this will happen. Movies will be funded by The People, only quality will count, and crew and cast will be selected, based solely on merit. Unfortunately, I don't know exactly when that will happen and my judgement on quality and merit has been a bit off lately.
Ha. I suppose that’s not unreasonable. The Soviet filmmaking tradition is supposedly very acclaimed, and no one had ever made any money from anything in that paradise, so here’s one example of it working, I guess. That wasn’t a socialist setting, of course, but a communist one, heh.

Personally, I have for years been battling a half-philosophical, half-political reluctance to engage with Soviet art/entertainment. Still getting there. I just don’t bloody like it, open-mindedness be damned. And that makes me wonder if that isn’t because I might like just a sprinkle of commercial consideration in my entertainment. Not sure.



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Some do (I'm thinking about Robert Eggers here) but part of what drives bigness is that, ultimately most movies are an investment strategy. A bunch of rich guys put up money for a movie, expecting to get back more millions in return. The people behind the scenes on all this have expectations about how much they will make in theaters, streaming, physical media, etc, and it's the film's writers, directors, etc, who need to make that happen. Plenty of times, I recall reading stories written on a Monday, pronouncing a movie that hit the theaters on Friday to be a failure because it didn't make enough millions in the first weekend. The financial wizards assume that, based on the first showing on Friday, every subsequent day and weekend and DVD sales, etc, will all follow the pattern. Investors are jumping out of high rise windows. Investors don't give a crap about quality or plot or anything else, especially political correctness. It's just a gamble for them....who will buy stuff.

Once you're in that mode of thinking, all of the demographics come into play, whether this group or that will relate to character A or B and whether the movie covers enough demographic slots to, again, make lots of money.

In my socialist paradise, however, none of this will happen. Movies will be funded by The People, only quality will count, and crew and cast will be selected, based solely on merit. Unfortunately, I don't know exactly when that will happen and my judgement on quality and merit has been a bit off lately.
But if this is the case, and they want to make safer movies in order to make more money, did something happen with the US and worldwide audience to cause a shift to want safer movies nowadays compared to before?



But if this is the case, and they want to make safer movies in order to make more money, did something happen with the US and worldwide audience to cause a shift to want safer movies nowadays compared to before?
It's always been that way, at least since the 1930's. Censorship, industry standards, ratings all had the same function. As I recall, for several decades, if a male actor was on the same bed as a female, he had to be fully clothed and have one foot on the floor, in order to make it clear that there was no sex happening there, even though the reason for the scene was to imply that sex was happening there. Blood wasn't shown, and criminals always had to be seen getting caught. It's always been about not scaring away an audience with "traditional values".



Movie Forums Squirrel Jumper
It's always been that way, at least since the 1930's. Censorship, industry standards, ratings all had the same function. As I recall, for several decades, if a male actor was on the same bed as a female, he had to be fully clothed and have one foot on the floor, in order to make it clear that there was no sex happening there, even though the reason for the scene was to imply that sex was happening there. Blood wasn't shown, and criminals always had to be seen getting caught. It's always been about not scaring away an audience with "traditional values".

But it seems that older movies are more riskier still. For example, movies like Fight Club, or Taxi Driver wouldn't be made in today's Hollywood, so isn't Hollywood safer now therefore?



But it seems that older movies are more riskier still. For example, movies like Fight Club, or Taxi Driver wouldn't be made in today's Hollywood, so isn't Hollywood safer now therefore?
Isn't Joker a lot like Taxi Driver in it's overall theme and main characters actions.