Movies today don’t even look and feel like “movies” at all

Ever since film production companies abandoned 35 mm and went straight to digital in the mid to late 2010s, Hollywood movies don’t even have that “cinematic” film aesthetic anymore. They look like artificial, ultra-refined, and digitalized with poor lighting that gives almost no shadowing to actors at all. As a result, movies look like insurance commercials now.

35 mm was the gold-standard for filmmaking from the 1960s all the way up until around 2015-2016. Due to the fact that the tiniest errors in exposure and development are very difficult to correct with 35 mm, it basically forced filmmakers and directors to already have pre-visualized shots in place before shooting. Combine that with perfected hard lighting, and you get the “cinematic” film feel that dominated Hollywood for close to 50 years.

Even those shitty low-budget comedy films from the late 90s/early 2000s had better lighting than most of the high-budget Marvel films that come out now. That should tell you something.

Nowadays, movies use solely digital and soft lighting which is the reason why they all look so incredibly bland and generic with no feel at all. We need to go back to 35 mm. Nothing will ever top it. Who gives a frick about if it’s “too outdated”? It was used for 50 fricking years by most Hollywood film companies.