Are Sci-Fi and Genre Movies 'Infantilizing' Us?

[lisarea]

Man, people here are always all promising to fight me later, but they almost never do.

If it's about the accuracy of the "morality tales are a totally new thing," though, I'm probably going to concede. I did a thing with my eyebrows at that part, because I think that was cherrypicking, but I couldn't right off think of counterexamples.

My main point of agreement is that the dominance of the hero's journey is childish and simplistic, and it perpetuates a kind of just world thinking.

Please remember to come back to fight me.

[JoeP]

I don't want to fight you, because that might give you some kind of perverse pleasure.

[Watser?]

Ach Himmel, I knew it vas ze Germans again!

[Watser?]

I don't want to fight you though, because I am not sure I am the good guy

If it's about the accuracy of the "morality tales are a totally new thing," though, I'm probably going to concede

Oh? O, gaan we zo beginnen?!!* In that case I am gonna fight!

Also blaming ze Germans is probably you being a bad guy!

[Watser?]

Though I have to agree that sci-fi (I always hated that, it used to be called SF) and Fantasy are infantilizing.

[Kyuss Apollo]

Just one more thing fucked-up by the rise of Nationalism. :Thanks: Obama!

[Ari]

Can I fight you if I still agree?

I think some of the dumbing down of movies is due to what the format has settled on. The big screen is a 1:30 to 3 hour visual and sound spectacle, which really lends itself to more basic 3-4 act, or simple hero's journey arc type story telling. Combined with the massive amount of money put into making block busters and you get lots of hands chipping away anything complex while at the same time wanting to make sure a general enough audience will enjoy it so they make their money back.

I think one of the failings of Bright was the transition from lively complex book genre to a single film was too big of a shock, all the pieces that needed to be put into place to properly understand or care and entertain with flash and bang all at the same time just wasn't there. While I loved the world building, it meant I also couldn't care less about some crazy possibly ancient super powerful elf bad guy because the time normally spent on character building was spent on world building.

With books and movies sharing the same viewing space, I predict the next big Renaissance of complex sci-fi movies will be when someone successfully mashes the two mediums and creates a film that requires reading or reading that goes better after seeing a film and it's entertaining.

[lisarea]

The frustrating thing is that it's so much easier to make movies now than it ever has been. We should have more diverse stuff available, and we kind of do, but it tends to get bottlenecked at distribution. And this will not stop happening as long as there's capitalism. You can make all the interesting, creative movies you want, but for some reason, most people aren't really down to do a bunch of research and seek things out just to watch a movie. It's like they think it's a leisure activity or something!

The big studios are designed to make money, and mass production is a solid way to do that. And the way you mass produce entertainment is that you identify formulas that appeal to the largest audience possible. And the way to do that is to deliver a reliable, inoffensive product that is marginally acceptable to as many people as possible, regardless of age, education, interests, politics, etc. It's all tied in with the scourge of the PG-13 rating. So you end up with movies that fit very neatly into genres and don't offend anyone too much (except me, but nobody ever cares about that!). There's got to be some formula for the maximum allowable unpredictability, too, and I'd put it somewhere under 10%. You want to have a surprise or two, but not too much, or you'll confuse people who were expecting a specific formula.

And this affects the ratings as well. Like with the Rotten Tomatoes problem, where they average scores and people just look at that instead of actually reading what people said. So a movie with a bunch of one stars and a bunch of fives looks the same as one with threes across the board, despite that being a very different type of thing.

And there's also this other thing that I've seen happen a lot. So I don't give a shit about superhero movies. But they're pretty easy to avoid. I don't accidentally end up watching superhero movies very often, and when I have watched them, I've never really thought that my opinions about them were valuable. I suppose I could go on a bunch of review sites and complain that they're too loud, too morally simplistic, too predictable, and too silly, but I don't, because I understand that's what they're supposed to be and that it all comes down to the fact that that stuff is just not my jam. BUT there are a lot of people, apparently so acclimated to predictable genre movies that they think it's some kind of prescriptive measure, who harshly review anything that doesn't meet their narrow expectations.

True story that might fall flat if you haven't seen it, but I saw a LOOOONG, detailed 'review' on a fillum site where a guy just savaged L'Atalante for not being a very good rom com. I don't remember if it was the part where the guy had his best friend's severed hands in a jar on the shelf as a memorial, or when, in a fit of self loathing spurred by some light criticism, he went to a dog groomer to have his hair sheared off like an animal. Or maybe it was how the male romantic lead is a largely unrepentant dick. BZZZT. BAD ROMCOM, TWO STARS. And because that guy was so entrenched in the formula, he seemed oblivious to the fact that his opinion was so low value. He did mention in the review that he knew that the movie was considered one of the greatest ever made, but somehow it never really tweaked that maybe he was missing something important. Doesn't matter. Review averaging means that guy's opinion matters as much as anyone's.

And that isn't at all uncommon. I see that on review sites all the time, people who somehow accidentally watched some auteur movie, and got all disgruntled that it didn't conform to some genre, or that it was weird or too slow or something. It seems that pretty much anything outside of the mainstream gets dinged for that reason alone, and they end up indistinguishable from a sub-mediocre genre movie as far as the beancounters can tell. (LOL, also go look at the Amazon reviews for Todd Solondz' Weiner Dog. It's currently at 69% one star reviews, largely from people who thought it was going to be a cute, feel good story for dachshund enthusiasts.)

So anyway, things should be better, what with streaming and all, but look at this site. I've sorted movies currently on Netflix by the best rating. #1 is a brand new Netflix orginal called A Futile and Stupid Gesture. I have not seen it, so maybe I'm wrong, but I am skeptical that that is actually a better movie than anything else down on the list. Sunset Boulevard, for example, is on the list, but not until the second page. And it's also ranked below some cartoon called A Christmas Special: Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir. The specifics will change, of course, but I'm betting the trend doesn't.

My point being that, with mainstream streaming services, the focus isn't really on offering diversity of choices, either. Those are profit seeking entities, too, so they're doing the same thing the studios and theaters are doing. They're trying to steer and shape their audiences toward their most profitable products. You may have more options available streaming than in theaters, but you're still getting that flattening.

And that's not going to go away. I don't see a lot of potential for a resurgence of more creative or challenging media, really. Different genres will trend, I'm sure, like they always do, but the constant is going to be the lowest common denominators.

[The Lone Ranger]

I thought about this sort of thing when I saw The Greatest Showman last weekend. (It's a pretty good movie, by the way. It's not everyone's cup of tea, I'm sure, but I thought it was pretty good.)


The problem with making a movie centered around P. T. Barnum is that Barnum had some very well-document qualities that many would regard as less than admirable. But, the protagonist of your typical Hollywood movie must be depicted as a hero, so those who oppose him must be depicted as villains. Minor spoilers to follow.



First up is Barnum's father-in-law. I don't know what kind of relationship they had in real life, but in the movie, Barnum's FiL is depicted as a straight-up villain who literally strikes children for acting like <gasp!> children and treats everyone who wasn't born wealthy as if they're trash. He does everything but twirl his mustache and cackle evilly while plotting to murder orphans. So next to him, Barnum looks like a virtual saint.


Then we have Jenny Lind. From all I've read, the real Barnum and Lind had a perfectly cordial relationship, with no hint of impropriety on either side. But Hollywood seems to believe that a.) it's impossible for a man and woman to work together and not fall in love, and b.) men are almost entirely driven by their sexual drives, and so only superior moral fiber coupled with heroic willpower could empower a man to resist the advances of an attractive woman.

So naturally, Lind eventually tries to seduce Barnum. When he gently turns her down, her response is ... nasty and vindictive. Thus, we get to view Barnum as a truly heroic person because he ... didn't abandon the wife and children he loves the moment an attractive woman batted her eyes at him. And, of course, we get to see Lind as a nasty villain who knowingly tried to break up a loving family -- and who tried to destroy both his fortune and his family when he rebuffed her advances.

[Kyuss Apollo]

Jenny Nicholson's numbered list take-down of The Greatest Showman, while not quite as long as the actual movie, is probably way better.

"I think Hugh Jackman will just take literally any project that lets him sing and it's extremely endearing but his enthusiasm did not save this."

I hate The Greatest Showman more every moment -...