this is what i've started calling the "it takes one to tango" fallacy, where an issue has two responsible parties but only one gets blame. hollywood's not forcing people to spend their money on mass-produced uninspired movies - worse! thats what people pay to go see!
Sure, the consumer does have some degree of influence here, but they're still picking from the menu of options the studio makes available.
If someone likes movies as recreation, even if they would prefer something different than the action blockbusters, their choices are "don't enjoy yourself to send a message to the studios" or "watch a movie you might enjoy less than something from another genre"... most people who enjoy watching movies are probably gonna chose the route that still lets them enjoy watching a movie.
The incentives don't line up. Its like buying McDonalds at an isolated highway rest stop - I don't particularly love McDonalds, but if my choices are a hot meal or whatever I can get from a vending machine or pack with me, I'll take the hot meal every time. Its not an enthusiastic endorsement of globalized fast food chains despite my paying for it.
this is again "it takes one to tango" - the people create the incentives the studios follow. movies largely make money with sales volume. this is important; tickets arent more expensive for different movies, its strictly a numbers game (ignoring uncommon deals like toys and video games, etc). according to the first link i clicked, marvel's last movie infinity war grossed two BILLION dollars. you are simply wrong if you think some novel, avant-garde sundance indie is going to interest that many people.
the world is the way people want it to be. this is the tyranny of the majority. if we want non-incentivized things to exist, we're gonna have to invent new socioeconomic theories in this movie thread : )
You are assuming a fair and competitive market where the consumer is actually in charge. False assumption.
The world is the way the people with money want it to be, because it’s the lowest effort, most extractive model they can legally get away with. That’s not to say people didn’t like Endgame, but we all could have done without the last 3 or 4 Transformer movies. There are plenty of examples of trash movies that only get made because the story is watered down enough to pass globally.
The entire premise here is a bit odd to me; are people forced to spend their time and money watching a sub-par movie? Couldn't they watch one of the innumerable television shows that are available, watch YouTube, older movies, etc., etc.? The comparison made above to having to eat McDonald's in a desert doesn't make any sense in this context since that is talking about needing life-supporting nutrients in a literal desert.
If there's nothing in movie theaters but trash, but your culture values movie-going experience, then you have no choice but either watch trash or forgo this part of your cultural experience altogether. I've been choosing the latter for years now, but I can understand people that choose the former - because I still miss the experience. I'd love to go back to it - but not with trash.
The McDonalds analogy is actually better than you think - imagine by some market quirk most of the restaurants in your city hired chefs that suck at their job. Because, say, The American Culinary Institute declared food is not supposed to taste good, it is supposed to send the right message, and the taste is secondary. It's not like the food isn't edible or harmful anymore - it still delivers the nutrition, and still kinda edible, but sucks. Ignoring the fact you could cook for yourself - let's imagine for a minute you have to dine out - what would you do? You'd go and eat sucky food. And since you do, the business model is provably working. Maybe if the whole town agreed to not eat out for a couple of months as a protest against sucky food, it could be changed - but what are the chances of that actually happening?
Invert it. I want to watch a movie in theaters because that's a treasured pasttime. What's available to see is what's most profitable to the producer (which is measured globally), rather than what's pleasing to the customer (which is measured locally). It doesn't matter that there are alternative avenues - we're talking about a specific, consolidated economic sector that is behaving irrationally at the local level.
I didn't write the McDonald's thing, so I'm not gonna try to contextualize it.
I understand your frustration but I still cannot get past the point that, generally speaking, an individual must make a specific, conscious, and unforced series of decisions in order to repeatedly end up in front of movies that they dislike. Their decisions must also by necessity happen in a context where there are many other media options available.
I also enjoy the cinema but I only go when there are films that I find interesting and worthwhile. In my specific case this means that over the past few years I've seen Parasite, a showing of the original Alien, a few midnight B-tier horror movies, etc. I don't get to go to the movies as often as I would prefer but the alternative of wasting my time on films that I don't find attractive while simultaneously financially supporting an industry I disagree with seems obviously non-viable to me.
Lots of people go to movies to go out with a group of friends. They have to agree on the movie, and don't each pick their own one. They enjoy spending time together maybe more than they enjoy the actual movie.
> I understand your frustration but I still cannot get past the point that, generally speaking, an individual must make a specific, conscious, and unforced series of decisions in order to repeatedly end up in front of movies that they dislike.
That seems like another odd assumption to make. It doesn't need to be based on individual choices, social dynamics drive plenty of decision making [1]. FWIW, I've only seen 1 new movie this year, and I only plan to see 1 other, so it's not like I disagree with you at an individual level. That's not how it works out in the larger population though - for many people it's their leisure activity of choice.
Another way of wording this is there's plenty of sequels that play to the long tail of fans of the original who will see anything relating to it
The consumer is in charge of what movies they see. To suppose otherwise assigns people no agency: it's easy to do when it's others, but, it's not a valid way of analyzing it.
I see this as a slippery slope argument that supposes any people who choose to see movies are drowned out by zombies who see only what ads tell them to see and think they're happy, but they're actually not
> The consumer is in charge of what movies they see
No they are not. The consumer is in charge of what they see given the options available. If what the consumer wants is not being produced, then the consumer is choosing the least-bad option (which is sometimes to choose a different activity).
I agree, and the next step would be to argue if there's _any_ options that pass arrosenberg's 'bad' filter, and I feel it gets awkward from there: I can't tell you what passes your filter. I respect your opinion and often say as much myself, but the argumentation is weak in several areas
In general I agree with you. But I think you're committing the fallacy illustrated by the following joke:
Two economists go walking down the street. One of them looks down and says, "is that a $100 bill on the sidewalk?". The other economist says, "it can't be, someone would have picked it up already", so they ignore it and walk on by.
Hollywood is controlled by a small number of corporate conglomerates, many of which have their hands in too many pies to keep track of. Their movies are largely stagnating, which is probably creating an opportunity for better movies to capture an outsized share of the market. Some day, some of those movies are going to come out and make a lot of money. Studios will scramble to react and get stuck in a newer and more different rut.
This is the same kind of cycle that Hollywood has gone through over and over again since the beginning. We're just in the trough of the cycle.
I know more than a handful of people who complain about Hollywood originality, but only go to the theater for Marvel or Star Wars movies.
Or who only go to see a movie that has 80% on Rotten Tomatoes (unless its a franchise movie).
The real problem is that TV killed the middle-rung movie. All that is left is blockbuster spectacle (which costs too much to take risks with) or art house stuff.
>The real problem is that TV killed the middle-rung movie.
You're 70 years too late. Life magazine in 1957 talked about how one of the consequences of the Hollywood studio system (from both TV, and the 1948 Paramount antitrust case) was the death of the "million-dollar mediocrity" (<https://books.google.com/books?id=Nz8EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA146>):
"It wasn't good entertainment and it wasn't art, and most of the movies produced had a uniform mediocrity, but they were also uniformly profitable ... The million-dollar mediocrity was the very backbone of Hollywood".
The "million-dollar mediocrity" died because the Paramount case forbade block booking, in which studios required that theaters purchase said mediocrities to also buy big films. Original TV movies appeared in the 1960s but their budgets and production values were too low to really fill the hole in Hollywood, but today's streaming companies' insatiable appetite for content has opened a new outlet for middle-tier films (and, more importantly, series).
> today's streaming companies' insatiable appetite for content has opened a new outlet for middle-tier films (and, more importantly, series)
Also consider that a home entertainment room has a comfort and quality level that surpasses that of a typical budget [movie] theater (though I've been to a more luxurious theater that I would gladly pay money for even if I had a proper home theater -- it was that good).
What I miss by staying at home and watching a Netflix film is the social aspect, and after the past 14 months, I think people are hungry for that. It's fun to cheer when your favorite star makes a cameo, or sing along to a Disney musical. If someone could figure out how to market it, I think there's money to be made there.
> The real problem is that TV killed the middle-rung movie
I nodded away to your last paragraph, but then I thought about my old Saturday job at an independent cinema. We charged £2.50 for a ticket (now £3.50, just checked; about US$3.50 & $5 in today's), the money was in the snacks, and of course it is in major chains too.
I think the real problem is consumer perception/treatment of cinemas as expensive rare treats comparable (in price) to going to a theatre. Which they are, at major chains fully laden with snacks, but don't have to be. Television is no doubt a contributor to that image of cinema, but not I think in itself the cause of this.
> I think the real problem is consumer perception/treatment of cinemas as expensive rare treats comparable (in price) to going to a theatre.
My happiest relationship with film was when I was able to go to the movies every week (some weeks even twice!). I was going alone, during the week, to independent movie theaters that charge 4-5€. It's a great experience, even if you don't love the movie. It never feels like a ripoff.
The main problem IMO is that people don't want to get out of their comfort zone (and lack time/interest to find new stuff they might like). But of course when tickets are 15€ instead of 4€ people are much less willing to take the risk.
The price of popcorn and a soda/pop at one of the big cinemas is comparable in price to a movie with dinner at one of the local places that serves a meal with the movie. Given the choice, I know what my dinner-and-a-movie date night choice is.
What we are paying for as consumers is the experience, but the experience keeps getting worse, and the price keeps going up. I suspect this is also part of what's killing the drive-in theaters too.
To assign blame to diffuse 'consumers' as well as the Hollywood/politicians/FAANG/manufacturers/international megacorporations that are the other side of whatever 'it takes two to tango' issue, the consumers need to have the capability to effectively communicate their demands back to their partner in the trap. Not only do they need the capability, they also need the expectation that the communication will be heard, else there is no reason to do it. But that line of communication is lost at large scales. Maybe a few purists will make a principled stand for nuanced, poignant, artistic, deep films, against the degeneration of the film industry towards bland, repetitive, shallow superhero rehashes, and will refuse to buy a ticket. But capturing those ticket sales would likely mean that more casual viewers didn't bother with the more difficult films. The only number that matters to Hollywood in the end is the box office gross sales; artistic purity is either counterproductive or immeasurable in that context and therefore irrelevant.
I want to make responsible choices, and want to reject bland movies, or disposable packaging, or privacy-invading ad trackers, or greenhouse gassy lifestyle choices, or any number of similar issues. And I do make personal sacrifices that reflect these preferences. But I fully expect that Hollywood will continue to churn out uninspired movies, that the 'local' Walmart and, shortly thereafter, the landfill will contain almost as much plastic as product, that websites will increasingly pack their pages with ever-more-invasive trackers, that people will still live in single-family housing with multiple internal-combustion vehicles and long commutes.
To be clear, I believe the blame actually lies with neither of the dancers, but with the system in which they operate. You can't expect the biggest studios like Universal/Paramount/Warner Bros/Disney/Columbia to make any decisions other than those which they're incentivized to make. They have no reason to do so, and if they did, they'd soon be replaced by a competitor who didn't. A corporation is not a moral entity, it's essentially an AI that attempts to maximize quarterly financial numbers, you can only expect it to act in the narrow context of incentives and consequences on which it operates. That cultural/social/political/economic context is the enemy, not any individual consumer and not any individual corporation.
You're simultaneously claiming that movie viewers have no way to communicate and that Hollywood listens very hard to ticket sales. I think you'll have to pick one.
I agree these are systemic problems, but I think it's a giant mistake to absolve a corporation's execs and employees for moral responsibility for their actions. The social context is also part of the system, and it's one of the easiest parts to change.
It's simultaneously true that a single individual cannot communicate and that the actions of a diffuse, uncoordinated population are heard. That population can always be expected to contain a lot of uninformed, irrational consumers. "But what if everyone simultaneously thought very carefully about they want to consume" is not a thing that will ever happen and therefore not a valid solution.
I don't absolve executives of moral guilt, they're clearly doing something wrong. I distinguish between this condition of being in the wrong with the condition of being to blame or responsible for the result. They are guilty, but if they didn't make the call, there will always be another greedy, narcisistic, power-hungry sociopath ready to take their place in the boardroom. "But what if all executives in the entire competitive industry rejected the cash grab and instead made the moral choice" is also not a thing that will ever happen and therefore not a valid solution.
Without a mechanism for coordination, neither consumers nor producers can effect change; the system is all that's left to blame. Therefore, instead of moralizing or advocating individual action, we should build mechanisms to help people coordinate, work to shift the Overton window, and change the system to incentivize the behaviors you want, building very carefully to make sure that your changes are self-reinforcing.
Movies aren't made for single individuals, so I'm not sure why you think explicit communication from a single individual is the important kind of communication here.
Who gets to decide that the consumers are uninformed and irrational? I presume that's you judging people for their tastes? In my view people are in fact pretty good at picking the kind of entertainment they want.
A lot of critics complaining about mass tastes seem to have not thought through what is economically viable in mass media. The complaint is effectively, "I, a discerning person who had studied this medium, want different things out of it than casual consumers." Which is almost tautological. What restaurant critic goes to McDonald's and complains that the food's not amazing? Its job isn't to amaze the kind of person who becomes a restaurant critic.
But there is a mechanism for coordination. You're using it. Fans use it all the time to push entertainment industries in directions the like. In my view, that this isn't happening with film is not because of lack of communication. It's that the number of movie tickets sold peaked in 2007: https://www.the-numbers.com/market/
Innovation has moved away from the dying medium because the economic incentives for film have shifted.
> That cultural/social/political/economic context is the enemy
quite right! what to do?
i usually dead-end with some question like "how to reverse incentives" or "forcibly generated counter-incentives" or "inherently diversified incentive portfolios". i wonder if we need some kind of knights-errant (justicars from mass effect), agents small in number but large in power to correct wrongs.
in daniel suarez's freedom, there is a meter/gauge that measures the concentration of power. the desired state is not diffuse OR centralized, but in the middle. you need both. the public needs power to be involved and feel involved, but there is not always time for a decision by committee and there is a time for prompt, decisive action.
I think this is ignoring the problem of the global market. Studios found that it was more profitable to cater to multiple countries and cultures simultaneously.
For example, even if 100% of America went to see a film, that only represents approximately 1/3 of China's population. As a studio, ignoring that market would be seen as throwing away money. So you will see immense pressure to make your movie marketable in China as well as America.
Even if many American consumers choose to watch a film catering to them that studio would still be pressured to view that film as a commercial failure.
It doesn't seem to matter so much what the local consumers want since their demand is dwarfed by global demand.
Every US movie watcher could stop watching certain movies and the studios would still make a lot more money globally than a US centric comedy, for example.
The consumer does not have that much power. The individual consumer almost certainly doesn’t.
Don't forget product placement and merchandise sales; those can pretty significantly offset the cost of making a movie. Ticket sales are becoming a smaller and smaller piece of the pie over time.
I do blame consumers as well. Lowest common denominator consumers are absolutely to blame for their exceptionally poor taste. Unfortunately, they happen to be the majority of consumers.
This opinion simply doesn't get expressed very often. People think it's elitism or something and react negatively to it.
One party in the equation is a very powerful, profitable industry, the other is a huge but atomized group of people.
To assume that the only power dynamic at play is consumers making individual choices as fully rational, considerate actors is a vast oversimplification. Your equation isn’t more even, you’ve just flipped the one side, assuming that consumers have all the power and Hollywood is just haplessly following demand.
Yes, lowest common denominator viewers are the biggest purchasing group, and that’s the money that Hollywood is chasing. But that was true before. What changed isn’t the same consumers demanding more Avengers and less art films, but Hollywood setting their sights on the global audience, thus increasing the market for generic movies a hundred fold. Now the incentives are so skewed towards that group that the individual American consumer has next to zero power in influencing Hollywood’s direction with their dollars.
You also ignore the power of advertising and limited choice. Marketing can and does create an audience of consumers that didn’t exist before. It’s not about “here are my products, now you choose the best” it’s “here are my products and I will subtly convince you that you need them.” Consumers are not rational actors in a classical sense of going to a market for a specific need and picking the best product from a wide selection. Marketing is sufficiently advanced that the owner of a supply can also create demand for it.
Finally, Hollywood also controls the selection of choices. So as others have pointed out, people who would prefer smarter films have to forego movies altogether if they really want to “vote with their dollars.” So they might still choose a sub par movie if they like the theater and their friends want to go.
PS: I’m not advocating for a solution, so much as I am pointing out that there’s more to market forces than a simplistic libertarian view of the market can offer. I think in this case it’s inevitable and Hollywood movies are just gonna be like that now. But there’s more at play than “oh well, consumers chose it!”
Yeah i guess the root root cause is TV + streaming competition has squeezed them so much that's the only way to get people to come out to the multiplex.
Edit: Well since I introduced the idea of a "root cause" I concede the truth is the root cause of all business decisions is, has been, and always will be market forces.
this is what i've started calling the "it takes one to tango" fallacy, where an issue has two responsible parties but only one gets blame. hollywood's not forcing people to spend their money on mass-produced uninspired movies - worse! thats what people pay to go see!