I’m sorry you don’t like comic book movies. I found them quite entertaining!
I understand what you are saying, but the premises baked into your conclusions would require me to shift my underlying views on art, cinema, and humanity, so I don’t find what you’re saying relatable or persuasive.
Seems quite wrong, as a peek at the most popular TV series would show.
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You may want to look into the background for virtually every 90s movie you listed lol you gonna get bashful 
Cinema IP has certainly evolved as technology and ancillary entertainment experiences have shifted. We have more explicit sequels, crossover properties, and intersectional media. Is that a bad thing? I think it’s awesome! I can understand why others hate it, but I simply don’t have the same perspective on the existential impact of those innovations, the obstacles they create to creating great art, or whether people are empowered to do so.
Even acknowledging the state of things for IP and mid tier budget movies, as you said, is the MCU the cause? That’s up for debate, but for me it’s a “debate” like when someone points out how many flat Earther friends agree with them. Just too far for me to meet them in the middle.
I’d never remove the MCU from the conversation, but from my POV inside the industry, the claims that started this dialogue are way too far from reality for me to give them breath.
Saying that just so we are careful if we shift the goal posts (my mom taught me that phrase yay) and suddenly we are “arguing” without realizing we are actually in agreement because we disagree on details but share the same underlying premises about art, cinema, and audiences. Do things suck and can we point to lots of what we believe to be moderating or causal variables? Absolutely. Is the MCU basically COVID for cinema? Well.
You see what I’m saying. I’m okay if we disagree. I will probs make a meme about it tho so choose your words carefully 
I still like to call humans what my long ago educational psychology professor referred to as “cognitive misers,” but the other side of us is just as powerful if not arguably more so. A lot of people can’t help it. They yearn for meaningful engagement, stimulation, and legacy payoffs. It’s arguably why we end up with so many addicts. They yearn so deeply for significance that only an illusion can help them taste it. But that’s also why we have so many awesome people in the world. They find their way and live life as fully as they can with each passing year. The obstacles they face to wholeness are an expression of an imperfect world, not imperfect people.
My views on this align with an article that just hit its ten year anniversary and catapulted the author from viral fame on Medium to a book deal and more.
Absolutely yes imo.
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Aren’t all the most popular TV shows sporting events?
That would fit the “simple and ephemeral pleasures” pretty well.
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I don’t think Sopranos and Breaking Bad or more recently Succession could be called unpopular or examples of TV avoiding human struggle.
Also, isn’t sport human struggle? Viewers enjoy, even seek, being emotionally involved in the contest.
I see your point, but I’d say sports fits the “friends and fast food” part of what NoMatterWho was talking about much more than a complex, engaging drama.
It’s very easy to just put sports on in the background and do other things simultaneously. Can’t really do that with Breaking Bad.
Ah then we are too far apart to ever agree but I will gaze upon you and your fellow Isolated Islanders from afar as I sit atop my intersectional throne in Everythingeros
I’m gonna give you a hot take here but you are understating your own intelligence and how that bottlenecks your ability to disengage. Lots of people can watch Breaking Bad and completely miss it.
What? Only one? Which one?
Well, Flintstones is an obvious IP cash-in, Clear and Present Danger and Interview are just cashing in on popular books. It seems like if you take the MCU away, Hollywood will find some other mass-market IP to market. Are any of these movies the kind that aren’t getting made anymore? I’m looking at this lineup and the movies of 2022, and I gotta say I like 2022 way more.
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I don’t think how some people consume something tells you much about the nature of the thing.
When I was young I accompanied a friend to a showing of a film version of a Wagner opera featuring puppets and lasting over four hours. I was very bored and spent much of the time reading a newspaper and doing the crossword, occasionally looking up if something interesting was happening, but my inability to connect with the serious art being performed says nothing about it.
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The final in the trilogy is my least favourite but in some ways most true. For that reason it turned a lot of people off.
You ever finally pay attention to a movie and go wait…wtf?
Russell Crowe asked Kevin Costner to hold his beer lol
Edward Lewis: People’s reactions to opera the first time they see it is very dramatic; they either love it or they hate it. If they love it, they will always love it. If they don’t, they may learn to appreciate it, but it will never become part of their soul.
Maybe you should have gone to see the same one as Tom Cruise. Is that the next innovation? I’d certainly go see a lot more opera if it included potentially real super spies jumping around the performance hall as they try to fulfill/prevent an assassination of a cast member.
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Speed !
(I’ve never seen “true lies” though, and I guess the lion king is pretty good, but zero desire to rewatch any of the others)
Speed is also the answer here, good mid budget action movies are definitely much more scarce now than 30 years ago.
Yeah same but this is only due to outliers TGM and A2 (batman also decent) but if you change the year to 2021 instead or look at the top 30 or 50 (didn’t do this to not clutter the thread but would be an even better illustration) it goes clearly to the 90s.
Also going to say “yes” on this and agree to disagree:) but it ultimately doesn’t matter that much to me bc I’m fine with mostly watching older releases (or non US movies!) and it would take me more than a lifetime to run out of good films to watch…
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I just watched it and think Babylon will take a Magnolia-like place in conventional wisdom. Some people will think it’s brilliant, others will hate it with a passion. I do definitely agree that the reviews are doing people a disservice because they make it sound like it’s not worth watching, while it definitely is.
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You need to watch True Lies. Speed is pound for pound the better action movie, but True Lies is perhaps the GOAT action comedy with the GOAT action movie star. Plus it’s Cameron, and Cameron don’t miss.
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