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I’d like to thank @[email protected] for posting this article from the L.A. Times over at [email protected]. A hot topic with some interesting (and less interesting) takes on the subject. This was going to be a mere cross-posting but, of course, you’re always going to get your mouth-breathing audience in any discussion regarding the—ugh—superhero genre, so I felt the need to distance myself from that.

Did you not see the name of this community?

While I might admit under pressure to some exaggeration on Prof. emeritus Scorsese’s part (it’s Martin Scorsese, for Buddha’s sake!), he’s certainly not wrong. One thing that few have understood, like Scorsese has, is that while cinema has always had cookie-cutter formulas and copycat movies, since the age of the Blockbuster and especially in this age of 3D, AI and algorithms it’s all been to reduced to formula. Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, Save The Cat scriptwriting, Seven Basic Plots, etc. It’s just a matter of choosing what color gimpsuit the test audience preferred. Scorsese, when he was making The King of Comedy or New York, New York couldn’t forsee the lowest common denominator going so low or so common.

I must mention the comment by @[email protected] regarding Scorsese’s reference to Christopher Nolan. Just in case anyone here can’t see it, there is a world of difference between [insert any MCU/DCU/SMU movie] and Nolan’s Batman trilogy. Especially with the second entry, The Dark Knight, Nolan elevates the entire genre because Nolan knows what he’s doing: he made movies about a comic book character, the others make comic-book movies. Nolan’s work is cinematic. The others’ are just big, dare I say, hulking. There’s just no comparison. It’s the difference between Finnegans Wake and Finnegan’s corner bar.

@[email protected] commented…

Sure, the Marvel movies pull in more money than other movies, but the money makers are usually trash. Marvel is like the McDonald’s of movies. It’s going to pull in way more money than a fine dining establishment, but not because it’s good, because it’s the garbage that the public will take out their wallet for. There is space in the market for both of these things.

For the most part we’re on the same page but there isn’t space for both, really. Masked Gimpsuit IV: The Revenge of The Attack of The Revenge is always going to push any smaller (independant) release off cinema screens and (maybe) on to one of the streaming services, if not push them right out of production.

Dopamine hits used to have different flavors. Marketing has discovered dopamine doesn’t even have to have a flavor, just get the drip timing right. God is in the details and the details have become flamingos.

  • King Mongoose@lemmy.filmOPMEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    If your end goal is to make a tight knit drama full of people in rooms talking to each other, well, The Godfather is over there ->

    FTFY. IIRC (so many acronyms) your sentence above, whether you knew it or not, is almost verbatim Coppola discussing his The Godfather.

    I don’t think Scorsese, of all people, forgets movie history. I think someone who made a film about Méliès being forgotten in his own time isn’t someone who easily forgets the technological advances you’ve mentioned (you’ve forgotten sound 😝).

    To do THAT, I NEED a spectacle. I need to see something that demands I see it right away, in a theatrical environment. It needs to be a theme park ride.

    Here’s where we part company. First Man wasn’t a “theme park ride” and yet needs to be seen on “the big screen.” Eraserhead, while potent even on a smaller screen, needs to be seen on “the big screen.” 2001: A Space Odyssey. D.E. Pennebaker’s Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars. Blazing Saddles. Lawrence of Arabia. Wouldn’t you agree? Sure, I’ll admit I’m cherry-picking but there are also many others I’m forgetting about and none of them are formulaic, soulless examples of moviemaking calculated just to press the dopamine drip button.

    One of these days, we’ll get into Cameron’s Avatar. Another time, not today.

    I realise technology plays an enormous role in cinema. It drives cinema. But I don’t understand why you (and the general moviegoing public) insist on the junk food being served for twenty years now and the bigger the portions the better. Movies need to be grand (even when they’re small), not merely big. It’s still the same ham sandwich every time. Adding more and more mustard doesn’t make it better nor different. FRANCHISE MOVIES ARE LIKE ALWAYS TYPING EVERYTHING IN CAPS. AND YOU CAN’T TYPE ANY BIGGER THAN THIS.

    Always a pleasure, Dr Lund! 🤝