Testing123
6d ago
I think that's mostly explained by the normal ebb and flow of comedy trends. The vulgar teen coming of age sex comedy era was basically 1999 (American Pie) to Superbad (2007), with Road Trip and Van Wilder and a bunch of others inbetween (I don't think 21 Jump Street counts, too meta), maybe with Project X as a limping capstone (2012).
But I also can't think of the defining comedy trend of the 2010s. I asked AI what the biggest comedies of the 2010s were, and it said: Deadpool 2 (2018): $785.8 million Deadpool (2016): $782.8 million Men in Black 3 (2012): $654.2 million Ted (2012): $549.3 million — the decade's biggest "pure" live-action comedy The Hangover Part II (2011): $586.7 million 22 Jump Street (2014): $331.3 million (It also noted Bridesmaids for cultural importance, which is true, but also vaguely fits into coming age but from the other gender).
What's the trend of those movies? Sequels and IP I guess. The better and boringer answer for "what was the comedy trend for Gen Z" is just Marvel movies, or rather, a sanded-down, repeated ad nauseum derivative of Joss Whedon comedy.
Or maybe Marvel is still the late millenial trend, and the real gen Z trend is that they don't care about comedy movies at all, and their comedy world is memes and streaming and nonsense like "6-7."
Testing123
6d ago
The explanations I've heard for the decline of comedies:
- Foreign box office is much more important now than in the past (especially China) and it's hard to do cross-cultural humor.
- Comedy movies used to make more money in the VHS/DVD phase than in theaters (often 2-5X as much), but now that whole sector is basically dead, streaming isn't as dependent on marginal movie value.
- In the olden days, movies were the best way for a comedian to get their content out. Now we have many more televised specials, YouTube, podcasts, Twitter, etc., all of which are far lower cost and less risky than a comedy movie.
- As you say, tv comedies are still alive and well, and pumped out at a faster rate than ever in the streaming era. It's still easy for Shane Gillis to make a little Netflix show like Tires, but if he was around in the late 1990s, he would have been paid $10 million for a $40 million budget movie.
- And yeah, the genre bending of modern blockbusters seemed to have consumed much of the desire for movie comedies. Even the action-comedies like Men in Black or Beverly Hills Cop seem to have fallen off.
Testing123
6d ago
Great write up. I'd explain the decline in action movie quality to the complex dynamics of genre filmmaking as a whole: pure action movies, rom-coms, and comedies used to be huge at the box office, attract big stars, and attract big budgets, but over the last 15ish years, all three genres have been demoted almost entirely to low-tier streaming fair. Action, romance, and comedy still exist on film, but on the biggest budgets they are packaged in super hero films and cross-genre blockbusters. In 1994, you could get Nick Cage and Ed Harris and Sean Connery to work together on a $100 million blockbuster like the Rock, now you can only get that money for a Marvel movie where the actual action is a secondary concern (at best). Meanwhile, pure action movies are left to Jason Statham, rom-coms are pumped out on Netflix, and comedies are almost dead entirely.
Ah, fair enough, but I'll nitpick to say that American Pie was a resurgence of the trend, and it definitely increased the gross out angle of it. Totally agree that internet porn put a big dent in the appeal of this stuff.
I'm surprised you think this, I think we've been in a horror renaissance since the mid 2010s and really kicking off with Hereditary (2018). Since then, we've had other Ari Aster movies, Jordan Peele, Robert Eggars, the Philippou Brothers, Zach Creggor, Osgood Perkins (more mixed), Empty Man, Smile (at least Smile 2), Together, etc. To me, this stuff is waaaaay better than almost all pre 2010 horror movie, except some of the true classics like Exorcist or the Shining.
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