I used to say “if you’re gonna remake a movie, you should remake a bad movie but do it better.”
Then they remade The Crow. “Dude I said do it better. 🤦♂️”
You said “remake a bad movie.”
Every iteration of me from 1994 to now is coming to your home to kick your ass right up and out past your teeth for calling the OG Crow a bad movie.
Yes, most of us will be in face paint. Some of us may have black trench coats on. There may even be some hammer pants, but we won’t talk about that.
Remakes that are better than the original:
The Thing
The Fly
The Blob
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Cat People
Hmm. I’m noticing a trend here.
Seriously, there’s nothing inherently wrong with remakes but why do it if you’re not trying to make it BETTER? Or at least substantially different? Do a different take on the material, don’t just swap the CG animated boy for a real life actor while leaving everything including the CG animated dragon as it was, for fuck’s sake.
The Wild Robot in theaters. Not a sequel or a remake. It is based off of a novel though.
2024 was apparently the first year where all the top-10 highest grossing movies were sequels. List doesn’t include Moana 2 and Gladiator 2 which are expected to make a lot of money as well.
Wild Robot really surprised me… Score was fantastic and some scenes had me bawling
We took our toddler to see it and both my partner and I had multiple episodes of weeping. Lovely film.
Also, for those interested in more mature movies: Juror #2. I had good expectations and was not disappointed. At least, not by the movie. There were only a handful of people in an already small cinema room, only a week after release. Meanwhile, Gladiator II is drawing a lot of public.
While I love shitting on CEOs and business people as much as the next left-oriented person, this trend in the movie industry is very much, at least partially, at fault due to many of the consumers.
Juror #2
Thought provoking in that everyone who wants to convict is “because he’s a piece of shit, whether or not it is unlikely he did it”. How do you tell people they are pieces of shit themselves, without them reactively thinking you are? Is the big thought experiment this film provokes.
Y2K. It was better than I expected!
Also, I remember walking out of Everything Everywhere All At Once and being angry because it probably wouldn’t do well in theaters or win any awards, despite being one of the best original movies I had ever seen.
I was happy to be wrong on that one.
Another also, I absolute hate that the video game industry is jumping on this trend. Sometimes it’s nice to play games I missed out on as a kid but it’s getting so bad now, they remaster games from a couple years ago. Enough is enough.
Last solid remaster is probably Age of Mythologies Retold.
Most remasters by now are just junkware though.
I’m not against sequels/prequels, just need some more than “it’s the sequel to that one you liked”.
OK, but why does it need a sequel? Can you make me interested in it aside from the fact it’s a sequel? Is it any good…?
Not a movie or fully original, but I watched Arcane and I loved it. It was good without knowing about the game, and those who know the game say it’s better if you do. That’s what a sequel/remake/adaptation should strive for.
It’s to the point right now that a young person 20 years of age could spend a decade just watching all the old classics from the past 80 years to enjoy great films. If they stopped making movies tomorrow, there’s more than enough content now for people to watch.
My wife wants to keep watching the latest stuff but if it were up to me, I’d just take the time to watch at least all of the AFI top 100 films… last I checked I think I’ve only seen about 30 of them and I thought I watched a lot of films. My last rough count of watched films that I could list was over 1,500 films. And I still have a waiting list of hundreds more I want to see.
I’m a Trek fan and I thought I watched lots but I’ve only seen about half of all the TV series and most of the films.
That’s also not counting all the other TV series I’d like to see from the past … MASH, All In The Family, Adam’s Family, The original Batman series, The Munsters, X Files, Walking Dead, Arrested Development, Battlestar Galactica, Twilight Zone, The Office … and on and on
If my spouse wasn’t so stuck in watching the latest stuff I’d probably be happy just spending my time catching up on everything I wasn’t able to see for the past 30-40 years.
I agree. Its the same with literature as well. One thing I enjoy about older media is not feeling so drawn to reflect on any social commentary of my own time. To me it makes it more immersive and more about the timeless aspects of the story.
I’m exactly that young person. I won’t be even able to consume every work of art I’m interested in. That’s both sad and amazing.
I’m not a young person and I’m in the same boat
People want original without taking the risk of watching an unknown movie that might be bad
I just can’t afford $30 for a ticket
So they take the risk of watching a movie that is somehow familiar to them ahead of watching it, and that might also be bad.
Good thing the critic was invented, my tip is to follow one and getting familiar with them, not looking at aggregate scores, because even if they dislike a movie, you’ll know if you would like it since you are familiar with their tastes.
The Banshees of Inisherin
i watched it in a theater, because i’ve heard the movie was good. Didn’t read up much on it beforehand and enjoyed watching it, albeit not fully getting it i guess.
It felt worth going to a theater for. Contrary to the last 3 or so Marvel movies i’ve seen in theater because friends dragged me and i ended up falling asleep every time.
MillionsHundreds of beavers.On a projector at home.
A silent film. From 2022.
Bizarre. Stupid. Funny. Silly. Stupid. Cute. Bizarre. And stupid.
★★★★
Hundreds of Beavers? Can confirm. It’s a masterpiece.
That’s the one.
The reason I believe sequels are doing good is:
- movie theaters have been perverted into massive and expensive hype fests
- in strong opposition, past movie theaters were not expensive to go to and got you entertained in a social setting
- due to the rise of large chains, small and cheaper theaters have died out.
- assumption: the price to rent a movie for your theater will probably be horrendous by now
- sequels have kind of a known quality which lowers the hurdle
- that means new movies could be watched in smaller theaters and would have to be sustainable for those
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There used to be dozens of theaters in a city, each one with a different set of contracts playing a different set of movies. Nowadays there are hundreds of movies in a city, all of them with the same set of contracts playing the same 5 movies.
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Yes, everything is too expensive, what means nobody can afford to take a risk. Not the public, not the theaters, not the studios. (You can see people on this thread commenting that they won’t.)
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There are what? 3 movie studios nowadays? Or are those 2? Either way, you can’t expect diversity from that.
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Movies and shows that I have watched this year in no particular order and not all released this year:
The Beekeeper
Iron Claw
Say Nothing
Altered States
The Substance
Oppenheimer
Peaky Blinders (rewatch)
Kneecap
In The Name of the Father
The Batman
Lord of the Rings (rewatch)
The Departed (rewatch)
Deep Space Nine (haven’t finished)
The Devil’s Own
Sicario
Additionally, my wife has recently started watching Gossip Girl but I only catch glimpses of that show. Did anybody actually like that show when it came out?
You should check “The Penguin”. Somehow better than The Batman.
Additionally, my wife has recently started watching Gossip Girl but I only catch glimpses of that show. Did anybody actually like that show when it came out?
If you think of teenage girls as people, tons of people liked it when it came out. They also liked the books.
I stopped watching almost all franchise and remakes. Horror seems be the only genre worth watching. I had the highest hopes for the creator so much wasted potential.
Horror has been exceedingly formulaic for long while, which cabin in the woods masterfully satirized by flopping, but there have been many innovations recently. Love that practical effects have made a comeback.
Yeah I really liked the substance. There were a few issues but enjoyed the overall message they were trying to tell. Most A24 movies have been solid.
I hadn’t even noticed where US horror had been coming from! Added a few movies to my list!
I watched every Terrifier film in the span of a week and it was a roller coaster. Art is amazing.
I enjoyed those too for what they are but the second one feels sooo looooong
I agree with that. The bedroom scene felt like it never ended.
Bullshit. The box office speaks for itself. Maybe YOU want to see new movies. Regular people want the newest superhero shit movie and remakes
Check the meme again
Poor marketing and limited theater releases is why and studios can blame themselves.
The huge improvements in TV screens have a lot to do with it too, I think.
When we only had CRT screens at home it was a big jump in quality to go to the theater. But when you have a 4K screen in your living room, there’s less reason to go to the theater.
It’s not just that they were CRTs.
You can get an excellent picture from the CRT computer monitors of the '90s and '00s, with high resolution (up to 2048×1536—better than 1080p!) and color rendering that’s arguably better than modern LCDs.
CRT TVs had low resolution, and NTSC/PAL has pretty bad color fidelity as well, but one of those high-definition CRTs connected to an RGB component video input (like VGA) carrying high-definition content (DVD or Blu-Ray) is another story entirely.
Yeah I was talking about TVs… we are discussing movies after all. Moreover, TVs that the average person has.
There’s a huge jump in quality between the TVs the average person has now compared to 20+ years ago.
How original we talking?
I have seen The Substance (good) in theaters and I saw the TV glow (hated it). I also watched Megalopolis (weird) in theaters and if we want something really original I even last year watched the Onyx the Fortuitous movie in theaters (enjoyed the heck out of it)
I will likely watch Nosferatu in theaters and any smaller movie that puts the effort in and deserves my money.
But I am not paying for the movies that they make just to make money. I don’t reward that kind of bad behavior and that afront to art and story telling.
Just get Nick Cage to be in your movie, that seems to be the secret ingredient
This checks out. I think the most recent “original” movie I watched was The Color Out of Space. Not in theater though.