Movies today are much more likely to be high budget, rehashed/sequels, most common denominator, etc.
TV, on the other hand, has been in a golden era for the past decade. Netflix/HBO/etc. has allowed lots of interesting more niche pieces to get produced.
No, there are periods that are artistically more fruitful and interesting that others, and the history of art knows and documents several of them.
Sure, but the claim was just that there have always been bad movies.
Here's a test: If there's some year you know of where bad movies were exceptionally rare, let us know. Then we'll see if we can provide counterexamples.
But really, how do you quantify good? Taste is subjective. The original Transformers move is a great example. I didn't like it. but i believe 14 year old me would have absolutely loved it.
It's similar to the statistics about Word users only use 5% of the functionality of Word. But everybody uses a different 5%.
I guess if you want to go by money, i'm going to pick 1939. I'd guess about $18,000,000 in production expenses, and about $240,000,000 in box. [1] (arbitrarily assigning 1,000,000 to the unlisted numbers, but keeping the box at $0 for unlisted numbers) Seems like a pretty good ROI. (although i think of, Gone with the wind, Mr Smith goes to washington, and the Wizard of Oz as subjectively good. 25% is a pretty good percentage)
Kind of a fun exercise poking through the years. 1997 was a standout, but everything i looked at had memorable and fun movies. I don't think any year would hit that 25% mark though.
Very funny.
> I guess if you want to go by money, i'm going to pick 1939.
You listed several great films, but I'm not disputing there were years with several great films, that's a completely separate point.
> But really, how do you quantify good? Taste is subjective.
I will concede that if we adopt a radical skepticism towards all aesthetic values then the claim "every year has bad films" collapses.
However, if we agree to make that move... the original claim that "everything in the theater now is terrible" is also false. Or "there's something special (and bad) about the quality of film at this very moment" also collapses.
So I'm good with this move. I accept the gambit.
That's why I don't use random individual tastes as a measure, but informed (from decades of studying movies and moviemaking) and argued critiques (by movie critics, other directors, and everyone with similar expertise).
The same way most will agree that Citizen Kane is a great movie, even if 16 year old John, from Buffalo, Indiana finds it "boring and gay".
That said, I also don't believe that just because something is fuzzy (like "what's a good work of art") and can't be defined with numerical precision, it's also impossible to reason about at all. So, in that sense, I'm satisfied with a general "expert consensus" on whether a movie's great and don't expect to have some absolute quantification of that.
So, to agree with my opinion, one should probably also be OK with fuzzy, not totally quantified inquiries (incidentally the inverse is something the climate deniers use for their advantage: they say that because the scientific community can explicitly give a specific number on the impact of human activity on the climate, it is bogus: http://blog.dilbert.com/post/157823678756/tucker-carlson-ind... ).
It used to take a lot more resources and know how to make a movie. Today, any hack can do so. Gawd.
Which makes filtering all the more critical.
Herbert Simon. Alvin Toffler. James Gleick. Ted Sturgeon.
Survivorship bias. They always have been.