Yesterday on Facebook I had to vent about how the 2010's just stink for American cinema: “As the end of the decade approaches, I fear we’ve basically gone through the worst decade for American movies since the ’80s. It’s a good thing TV is going through an incredible golden age that far surpasses most of the stuff being released in theaters.”
Jeffrey Wells pointed me to a corresponding Hadley Freeman piece in the Guardian today: “From Top Gun to Stand By Me: Why the 1980s Is My Favorite Film Decade,” and reminded me of a Paul Schrader quote from a 2016 Little White Lies interview: “In the ’70s it wasn’t that the films were better, it was the audiences.”
He also pointed on his site to a comment by Tony Joe Stemme: “It’s easy to blame Hollywood for the lack of substantive, reality-based movies that get made, but the blame is squarely on audiences. They’re the ones that have made adult-themed dramas and comedies practically extinct. Folks see only superhero, sci-fi, fantasy and animated features? That’s what Hollywood is going to make. Kramer vs. Kramer made $400M in adjusted gross to today’s dollars. FOUR HUNDRED MILLION. For a divorce drama. Would a movie like that make even a quarter of that today?? Doubtful. Look in the mirror.”
My response: "You're not wrong but television also found a way to make "cinema" novelistic. It's the closest we've ever come to duplicating reading a book. The luxury TV has, that movies don't, is that there's more time to build up characters, storylines, atmosphere through a 10-12 hour season. We care more about the characters and are more involved because of that. A movie has to cram everything it has to say in just 2 hours."
I will close with this, if anything, American movies this decade have proven to us that fanboys drive the narrative of whatever is made, for better or for worse: I think genre movies were really great this decade, especially sci-fi and horror. Maybe the best decade ever for those types of films. It's a golden age for those kinds of films.
For months, people close to CEO David Ellison had hinted that he would leave if state AGs didn't drop their antitrust suit against the $111 billion Warner Bros. Discovery merger.