I can only tell if men are friends if they share a bicep-flexed hand clasp.

Go back, Sam! I’m going to Mordor alone.
Of course you are. And I’m coming with you!

It always makes me tear up. Fantastic films.

Conversely, the worst film I’ve seen in recent years must be the third(?) fantastic beasts film. I still have no clue what actually happened or what it was trying to tell. It was such a jumbled mess, and them changing out the actor of the main villain for the third time didn’t help much.

Yeah, if made in last 10 years, they might have turned Aragorn into some kind of Conan the Barbarian ripoff. Not necessarily, for example, RDJ’s Iron Man has a lot of complex emotions and nice arc. But, they could. I mean, look at Galadriel in Rings of Power.

I feel like Dune was a good outlier to this. It’s the only movie I’ve seen in theater in the last few years and I really enjoyed not having everything explained to me

One thing I’ve noticed with newer movies is they do a lot more “tell, don’t show” than old movies.

Main character seeing old friend: Well if it isn’t my old friend Daniel, we used to roam these streets as kids, I used to have dinner at your house every day, you were like my brother, I would have done anything for you, I haven’t seen you since our other old friend Jake died mysteriously, remember when we used to play videogames all night and made that life long pact that if “HE” returns we will do what it takes to send him back to the world where he emerged from when we were kids and lived right next door to each other, our mothers were best friends until the incident but they never stopped us from being life long best friends forever, we used to play in the streets all night, me you Daniel and Chris, the rat Pac they called us, best friends for life.

they do a lot more “tell, don’t show” than old movies

Geez the Netflix Avatar adaptation (a show, not movie, but still) was so bad for this. Despite actually having more runtime and fewer distinct plot points (due to the removal of and consolidation of different side-plots) than the cartoon it was based on, it spent less time showing us why characters think and feel how they do, and straight-up told us every single thing.

Not to lump everything into one pile, but there’s definitely some problems with movie planning nowadays.

That’s what is pointed out in all those “this movie production literally sacrificed ten VFX studios on a mayan altar” documentaries - some of new directors don’t plan shots ahead, require seeing the result and then re-doing it ad nauseam, and as a result waste WAY more vfx team effort and don’t get good scenes.

Setting up visual storytelling and using good cinematography is hard - which is why to a lot of people the 3D movies like Spiderverse/Last Wish/Nimona stand out so much, you kinda have to plan ahead for a 3D movie, and even if you don’t modifying a scene is easier (if you do it early enough in production).

I’d imagine that it’s similar for writing - large monologues like that are probably the outcome of the writing team needing to put all they mean to onto the paper. Maybe also result of focus-testing being passed down directly to writing staff?

I don’t know, I’m just a random guy on the internet but those are my two cents.

Part of this is the phone addicted culture. A lot of people listen at best to movies and TV, so they make everything accessible to that audience.

Another related problem is the over reliance on focus groups. The thoughts and opinions of people in LA/NYC/Chicago that are free at 10am on a random Tuesday aren’t representative samples of the current American. It’s even worse as movies move to target the global audience.

This is my issue with a lot of indie horror games and visual novels. (Whatever manlybadasshero plays). There’s just unnecessary details (you open the door). That makes me go this is just shit.

The expressions between the 2 actors in this scene are so great and genuine too…that helps a lot.

One thing I’ve noticed with newer movies is they do a lot more “tell, don’t show” than old movies.

The writing sucks which is why movies seem like stream of consciousness time wasters with no stakes, fake emotions and CGI explosions. When the writers went on a strike in Hollywood I actually laughed. ChatGPT can write better scripts than what Hollywood has been churning out lately.

It really does feel like movies are dumbing down.

I think this is a combination of armchair directors in the boardroom trying to actualize their market research and writers actually being less smart and creative. It would explain why everything is a prequel, sequel, soft reboot, universe expansion or some other vehicle for recycled IP.

I feel like they make movies to appease the hot take internet culture. If a few people don’t understand how a guy with magic powers in a room full of cloning tanks could be brought back from the dead, you end up with endless “Somehow Palpatine returned” memes and it becomes a whole thing. So they’ve compensated (maybe over-compensated) and make sure every detail is explained fully to avoid that kind of reaction. They also have to make sure they make jokes about something being corny before people on the internet make the lame jokes.

Rise of Skywalker was probably the last popcorn movie where there was a lot of “show don’t tell” going on and pretty much all of the commentary about it on the internet indicates people think it’s wrong to do that. To be sure there were other problems with that movie, but people got very fixated on criticizing the decision made to not over-explain.

Somehow… movies have to explain every little detail now.

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Just for the first one, right? I remember Ian Mckellen had a breakdown on set because he was sitting in front of the table at Bag End with nothing around him but green screen and was struggling without any other actors.

Idk about “ample budget”. I was watching the director’s commentary on the Two Towers and he mentions one week where the studio was trying to decide whether to green light money for the film and Peter Jackson knew that he had nothing to say that would convince them, in fact he thought it would dissuade them because they wouldn’t see the benefit on the way he was spending the money. So he went out to a remote location to do the filming for several days intentionally to avoid their phone calls lol. I think that was when they were filming the battle for Helm’s Deep. Apparently it worked because after he had the footage from that week to show them, they decided it was good enough to justify the price.

Is a movie that came out 23 years ago still modern?

What do you mean? Of course it isn’t a modern movie, it was filmed during the Third Age.

I mean it was filmed 25 years ago, I guess it depends on your definition of ‘modern’

To me, modern says more about the techniques and methods used. In that respect, not much has changed even though 25 years has passed. Even stylistically it is more similar to a current film than one filmed 25 years before its release, i.e. mid 1970s. As someone else said, contemporary is a better word for describing its age than modern.

Eh, I think it’s more related to survivorship bias of the movies we remember. Most movies from decades ago were utter trash then too, we mostly remember the good ones while most of the rubbish fades away and is forgotten.

This is an answer I’m not seeing here enough. The score for LotR just FORCES you to feel the feelings. Don’t wanna be happy? Too bad, we’re in the Shire bitch.

I really liked the part where he went

Sir Ian, Sir Ian, Sir Ian, Sir Ia… YOU SHALL NOT PASS! Sir Ian, Sir Ian, Sir Ian

Really spoke to me on an emotional level, you know?

Sir Ian Mckellen is great, I love that him and Patrick Stewart and good friends as well.

That’s also why it feels like the older you are the faster time passes. Life gets monotonous for you so all the days just blend in together and time feels like it’s flying. You’ve seen a lot you’ve done a lot and stuff just sorta stops being as impressive as it was when you were a child.