Why Movies Suck Today ?

INTRODUCTION AND PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

Why are movies so bad today is a thought provoking question. One of my interests in life is criticizing movies and there is certainly no shortage of bad movies coming out now. While there has always been bad films, they seem in greater abundance today than in the past. What is worse is that in our present day , bad movies do not bomb at the box office as they would have in the past. Regardless of the lack of plot, lack of character development, poor script and contrived behavior, a movie will make money if you put enough explosions and visual spectacles in it. People will come, watch it and, in fact, praise it.

I remember while spending Christmas in Toronto last year, me and my at the time girl friend made the mistake of going to see Disney's TRON. The movie was nothing but an inarticulate light show with no plot or story. Halfway through the movie I just looked at my date and said " WHATS AT STAKE IN THIS MOVIE" ? "WHAT THE HELL AM I WATCHING?" We then spend the remainder of the movie making fun of it.

This was hardly a isolated case. When serving in Iraq I had to suffer through the agony of listening to TRANSFORMER movies as soldiers would play TRANSFORMERS One and Two on their laptops. Torture by the enemy is expected, but torture by your own men? No wonder I was happy to pull guard duty. The TRANSFORMERS movies are complete messes of a film full of failed jokes, weird behavior that is intended to be funny but is not, useless characters, and no sensible plot. At their conculsion the movies make the watcher feel a sense of inadequacy as you cannot understand what the movie was trying to communicate. I only saw TRANSFORMERS 1 in the theaters and hearing the excessive moralising from a giant robot at the end of the movie was the last straw; I went to the ticket counter and demanded that I get my money back.

The 2009 movie STAR TREK is another abomination thats is well praised. This colorful spectacle was nothing more than a brainless action flick with STAR TREK on the title. The villains motive made absolutely no sense as he wanted to destroy the planet Vulcan to get revenge on Spock because Spock was trying to save the villains home planet but could not in time. Thats like me wanting revenge on a fireman because my house burnt down and the fireman could not arrive in time to extinguish the fire. Furthermore the new Star Trek movie lacked any of the spirt of the orginal. It was dead. In the orginal Star Trek, the chemistry between the cast was superb. The doctor was the conscience, Spock the intellect and Captain Kirk the action. The ideas of self-sacrifice, human emotion, fighting against the odds, moral philosophy, boldness and courage where the main traits of the story. In this new STAR TREK, these kids just serve cause they want to have a "good ole time". Furthermore Captain Kirk, Spock and the Doctor all seem like " roommates" or drinking buddies to the rest of the cast in the new movie where as in the old STAR TREK they were assertive leadership figures.



WHY MOVIES SUCK TODAY

In my opinion I can explain why movies suck in two words, stupification and emasculation. As Western Civilization declines sensible thought also declines as well as military spirt and masculinity . Like the Romans who became weak, selfish, lazy and effeminate , we too are repeating that example. Movie makers now have to make movies that cater to the idioicy, pussification and seflishness of society.

With movies like the new STAR TREK and TRON, no wonder young kids see themselves as the center of the universe. In TRON the main character walked into a club and got to immediately meet with a big shot boss while everyone else either couldn't or had to wait for a long time to get that same meeting. In STAR TREK the story had you believe that a young mutinous punk could in three years become the Captain of a Starship. In the movie, by simply delivering news of an impending Romulan attack, the main character James Kirk is immediately promoted to First Officer, aka second in command. The movies have become a video game where the world revolves around the main character who is greatly sought after and he always get what he wants, regardless of restrictions or silly rules.

Furthermore movies are so ridiculous no wonder kids have no notion of reality. The new movie THE THING (2011) tried to make audience believe that a group of Norweigns living in Anarctica and wanting to keep an extra-terrestrial discovery a secret would logically travel to the United States to hire a palentologist to study the alien remains. What there are no paleontologist in Norway ? The new THING was a total failure as it ignored what made the orginal thing so great, isolation and not knowing who was the alien. In this new movie, the alien simply attacks out in the open and spoils the suspense while the feeling of isolation in Anarctica was immediately removed from the film when they went to the United States to hire the girl scientist.



EMASCULATION OF WAR MOVIES

War movies are no doubt also affected by the stupification and emasculation in Hollywood. Growing up I remember watching such Epic war movies like ZULU (1964) and THE BLUE MAX (1966). Zulu was an excellent war film which told the story of the Battle of Rorks Drift where a single understrength British company of about 150 men held off an attack by 3000-4000 Zulu warriors. The movie was about honor to British crown and stubborn heroic resistance to overwhelming odds containing some of the most epic lines in hollywood like "The army doesn't like more than one disaster in a day. Looks bad in the papers and upsets civilains at their breakfast" and "Why us?" Cause were are here lad. Nobody else, just us". The BLUE MAX was also a great war film about a World War One peasant/commoner in the German Army who becomes a fighter pilot and has the ruthless ambition to attain 20 kills so he can win the greatest medal in the German Army, the Blue Max, which to him will prove that he is equal or greater to his fellow fighter pilots who come from the aristocratic class. This excellent film focuses on a mans drive to be the best driven by his modest upbringing while the events of 1918 occur in the background with the German Army attempting a final offensive to crush the allied armies in France before the Americans arrive in sufficient strength.

But what are war movies today? Do they focus on honor, ambition, general strategy and ruthlessness ? No, instead they focus on political correctness and overdramatize the misery of soldiers in combat with melodramatic music. Watching war films is now like watching a soap opera. Sitting through a war movie is now mentally draining and no longer fun or entertaining. Movies like SAVING PRIVATE RYAN and the THIN RED LINE come to mind. These movies are overhyped by hollywood. They are overdramatic and furthermore they are movies you cannot just sit down and watch to relax. I could not even sit through half of the THIN RED LINE as it became a frustrating affair of bizarre psychology having to freaking watch all these soldiers and their stupid flashbacks and narrations about their lives befores the war... boring...not fun..overdramatic.

No doubt if ZULU was remade today .. it would not be a straight to the point, no nonsense, lets fight it out type of movie like the orginal, but an overdramatized mess with most of the movie focusing on the evils of whites against blacks, the misery of the British soldiers and some woman would be thrown in the story to have a useless romantic subplot added.



COMIC BOOK MOVIES

All genres in movies are affected, including Comic Book movies.With exception to Nolan's Batman series, Watchmen and X-men First Class, pretty much every comic book movie to have come out is total garbage.



SUPERMAN RETURNS

Damn I thought movie was horrible. Superman leaves Earth for 5 years or so to explore the remanants of Kyrpton but doesnt tell Lois or anyone. Why? Superman would not just leave Earth for 5 years without tellling Lois before hand. He is not that cruel. That makes no sense and is contrived to fit the story. Who is the main villain? Lex Luthor? How exciting.. so either Lex Luthor has Kryptonite and Superman is helpless or he does'nt have Kryptonite and Lex is helpless against Superman. Gotta love one sided battles.

So Lex's sinister plan so to create a new continent by using Kyrptonian crystals cause he needs land for real estate reasons. But who would want to live on that rock he created...? It looks barren and not livable or even remotely arable. Even if it was , how would he keep it and prevent the world from taking it ? His response to that was " I have alien techonolgy. Bring it on". What you are going to defend a continent the size of Australia using alien technology with 5 goons and a helicopter ?

Good to see James Marsden playing his usual whimpy roles as the beta male. In X-men he plays Cyclops and is Wolverines b***h. In the Notebook the girl leaves him for another guy and he whines. In the trailer of the new movie he is in with Kate Bosworth she calls him a coward. Here in this movie he is Supermans b****h, takes care of Supermans kid while Lois hangs out with Superman behind his back. What a chump. Keep up the good work Jimmy. Bryan Singer is also a bad director and his constant film features are super powered beings using their powers to the most minimal extent like in the first two horrible X-men movies and people staring blankly into the camera and at each other. Singer also is infamous for using annoying lines in his movies like when the little kid who just stares in the movie and does nothing tells Lex Luthor " You're Bald." Similar, useless, annoying lines in Singers other movies like X-men including " Whats with the Dorky Helmet" (What Pyro tells Magneto)



X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE

This movie apparently tells the story of wolverines "questionable" past where he commited unspeakable acts and atrocities..only it does not happen in the movie. In fact, Wolverine does not do anything at all while serving under Stryker... it is in fact his brother who does all the evil things we thought Wolverine was responsible for. Why Styker sought after Wolverine so much in the film is beyond me when Wolverine did not do anything.....oh wait... this movie is like a video game where Wolverine is the center of the universe and he goes from boss to boss while Styker worships the ground he walks on.

Things occur so fast in the movie that the audience just does not care. In ten minutes, Wolverine grows up, fights in several American Wars, joins Strykers team then after doing nothing when working with Stryker, quits. He meets a girl who is on screen for ten minutes before she is killed. Characters like Gambit and the Blob appear on screen for like 2 minutes but disappear because the center of attention is on Wolverine, the only guy we care about right? After all Wolverine is so interesting and we have not seen him before.

Every cliche you can imagine is in the movie. Overhead scream holding a dead person in your arms, scientists being a victim of their own creation, walking away when there is an explosion in the back ground, its all here. The editing is poor too. In one scene you have Gambit getting knocked out by Wolverine but a minute later you see Gambit on top of a building running towards Wolverine. Apparently Gambit got knocked out, recovered and ran 3 blocks away, got on top of a building and ran back to Wolverine. The assault on the compound in Africa was so ridiculous as every mutant there got conveniently a turn to show off their powers. It was like they were saying... now its my turn...now my turn...now my turn. Styker wants to shoot Wolverine in the head with an adamantium bullet because according to Styker, the bullet will erase his memory...so... has Stryker been experimenting with that or something? How does he know it will erase his memory?

Ryan Reynolds is in this movie..and does not contribute a thing except his obnoxious attitude. Good Job Ryan Reynolds, I am sure you wont be involved with any more bad comic book movies in the future.




GREEN LANTERN

Oh snap , Ryan Reynolds is back.. this time as the Green lantern. While I did not find this movie as bad as X-men Orgins: Wolverine it was still not very entertaining. Gotta love the useless romantic subplot they put in cause we really needed to see that. Whats an action movie without a little bit of contrived and vomit inducing romance with two people who have zero chemistry. Sinestro, the Green Lantern Corps,..nah they dont deserve screen time, Ryan Renolds hanging out with some generic brunette is what we really needed to see. Not like Green Lantern training takes very long... in fact only two minutes of screen time is devoted to this. Hm Hector Hammond having daddy issues...why? what as the point of that subplot or character? Of course, Ryan Renolds can get the ear of the alien elders...this is a video game after all, not like he has to go through the silly chain of command or anything. The speech at the end about Hal Jordan becoming a GL and about that being human is his greatest strength made no sense. How is it his greatest strength? I felt as inadequate when hearing that as when I listened to Optimus Prime's speeches at the end of Transformers 1.




IRON MAN 2

Despite there not being an interesting villain in the first Iron Man. I rather enjoyed it. The second movie suffers the same problem however but ,unlike the first movie, moves too slow while failing to tell a good story. Whiplash is given zero character development. We really have no idea who his is, why he is doing what he is doing and what is real motivations are other than a very small amount of exposition. As such, we really do not care about him. The second villain man in the film, the business rival of Tony Stark, is obnoxious and every scene his is in immediately dies. The fight between Iron Man and War Machine was ridiculous. I guess a guy should not enjoy and drink on his birthday or have parties at his house ? The story overall has no purpose or theme. In the first Iron Man, Tony Stark after surviving captivity , tried to make himself a better man by creating the Iron Man suit. In this movie there is no theme or story. Its just a filler for the upcoming avengers movies that was rushed into production.




SPIDERMAN 3

Spiderman 3 was one of the worst super heroes I have ever seen. This movie turned Spiderman/Peter Parker into a pathetic dancing cry baby subject to the whims of his airhead girl friend. In the end they tried to cram too much into the film with the introduction of three villains and all the contrived emotional nonsense of Peter and Mary Jane's relationship. They in fact tried to cram so much into the film they had to give the new Goblin Harry amnesia so they can stick him in the back somewhere and pull him out when it was convenient for the plot.

The director attempts to show how Peters losing control as a result of the symbiote but fails ultimately. He attempts to show this with three scenes, One with Peter turining in Eddie Brock for adversiting a fake picture and incriminating Spiderman, two with Peter beating up Harry and throwing a bomb in his face and three with Peter hitting Mary Jane. Yet turning in Eddie Brock was a good thing, throwing a bomb in Harry's face was self-defense and hitting Mary Jane was an accident so these scenes do not work.

What killed the movie for me was the ridiculous amount of coincidences. An alien symbiote just happens to fall out of the sky near a guy who just happens to be Spiderman. A guy just happens to wander in a scientific testing factility to become Sandman then when pursued by the police he hides in a truck that just happens to have sand in it. Eddie Brock just happens to be conveniently in the same place as Spiderman when Spiderman is trying to remove the symbiote and then as Venom he just happens to find Sandman in an alley.

Sandman was a terriblly written villain and the writters had no idea where to go with him. Despite being responsible for Peter's Uncles death, the movie wants the audience to feel sorry for him because he is just a misforunate man who never got a "break" in life. Please. Luckly I did not pay for this movie. Seeing him tell Peter he is sorry then flying away in the wind at the end of the movie would have been reason to demand a full refund.



AAAAAAAA

Regarding Thor and Captain AMerica, I did not think these movies were bad, but a little mediocre. It was annoying watching Natalie Portman in Thor cause she kept trying to find answers to questions the audience already knows. Captain America was ok and I like how he started out as a propoganda figure before fighting in the war. I was not too interested in the villain Red Skull however so it kinda took some points away from the movie for me.

So if you have your own theory of why movies suck please state it if you want. Regardless ,with exception to Nolan's Dark Knight Rises, most of the comic book movies are probably going to be awful.

I personally enjoyed Saving Private Ryan and find it to be one of those movies that I can watch several times over like the Shawshank Redemption, while couldn't sit through The Thin Red Line after barely managing it the first time.

Too busy remaking old movies
Heavy reliance on CGI
Shoving 3-D down our throats
Pushing PG-13 when many movies should be R (see most "horror" movies) just so they can make more money.

I will have to disagree w/ you about Iron Man 2 on some points, while Whiplash didn't have much screen time, we knew who he was and his motives, which were pretty simple, revenge for how his father was treated and exposing Tony Stark.

Old school looked so much better.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjIXwkX1e48


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0Z44...feature=relmfu

Nice rant, Grampa Simpson.

I hated bad movies before it was popular.

(And I still do, but at the same time I just sit back, let them roll on and enjoy what few elements I can find in them: case in point, the first Sherlock Homes film. Pretty bleah, too frenetically actiony, but Robert Downey Jr. is always a fun screen presence.)

Gosh darn kids. Always listening to that rock and roll stuff. That ain't music, it's just plain terrible. I tell you when I was a kid we had real music like Minnie the Moocher and Jeepers Creepers.

Now get off my lawn dag nabbit!

TL;DR, but I agree with you on Star Trek '09 (even the title was generic and boring).

However, I can't agree with what you've said about Red Skull, Hugo Weaving was frickin' awesome. He's really a villain that doesn't require a lot of depth to be good (and in fact, probably suffers from having it).

New Dark Age, you nailed it. I've felt this way about Hollywood for years now.

Saving Private Ryan was a great movie, but it's not the kind of war movie to "sit back and watch to relax". The first ten minutes should have tipped you off. It's a serious grown up person movie with (yes) drama...nothing wrong with that. Complaining that Saving Private Ryan wasn't relaxing enough is like complaining there weren't enough jokes in Schindler's List. (i.e. It's not that kind of movie.)

We are Rome. That is all.

The world is quickly developing a fatal case of ADHD thanks to the myriad of marvels available to us now.
You wanna know why movies suck? Because the audiences attention span has shrank to microscopic levels over the years.

Tis just the age we live in, being in the decline of an empire, instead of during it's ascendency. Both have pros and cons.

It's been said by more than a few people that I have really high standards, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that movies in general suck today. There's always been good movies and crappy ones.