https://archive.ph/2022.03.25-133359/https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/25/opinion/oscars-movies-end.html
But the effects-driven blockbuster, more than its 1980s antecedents, empowered a fandom culture that offered built-in audiences to studios, but at the price of subordinating traditional aspects of cinema to the demands of the Jedi religion or the Marvel cult. And all these shifts encouraged and were encouraged by a more general teenage-ification of Western culture, the extension of adolescent tastes and entertainment habits deeper into whatever adulthood means today.
Over time, this combination of forces pushed Hollywood in two directions. On the one hand, toward a reliance on superhero movies and other “presold” properties, largely pitched to teenage tastes and sensibilities, to sustain the theatrical side of the business. (The landscape of the past year, in which the new “Spider-Man” and “Batman” movies between them have made over a billion dollars domestically while Oscar hopefuls have made a pittance, is just an exaggerated version of the pre-Covid dominance of effects-driven sequels and reboots over original storytelling.) On the other hand, toward a churn of content generation to feed home entertainment and streaming platforms, in which there’s little to distinguish the typical movie — in terms of casting, direction or promotion — from the TV serials with which it competes for space across a range of personal devices.
Under these pressures, much of what the movies did in American culture, even 20 years ago, is essentially unimaginable today. The internet has replaced the multiplex as a zone of adult initiation. There’s no way for a few hit movies to supply a cultural lingua franca, given the sheer range of entertainment options and the repetitive and derivative nature of the movies that draw the largest audiences.
The possibility of a movie star as a transcendent or iconic figure, too, seems increasingly dated. Superhero franchises can make an actor famous, but often only as a disposable servant of the brand. The genres that used to establish a strong identification between actor and audience — the non-superhero action movie, the historical epic, the broad comedy, the meet-cute romance — have all rapidly declined.
Tell me you only watch Anglophone movies without telling me you only watch Anglophone movies.
This critique is old and played out. Yes, capitalism has totally decimated Hollywood, the medium budget film is dead, etc etc. There's a world outside of Hollywood. There are thousands of movies released every year. Quite a few of them are very good.
Likewise, the concept of giant movie stars who transcend the movies they're in lives on. Look at Bollywood or the Chinese film industry—they have massive, massive stars that aren't tied to capeshit. This author needs to zoom out and realize that the Anglophone world, and the United States in particular, are a cultural dead end experiencing decline and decadence the likes of which we can only scratch the surface of. Expecting powerful and uniting cultural products from an empire undergoing its death throes is just unrealistic.
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Ok rec time—I've seen all of these, but there are plenty of other great Chinese films that aren't romcoms or CGI action movies that I haven't!
Not sure if you count Taiwanese cinema as "Chinese" but for this rec list I'm sticking with mainland and Hong Kong films, since Taiwanese cinema is also massive and has plenty of greats. If you're interested, literally any movie by Edward Yang is a masterpiece (Yi Yi is one of the best movies ever made), everything he touched is some of the greatest film ever made. Hou Hsiao-hsien is also a legend, particularly love City of Sadness and Flowers of Shanghai by him.