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Home > Blogs > Sir Critic on Cinema > Archives > 2009 > April > 20 > Entry
Why aren’t movies as good as they used to be?
If I had a dollar for every time someone watched an old movie and they said “They don’t make em like that anymore,” I could finance my own blockbuster.
That oft-heard lamentation begs the question, though: WHY don’t they make them like that anymore?
Talk to most any movie fan these days, and they will tell you the movies seem to have lost something. That’s not to say great ones aren’t being made; it’s more that Hollywood by and large doesn’t seem to be trying. At least that’s the impression one gets when reading Variety and finding almost every new movie to be a remake, a sequel, or an adaptation of a comic book or old TV show.
But why is all this? The reason I bring this up is that I read a couple of items recently that address this very topic.
First, director Norman Jewison, who made In the Heat of the Night, Fiddler on the Roof, Moonstruck and The Hurricane, among many, many others, made headlines recently when he said: “Art missing — a lot of it. When you look back 15 years at any type of awards that are given, you will find that there are very few major Hollywood films honored. I don’t know how to change that.”
That same story paraphrases Jewison as likening the drop in quality to “linked the drop in quality to the rise of corporate-owned Hollywood studios focused on bottom line profits.”
And then there was this interiview I read with the great Frank Capra in the book Conversations with the Great Moviemakers of Hollywood’s Golden Age at the American Film Institute. He identified another problem studios have:
“When you go into go into the subject of change, you get into a subject that’s very dear to my heart: trends. It’s the dirtiest word in films. Don’t follow trends. Start trends. First of all, it’s unethical. What you’re doing is trying to capitalize on somebody else’s creation, and you’re starting with two strikes morally against you. Secondly, audiences do not want to see cheap copies of an original. Just because audiences liked a picture about a building on fire once doesn’t mean they’re going to like pictures about buildings on fire all the time. You make automobiles on an assembly line, but it’s not how you make pictures. And as for ‘What do the people like now?’ - the people don’t know that until they see it. There is no trend. So be individuals, be mavericks, swim upstream. Never float down the tide with the rest of the people.”
Thought-provoking stuff, and I think there’s a great deal of validity to what both men say. My short answer to my own question is that studios are dominated not so much by people who love movies, but by business majors obsessed with spreadsheets. Hollywood as a whole is so risk-averse, that too many movies feel safe, prepackaged and preordained.
At least that’s one way to look at it? Why do you think movies are lacking these days? Or do you think they’re lacking at all?
Permalink | Comments (7) | Post your comment | Categories: Sir Critic muses
Comments
By Cody
April 23, 2009 10:19 AM | Link to this
Well I have to say they don’t make them like they used to because nothing shocks us like it used to. We used to have great films with fantastic actors about scandals and romance and family values. Now if we see something like that, we’re like “seen that, boring” People want something new. The problem is that something new is out there but nobody seems to know how to access it. I’m hoping to tap into that myself in the future. I have to say, we have great actors right now, and maybe the right actors aren’t being picked for the roles. I agree that is all about profit anymore and it’s sad.By Kim S.
April 21, 2009 10:59 AM | Link to this
Why don’t they make them that good anymore - because they don’t HAVE to or don’t NEED to in order to make a profit. I think it’s that simple. The gems are still there - it just takes more digging to find them. And I think in the Golden Age, they still put out sub-par films, they just didn’t stand the test of time and are forgotten.By Distressed Citizen
April 21, 2009 9:55 AM | Link to this
I believe it is because we are losing the good old actors and actresses and their replacements are nowhere near as good.By Doco
April 20, 2009 1:53 PM | Link to this
One word. Originality. Music is suffering in a similar way. The people with the money to distribute want a sure thing. Old money isn’t fond of new ideas.By Zack
April 20, 2009 1:39 PM | Link to this
Studios have always been more interested in the bottom line than quality. We don’t remember, because bad films don’t last. That a dozen-or-so really good films tend to creep out each year is a minor miracle. As for Norman Jewison, well, he made BOGUS, in addition to any number of other bad films.By Rob
April 20, 2009 11:55 AM | Link to this
To a certain extent I think the nostalgia for the “good ole days” of movies mostly has to do with the fact that only the good movies are remembered. The only movies that still get played are the good ones. AMC doesn’t exactly do marathons of the movies that stunk. The studios churned out movies back in the day and for every classic there were probably 50 that were formulaic crap that we don’t even have prints of today. And it’s not as if adaptations and sequels are a new phenomenon either. Dashiell Hammett only ever wrote one Nick & Nora Charles book, but that didn’t stop them from making 5 sequels. And many of the classics of film were adaptations from the popular fiction of their day. Gone With The Wind, Maltese Falcon, etc…By Allie D.
April 20, 2009 11:27 AM | Link to this
I read in Roger Ebert’s Answer Man column this weekend a comment that resonated with this topic a bit. Someone asked whether it would be risky for a studio to make a movie about Buster Keaton. He answered that the only risk involved would be the fact that modern studio executives don’t even know who Buster Keaton was. I found this to be very sad. Now, the question you pose is a difficult one to answer. The saying “They don’t make ‘em like they used to” has been around since there have been enough people around to lament over a past they’re having trouble letting go of. We see best through the rear view mirror. Always have. It’s harder to be a visionary, to not only appreciate the past, but to look forward and find opportunities. It’s all a matter of perspective. One could definitely say there is a dearth of original ideas, but really, that has ALWAYS been the case. There is a finite number of “stories” in this world, and every tale that’s ever been told has been a different spin on one of maybe eight basic ideas. And Hollywood has been adapting literature since it’s been in the business of making movies. Television has become so pervasive in culture, it was only a matter of time that we’d start seeing adaptations there. So to me, that problem is really a misnomer. What we’re seeing in the mainstream is this phenomenon coupled with what Jewison mentioned: corporatism and the increasing obsession with the bottom line. That being said, I think there are still a lot of wonderful movies being made today and a great number of talented people making them. Are they all coming out of Hollywood? No. Are they all brilliant, original ideas sprung from the minds of screenwriters and directors? No. But that doesn’t detract from a film’s quality. If a movie is good, it’s good, in my opinion. It doesn’t matter if it was based on a book or a previous movie. I can still appreciate the efforts behind a well-made film. We went from the Golden Age to New Hollywood to the greedy, merchandising Blockbuster period (or what I call Big Money Era). It’s not going to end here. Eventually the pendulum will swing again. Ticket sales and theater attendance have consistently been trending downward for years. The paradigm will continue to change. Meanwhile, I will treasure every treasure I can, because there are plenty of them. Slumdog Millionaire, There Will Be Blood, No Country for Old Men, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan, Dark City, The English Patient, Million Dollar Baby, Mulholland Drive, The Royal Tenenbaums, Magnolia, Brokeback Mountain, Juno, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, The Station Agent… I could go on and on. All wonderful movies made within the last decade or decade and a half that prove to me that great movies are still out there. I believe we need to start lamenting less over the past and the times we can’t reclaim and instead start claiming our futures.