Takashi Shudo's last blog post is basically him telling kids to not become an anime writer; he said there wasn't any money in it anymore. That was over ten years ago.
The mad thing about the manga/anime industry is that they can sell many issues have animations of their works and have merch and essentially have a single manga be a franchise YET virtually everyone involved is overworked and underpaid
Even before all the political crap, they stopped caring about story to push "pretty" cgi crapfests for a while now. The success of stuff like bayformers and F&F back in the day show that.
I haven't watched a single film or TV show made after 2015 (which in itself was an arbitrary cut off date where I could no longer tolerate even trying to watch anything). Talking to friends who try to suffer through post-2015 effluent, & seeing trailers or reviews, etc., I firmly believe the 2015-Rule is undefeated.
When people ask me what new movies I like, I used to say SICARIO and NIGHTCRAWLER... and now I realize that they're both about a decade old already. Yeah 2015 was the last year of decent cinema, and even back then it was mostly pretty bad.
This lines up with me too I've watched almost nothing new from Hollywood since 2015-16 forward. Joker was exception and there are a few others. When I have tried a new show or movie it always reaches a point where they push "the message". That's when I turn it off.
It’s not just Hollywood, it’s also comics & games, it’s all gone to the dogs. I rely solely on the Japanese with manga & anime for all my entertainment.
People don't want to make decisions anymore. Everyone talks about loving digital media for its convenience, but I think secretly it's popular because it takes away the need to make decisions. Game Pass is ultra-popular because you don't need to decide which game to play, you just play what everyone else is already playing. Audiobooks are popular because you don't need to pick a book, you can just read what everyone else is already reading. Streaming services are the same way. Knowing this, I'd say the quality of the writing only ever really mattered to convince normies that the medium was valid. Once movies became mainstream, quality stopped mattering. Once games became socially acceptable, quality stopped mattering. Once audiobooks became commonplace for your coworkers to be listening to instead of hearing what you're saying to them, quality stopped mattering. Ironically, books never *really* became mainstream. They almost did, but the medium fell off a cliff when people realized they would always have to be discerning consumers in that realm.
It’s about high return of investment vs a breakout story. Profitability vs originality. They don’t want to take risks anymore and would rather go with assembly line products instead of advancing the art form. Advancing the art form enriches the medium but most likely keeps you poor.
I should clarify that I think there are lots of filmmakers who would like to enrich the art form but don't get exposure when they make a movie or simply can't get funded these days. I'm sure there are competent writers but we don't see them in the big things.
A few thoughts: 1. Spec scripts have pretty much died in Hollywood. There's a lot more writing on assignment (for bigger projects, and TV of course), which means less passion for projects. 2. Another element could be that there's been more emphasis on the "writer-director" recently, as opposed to separate writers and directors. A lot of the times this is great , but there are a lot of big directors that benefit from separate writers (though they don't want them and have the power to turn them down). From my experience talking to people in the industry, producers like working with writer-directors. Pretty sure it's because it makes their lives easier. 3. A lot of the best movies of the last century were based on best-selling novels, and since best-seller lists are topped with poor quality and political material, Hollywood has had less to draw from. Plus, movie producers are almost certainly less literate than they were fifty years ago. 4. The money is a big thing. Lots of Hollywood writers are nepo babies or at least come from rich families that support them while starting out (or well into their carriers).
I disagree that it isn't essential to success, the studios just THINK that it isn't essential to success and they have suits with graphs that tell them to focus on the wrong factors. We can all imagine how many more billions of dollars Disney/Lucasfilm could be making if they had written good movies. Marvel has tanked since Endgame because everything is bad. Merch, toys, games, theme parks, comics are all drastically hurt because these franchises have all been ruined. They can blame streaming, ticket sales, burnout etc but it's all due to bad writing (and planning) and lack of new well written IP.
@@batman5224 that’s my point. Their asses are NOT in seats univerally. They are just relatively higher for mainstream franchises than unknown IPs, but almost everything that is greenlit is bad. My point it could be like it used to be and they would fill seats if there was good storytelling.
@@BaazarStudios They still make billions of dollars. Of course, movies don’t make precisely what they used to because of streaming, but if they weren’t making money, studios wouldn’t make them. The sequel trilogy grossed an insane amount of money, despite its lack of quality.
The problem is there is a big lag in this form of monetary feedback. It takes a lot of stinkers for people to loose interest in a franchise they have a lot of love and nostalgia for, especially as all the "hate watches" count as views. I found Rings of Power worked as a comedy I was excited to see how stupid the writing could be in the next episode. Solo was not the lowest grossing SW movie because it was the worst, but because it followed the worst. Streamers are a lot less discriminating also as they they are not paying individually for a film.
I went to see John Wick 3 and then swore to never go to see an American movie again. Then I went to see Dune 2 and swore the same. And then I went to see Deadpool 3 and I'm thinking, Is this the greatest work of art Hollywood has to offer? I'm never going to go see another American movie. Never. Ever. Again!
Maybe you would have had better luck if you stuck to Tom Cruise movies. With the exception of "The Mummy" (2017), his movies tend to be significantly better than most others that come out today.
@@hardwickebenthow Not really imo. He is really into franchises like MI. That scene with the female cop trying to arrest Tom when he was undercover in MI Fallout was lame. 24 with Kiefer Sutherland had so much more balls.
@@grahf6807 "He is really into franchises like MI." True, but I don't see this as a problem as long as they continue to be good. In my opinion, starting with "Mission: Impossible III" each movie in the series has been better than the one before it, except for the latest one (which I consider a step down compared to the previous two, although it's the most interesting movie of the franchise from an intellectual angle due to its religious symbolism and deliberate Lord of the Rings parallels). "That scene with the female cop trying to arrest Tom when he was undercover in MI Fallout was lame." Ironically, I referenced that scene about a month ago in a comment on an Isaac Young Substack article, but in the exact opposite context: I used it as a positive example. Isaac Young's article was about how very little of modern entertainment uses classic hero archetypes anymore, instead using reluctant heroes, antiheroes, etc. He used the John Carter movie as an example (as the movie took a classic hero and turned him into a flawed reluctant hero). I wrote a comment mentioning (among other things) that the most prominent recent example of a classic hero I could think of was the MCU's Captain America, and the second-most prominent was Ethan Hunt. I used that very scene (with the French policewoman) as an example of how Ethan Hunt is depicted as a classic hero. Personally, that scene is one of my favorite scenes of the movie, because of how it depicts Hunt's unwillingness to make moral compromises even when it puts him and his mission at risk. In recent years, most movies have increasingly depicted flawed heroes, all-out antiheroes, or worse (John Wick is really just a villain killing worse villains, for example), so I've come to crave stories about "boy-scout" type heroes even more than I already did, and I've always had a special fondness for those types (Doc Savage, the Lone Ranger, Superman, Captain America, etc). "24 with Kiefer Sutherland had so much more balls." I watched a few seasons of "24" back in the day but lost interest. It's been so long that I don't remember much about it, but I seem to recall it getting into neocon propaganda territory as it went on.
It seems to me that good writing, for a Hollywood movie especially, is SO inexpensive in the grand scheme of things. It requires only time and attention, really -- NOT much money. Do a few drafts, have a few people do a pass, reward successful writers with more money, sure, but also more WRITING. No one bothers anymore and it seems to be mostly attributable to laziness and not the bottom line...it's sad.
I think another main reason is because of how cultural it all is and how much it's about keeping up with the jones kind of thing. This is especially prevalent among alot of friend groups where people want to fit in and have something to talk about and be friends over. I think it's also similar in a way where some people will play a game they find terrible on their own, but with a friend it's at least tolerable and can even be enjoyable itself that way when it's with a friend. I think that's why it's still so prevalent, because everyone's caught up on that. It's not just being afraid of trying new things. It's wanting to keep up and fit in.
@@DVSPress Yep. And I was always the odd one out even with my not so close friends. I'd refuse to watch garbage SOL anime that was nothing but boring highschool melodrama, I'd refuse to play Call of Duty which was nothing but a snore fest, but they all hated Halo or never played it much.
You forgot to mention movies are made for the world market now. Plots, dialogue and story are boiled down to a 2nd grade level with the whole thing "get the MacGuffin, stop the world ending blue skylight count down" .
Being in a "fandom" conditions people to be mindless product consumers, but anti-fandoms are also a problem. Most of us are totally over Star Wars, but how much time do we spend watching channels that dunk on the shows and the shills that push them for Disney? Yes, they are entertaining, but it also takes time away from creators who could otherwise be curating quality movies, books, and shows. I know I'm guilty of being part of this.
Sign of the times is having an identity that's tied to being a fan of something. There are people who can't really conceive of giving up a corporate property because they've internalized liking it as some indelible quality of themselves.
I think everything is in a feedback loop. A movie comes out that is really successful. Studios decide to capitalize by making more movies similar to it, training audiences to only like that type of thing. Good dialogue is especially rare in most movies, even ones that have a good story. I think this is because most screenwriters don’t have literary backgrounds. Movies like Double Indemnity had good dialogue because they had people like Raymond Chandler writing for them. Most modern screenwriters aren’t nearly as talented. I honestly don’t believe anyone should go into producing movies if their goal is to make a lot of money. If you do, you are a fool. There are so many easier and more guaranteed ways to make money. The capricious nature of the film business is too unstable. We need more people who are willing to take risks because money isn’t their primary concern.
Most movies were quickly written, b-grade material. They were only released for a week or so before another quickly-written b-grade film replaced them. In the 80's, these films were regulated to home video, so you had to look for them to find them. Today, streaming makes them easy to find again, & they stay available forever. Not sure why the big budget films have poor writing, but that has happened in the past too. Hollywood goes through periods where they make a lot of big budget epics to attract folks back to the theaters; usually, at the end of those periods, the producers are so focused on spectacle they forget to provide a good story.
Yes I think his claim that most hollywood productions were well written is strange. There is a reason we have a "TV Tropes" and not a "Book Tropes". I know trope from books have entries on TV Tropes. The name itself, though, and the perponderance of Hollywood movie and TV tropes on the site suggests Hollywood has always had this problem.
Taleb made the point that people don't buy McDonald's because it's good, but because it is predictable. the McDonald's in Milan is packed because you can be reasonably sure you're not going to get food poisoning (paraphrasing).
Ngl, I haven't watched vicariously since Toonami. I've watched TV on and off when I was bored with family, but otherwise I don't much care for TV shows or movies. I like old Star Wars, I like Interstellar and Arrival, and I like drinking Chai milk tea. Idk why I threw the last bit in there.
Recent trends would tend to imply this is becoming less true. Star Wars is losing money at this point. It still hasn't made a profit since they bought it for 4.2 billion. Disney only really makes money on the parks at this point. Their media is just a money sink to drive people to the parks.
There's something else that's becoming an increasing problem. It's that a lot of the easy potential in what we can see from cinema/TV has been achieved. For example - color was one frontier, it was huge and we grew accustomed to it. Then it was dark and gritty storytelling, it was achieved. Then it was CGI, I remember good special effects being a selling point. A new frontier was then TV series that can afford to have overarching plots without the writers being worried people would miss one episode and be lost. What's next? 3D was once seen as that, but I haven't seen a 3D movie in what feels like a decade ( I think it was Shazam so it was 5 years). There's no real novelty anymore to me. That may sound petty, but it's true. The last time I went to the cinema was to watch The Boy and the Heron and I only did it because I knew it'll probably be my last chance to see a Miazaki film in theaters (hopefully I'm wrong).
There have been a lot of gimmicks in the last 20 years in addition to 3D like DFX. None of them have improved movies though and clearly they have not enhanced the cinema experience enough to keep butts in the seats. As to what is next, I think we already got the answer, and it's video games. That's not a good answer as cinematic games are not necessarily good games, but I think the paradigm is for them to be the next progression of visual experience - user control instead of cinematography. Maybe VR.
@@DVSPress True enough, I'd vastly prefer playing a video game to watching a movie or a tv show, despite the fact games are also a bit stale at the moment.
I'll put part of the blame on everyone going through college. In the past 20 years a larger and larger percent of artists have been going through a standard 4 year program. Institutional artists create institutional art.
I was thinking similarly. These writers often go for the same degrees, end up studying and drawing from the exact same films/screenplays/books. There is a wealth of interesting and clever writing if they'd go back a few decades for older tv and films. Books other than only Jane Austen and Brandon Sanderson. No insult to those, but if they're all drawing from the same limited well, you get the same kind of slop served in 500 variations and it's not interesting.
It could also be that there are just so many fewer people persuing the craft of writing. That means fewer total writers to draw from on top of everything else.
True art must involve unrestrained human expression, modern media requires it's "artists" to be politically correct; which inhibits this expression. True artists who are uncompromising do not get access to these platforms, so they must exist on the fringe.
I think you're right. But in the long run I think this will have a profoundly negative impact on Hollywood. So many of these industries are so absurdly large that the effect of the diminishing standards takes decades to fully impart their effect. Perfect example is the noticeable drop of people going to theaters. It's being conflated with online streaming services and covid but theater participation was going to inevitably nosedive even if neither occurred. It would have taken another 10+ years though. This bad writing and lack of respect for writers will have an effect and hurt the market, but Hollywood is so large and so complicated that its effect will only be realized decades from now and it'll never be measured by their paper pushers. One of the more interesting effects of this is the steady shrinking of Americas cultural worldwide dominance. Entertainment is becoming more local or nationalized in other parts of the world as its hegemony over film and media shrinks. Another contemporaneous example is McDonald's. The drop in quality and rise in price of take away has been occurring since ~ the early 2000s late 1990s. It's only recently they've been showing a decrease in purchases and market dominance globally. It takes a long time between something sucking and the market catching up to punish that drop in quality. The bigger the organization the longer it takes to feel the effect. On my part I sincerely hope they continue to write terrible movies and tv shows and mostly die as the culturally monopolistic force they are so something more interesting and different takes the place of Hollywood in media.
I think it's kind of a smiliar situation with music. If you've seen the Rick Beato video, you know what I'm talking about. It's the fact that everything is so easily available at any time, but also the fact that the audience doesn't have high standards. I personally struggle to decide what to watch almost every day. The numbers of good movies that are worth watching isn't exactly increasing, so you're left with those that already exist and you've watched those five times, ten times ore fifty times already. And then they begin to suck because you've seen them so much. I've become quite the movie geek doing research on movies to find some that might be watching through all this.
There is also a kind of nostalgia factor by which i mean good writing is memorable while poor writing is not. We don't bemoan the inferior writing of Shakespeare's contemporaries because their work ended up on the rubbish heap, his survived because it was good. There is too much content today, when i was a kid there was no TV until the news and a short kids programme at lunchtime and then nothing until 3:30pm and broadcasting would stop at 10:30pm - now its 24 hours. That makes for thinly spread content
There's a lot of factors in play as to what goes into a movie and what gets put on your screen. One that I don't think is addressed in this video is that writers in hollywood have no authority over the work during or after the filming process, and not even that much during the writing phase. You can be a good writer but if then you have to write it FOR a hollywood actor who wants to have input you are writing with a hand tied behind your back. If it's not a hollywood actor its a political agenda. If it's not a political agenda it's an executive who seems to barely be paying attention. It can also be all 3 and more. People want to give a lot of heat to writers, some deserved, but much is not. If a writer can make a small living out of a production they are lucky and they lick their wounds until the next thing where maybe they have more control. "The Batman" is an example where clearly there was some story version that could have worked but likely was edited out and instead you sort of have this directionless movie.
They can keep 90% of the CGI and comic book crap. Give me a lower budget movie with excellent writing. A la Tarantino. It's amazing the lack of leadership in Hollywood. You'd think somebody would want to make something memorable.
A friend of mine graduated from a major film school, and the writing has never been the primary focus, even going all the way back to the 1930s. Filmmakers have tried to bring in great writers over the years, but it never really worked. Bottom line is screenplays aren't really a form of writing, they're more like a blueprint or instruction manual. The unspoken rule for creating a good script is not the actual writing quality, you just want the reader to say "uh oh" followed by "oh shit" five times, then "oh my god" twice before the end. I think the biggest issue with the writing in modern movies is the breaks in immersion, usually caused by political messaging, real world issues (in a story NOT taking place in the real world), or author inserts for characters. Everything else, especially the technical aspects like cinematography and sound have improved significantly.
Writing of Movies and Shows follows writing of Books in regards of quality. Books became worse and worse each decade and Movies and Shows are following now. Why? Because people get no real life experiences anymore and therefore nothing interresting to tell. In the past, those missing life experiences was partly substituted by reading great stories already written in Books. And then, writers bacame more and more lazy and dumb and didn't read anymore but only watched Movies and Shows as an inspiration instead. And now, a lot of writers are even to lazy for watching other Movies or Shows as an inspiration. Finally, it is a spirale downwards.
Well, I do think the writing matters; whilst it is certainly true that "Good Writing = Success" and "Bad Writing =/= Failure" in a one-to-one ratio, they are related. Writing is the bedrock for any story-based piece of media; or perhaps it's like the tree you hang the ornaments on. The plot is the reason a scene exists at all; it's what creates the setting for the spectacle. It doesn't need to be the best story ever written, but there are limits to how bad it can be; in order for it to be successful it needs to at least be competent enough that the audience can buy into it. There are mitigating factors; big brands with a proven track record are operating off of the goodwill generated by past achievements, and you can condition a portion of your most hard-core followers to accept lower and lower standards. People go into a movie like Deadpool with different expectations from when they sit down to watch LotR. But there are diminishing returns. Each SW sequel made less money; Endgame made buckets of cash but it (along with Cpt Marvel) introduced all the elements that would lead to the MCU's ruination. If this were not true, Hollywood would not be cratering under its own weight right now. Far as I can tell, the only thing keeping it afloat is the equivalent of several overlapping pyramid schemes. And that won't last forever - sooner or later, the Piper must be paid.
Terribly written movies can be really enjoyable, like Independence Day was. I really liked GodzillaXKong, despite the fact that the writing is atrocious. Because of that, I laughed out loud at how ridiculous and silly some of the content is.
Doesn't your answer go against the thesis of your recent video: "Godzilla Minus One succeeds because of the WRITING"? Yes, the modern tasteless audience is a large part of the problem...but there are also millions of us that have stopped going to see movies because they are poorly written. That's leaving money on the table. So it seems that poorly written big budget movies are successful "enough" for the Hollywood execs? Is that why there is not a push for talented writing? But, with good writing, couldn't these movies be even more successful? Like the recent Godzilla Minus One?
Wouldn't a good story just boost revenue, though? How much more could it possibly cost to write a "classic" when compared to the potential short and near infinite long-term profits that results from writing a "classic"? And if your movie doesn't profit much from better writing, how much did you really lose by funding that better writing? Granted I do think the addiction aspect of media consumption has allowed media cartels to cut their products more and more with harmful additives.
Since you blamed the Last Jedi on nihilism in Hollywood, would you make that same accusation towards Game of Thrones? And might that be part of the reason why G.R.R. Martin doesn’t know how to finish it - because he doesn’t know what his story is supposed to say in the first place? Is Game of Thrones ultimately just simulated historical fiction in style of The Tudors etc., combined with a grimdark fantasy soap opera?
David, I wanted to ask you genuinely: If you know so much about what makes a great story, why haven’t your books attracted more mainstream popularity? Are there additional factors that hold people back from mainstream success?
Because success is a combination of luck and coordination by elites. A lot of media is chosen by people to be put front and center for audiences, I.e. it’s not entirely organic
to be honest, i wouldn't necessary call the writing in godzilla minus one _good_ yes, it is above the level of what you'd expect from a godzilla movie (or from modern hollywood, for that matter), but taken on its own, it's... not great. it lacks anything resembling subtlety, it's filled with unlikely coincidences, and the fact that it's a part of a franchise (and a sort-of prequel to the original godzilla) kinda defeats the point it tries to make. still a better movie than the new dune, of course
Takashi Shudo's last blog post is basically him telling kids to not become an anime writer; he said there wasn't any money in it anymore. That was over ten years ago.
The mad thing about the manga/anime industry is that they can sell many issues have animations of their works and have merch and essentially have a single manga be a franchise YET virtually everyone involved is overworked and underpaid
Oh my, Pirates of the Caribbean is 20 years old...
They replaced their writers with activists.
They stopped caring about good stories well told and instead focused on pushing political agendas that nobody cares about while seeing a film.
Even before all the political crap, they stopped caring about story to push "pretty" cgi crapfests for a while now.
The success of stuff like bayformers and F&F back in the day show that.
I haven't watched a single film or TV show made after 2015 (which in itself was an arbitrary cut off date where I could no longer tolerate even trying to watch anything). Talking to friends who try to suffer through post-2015 effluent, & seeing trailers or reviews, etc., I firmly believe the 2015-Rule is undefeated.
I think it goes back further as an overall, but that is a good cutoff point.
@@munfurai8083 absolutely goes back further. By 2015 I'd lost the will to even try.
When people ask me what new movies I like, I used to say SICARIO and NIGHTCRAWLER... and now I realize that they're both about a decade old already. Yeah 2015 was the last year of decent cinema, and even back then it was mostly pretty bad.
This lines up with me too I've watched almost nothing new from Hollywood since 2015-16 forward. Joker was exception and there are a few others. When I have tried a new show or movie it always reaches a point where they push "the message". That's when I turn it off.
They rather meet an arbitrary quota than write a good story.
It’s not just Hollywood, it’s also comics & games, it’s all gone to the dogs. I rely solely on the Japanese with manga & anime for all my entertainment.
People don't want to make decisions anymore. Everyone talks about loving digital media for its convenience, but I think secretly it's popular because it takes away the need to make decisions. Game Pass is ultra-popular because you don't need to decide which game to play, you just play what everyone else is already playing. Audiobooks are popular because you don't need to pick a book, you can just read what everyone else is already reading. Streaming services are the same way.
Knowing this, I'd say the quality of the writing only ever really mattered to convince normies that the medium was valid. Once movies became mainstream, quality stopped mattering. Once games became socially acceptable, quality stopped mattering. Once audiobooks became commonplace for your coworkers to be listening to instead of hearing what you're saying to them, quality stopped mattering. Ironically, books never *really* became mainstream. They almost did, but the medium fell off a cliff when people realized they would always have to be discerning consumers in that realm.
It’s about high return of investment vs a breakout story. Profitability vs originality. They don’t want to take risks anymore and would rather go with assembly line products instead of advancing the art form. Advancing the art form enriches the medium but most likely keeps you poor.
I should clarify that I think there are lots of filmmakers who would like to enrich the art form but don't get exposure when they make a movie or simply can't get funded these days. I'm sure there are competent writers but we don't see them in the big things.
Originality is often profitable.
Yeah I think Godzilla minus one proves good writing still is King. Only movie I went twice to see at the theatre
A few thoughts:
1. Spec scripts have pretty much died in Hollywood. There's a lot more writing on assignment (for bigger projects, and TV of course), which means less passion for projects.
2. Another element could be that there's been more emphasis on the "writer-director" recently, as opposed to separate writers and directors. A lot of the times this is great , but there are a lot of big directors that benefit from separate writers (though they don't want them and have the power to turn them down). From my experience talking to people in the industry, producers like working with writer-directors. Pretty sure it's because it makes their lives easier.
3. A lot of the best movies of the last century were based on best-selling novels, and since best-seller lists are topped with poor quality and political material, Hollywood has had less to draw from. Plus, movie producers are almost certainly less literate than they were fifty years ago.
4. The money is a big thing. Lots of Hollywood writers are nepo babies or at least come from rich families that support them while starting out (or well into their carriers).
I disagree that it isn't essential to success, the studios just THINK that it isn't essential to success and they have suits with graphs that tell them to focus on the wrong factors. We can all imagine how many more billions of dollars Disney/Lucasfilm could be making if they had written good movies. Marvel has tanked since Endgame because everything is bad. Merch, toys, games, theme parks, comics are all drastically hurt because these franchises have all been ruined. They can blame streaming, ticket sales, burnout etc but it's all due to bad writing (and planning) and lack of new well written IP.
People can complain as much as they want online, but as long as asses are in seats, studios don’t care.
@@batman5224 that’s my point. Their asses are NOT in seats univerally. They are just relatively higher for mainstream franchises than unknown IPs, but almost everything that is greenlit is bad. My point it could be like it used to be and they would fill seats if there was good storytelling.
Force Awakens is the fifth highest grossing movie of all time 😂
@@BaazarStudios They still make billions of dollars. Of course, movies don’t make precisely what they used to because of streaming, but if they weren’t making money, studios wouldn’t make them. The sequel trilogy grossed an insane amount of money, despite its lack of quality.
The problem is there is a big lag in this form of monetary feedback. It takes a lot of stinkers for people to loose interest in a franchise they have a lot of love and nostalgia for, especially as all the "hate watches" count as views. I found Rings of Power worked as a comedy I was excited to see how stupid the writing could be in the next episode. Solo was not the lowest grossing SW movie because it was the worst, but because it followed the worst. Streamers are a lot less discriminating also as they they are not paying individually for a film.
I went to see John Wick 3 and then swore to never go to see an American movie again. Then I went to see Dune 2 and swore the same. And then I went to see Deadpool 3 and I'm thinking, Is this the greatest work of art Hollywood has to offer? I'm never going to go see another American movie. Never. Ever. Again!
Maybe you would have had better luck if you stuck to Tom Cruise movies. With the exception of "The Mummy" (2017), his movies tend to be significantly better than most others that come out today.
@@hardwickebenthow Not really imo. He is really into franchises like MI. That scene with the female cop trying to arrest Tom when he was undercover in MI Fallout was lame. 24 with Kiefer Sutherland had so much more balls.
@@grahf6807 "He is really into franchises like MI."
True, but I don't see this as a problem as long as they continue to be good. In my opinion, starting with "Mission: Impossible III" each movie in the series has been better than the one before it, except for the latest one (which I consider a step down compared to the previous two, although it's the most interesting movie of the franchise from an intellectual angle due to its religious symbolism and deliberate Lord of the Rings parallels).
"That scene with the female cop trying to arrest Tom when he was undercover in MI Fallout was lame."
Ironically, I referenced that scene about a month ago in a comment on an Isaac Young Substack article, but in the exact opposite context: I used it as a positive example. Isaac Young's article was about how very little of modern entertainment uses classic hero archetypes anymore, instead using reluctant heroes, antiheroes, etc. He used the John Carter movie as an example (as the movie took a classic hero and turned him into a flawed reluctant hero). I wrote a comment mentioning (among other things) that the most prominent recent example of a classic hero I could think of was the MCU's Captain America, and the second-most prominent was Ethan Hunt. I used that very scene (with the French policewoman) as an example of how Ethan Hunt is depicted as a classic hero. Personally, that scene is one of my favorite scenes of the movie, because of how it depicts Hunt's unwillingness to make moral compromises even when it puts him and his mission at risk.
In recent years, most movies have increasingly depicted flawed heroes, all-out antiheroes, or worse (John Wick is really just a villain killing worse villains, for example), so I've come to crave stories about "boy-scout" type heroes even more than I already did, and I've always had a special fondness for those types (Doc Savage, the Lone Ranger, Superman, Captain America, etc).
"24 with Kiefer Sutherland had so much more balls."
I watched a few seasons of "24" back in the day but lost interest. It's been so long that I don't remember much about it, but I seem to recall it getting into neocon propaganda territory as it went on.
It seems to me that good writing, for a Hollywood movie especially, is SO inexpensive in the grand scheme of things. It requires only time and attention, really -- NOT much money. Do a few drafts, have a few people do a pass, reward successful writers with more money, sure, but also more WRITING. No one bothers anymore and it seems to be mostly attributable to laziness and not the bottom line...it's sad.
I think another main reason is because of how cultural it all is and how much it's about keeping up with the jones kind of thing. This is especially prevalent among alot of friend groups where people want to fit in and have something to talk about and be friends over. I think it's also similar in a way where some people will play a game they find terrible on their own, but with a friend it's at least tolerable and can even be enjoyable itself that way when it's with a friend. I think that's why it's still so prevalent, because everyone's caught up on that. It's not just being afraid of trying new things. It's wanting to keep up and fit in.
I feel like that's modern wow. It's a miserable experience but if your friends won't play anything else...
@@DVSPress Yep. And I was always the odd one out even with my not so close friends. I'd refuse to watch garbage SOL anime that was nothing but boring highschool melodrama, I'd refuse to play Call of Duty which was nothing but a snore fest, but they all hated Halo or never played it much.
You forgot to mention movies are made for the world market now. Plots, dialogue and story are boiled down to a 2nd grade level with the whole thing "get the MacGuffin, stop the world ending blue skylight count down" .
Being in a "fandom" conditions people to be mindless product consumers, but anti-fandoms are also a problem. Most of us are totally over Star Wars, but how much time do we spend watching channels that dunk on the shows and the shills that push them for Disney? Yes, they are entertaining, but it also takes time away from creators who could otherwise be curating quality movies, books, and shows. I know I'm guilty of being part of this.
Sign of the times is having an identity that's tied to being a fan of something. There are people who can't really conceive of giving up a corporate property because they've internalized liking it as some indelible quality of themselves.
I think everything is in a feedback loop. A movie comes out that is really successful. Studios decide to capitalize by making more movies similar to it, training audiences to only like that type of thing. Good dialogue is especially rare in most movies, even ones that have a good story. I think this is because most screenwriters don’t have literary backgrounds. Movies like Double Indemnity had good dialogue because they had people like Raymond Chandler writing for them. Most modern screenwriters aren’t nearly as talented. I honestly don’t believe anyone should go into producing movies if their goal is to make a lot of money. If you do, you are a fool. There are so many easier and more guaranteed ways to make money. The capricious nature of the film business is too unstable. We need more people who are willing to take risks because money isn’t their primary concern.
Also, too many cooks in the kitchen. Very few recent productions have a distinct voice.
Most movies were quickly written, b-grade material. They were only released for a week or so before another quickly-written b-grade film replaced them. In the 80's, these films were regulated to home video, so you had to look for them to find them. Today, streaming makes them easy to find again, & they stay available forever.
Not sure why the big budget films have poor writing, but that has happened in the past too. Hollywood goes through periods where they make a lot of big budget epics to attract folks back to the theaters; usually, at the end of those periods, the producers are so focused on spectacle they forget to provide a good story.
Yes I think his claim that most hollywood productions were well written is strange. There is a reason we have a "TV Tropes" and not a "Book Tropes".
I know trope from books have entries on TV Tropes. The name itself, though, and the perponderance of Hollywood movie and TV tropes on the site suggests Hollywood has always had this problem.
Movies have become like food - people will eat any old slop...
Taleb made the point that people don't buy McDonald's because it's good, but because it is predictable. the McDonald's in Milan is packed because you can be reasonably sure you're not going to get food poisoning (paraphrasing).
Evil cant create, it can only corrupt.
And Hollywood is on a remake every movie spree 😂
Ngl, I haven't watched vicariously since Toonami.
I've watched TV on and off when I was bored with family, but otherwise I don't much care for TV shows or movies.
I like old Star Wars, I like Interstellar and Arrival, and I like drinking Chai milk tea. Idk why I threw the last bit in there.
Recent trends would tend to imply this is becoming less true. Star Wars is losing money at this point. It still hasn't made a profit since they bought it for 4.2 billion. Disney only really makes money on the parks at this point. Their media is just a money sink to drive people to the parks.
There's something else that's becoming an increasing problem. It's that a lot of the easy potential in what we can see from cinema/TV has been achieved. For example - color was one frontier, it was huge and we grew accustomed to it. Then it was dark and gritty storytelling, it was achieved. Then it was CGI, I remember good special effects being a selling point. A new frontier was then TV series that can afford to have overarching plots without the writers being worried people would miss one episode and be lost. What's next? 3D was once seen as that, but I haven't seen a 3D movie in what feels like a decade ( I think it was Shazam so it was 5 years). There's no real novelty anymore to me. That may sound petty, but it's true. The last time I went to the cinema was to watch The Boy and the Heron and I only did it because I knew it'll probably be my last chance to see a Miazaki film in theaters (hopefully I'm wrong).
There have been a lot of gimmicks in the last 20 years in addition to 3D like DFX.
None of them have improved movies though and clearly they have not enhanced the cinema experience enough to keep butts in the seats.
As to what is next, I think we already got the answer, and it's video games. That's not a good answer as cinematic games are not necessarily good games, but I think the paradigm is for them to be the next progression of visual experience - user control instead of cinematography. Maybe VR.
@@DVSPress True enough, I'd vastly prefer playing a video game to watching a movie or a tv show, despite the fact games are also a bit stale at the moment.
Your point about Godzilla Minus One is so true. Those awards almost don't mean anything anymore.
I dont think I saw a new movie since The Last Jedi lol.
Same here. I've totally stopped watching new movies and tv shows.
My last film in theaters was Purple man gets beaten by Avengers, whatever that film was called
I love the poster of Madonna and child in the background. Do you know if there's anywhere I can buy a copy?
Even sadder is that people these days love terrible writing. Large communities have devoted themselves to the next dumpster fire.
I'll put part of the blame on everyone going through college. In the past 20 years a larger and larger percent of artists have been going through a standard 4 year program. Institutional artists create institutional art.
I was thinking similarly. These writers often go for the same degrees, end up studying and drawing from the exact same films/screenplays/books. There is a wealth of interesting and clever writing if they'd go back a few decades for older tv and films. Books other than only Jane Austen and Brandon Sanderson. No insult to those, but if they're all drawing from the same limited well, you get the same kind of slop served in 500 variations and it's not interesting.
There’s very few talented writers in Hollywood. Most are mediocre at best.
It could also be that there are just so many fewer people persuing the craft of writing. That means fewer total writers to draw from on top of everything else.
True art must involve unrestrained human expression, modern media requires it's "artists" to be politically correct; which inhibits this expression. True artists who are uncompromising do not get access to these platforms, so they must exist on the fringe.
canada hasn't won a stanley cup in 30 years. Its still their #1 sport and people still go to games.
7:05 _Irony_ , the hipsters' favorite flavor.
I think you're right. But in the long run I think this will have a profoundly negative impact on Hollywood. So many of these industries are so absurdly large that the effect of the diminishing standards takes decades to fully impart their effect. Perfect example is the noticeable drop of people going to theaters. It's being conflated with online streaming services and covid but theater participation was going to inevitably nosedive even if neither occurred. It would have taken another 10+ years though. This bad writing and lack of respect for writers will have an effect and hurt the market, but Hollywood is so large and so complicated that its effect will only be realized decades from now and it'll never be measured by their paper pushers.
One of the more interesting effects of this is the steady shrinking of Americas cultural worldwide dominance. Entertainment is becoming more local or nationalized in other parts of the world as its hegemony over film and media shrinks.
Another contemporaneous example is McDonald's. The drop in quality and rise in price of take away has been occurring since ~ the early 2000s late 1990s. It's only recently they've been showing a decrease in purchases and market dominance globally. It takes a long time between something sucking and the market catching up to punish that drop in quality. The bigger the organization the longer it takes to feel the effect. On my part I sincerely hope they continue to write terrible movies and tv shows and mostly die as the culturally monopolistic force they are so something more interesting and different takes the place of Hollywood in media.
Lack of writing is the reason Hollywood is going down
I think it's kind of a smiliar situation with music. If you've seen the Rick Beato video, you know what I'm talking about. It's the fact that everything is so easily available at any time, but also the fact that the audience doesn't have high standards.
I personally struggle to decide what to watch almost every day. The numbers of good movies that are worth watching isn't exactly increasing, so you're left with those that already exist and you've watched those five times, ten times ore fifty times already. And then they begin to suck because you've seen them so much. I've become quite the movie geek doing research on movies to find some that might be watching through all this.
There is also a kind of nostalgia factor by which i mean good writing is memorable while poor writing is not. We don't bemoan the inferior writing of Shakespeare's contemporaries because their work ended up on the rubbish heap, his survived because it was good.
There is too much content today, when i was a kid there was no TV until the news and a short kids programme at lunchtime and then nothing until 3:30pm and broadcasting would stop at 10:30pm - now its 24 hours. That makes for thinly spread content
There's a lot of factors in play as to what goes into a movie and what gets put on your screen. One that I don't think is addressed in this video is that writers in hollywood have no authority over the work during or after the filming process, and not even that much during the writing phase. You can be a good writer but if then you have to write it FOR a hollywood actor who wants to have input you are writing with a hand tied behind your back. If it's not a hollywood actor its a political agenda. If it's not a political agenda it's an executive who seems to barely be paying attention. It can also be all 3 and more.
People want to give a lot of heat to writers, some deserved, but much is not. If a writer can make a small living out of a production they are lucky and they lick their wounds until the next thing where maybe they have more control. "The Batman" is an example where clearly there was some story version that could have worked but likely was edited out and instead you sort of have this directionless movie.
A whole generation of writers with daddy issues writing both new and pre-existing male characters.
They can keep 90% of the CGI and comic book crap.
Give me a lower budget movie with excellent writing. A la Tarantino.
It's amazing the lack of leadership in Hollywood. You'd think somebody would want to make something memorable.
2018 confirmed writing is dead in Hollywood and stuff like Way of Water solidified how dead it is.
Was the one where she bangs a fish monster?
@@DVSPress No he means Avatar: Way of Water
@@DVSPress Nah, that’s Shape of Water. Way of Water is the Avatar sequel. Could be interchangeable. 🤣
@@madcapmakov2 whoops
@@DVSPress The Blue Alien son wanted to fuck that whale tho so it could easily be mixed up with Del Toro’s film.
A friend of mine graduated from a major film school, and the writing has never been the primary focus, even going all the way back to the 1930s. Filmmakers have tried to bring in great writers over the years, but it never really worked. Bottom line is screenplays aren't really a form of writing, they're more like a blueprint or instruction manual. The unspoken rule for creating a good script is not the actual writing quality, you just want the reader to say "uh oh" followed by "oh shit" five times, then "oh my god" twice before the end.
I think the biggest issue with the writing in modern movies is the breaks in immersion, usually caused by political messaging, real world issues (in a story NOT taking place in the real world), or author inserts for characters. Everything else, especially the technical aspects like cinematography and sound have improved significantly.
Writing of Movies and Shows follows writing of Books in regards of quality. Books became worse and worse each decade and Movies and Shows are following now. Why?
Because people get no real life experiences anymore and therefore nothing interresting to tell. In the past, those missing life experiences was partly substituted by reading great stories already written in Books. And then, writers bacame more and more lazy and dumb and didn't read anymore but only watched Movies and Shows as an inspiration instead. And now, a lot of writers are even to lazy for watching other Movies or Shows as an inspiration. Finally, it is a spirale downwards.
I stopped going due to ‘frying pan over the head’ political messaging.
Well, I do think the writing matters; whilst it is certainly true that "Good Writing = Success" and "Bad Writing =/= Failure" in a one-to-one ratio, they are related. Writing is the bedrock for any story-based piece of media; or perhaps it's like the tree you hang the ornaments on. The plot is the reason a scene exists at all; it's what creates the setting for the spectacle.
It doesn't need to be the best story ever written, but there are limits to how bad it can be; in order for it to be successful it needs to at least be competent enough that the audience can buy into it. There are mitigating factors; big brands with a proven track record are operating off of the goodwill generated by past achievements, and you can condition a portion of your most hard-core followers to accept lower and lower standards. People go into a movie like Deadpool with different expectations from when they sit down to watch LotR. But there are diminishing returns. Each SW sequel made less money; Endgame made buckets of cash but it (along with Cpt Marvel) introduced all the elements that would lead to the MCU's ruination. If this were not true, Hollywood would not be cratering under its own weight right now. Far as I can tell, the only thing keeping it afloat is the equivalent of several overlapping pyramid schemes.
And that won't last forever - sooner or later, the Piper must be paid.
Terribly written movies can be really enjoyable, like Independence Day was. I really liked GodzillaXKong, despite the fact that the writing is atrocious. Because of that, I laughed out loud at how ridiculous and silly some of the content is.
Doesn't your answer go against the thesis of your recent video: "Godzilla Minus One succeeds because of the WRITING"? Yes, the modern tasteless audience is a large part of the problem...but there are also millions of us that have stopped going to see movies because they are poorly written. That's leaving money on the table. So it seems that poorly written big budget movies are successful "enough" for the Hollywood execs? Is that why there is not a push for talented writing? But, with good writing, couldn't these movies be even more successful? Like the recent Godzilla Minus One?
Failing upward, and wanting to pay as little as possible for a writer.
Wouldn't a good story just boost revenue, though? How much more could it possibly cost to write a "classic" when compared to the potential short and near infinite long-term profits that results from writing a "classic"?
And if your movie doesn't profit much from better writing, how much did you really lose by funding that better writing?
Granted I do think the addiction aspect of media consumption has allowed media cartels to cut their products more and more with harmful additives.
Since you blamed the Last Jedi on nihilism in Hollywood, would you make that same accusation towards Game of Thrones? And might that be part of the reason why G.R.R. Martin doesn’t know how to finish it - because he doesn’t know what his story is supposed to say in the first place? Is Game of Thrones ultimately just simulated historical fiction in style of The Tudors etc., combined with a grimdark fantasy soap opera?
Star trek next gen is good
One of my favorites.
I was just watching Oblivion videos on your channel and now you’re talking about culture and politics. What happened?
David, I wanted to ask you genuinely: If you know so much about what makes a great story, why haven’t your books attracted more mainstream popularity? Are there additional factors that hold people back from mainstream success?
Because success is a combination of luck and coordination by elites. A lot of media is chosen by people to be put front and center for audiences, I.e. it’s not entirely organic
to be honest, i wouldn't necessary call the writing in godzilla minus one _good_
yes, it is above the level of what you'd expect from a godzilla movie (or from modern hollywood, for that matter), but taken on its own, it's... not great. it lacks anything resembling subtlety, it's filled with unlikely coincidences, and the fact that it's a part of a franchise (and a sort-of prequel to the original godzilla) kinda defeats the point it tries to make.
still a better movie than the new dune, of course
You start the video saying writing doesn't matter explaining for the latter half of it why it absolutely does
I watch less and less films these days. There's just nothing worth watching.