News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Alien was released 44 years ago today by George83728 on Thursday May 25, 2023 @01:36PM (#36073641)
> The whole thing is played like it's ordinary, no awkward asides to make sure we understand that this is a WOMAN being STRONG. 1977 and 1980 release dates.

This is a big problem I have with modern movies; they're unable or unwilling to simply show, they need to show and tell. It doesn't matter the theme, even wholly unpolitical themes are far too often explicitly laid out, multiple times, with blunt dialogue exposition to the audience who are presumed to only be half-watching the movie.

A modern movie can't just have a bank robber kill another bank robber. They need the killer to say "hehehe, this way I get a larger cut of the profit!" Does that really need to be said? Why can't a movie just show it but not have the character explain his motivations outloud to an empty room? Because modern movies are made to spoonfeed disinterested dimwits with short attention spans. Movies are catering to people who aren't even paying attention, because in test audiences there are always a few people who keep muttering questions "what's going on? what did they just say? why is this happening?" And the worst part is, these sort of people are still confused even when the movie explicitly explains everything to them.

Re:Alien was released 44 years ago today by yamtaddle on Thursday May 25, 2023 @02:09PM (#36074022)
Plenty are still made well... they're just not usually blockbusters that get a ton of advertising.
Re:Alien was released 44 years ago today by chongli on Thursday May 25, 2023 @02:27PM (#36074240)
This is a big problem I have with modern movies; they're unable or unwilling to simply show, they need to show and tell. It doesn't matter the theme, even wholly unpolitical themes are far too often explicitly laid out, multiple times, with blunt dialogue exposition to the audience who are presumed to only be half-watching the movie.

The smart writing (and smart audiences) have all moved to TV. The Sopranos, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, True Detective, Better Call Saul. These are the shows that respect their audience's intelligence.

The movie business has turned into Disneyland with guns.

Re:Alien was released 44 years ago today by layer8 on Thursday May 25, 2023 @03:18PM (#36074871)
It seems you missed a lot of recent awful shows. What the GP describes is very present in TV.
Re:Alien was released 44 years ago today by ryandrake on Thursday May 25, 2023 @04:40PM (#36075910)
> Movies are catering to people who aren't even paying attention, because in test audiences there are always a few people who keep muttering questions "what's going on? what did they just say? why is this happening?" And the worst part is, these sort of people are still confused even when the movie explicitly explains everything to them.

I've got a few relatives I simply can't watch movies with because it's like this the whole movie. It's like they can't remember anything that happened over 2-5 minutes ago. "Who's that character?" "Where are they?" "Now who's that?" "Is that the cousin or the uncle?" "What are they doing now?" "I don't understand." OF COURSE you don't understand! You've been on Instagram the whole movie! They come out of a standard brain-off romcom and they don't really know what it was about, except that the ending was sweet and romantic and they liked it. Put something like Inception or Tenet in front of them, and they're going to just sit there totally befuddled.

Re:Alien was released 44 years ago today by kaba0 on Friday May 26, 2023 @03:19AM (#36081070)
Also, often times that’s the whole point of the movie that we don’t know yet who is that character! Like, can’t you accept that as an unknown and work the story from there?!