The Days of Great Movies Are Gone With the Wind

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Once upon a time in Hollywood, a movie could win the Oscar for Best Picture and be culturally popular at the same time. Movies like "Titanic," "Braveheart," "Ben-Hur," "Forest Gump," and "The Godfather" come to mind.

And those are just the winners. Beyond that, there exists a whole archive of popular films that have enjoyed the privilege of simply being nominated for Best Picture, some of which have surpassed the legacies of the victors. "Star Wars" lost to "Annie Hall." "Raiders of the Lost Ark" lost to "Chariots of Fire." "E.T." lost to "Gandhi." "Pulp Fiction" lost to "Forest Gump." The list goes on.

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Let's take a show of hands, shall we? Since 2006, when Scorsese's "The Departed" took home the Oscar for Best Picture, can anyone name a single movie they have repeatedly watched? The kind of movie that holds the attention from start to finish once every few years? I can already guess them: all Christopher Nolan movies and maybe a few from Quentin Tarantino or David Fincher or David O. Russell, all of whom entered the film industry in the early or late-'90s before the industry moved to the franchise business model.

Has anyone actually given a second viewing to Best Picture winners like "The Artist" from 2011? Or "Argo" from 2012? Or "Spotlight" from 2015? What about the movies that lost? "The Theory of Everything," anyone? "Her," anyone? "La La Land," anyone?

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While the Marvel films certainly dazzle the senses for 2-plus hours, few people can argue leaving a Marvel movie with the same emotional elation as they do in a movie like "Raiders of the Lost Ark." An even stronger argument could be made for the "Star Wars" sequels. DC all but destroyed its brand with "Justice League."

What differentiates those movies from that of "The Terminator" or even "The Dark Knight" is they feel less like movies and more like glorified television shows. Bottom line: they just don't build to a meaningful climax. There's no suspense because we already know that Spiderman or Iron Man or Black Panther will overcome their nemesis no matter how great or dire the cliffhanger. Like any television show, we instinctively know that next week's episode will set the universe right again.

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In any classic, you get a sense that the filmmakers carefully crafted something for their audience to enjoy. You get a sense that Spielberg really wanted to make "Jaws" or that James Cameron really wanted to make "Titanic" or that Peter Jackson really wanted to make "Lord of the Rings." No such experience exists with the modern blockbuster.

Is there really any difference in quality between the "Star Wars" sequels, the Marvel movies, and "Jurassic World"? As products of executive committees, they look the same, feel same, and sound the same. Some are indeed slicker and more entertaining than others, but none of them actually rise above a mere amusement park ride.

Movies that tell great stories have now become the minority, outnumbered by two increasingly emboldened camps of filmmaking: shameless commercialism and political propaganda. The blockbusters are the former and the Oscar-bait films are the latter.

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