What was once a cineaste, film-loving community has been co-opted by corporations

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I'm genuinely interested in a board discussion about this because it's been a noticeable audience paradigm shift over recent years that I, too, have found difficult to explain. Classic "get off my lawn" moment or a more complex shift in the fabric of society?

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There are probably lots of reasons. Using the board as an example.

I think for a lot of the old timers on this board - we already all joke about our common loves, or "the thing everyone knows "x poster" love more than others," that there's just nothing left to talk about.

I can only tell you guys so many times that Throne of Blood is a massive artistic achievement, and about as perfect example of an adaptation as you can get.

We all know where each other stands on Seven Samurai, TGTBTU, THe Godfather etc. There's not much new ground to cover there.

And I won't say that modern film is bad, but I think a lot of people have gone different directions. Only a few people shared my love of modern horror classics like You're Next or The Invitation. While I've kind of waned on most foreign film that isn't Korean, when I used to watch anything and everything foreign.


ETA two other things:

1. The board moves too fast and too many people ransack it with the same crap. 6 years ago - We never had a "Rotten Tomatoes thread," but now it's a thing, so during the summer, when films were released, there's at least 3 at all times.

Then throw in people who make posts for every single piece of news, yeah you know who you are, and it just quiets all other topics.

2nd - Too much Content and the popularity of TV. I find TV to be a bit more divisive than film. Again, 6 years ago there would have never been a reality TV thread on this board, and again there's usually 1 or 2 at all times.

Adding another interesting and prescient quote I had been searching for and finally just found with possible ties into this discussion. It's from the 2009 Roger Ebert review of the movie Fanboys.

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A lot of fans are basically fans of fandom itself. It's all about them. They have mastered the "Star Wars" or "Star Trek" universes or whatever, but their objects of veneration are useful mainly as a backdrop to their own devotion. Anyone who would camp out in a tent on the sidewalk for weeks in order to be first in line for a movie is more into camping on the sidewalk than movies.

Extreme fandom may serve as a security blanket for the socially inept, who use its extreme structure as a substitute for social skills. If you are Luke Skywalker and she is Princess Leia, you already know what to say to each other, which is so much safer than having to ad-lib it. Your fannish obsession is your beard. If you know absolutely all the trivia about your cubbyhole of pop culture, it saves you from having to know anything about anything else. That's why it's excruciatingly boring to talk to such people: They're always asking you questions they know the answer to.

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I think it's pretty simple. People post about what interests them. Less people are interested in great cinema. Most people just want mindless entertainment (myself included).

Carson abandoned his role as board critic.

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2nd - Too much Content and the popularity of TV. I find TV to be a bit more divisive than film. Again, 6 years ago there would have never been a reality TV thread on this board, and again there's usually 1 or 2 at all times.

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I imagine the prevalence of streaming plays into that as well.

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modern film is bad

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It is horrifyingly bad. Massively overdone MCU movies which, while fun for what they are, finished off what was already a dying medium.

Studio suits who have zero understanding of the art form beyond that the fact that it is the source of their paychecks have to market research and everything has to be hypervetted or it can't be made.

Frankly, the problem is the audiences who continue to go see "Fast and Furious 34: We're doing this shite again" and overlook smaller films because they don't want to pay modern prices, overpriced popcorn for something they can stream in 3 or 4 months (tops) in the comfort of their living room.

The good news is modern dramatic television has been outstanding, although with the diffusion of content across well over a dozen platforms now (probably closing in on 20 major and mid-majors worth considering) it is difficult to find shared experiences because folks choose different platforms and tend to stick with them.

This is sort of the conundrum that hit when the internet exploded. By the mid 2000s, virtually any piece of information you desired was out there on the web, somewhere. The information itself became relatively valueless compared to the tool used to find it (the browser) which made Google one of the most powerful corporations in history and Wikipedia is a panhandler ("Will intrigue you with data for food.")

Film/TV content is sort of like that now - a gateway/access holding the value for most people - while the individual pieces of content are almost afterthoughts (which is upside down and backward, but I see little alternative going forward).

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from the 2009 Roger Ebert review of the movie Fanboys.

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What a crock of shite from an elitist blowhard. You think this guy has ever been to comic-con and actually talked to people? He puts down an entire genre of fans because *gasp* they really like movies. But just not the movies that he deems to be good enough for polite society. frick this guy.


If this were about books it would be like a woman who looks down on trashy romance novel readers as she finishes her 6th reading of Wuthering Heights.

If this were about ice cream it would be like some fat diabetic a-hole talking shite about people who eat plain strawberry while he stuffs his fricking face with a tub of sweedish pistachio.

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He puts down an entire genre of fans because *gasp* they really like movies

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His point is pretty specific to the movie Fanboys, as these people who camp out for weeks in front of theaters exist much more in certain types of movies and TV shows than they do in real life. If Fanboys had been the least bit funny he might have been nicer to it, but it does present a world of fandom almost wholly separated from actual movie content. Those dudes have made Star Wars a part of their personality to the extent that their conversations consist of strings of references to Star Wars. In the case of the movie at least, that familiarity doesn't equal affection for a movie, it's just a different form of elitism to exclude certain acquaintances and the women in their lives, like Kristen Bell, who is revealed to be just as big a fan of the movies without exhibiting all the stupid fanboy behavior. Star Wars is presented as the nostalgic language of a small click, not something to love.

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You think this guy has ever been to comic-con and actually talked to people?

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The people at comic-con at the time the movie was set (1999) would have cared about comics, not massive blockbusters. The big guests that year were Neil Gaiman, Art Spiegelman, and Mike Mignola. In 2006, the year Fanboys was released, TV/movie studios were dipping their toes into comic-con. Samuel Jackson was there promoting Snakes on a Plane. The cast of Heroes was there. Comic-con fans were not camping out for movies then, and very few are camping out for movies now.

Ebert loved movies of all kinds, and he spent half a century trying to make others love them. I can see how his dismissal of a fictional set of fans might sound elitist, but I think it makes sense that fans of movies who are actually only fans of one movie or one franchise would seriously irk him.

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No way in hell this movie gets made today.

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I don't know - good actors want to do these movies, even if only a break between their paycheck films. If they form collaborative groups, they can fund/release some of these themselves. Even if they don't "make" money, just break even with a streaming deal or whatever, they would be free of studio interference.

I can see guys like Ed Norton or Tom Hardy doing something like that. Or even in collaboration with Tarantino, Fincher, etc.

It can be done. It should be done. It would be liberating and remove studio (and Red China) influence that is crushing creativity in modern big budget filmmaking.

Is it already time for the weekly "shite on current movies, back in my day everything was amazing" thread?

I remember reading about how westerns were going to kill cinema because it was all Hollywood would make. Or monster movies, you know, the original shared universe no one ever talks about.

Let's be honest here, at no point was Hollywood some haven for high art. It is an industry that's goal is to make as much money as possible and to be propaganda for certain ideas/groups. That was true in the 50's and it's true now. A lot of this classic films were not well received at the time and picked up wider appeal later. Hell Citizen Kane did poorly Taxi Driver was the 17th highest grossing film of 1976, despite the fact that we would recognize it as one of the best films of that year. Fight Club flopped.