Seems like the teeming masses are making your argument for you - no need to leave.
How has the revenue stream changed with the demise of video rentals? I mean, with per-movie rentals it was pretty easy to see how much money a movie made from rentals and then hide it from the creatures through shady accounting. Seems that stream has dried up with streaming, making it harder for small budget movies to make money down the road.
My main problem with this take is that weāve had some outstanding movies made over the past two decades even with Marvel churning out movies, and I think itās not persuasive to say weād have even more if Marvel hadnāt been around. When the MCU finally dries up, Hollywood will just find another genre of popcorn action movies to produce.
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This is exactly the argument that I would make. New Hollywood was more of a temporary phase of American filmmaking between studios running things and media conglomerate corporations running things. It wasnāt a movement destined for financial success in our increasingly corporate landscape that has become more dependent on movies that appeal internationally.
Iām just not persuaded. There are so many good movies coming out every year. Are they given the same expansive release as Endgame? Well no, but thatās not a comic book movieās fault. Thatās just late stage capitalism.
Thatās an interesting point I hadnāt considered.
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I predict post apocalyptic movies are going to gain more traction in the next few years.
I mean, Iād say itās far easier to account for how many times a given movie is streamed even compared to how many times a tape or DVD is rented given that the data for this are inherently digital. But itās arguably harder to say how much a given stream is worth.
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It wasnāt just new hollywood. It was the 50 years before that too. Way more people went to the movies the 30s and 40s than do today.
When there was substantially less competition from TV, video games, watching movies on your own time in the comfort of your own home, YouTube, TikTok, and other forms of entertainment. This is hardly the fault of blockbusters.
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And then television happened. Old Hollywood pushed the spectacle of historical epics and musicals that people didnāt want to see anymore. The Hays Code fell apart and we got the MPAA rating system that aligned more with the New Hollywood directors creating more of the movies that Baby Boomers wanted to see.
The shift in the early 80s that accompanied the end of New Hollywood coincided with the creation of the PG-13 rating as a target that was edgier than PG but not R-rated and the start of home video as a market.
Itās not merely a marketing ploy, there are just too many similarities for OBAA to be anything other than heavily influenced by Star Wars. If it was any more obvious they would get sued. The French 75 is the Rebel Alliance, US govt is the Empire. The ICE agents are stormtroopers. Lockjaw takes the role of a menacing hunter like Vader. The scene where they break down the door of Leoās cabin is almost exactly like the scene where the storm troopers first board the rebel frigate. Benecio del Toroās character is basically Obi-wan/Yoda. The hooded nuns are like jedi. They give out communication devices shaped exactly like lightsabers. Sean Penn has a dramatic āNo, Iā am your fatherā moment. The Native American character undergoes a switching of sides like Vader in RotJ. The car chase scenes at the end are filmed like xwing/tie fighter battles. Filmed partially in southwest USA desert.
I mean you could say PTA is deliberately trying to produce a more pop-culture film here, but heās doing that in adopting the core structure of the Star Wars plot, character, and pacing, not the bells and whistles part (spaceships and aliens). So yeah, the under-appreciated aspects of Star Wars were utilized here to make a legit best picture winner and is one of the reasons why I think Star Wars is deserving of the highest placement on any list.
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Way more people rolled hoops down the sidewalk with sticks, too.
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True story and Star Wars is that movie for many many people. I was more the Spielberg side but didnāt start getting interested in the industry as a career til freshman year in college when I became more exposed to crafts within it (first specific interest was film editing). Going into college my plan was to be on the radio. Things shifted quickly as I learned more. It wasnāt long after I knew my city choices were NY or LA, which meant LA to me. I spent two years thinking of it as the promised land with no option of not liking it, despite me not really liking it there visiting in middle school and freshman year in high school (outside of Miceliās).
Once I entered the industry, I was pushed into sound because of my specific award-winning audio background in college. I had such an atrocious internship at a major recording studio when I wanted to become a music engineer/producer that I said Iād never work in that industry full-time. I tried to get into post audio right out of college somewhere but was told they had no spots to get me into the pipeline for that.
Thought I went into my first company as a video apprentice but was made to be an audio apprentice. On the first day I sat with her, when the mixer was working on an infomercial I knew that job was exactly what I wanted to do.
Less than 3 years after my interview at the post house that couldnāt find a spot for me, they were looking for a night mixer. Iād been a mixer for 2 years at this point, having done a lot of stuff, even being the only mixer at a small very busy post house. The guy I interviewed with remembered me and said he wasnāt letting me get away again.
He said the guy who had been hired in front of me back then had just become an assistant while I was now interviewing for the mixer job and Iād already been mixing for two years. That was how I became the youngest mixer in the history of that major post-production company at age 25. I was, in fact, 3 years younger than the youngest assistant and possibly 10-15 years younger than the youngest mixer.
I wasnāt held to either of the facilities at first, but the main facility got wind of some unsupervised work I did on a Friday night in my first week of work with very little training in their facility and tried to poach me from the guy who hired me. Less than two weeks in to my 90 day freelance probation I was put on staff. About 4 months later, I was promoted to day shift and only mixer at the satellite facility. This was all by the age of 25.
No one really knows what their path will be in the industry but some movie or director almost universally inspired them to be in it. For most people who came up from the 70s to 90s it was Star Wars. I donāt know what it is for people getting into the biz now. For people a bit younger like Coogler, I just get the sense he had a voracious appetite for all movies growing up. A lot of the younger generation might be inspired by someone like Tarantino but there arenāt really a lot of directors doing Tarantino type stuff, so it doesnāt really seem like it.
If theyād been around in a substantial manner when I was in my learning about movies phase in college, I likely would have been heavily influenced by the Coen Brothers. Most of their movies that had been out were too violent for me then, but I just loved how they did everything in the movies I could watch by them (Raising Arizona and Hudsucker Proxy).
Who or what are the last generation of filmmakersā inspirations? Does anyone know?
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Absolutely riveting, the AI bots canāt come soon enough
Itās also going to Epstein island and partying
That was really not Einsteinās thing.