Quality fluctuates, there are good and bad years. During the pandemic there were very few actually good releases but this last year has been pretty great. Of course when I talk about a ‘good year’ I mean there were a handful of great releases, not that everything released was good. Most of new releases are trash (always have been) but you can happily ignore those if there are enough of the quality shows/movies.
The thing is both audiences and TV shows/movies evolve. Once you see something revolutionary it’s hard to go back to some of the old stuff that now feels stale or lacking. So in order to release quality content, I would argue, you actually have to do better every year.
Also, studios love repeating what works already. This grants them safe, repeatable profits, but reduces experimentation and means they release similar movies repeatedly year after year. Take a look at the Marvel movies since Endgame. I would actually say that quality hasn’t actually been dropping necessarily, (at least not on average) as many say. It’s just that the premise of a Marvel movie in 2023 is so boring and played out, everyone already knows how the movie will flow. But I think a 2017 audience would enjoy Guardians of the Galaxy 3 just as much as they did the previous movies.
Finally, Hollywood seems to love tropes. In the 80s and 90s it was macho action man, the 2010s we had a superhero craze, and this last decade it seems to be female empowerment. As with anything after a few years it starts to become stale and the best movies are usually the ones defying the industry because, as you said, fatigue sets in. (the 2000s seemed great in this regard I can’t really pin an overarching trope on them)
So I think the quality of cinema is increasing but so are our expectations. And we can get bored by seeing the same movie over and over again.
No, it’s mostly drop in quality.
I think it has to do with how corporate and formulaic content as become.
There are fewer risks being taken, studios take what they know and refuse to learn something new.
This means that the content they produce is very generic and safe.
The rise of PG-13 killed a lot of interesting projects.
Add to that an ever evolving media market by creators, they might not be able to compete on scale yet, but it is comming.
Documentaries and video essays are really great now on youtube, I mean we have hbomberguy, wendover productions, Peter Dibble, Calum, Side Note, Barely Sociable, Map Men, Mustard, Paper Will, Retro Bytes, TheEpicNate315 and Tom Scott, just to name a few, that are producing brilliant content that in many cases is more interesting than generic post apocalyptic show 537 that just started on Netflix this week.
There are fewer risks being taken, studios take what they know and refuse to learn something new.
I used to LOVE Kdrama. Watched it exclusively for more than 10 years, mostly because it was so different than anything I could see in western media. Then it took off and Netflix got involved in production, and now it’s just the same crap just with an all-Asian cast. Kdrama is a prime example of what you’re talking about. They had a great opportunity to figure out why it was popular and learn from it. But they just can’t.
Don’t get me wrong, it was always “bad” in lots of ways, but often in ways that were easy to overlook. Because underneath the cheap production values, repetitive tropes, and outlandish framing devices, there were engaging stories about people relating to each other. (Especially around toxic masculinity. Western TV has refused to touch that since Luke raped Laura and they fell in love and got married. I wonder if we’d have as much problem with incels if we could have more realistic portrayals of what men and women put up with from each other just to get through the day. --But I digress.) They had a story arc with a definite end. Now it’s all just serial-killer murder mysteries and Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman set in Joseon.
What. Western media touches toxic masculinity regularly. Barbie and The Last Of US, One of the most successful movies and One of the most successful shows of this past year had major sub-themes about toxic masculinity.
I can’t speak to The Last of Us, but Barbie only discussed toxic masculinity at a high level, systemically, not on a personal, one-on-one level. Not in a “Her boyfriend just raped her. Does that mean he loves her or not?” sort of way. We’re all socially adept enough to sit back and say, “Of course not,” from the outside. But it’s never that easy or clear-cut from inside a relationship. THAT’s what western media won’t touch. There’s a post on the front page about a politician apologizing for joking about spiking his wife’s drink with a date-rape drug. What does that kind of relationship look like? Where is something like that explored in western media? If you can name some I’d be glad to hear it, and interested in watching.
It feels like there are two types of productions since Covid… $200m+ epic productions, or Netflix style lazy cookie cut crap. I hope one day we go full circle and resurrect some forgotten genres that just don’t get funded anymore
With the whole superhero stuff it’s also a consequence of their own success. Back in the day there weren’t many super hero movies, so we watched them even though they were campy and mediocre (batnipples come to mind).
Then they had some real bangers mixed in with trash and the whole thing took off. The Dark Knight trilogy for example and the first Iron man movie, just to name some. People have then come to expect that level of quality, while most of what they put out is mediocre and a lot of it is total trash.
Instead of working on quality they worked on quantity, riding the wave as hard as they could. But people only give it so much chances, there need to be some good movies to keep on coming back. Instead the quality declined and went back to mediocre/trash levels, but since people remember the good ones it’s not acceptable anymore.
Quality drop resulting from devotion to “safe” and “cheap”.
I’m not sure it even is a devotion to cheap. I think a lot of major media projects now play everything so safe specifically because they’re so expensive and therefore cannot afford to fail
Which costs more, a decent writer given the time to write a good script or 70 hours of reshoots? The cost is A: to hide the skimming off the top by the studio heads. and B: because the folks calling the shots are so completely out of touch with reality.
You don’t need to invoke corruption or reshoots to explain the costs of these big-budget blockbusters though. They have thousands of people working on them, and… Yeah, hiring thousands of professionals for years of work is going to cost a fucktonne of money. It won’t necessarily make a good film, but it will definitely cost a lot.
What a lovely dodge. But see that is the whole point. If things are efficient it is a lot harder to hide the graft.
100% quality drop, but it is due to the other reasons you listed.
VC has entered the industry, this is what media is now.
Part of it may be due to troops as well. There is some audience fatigue, but that’s only because companies try to play it safe by recreatung old ideas instead of coming out with OC.
Sure, in general people are going for quantity over quality but I have watched some really good TV shows which aired new seasons this year in Ted Lasso, Fargo, and Shoresy.
I dunno but im watching as much media as ever. Just not much current stuff.
