Quentin Tarantino says we're living in one of the worst eras of movies do you agree?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/news/quentin-tarantino-says-we-re-living-in-one-of-the-worst-eras-in-moviegoing-history/ar-AA14eEzu?OCID=ansmsnnews11

Quentin Tarantino says we're living in one of the worst eras of movies do you agree?

For me it's a yes what about you?

I agree. Personally I watch movies just fine but the originality is kind of lacking. As expected since the movie market hit saturation long ago, there just not much new story to tell anymore. I guess its why director nowadays use shock factor value more to entertain audience.

I'm one of those that says great art comes from the past, present and future; however, I'm inclined to agree with Tarantino for the most part.

With that said, great and fantastic films come out to this day, but what I see is where the industry has transitioned into commercialization of product franchises.

More and more actually great filmmakers that are living today are receiving dwindling respect for they are getting delegated to streaming services and less chances to be on the big-screen.

We have greats like Scorsese and the Coen Brothers, losing out to yet more Star Wars and Marvel stuff. Audiences love the likes of James Gunn and Zach Snyder sniffing their own farts these days, when they're attached big name franchises.

And then we have a whole new generation of filmmakers like J.J. Abrams and Taika Waititi, who once showed potential, only to become big sellouts to the Hollywood machine. That's what's unfortunate most of all: younger filmmakers that showed potential and the Hollywood machine taking hold of them to make plastic.

Absolutely, MCU shit is a cancer. Talented actors in costumes like they're clowns. The complete infantilisation of audiences and an absolute lack of substance. Mediocre cinematography... I could go on.

That's the issue with capitalism, the need of infinite growth, means that eventually the nature of the product becomes secondary and it becomes about how to use it to maximize profits. Like how games shifted from enjoyment to engagement. Don't get me wrong, capitalism had an amazing role but we are at a point of saturation where its toxicity is starting to be preponderant.

^ J.J. Abrahms is a moron. Star Wars simply exposed that.

You might be right, although I did enjoy Super 8, and that was right before he became this big sellout.

With that said, that's just one example of many. I see companies like Disney preying on younger talents, directors and actors alike - often times in their sophomore phases of their own careers - give them outrageous money offers they can't say no to, in order to attach them to big blockbusters, and make them a hundred times more smug than when they entered the industry.

It's an unfortunate trend we are not setting up younger talents to be the Scorsese's or Kubrick's of tomorrow, but to just make them a part of a plastic assembly line. It's a damn shame, really.

If we focus strictly on the big blockbusters, I mostly agree. Over reliance on esrablished franchises has never been more ubiquitous. However, there is still a lot of cool stuff that manages to come around in spite of it all, Everything Everywhere All at Once being a great recent example.

Its important to remember though, there has always been a lot of crap. But the crap tends to be forgotten, and so we compare the worst of today with the best and most enduring stuff of yesterday. Not really a fair fight.

Initially I had an overall positive opinion of the Marvel theatrical adaptations ('86-'07) but that went out the window when it became the MCU with Marvel Studios. What I saw was a very bad caricature with each film. Cliche, predictability, bad acting, too much quantity, etc.., it was all there. Nothing I found was memorable. Nothing released is something I want to see. The past fifteen or twenty years of the film industry has been awful. Actors and actresses being pushed as the IT person when they should be nothing more than an extra on Days of Our Lives, crappy movies with poppycock stories, etc..., He's correct about this era.

@Solaryellow: There's a place for silly movies, that's fine. I remember watching Hulk, which is a passable movie, and having fun while watching it and that's that. I never thought about that movie again in my life.

But then you got to a point when that becomes the zeitgeist, and you get social media flooded by people in tears because the Avangers movie is the most incredible movie in the history of cinema and you just pray that an asteroid hits earth.

@Solaryellow: Agree with all this. Although there are a few movies in the last decade that I thought were pretty damn good like The Northman, Blade Runner 2049, The Revenant, Mad Max Fury Road, and perhaps a few others I cant think of right now. Unfortunately these films are so few and far between now.

But yeah, too much formulaic garbage every year. Very disappointing.

I think it gets to a point where it's like what do we create next that hasn't been created. It will all be new to the new people of the world but even then they will watch movies with similar scenes from prior movies 30,40,50 years ago. Things of nature like movies,music, video games etc eventually get to it's end and same things eventually get remade.

Counter-point: filmmaking is more accessible than ever with video and audio equipment being more affordable than ever. Big productions have gone stale because major studios only want to invest in established franchises, but there are now many talented indie filmmakers who are able to get their stories told whereas if they were born in another era, they would never have the resources to make their film.

So let's just not try anymore and slump into a plateau of commercial nonsense? Saying nothing is original anymore is a bad excuse for lazy filmmaking.

The irony of this so-called accessibility these days is indie filmmakers as well as legendary filmmakers are losing big-screen real estate when companies like Disney steal up all the major release windows in a year with massive billion dollar movies, and taking up more screens that push smaller productions out the door.

Disney has created an atmosphere that puts indie director's against a wall with limited options, and then Disney turns around and preys on these very people and then transform them into yet another cog on a conveyer belt.

@jaydan:

I didn't say that but it will be very difficult to create something original even when 'trying'. All this stuff is new to us as a civilization only between 60-120 years old. You take away the entertainment stuff out of the world and we are still doing things since we were created and it never gets old. It's a way to live and is life itself. Music, movies,video games etc are things that get old fast and reach their limit, there will be less people interested in those things in the future.

@eni232: My point: Originality is not the big issue of the state of the film industry. It's pretty much obvious what you're saying that it's hard to make things original these days. That's not the big issue. The big issue is quality films are getting pushed out in exchange for hollow commercial products.

If lack of originality is the excuse for not trying to make a good film, it is a lousy excuse and the filmmaker should instead admit they're just not good at what they do.

Yes 100%

I love movies, like movies more than TV. But a lot of movies today are garbage

It's sad that the video game industry has already reached that point considering the movie industry has been around much longer. Although I do think there could be more new IP's but the gaming industry is to lazy and scared to make anything new most of the time anymore anyways back on topic.

I wonder who's the minority here: The people who say movies aren't good anymore, or people who think they're awesome? I believe it's the former, hence why we're getting the same quality of films year after year, and Marvel not going beyond their shtick.

I personally don't care about the film industry as I don't really watch movies all that often. My friend and I go to the theaters once a month, if even that, but we haven't been there in awhile. So perhaps that says something? :/

A resounding YES. That goes for videogames and music as well. Never have it all been so bad.

Now, I'm not 100% sure if it's just that more shit is being released now and it makes the actual good shit harder to find than before, but my guess is that everything is just overall worse. Everyone seems to just "go with what works" and originality is thrown out the window. New horror movie? It's gonna be like all the other ones. New videogame? What skin of AC will I be playing? New song? Sounds like all the other ones. All of it, soulless.

I'm 34 and if I'm already like a grumpy old man going "it was better before", something is wrong and I don't think it's me.

It's definitely not just you I'm a bit older and I agree 100 percent we are living in the creatively bankrupt era where everything feels driven by greed and no passion.

Didn't bother to read the why he said that but I think the expansion of streaming services has really spread industry talent thin. All these varying services has made stuff worth watching inaccessible for many who don't want to subscribe to yet another service as there's new ones growing all the time. Then there's the what we call the "Netflix effect" where having many more viewing options really drags down interest in what is available because too many options creates a sense of indecisiveness.

And to add what Covid did to traditional movie viewing and a growing contentedness for waiting for home video releases, the industry sure isn't the same for traditional distribution models nor consumer content consumption.

Years back my interest in going to movies died down mostly due to ticket prices and concessions being unattractive. I ended up working for a movie theater so I got to see lots of movies for free and discounted concessions but I haven't been back since Covid and right before then too the chain I worked for limited our ability to watch free movies so back to waiting for home movie releases again and I am okay with it.

Ok. But he also claims the 80s was one of the worst in cinema history. That doesn't fit.

I agree, cinema today is atrocious for various reasons. One be the change of generations. The 20th century produced a certain quality of people.

Tarantino is actually right about that. The 80's might very well be the worst era for film.

It does not mean good movies were not made from this period, but the technical shortcomings of the 80's are inexcusable, it is the cheapest era for all of film.

80's movies don't translate well when they get the 4K treatment due to how the films were shot, and quality you will never get to restore. 80's films were shot super cheap and that's where Tarantino is coming from. He is objectively right about that, and you need to understand the context of film history to know that.

It turns out, you can take a film from the 1930's and give the 4K treatment and you'll be surprised to discover how a nearly century's old film suddenly looks like they were shot from the most state-of-the-art cameras as if the film was shot yesterday. That's because film is definitive, even to this day; the 80's ditched film for cheaper alternatives.

Reason why older films look better pre-80's is because they go right to the original reels they were filmed on. Those reels don't exist for most 80's films, so you can't rip from the purest source.

Reason why it took older films so long to appear as sharp as they may today on a Blu-Ray disc, is because before HD films had to be downgraded in order to effectively play in theaters, and unbeknownst to civilization we have been used to watching downgraded films all this time.

Film is the pure capture of exposed light, and not pixels translating an image or cheap video taping that the 80's was known for. Film is the purest of image capturing. If you ever worked with film cameras or in a dark room lab, you will understand.

With that said, that is why the 80's is technically the worst era for film.

am going to say no. there is tons of great films atm.

sadly most dont get any pr and its a guessing game on what stream app etc it will be on.

Oh yeah.

Marvel reached saturation point awhile ago, they just didn't get the memo. I don't bother going to theaters for their movies anymore. I'll catch them on streaming at some point.

Marvel or whomever, the movie experience isn't unique anymore, like it was twenty five or more years ago, which made going to the theater a fun time.

@playmynutz: I think Black Widow is probably a prime example of a movie that he had in mind, LOL. And he has a point, the MCU has a formula that the movies generally follow. But I don't know, I still enjoy them for what they are, just don't take them too seriously. They're perfectly fun popcorn flicks, and even in the past those types of movies made up the majority of what was on tap. Whether it was the atomic sci-fi era of the 50s, the spaghetti western era of the 60s, or the slasher era of the 80s, each time period really has it's filler type material. Over time much of that will be forgotten and the cream that's currently buried in it will rise to the top. We've already seen some of this occur in relatively modern cinema with overlooked films like The Shawshank Redemption, The Iron Giant, and The Big Lebowski. We'll see similar resurgences from the the aughts and the 2010s, and they'll be remembered fondly as well while we'll conveniently forget about the worst of the MCU just as we forgot about Batman and Robin, Fiend without a Face, A Pistol for Ringo, and Children of the Corn. We can probably already identify some from the 2010s that will be remembered fondly like Get Out and Parasite, while others have a short path to get there for various reasons like Fury Road (for it's technical stunt and practical effects work) and Hereditary (this one just needs more reach/exposure to get there, I think, although it's script is perhaps subtle/confusing enough to relegate it to the Criterion type of list).

Hereditary is, IMO, a fantastic little "unique" film with a lot going on. It's just that not many people saw it and for it to have a resurgence like Shawshank did (seriously, go watch Shawshank) it probably needs to be more accessible. A lot of what happens is implied, and the themes around what happened are also implied. That's not a recipe for post-release word-of-mouth popularity growth.

It can still be a great movie, as the Criterion list shows (Criterion is an American home video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films."), but many of the movies in it's list are relatively unknown to American audiences for various reasons. Due to Hereditary's confusing storytelling there's a chance it may find itself among that list of good movies that no one knows about.

The problem with art in the modern era--music, film, television, etc--is that it has become so highly commodified that there is little room for expression.

In other words, the priority has become the profit, and not the art. So instead of making something for the sake of making something great and then profiting off it, they do market studies and appeal to the masses.

In essence, everything made these days is more or less part of pop culture, and pop culture is absolute shit. Growing up, I always felt there was a healthy divide between "pop" and other areas. For example, Britney Spears was pop...Mariah Carey was pop...NIN and Nirvana, despite being popular, were not pop.

The only reason folks like Tarantino and other (frankly old or aging) filmmakers can say things like this is because they have enough clout that studios will take mild risks on their projects because their name brings a guaranteed amount of money.

Just my $0.02.

*As a follow up, I don't think movies are terrible these days. I don't think we are living in one of the worst eras of filmmaking. I think those are the ramblings of old men.

Movies today are great. We get stuff like Hereditary, as others have pointed out. We've seen the horror genre go from campy to comedy to something that can be taken really serious. We have great writers with a lot to say. We have a lot of folks still championing practical effects instead of CGI. We get movies like The Lighthouse, The VVitch, Gran Torino, and so on and so forth.

I think what Tarantino doesn't like is the success the "garbage" gets, and a lot of good films get shot in the crossfire when he issues a blanket statement like that. There are a lot of good movies, you just need to look for them.

Also let's not forget we've seen a transition of movies to series, and there are some truly excellent series out there every bit as good as big budget movies.