It was interesting from 50+ years before I was born, through B&W B movies of the 50s, to maybe early 00s. Independent movies don't have the same absurd tendencies, and often still have lots of contrasts. Sure, some of those are just poor too. Independents have changed too, but haven't magically ended up with the same framework every time. Hollywood didn't used to.
There were always derivatives, themes, fashions, but without dull homogeneity. Too much chasing what sells, I have no idea why, but it seems to have reached self parody with succession of predictable remakes that add the standards and take away what made the original interesting in the first place. e.g. Total Recall
I still regularly find new bands and music. shrug.
You think older movies were better because of the time filter - we remember the classics and forget the crap.
You think movies you saw in your youth were great because they were original to you - you hadn't seen all the previous movies and plays they were inspired by or remakes of.
This is the same for everybody, which is why people was saying the exact same thing as you do 10, 20, 30 years ago.
> Too much chasing what sells, I have no idea why,
Hollywood is a business, it exists to make money. It have always been like that.
> You think older movies were better because of the time filter - we remember the classics and forget the crap.
No you're making excuses. I don't think they were always better, but that they took from a FAR wider selection of production styles. Hollywood has been afraid of variety for decades, inserting the cliche "family values" ending in every movie, or even demanding the neat happy end every time, or some cliche camera technique, whether the Dutch angle, or today's overhead rotating zoom-in. Habits and techniques that run in eras. Those homogenised 5 or 15% of the film, with half of that always the cliche ending.
There have been shite movies in every era, but both good and bad provided a far wider variety of production styles. Emphatically not saying that every film became crap - though they often seem tired and boring because even a good or perfectly directed and produced film feels tired when its 5th or 15th in the franchise. Everything feels like it's in the same franchise now at 70-90% homogenised.
Maybe you don't see it, but my kids and their friends seem to and regularly take the piss about movies they saw. They can't compare with earlier eras but they can, and do, come back and take the piss about the scene or idea lifted straight from the last movie they went as a group to. Not always - they can rave about some film I thought awful too. :)
> Hollywood is a business, it exists to make money. It have always been like that.
The point, that I could have expressed better, is that it always existed to make money, but didn't completely sacrifice everything else on that altar. Yet despite scifi, yes even Star Wars, usually being western in space the theme book had more than one page. Maybe there were a dozen or so common, cliched themes and production styles, but clearly more than one.
The point I suppose boils down to: every movie now has become a super-hero martial arts movie. A horror film has become a super-hero martial arts movie in a cabin in the woods etc. The book must say that's what encapsulates the perfect movie, so that's the form given to every movie.
As for happy endings etc., this have always been a mainstay of Hollywood. In the Hollywood satire "The Player" from 1992 it is actually a plot point how a script without a happy ending cannot get produced. (And that movie itself have an improbable tacked-on happy-end to drive the point home.)
For fun I looked up the term "Hollywood Ending" ("a film ending of a conventional type, characterized as sentimental, simplistic, or melodramatic, and often featuring an improbably positive outcome; frequently in extended use."). The first example of this usage is from...1929.
So not exactly a recent development.
As for every movie being a "super-hero martial arts movie." - well this genre is certainly big at the moment, but by far isnt the only type of movie. If you look at the most recent Oscar awards, you will see movies like Roma, Vice, The Favourite, BlacKkKlansman, Bohemian Rhapsody, Green Book. These are mainstream Hollywood movies (almost by definition, this is what the Oscars awards) but there is still a span of genres and narrative styles. I don't see this as notably more homogenized than any other year.
And despite the hand-wringing over superheroes, I would like to point out that the "Marcel Cinematic Universe" is actually a pretty original concept in itself. Never before have such a complex shared universe and storyline unfolded over so many coordinated movies. I don't know if this is particularly worse than bygone Hollywood fads like westerns, sword-and-sandal epics, musicals etc.
But if you don't like superheroes there is still plenty of movies to choose from, since the overall number of movies released is steadily growing.
The Hollywood ending defines them and probably always has, so far from recent. It's been a standard for everyone to take the piss out of as long as I've known of movies!
It's one reason I miss a healthy British film industry - sure those mostly ended happily, but rarely so cheesy, except some from the 1940s. Yet there was a decent proportion of surprise unhappy, cynical, tired and non-endings too. A twist would sometimes be something you actually didn't see coming, rather than a "surprise" set up from the start and regularly telegraphed like a five year old keeping a secret. :)
It's not that I dislike superheroes. Well, didn't used to. The whole Marvel universe thing started off well enough. I enjoyed Wolverine, Iron Man, Deadpool 1 plenty, and some others. I really like roast lamb and mint, but getting it for 2 in 3 meals would cure me by boredom within weeks. Maybe it's just too large a proportion of the canon. Except it infects all genres... Wolf of Wall Street? Great Gatsby? Chernobyl? Superhero movies - in style, in script, in camera work, and in tropes used. Now that's putting lamb and mint in with my choc cake and just spoiling every meal.
Chernobyl was the surprise disappointment. It didn't need to deviate so far from reality - the affected were dangerously radioactive too? Not in our universe's physics. Nor be quite so McCarthy child's comic book (and wildly inaccurate) in representing the Soviets. That kind-of suited Stranger Things, though even there it was rather overblown, or Bruce Willis' Red, but not here. Legasov was the superhero - except he didn't actually tear down the whole Soviet system in court, nor get arrested by the KGB after the show trial. The plant manager (I forget the name) was the absurdist villain, missing only a white cat. Do as I say or I will throw you into the reactor Mr Stark. Oh wait, that was Serbina in the helicopter.
Chernobyl was clearly set in a comic book universe. It would still have been bloody good, and well made without any of that bullshit. The attention to scenic correctness and actors resembling the real people was remarkable. Spoiling the plot for a ha'p'orth of reality then.
Suffice to say, I don't think we're going to agree, but it's been a fun back and forth. :)
I don't really disagree with you about the criticism towards Hollywood for being profit-seeking, clichéd, fad-chasing, derivative etc. This is often fair. I'm just pushing back against the idea this this is somehow a recent development. I believe this is ingrained in the nature of Hollywood since its inception, and due to the nature of creative endeavors: 95% of everything is crap, and movies are so expensive they need (at least on average) to catch the tastes of the audience in order to be made.
For example, regarding Chernobyl, this is a dramatized retelling of historical events. Characters have been invented, dialog made up, and event changed or rearranged in order to sharpen and intensify the drama. Every "based on a true story" movie ever have done that. This is not something which can be blamed on comic books or recent trends. And compared to typical Hollywood history like "Amadeus" or "Braveheart", Chernobyl is practically a documentary.
There were always derivatives, themes, fashions, but without dull homogeneity. Too much chasing what sells, I have no idea why, but it seems to have reached self parody with succession of predictable remakes that add the standards and take away what made the original interesting in the first place. e.g. Total Recall
I still regularly find new bands and music. shrug.