* I don't think polarization is a good signal for poor quality; I would rather suggest it means a more niche product, more highly focused. That the niche being served is largely adolescents is unfortunate.
* I think big-budget movies have been getting more conservative and predictable, but I would hazard a guess that it's due to financial industry turmoil and consequently less desire for risk taking.
"That the niche being served is largely adolescents is unfortunate"
Ever seen the Poochie episode of The Simpsons? The producers try to boost the ratings of Itchy and Scratchy by adding a ridiculous character designed to appeal to everyone. Near the start of the episode they hold a focus group (text from snpp.com):
Man: How many of you kids would like Itchy & Scratchy to deal with real-life problems, like the ones you face every day?
Kids: [clamoring] Oh, yeah! I would! Great idea! Yeah, that's it!
Man: And who would like to see them do just the opposite -- getting into far-out situations involving robots and magic powers?
Kids: [clamoring] Me! Yeah! Oh, cool! Yeah, that's what I want!
Man: So, you want a realistic, down-to-earth show... that's completely off-the-wall and swarming with magic robots?
> So, you want a realistic, down-to-earth show... that's completely off-the-wall and swarming with magic robots?
That actually sounds like the first few seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I would have given any of several other examples, but you specified that there must be "magic robots", which narrows things down a lot.
The kids' desires aren't actually contradictory, if you've got the writing skills to pull it off.
I would say that Buffy isn't so much evidence that two opposed motifs can exist at the same time in a show, so much as that they can exist in close quarters, alternating in a schizophrenic-but-enjoyable fashion. I don't recall many moments where I was thinking of any of the characters as both teenagers and gothic-fantasy-world occupants (even in, say, The Body, you're just watching a well-plotted drama about a teenager; the vampires, though serving as setting elements, could be traded for mobsters or hospital patients or needy pets in that episode without affecting the theme.)
You'll have to forgive slightly imprecise language. This post was in response to the noise around the blogosphere that Hollywood has become too conservative, and is targeting reliable niches (as you point out).
We think one interesting way to observe the above is via polarization.
It's more than just date movies. High school kids have lots of disposable income, few bills, plenty of time to kill, can't get into bars, and don't need get hire a babysitter.
College kids have lots of other things to spend their money on, like booze and, uh, booze. Once you're past that age, the odds of having kids goes up and then going to a movie becomes a major outing. For my wife and I to see a movie in the theatre now, we'll have to shell out close to $80. It's just not worth it, especially as home theatres keep getting better and better.
I think Moki.TV just redefined 'polarizing'. If you look at the individual bar graphs for each movie (especially the ones on the top right of the main graph), the voting distribution is actually very even ('square' or 'sloped' looking). For the data to be truly polarised you would expect the graph to be U-shaped: lots of 5s and lots of 1s and little in between.
What this data shows is that lots of people are giving these films a chance (and paying money to do so) who aren't really that engaged with the genre, or niche. That's a big validation of the studios' design strategy for the films.
An illustrative example I can think of that isn't in the top 20 is District 9: a very familiar 'niche-y' core genre, a fairly predictable plotline, but with enough influences from other genres to keep a diverse audience interested. The Dark Knight would probably be another.
Interesting. I'd just been thinking about this. The last two new releases I tried watching were so bad that I couldn't finish either of them. I know this is only 2 data points, but they were both bad in the same way: they were completely predictable. That's something you commonly see in a declining medium. People recycle old ideas instead of having new ones.
How much of this is a failure of the medium, though, rather than of individuals' jaded palates coupled with the availability of almost all hit movies from the past for instant home viewing? We tend to glamorize earlier generations of the movie industry because some of their products have stood the test of time so well, while overlooking the abundance of terrible films that came out around the same time.
I do think that plotting, which is only one element of a film, tends to get more predictable as viewers age. There are only so many basic dramatic situations, and nowadays genre tropes are so well-defined and well-known that almost anything is going to look familiar and derivative to somebody, and be blogged about in such terms. On the other hand, a good film can be enjoyed repeatedly, despite the element of surprise being gone after the first viewing; the pleasure is in the quality of the execution rather than in the novelty of the story development.
I find most movies to be predictable. "Hero's Journey" and all that. But I assume you mean less structural, and more like knowing exactly what they are going to say (or what jokes they'll use for a situation). I hate that.
But still, movies are (generally) business first, and art second. They don't even want to be "new"... just "fresh".
Nothing wrong with predictable, humans have been telling the same basic stories plot-wise for thousands of years. It's about how well you tell the story, not whether the story is original or not; originality is great, but it's too rare to be a requirement.
You'd be crazy to make a movie, and not try and pull on the well known well loved plot lines. It'd be like trying to make music with chords no one has ever heard; it'd be terrible. People want something familiar.
Did you watch The Social Network? Did you like it? I think we all knew how it ended, it was the writing, cinematography, etc. that account for its popularity. And the fact that the writers stretched the truth so the story would be somewhat fresh :)
And the fact that the writers stretched the truth so the story would be somewhat fresh
Actually I'd argue that they changed the story to make it less fresh, but more understandable/appealing to the non-tech audience. After all, who doesn't understand jilted love as a motivator? Whereas the "hacker's ethic" -- try something to see it it'll work -- is tougher to convey to a general audience.
(For the record, I thought it was still a great movie.)
Ehh, I haven't seen more geeky hacker stuff references in a movie so while it was given broad appeal at leas they retained a decent amount of the hacker feel to it.
It's one thing to adapt a classic story or classic elements in a new form, that's how all writing works. It's another thing entirely to work within a narrow confine of sequels and reboots of a single story.
It's been my theory that now we have movies that are more inspired by computer games and other movies than real life. This is subtly manifesting itself in a bizarre circular feedback loop.
It has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with the universal appeal of comic book/superhero/fantasy mythologies.
Major studio economics have changed in recent years and it is now critical that movies have a global, universal appeal.
Their major profit centres are evaporating before their eyes (back catalog tv licencing and dvd sales), along with declining domestic audiences.
In order to turn a profit the movies must be as generic and acceptable as possible: lots of children, the hero's journey and other myths, no sex or swearing, "fake" comic book violence or none at all.
Any kind of NC-17/Restricted rating is the kiss of death. Anything controversial will be a flop.
The problem is the death spiral of risk-aversion, unoriginality, and plot refinement to the point where the "movie" will be perfected and there will be nothing left to film.
Lord or the Rings is the new mythology.. the archetype of the Hero's Journey. Once you print it to film.. what's the point of retelling the story?
I didn't say it had anything to do with technology exclusively. But there's a relatively new medium in which people experience narrative and action scenes. It doesn't take a great stretch of the imagination to believe that current or new moviemakers will be influenced by the action in, say, Modern Warfare 2, and make scenes that take from it rather than reality.
I don't disagree with you in other respects at all.
1) Critical meta-ratings as THE measure of quality
2) The Top 20 popular movies per year as a representation of the entire year's quality.
The author's final result seems to be that movie studios prefer to make movies that have a built-in audience (at least for big-budget blockbuster movies).
Assuming the ratings have been made since the launch of the site, there's also a massive systematic error introduced by people being inclined to forget films they considered to be pretty rubbish a decade ago, whilst being determined to challenge popular opinion on the stuff they wished they hadn't watched last year.
Whilst people feel the need to use ranking systems to express their dismay at Avatar not being the experience they'd hoped for and correct their teenage daughter's friends' belief that the Twilight Saga is deep and insightful, it's mostly the people that actually consider themselves fans of Adam Sandler and Hugh Grant's stock characters that bother to go and rate Happy Gilmore and Four Weddings and a Funeral.
Although I agree with the statement in general, I have to ask: is polarization really a good measure of declining quality? With ticket prices these days, maybe a higher percentage of audiences are more likely to think it was good so they don't feel like they wasted money...
Either way, nice visualization and it's always fun to read catty reviews about bad movies.
Its a really interesting article, but their methodology doesn't support their conclusion. I'm willing to accept critical rankings as a measure of quality, since I can't think of a better way of mapping the subjective notion of quality to a quantitative measure. There are still some dodgey things being done here though:
1. Polarization as a measure of quality
2. Choice of the top 20 movies as a selection measure.
The article should really be title: "Popular movies are becoming more polarizing". Though I concede that blogs like this are written to attract hits and "Movies are getting worse" is probably more likely to achieve that.
Don't you feel this might be kind of a cognitive bias? Like when people poll for the best album of all time and it's always something that was released within the last 3 years of whenever the poll was.
The social network is of it's time and will date really badly, to the point where no one will watch or mention it ever again.
True Grit is a remake so specifically cannot be included as it had to be good enough to have been remade.
Inception isn't ever going to be a classic a la The Matrix.
The Kings Speech will definitely have longevity; Black Swan I'm not convinced will float above just being another film you can pick up for £3 in HMV in a couple of months but then think "well, will I ever watch it?"
I chose these movies not necessarily because I felt they were superb (although I loved them all) but because they were critically acclaimed and all received lots of oscar nominations. Almost by definition, they are the best films of the year.
If you compare it to nominated movies ten years ago, Braveheart, Apollo 13, I think they are comparably great.
Additionally, box office returns seem to be at all time highs. Black Swan and True Grit are two films that typically would be destined for "niche" audiences, but have returned hundreds of millions for reasonably small budgets.
Also, I think that Inception will be almost as influential as The Matrix, except in a smaller genre of films (eg: Matrix built upon action movies, whereas Inception was more of a psych thriller) - in my opinion.
Box office returns at an all time high? With or without adjusting for the increase in ticket prices (i.e., I seriously want to know how many tickets were sold per capita)?
The social network is of it's time and will date really badly, to the point where no one will watch or mention it ever again.
I totally agree that The social network is of it's time but totally disagree that will date really badly.
The social network is about its time, and has excellent structure and dialog too. Time will tell if it becomes a classic, but as a snapshot of .dot com boom era it's excellent, and will remain so. How can one write a social history of the years 2000-2010 without mentioning social networks and facebook in particular?
> The Social Network -
Sort of knew the story and acting was pretty ordinary.
> Inception -
Cool story and nice effects, very captivating movie, made me think a little bit, but the ideas of the movie are too far fetched.
> True Grit -
I didn't see the original, couldn't work out whether it was fiction until near the middle, and then it just went downhill, for me the girl did the best acting.
Worth watching? Definitely, become classics? Probably not, they're all missing the extra magic sauce.
One explanation behind increasing polarization could be the internet.
I would assume that there are more movie critics now, or at least critics are more visible. Thanks to sites like Rotten Tomatoes, even a local newspaper critic can have global reach.
Due to this visibility, it's harder for critics to stand out. The easiest way to stand out is to be extreme or contrarian which would lead to more polarization.
Your point is a very important one that I was surprised to find was not expressed by other commenters. It convinced me of something that was bouncing around my head while reading the article and the comments before yours:
If, as everyone seems to agree, movies are becoming more 'safe', more 'lowest common denominator' on average, reviews should be becoming _less_ polarized in response, not more.
That the opposite is happening suggests that reviews are progressively carrying less and less 'truth' than they once did, and this is likely the case even when they may be in general agreement on a given film.
The appropriate measure is not whether bad movies are made; (or popular) it's whether good films are still produced. There is some room for concern - mid-budget films for adults like, for example, 'Master and Commander' are essentially dead. The economics of film push studios to make blockbusters or low-budget films. Still, there are enough good low-budget films still being produced that I won't give in to despair just yet.
> The key, we think, is to look for movies that some love and some hate, which is the likely profile of a bad movie that's "safely" manufactured for an existing fanbase.
But according to the graph, Toy Story 3 was the least polarizing movie of 2010 and that seems like a prime example of a movie "safely" manufactured for an existing fanbase.
I think it's fair to say that the Toy Story movies (and possibly Pixar movies in general) is an exception to the Polarizing Sequels trend, similar to the Batman franchise. I'd be curious to see a filter that lets you select films by studio and/or distributor.
>But according to the graph, Toy Story 3 was the least polarizing movie of 2010 and that seems like a prime example of a movie "safely" manufactured for an existing fanbase.
I think this is likely due to that fact that Toy Story 3 was superior to Toy Story 2, leaving people pleasantly surprised.
(It is actually unexpectedly complex. The first scene features the toys calmly discussing and preparing for their own deaths. It's quite stark.)
OK, then what about The Blair Witch Project? One of the most polarizing movies on the graph, but not exactly what you'd call "safely" manufactured for an existing fanbase.
> not exactly what you'd call "safely" manufactured for an existing fanbase.
I'd say a film having a budget of $22k[1] is pretty safe, as far as the rest of the films on that list are concerned. While not a non-trivial amount of debt for a handful of people to take on, it's roughly in the same price range as a new car, which most people are capable of taking on.
Why would extremely polarizing movies be an indicator that movies are getting worse? If anything, more polarization would seem to mean that critics are finding movies more difficult to come to consensus on, which could mean that movies are getting MORE complex and nuanced in their storytelling, which in tern could be taken to mean that movies are getting BETTER.
The reason extremely polarizing movies are an indicator that movies are getting worse is because that is what Moki's data shows.
Their graph shows that "polarizing" movies are strongly correlated with low ratings by Moki users (not just critics), and that both are increasing over time (i.e. getting worse).
Moki does not claim one causes the other, or try to psychoanalyze users based on their ratings. They simply note that it does exist.
Then I'm not understanding the definition of "polarizing". By my thinking, a polarizing movie would have distinctly good ratings to go alongside distinctly bad ratings, i.e. Twilight is not polarizing if everybody agrees it is bad.
Good point. Sparkly vampire movies produced and marketed with the express intent of playing on the hormones of teenage girls tend to be extremely complex and nuanced.
The key, we think, is to look for movies that some love and some hate, which is the likely profile of a bad movie that's "safely" manufactured for an existing fanbase.
Some people love death metal and some hate it. Some people love classical music and some hate it. Polarization is hardly a quality indicator. Indeed, it seems more like an indicator of memorability.
People recycle old ideas instead of having new ones.
IMO this is a weak argument - you could say the same thing about startups. When it comes to creative work, it's all about the execution.
Just because a story is being retold doesn't automatically make it bad. Similarly, just because a story has been told before doesn't mean you can't tell it again.
How so? Seems to me it's just "the man who kicked lots of ass". He certainly didn't learn better, since John McClane proceeded to find himself in similar situations 3 more times :P
If you look closely at the graph, notice that while there are more poorly rated, highly polarizing films, there is also an increase in less polarizing, very highly rated films... They're just hidden because your eyes are drawn upwards to the red. If you only pay attention to the red, it's just a chart about polarization.
Polarization is a measure of the assertiveness of an artist.. the degree to which they have executed an opinionated concept for a specific audience.
A niche film should be as highly opinionated as possible, with the objective of both catering to your chosen market and excluding all others intentionally.
For example, the musical act Prodigy do not do TV performances. This is a mainstream marketing method that does not appeal to their audience. By avoiding it, they increase their appeal to their true fans, while ignoring uninterested listeners. Likewise, the singer Adele does not perform at music festivals for the same reason.
The ideal niche product would repel exactly half the critics and attract the other half. This would create a core of hardcore evangelists, a bigger group of fans, a big group of uninterested bystanders and a small group of haters. The haters and bystanders can mostly be ignored, making marketing super-efficient.
Lack of polarization is a measure of beauty and popularity. Beauty is a measure of average-ness and normality. The most beautiful person in a given society is the one that looks the most an average of all the people. The most popular movie is the one that everyone can relate to.. the most profoundly average.
Case in point.. the Shawshank Redemption. This is a movie that is consistently voted one of the best ever made, but it's highly rated because of its familiarity. It's a near flawless execution of common mythologies that everyone can relate to: fall from grace, redemption, justice, freedom and so on.
Toy Story is another example. Pixar's entire methodology is to distill the world's archetypes and mythologies down into the "perfect" movie with every "i" dotted and every "t" crossed. The result is profoundly familiar, yet kept fresh with just enough plot twists and humour to keep it interesting.
Niche movies are just popular movies for specific groups instead of a general audience. Polarization is a measure of how effectively they achieved the goal.
It's all relative, and trying to apply "scientific visualization" to literary criticism is not an especially useful activity. (Applying it to literary markets is another matter...)
Interestingly, I liked the Matrix sequels, the 3rd Spiderman movie, and thought the Star Wars prequels were pretty good (though not as good as _Empire_). And having been around at the time depicted in the latest Indiana Jones movie, late 50s early 60s, I enjoyed it tremendously.
I'm in my early 50s, and one of the things I've noticed over the years is that I become _less_ critical of movies and literature as I get older. That is to say I'm much more tolerant of elements in a movie or story that would drive me nuts when I was younger.
When you are very young, everything is new and wonderful, then you become an adult and suddenly you start to notice that "hey, I've seen this type of story before. And I liked it better then!" Of course most likely the story wasn't all that new when you saw it first, but it was new to _you_. There are very few truly new storie.
As you get older, though, you often start looking not at the flash and the surface of stories, but at the quality of execution, at the subtleties of exposition, and the nuance of character. You also can view the story in a larger context, both your own context, and the context of history. And, more importantly, you stop comparing the _qualities_ of works to the _feelings_ you had when you were twelve years old. I can tell you for sure, _nothing_ is ever going to be as much fun as whatever it was that was pushing your buttons when you were a kid.
As they used to say in old school science fiction fandom, "the golden age is twelve."
Sad, but true. In compensation, though, you do get a possibly deeper appreciation, and, if you let it happen, a broader range of tastes. If you had told me 30-40 years ago that one of my favorite genres would be josei anime and manga I would have laughed in your face; once you'd explained to me what that was...
Having said all that, the vast bulk of movies at any given time follows Sturgeon's Law pretty closely. Mostly shit. We remember the gems of the past and in aggregate they seem to add up to a larger sum than the current year's turkeys. I seem to go to the movies about as much as I did in my 20s and seem to be enjoying them at about the same rate.
I think its more that no one is taking the time to write great and compelling stories.
It takes time and patience and a lot of effort to create a story like the The Lord of the Rings. And the movies that are really good are ones with a great story behind them.
Hollywood seems to be just mining stories from the past. Its gonna run out at some point and all we'll get are sequels.
There needs to be some infusion of creativity. "Contemporary" creativity. Ie new but compelling and interesting stories. It seems to be a lost skill.
> I think its more that no one is taking the time to write great and compelling stories.
Seriously? Pick up a book, that's so far from true it isn't even funny.
> It takes time and patience and a lot of effort to create a story like the The Lord of the Rings.
Sure, and there's a ton of them already out there in the form of books.
> Hollywood seems to be just mining stories from the past. Its gonna run out at some point and all we'll get are sequels.
You can't run out of mining stories from the past; more great stories have already been written than will likely ever be able to be put on film.
> There needs to be some infusion of creativity. "Contemporary" creativity. Ie new but compelling and interesting stories. It seems to be a lost skill.
Or you're simply misdiagnosing the problem. Perhaps movies just suck more recently because exec's have gotten really good at shooting for the lowest common denominator to gain the largest audience and thus revenue.
Making money is not a guarantee of a great movie and great movies are quite often box office failures because they're too niche, by necessity.
The more the business folks pull the strings, the worse the movies will be artistically, but their goal is money, so they don't care, nor should they.
Movies will become great again, when Avatar style technology drives down the cost of making one to the point that making cheaper niche movies can be profitable.
Watching old movies like Star wars, Indiana Jones, old Bond movies, you get the sense that a lot of work was put in to creating the scenes. It must have been very expensive to make, was it because revenue was very high back then?
Movies used to be the only game in town; now there are actual games and the gaming industry surpassed Hollywood a while back. Besides, blockbusters have always been profitable, but with so many other entertainment options these days, viewers have choices they didn't in the past.
That Michael Bay movies continue to make big bucks is a travesty, but that's today's market. I'd much rather watch Man from Earth than any movie he's ever made, but one can't deny his movies make execs lots of money by being dumb and going for every cheap laugh, big explosion, overdone effect he can think of.
Might want to mention that your chart works fine in Firefox 4 as well. The "Works best in Google Chrome" gives me eerie memories of the "Best Viewed in Internet Explorer" days.
A bit over 25 years ago, I saw _Top Gun_ and told my girlfriend that people had forgotten how to make movies, though they did know how to make commercials and music videos. I don't think that I was wrong, but I may have implicitly given too much credit to the movie makers of years past.There were a lot of awful movies made during times that at least the film critics look back on with nostalgia.
I'm not sure if I'm reading the visualizations correctly, but thankfully, they put Christopher Nolan on there, so I can have a reference as to whose work is best. ;-)
I do have to agree with AndrewO though, there are many movies that I consider to be of the highest quality that I would consider as eliciting heavy polar reactions. Primer is perhaps the best geek example.
It probably hasn't helped that TV can now feature long-running complex shows (Lost, the Sopranos, the Wire, Dexter, Mad Men, the Office, etc) that 2 hour movies can't beat in terms of character exploration and plot depth.
In other news, those damn kids have it too easy these days, had to walk 10 miles, bare foot, in 10 feet of snow, up hill...
Sensationalist title and a data visualization that's useless. Try average Rotten Tomatoes score or something, not some random stat with no formula made up on the spot. Seriously, what does "polarizing" actually stand for?
This kind of thing has been going on since the beginning of time and will continue until the end of it. Sorry, nothing to see here.
"We looked at how polarizing each movie is by measuring the standard deviation of the ratings for each movie."
That's pretty clear, even if it's still a bad measure. There are plenty of valid criticisms of this survey; you don't need to make stuff up based on skimming it before you post your predetermined conclusions.
As a bit of a tangent, I'd like to mention a movie ranking site I think is pretty underrated http://www.phi-phenomenon.org/ which uses some interesting statistical methods to aggregate "best of" lists
OT: that website is horrible in Firefox, 100+ assets, 25 secs to the onload event, and afterwards it locks up periodically because of the chartbeat analytics ajax call. In Chrome, it's a breeze, fast load and then completely fluid. Chrome is magic.
PS: the Firefox UI freeze on ajax calls seems to be a Mac specific problem.
By my research Bollywood's total annual revenues are barely a third of Hollywood revenues for theatrical releases alone (aside from dvd, broadcast, and digital distribution revenues).
* I don't think polarization is a good signal for poor quality; I would rather suggest it means a more niche product, more highly focused. That the niche being served is largely adolescents is unfortunate.
* I think big-budget movies have been getting more conservative and predictable, but I would hazard a guess that it's due to financial industry turmoil and consequently less desire for risk taking.