Testing123
1mo 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
1mo 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
1mo 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.
Testing123
1mo ago
I love this movie, super underrated. It's the closest thing to a Taxi Driver comedy.
Testing123
4mo ago
I see, thank you.
I want to take a break from talking about how modern politics and the culture war is ruining society to explain how modern politics and the culture ruined one my favorite book to movie adaptations: The Long Walk. I can’t think of a more perfect example of uber modern politics brain destroying the soul of a work of art.
FULL SPOILERS FOR THE LONG WALK BOOK AND MOVIE AHEAD
The Long Walk was written in 1979 by Stephen King. In the plot, 100 boys, aged 13 to 19, compete in a game run by the government. The boys all volunteered to play and were selected by lottery. Everyone walks along a road in Maine (of course), if their walking speed falls below 4 mph, they get a warning, and if they get three warnings, they get executed by escorting government soldiers. The last boy standing gets anything he wants from the government for the rest of his life. There are a few other rules to the game, but that’s the gist of it.
The story takes place in an alternate US run by a military figure called The Major. It’s implied that the government is authoritarian, or even totalitarian, and that the economy isn’t in a great state. The protagonist’s father was arrested by some sort of secret police force and was never seen again. The Long Walk game is televised to the nation as a form of inspiration for the people, and throughout the book, crowds of onlookers cheer the walkers on.
Despite the above, the politics of The Long Walk is distinctly and purposefully vague. The boys participating in the game are young men who are generally clueless about the larger state of the world around them, let along the politics of it. Even the protagonist whose father was presumably killed by the government doesn’t have any particular animosity toward the state. None of the kids talk about politics or think about government/societal reform. While many of the players do eventually turn against the game and The Major, they do so out of an almost animalistic rage at their suffering, a desperate attempt to throw their pain back onto the world, rather than out of any principled protest against authority figures.
So why do the kids play the game (in the novel)? The book is wonderfully vague about this question and it serves as the core thematic element of the book. Readers are left to their own devices to piece together clues and sentiments to figure out their interpretation.
Sure, the kids are partially motivated by the prize, but even a dumb-ass teenager knows that their odds of winning are so low and unpredictable that the prize isn’t worth entering. IMO, their desire to play the game is a representation of the raw masculine urge to embrace danger and adventure for the sake of glory. That is mostly what the kids talk about, along with sex and alcohol and what they are going to do with their prizes, which I think is very accurate to what a bunch of teenage boys would think about. At the start, just about all the players are hyped up and gung ho to walk and win, and it’s only when their minds and bodies fall apart that they begin to question their desires.
At the end of the book, the protagonist ultimately wins after all of his friends and biggest competitors fade away and die, either by exhaustion or gun shot execution. The protagonist is left all alone as the victor, but he’s in such a distraught state that even after the Major appears to congratulate him, the protagonist keeps walking past him in a zombie haze, vowing to never stop. The implication is that winning the contest is pointless. Whoever makes it to the end will probably die anyway from the ordeal, and even if they do survive, they will be a physical and mental husk of themselves, and therefore unable to enjoy their prize. Thematically, IMO, the ending cements the futility of the urge that drove the boys into the contest in the first place. I can’t possibly do it justice here, but it’s a haunting, phenomenal, thematically rich ending (for an author who is notoriously bad at writing endings) to a great book.
That’s The Long Walk novel. What I think happened with The Long Walk movie is that a modern person with modern left wing culture war views read the book, and he couldn’t get over the fact that the politics was vague. The politics can’t be vague. If there is politics in a story, then it MUST relate to the current day. And it MUST be the focus of the entire story.
So in the movie, you have the same basic set up with the Long Walk contest. But now, we get an early scene where we learn more about the political situation on the radio. There was some sort of war years ago that left America in an economic depression. An authoritarian military government has taken over the country and enforced strict top-down totalitarian control over the population, including extensive censorship of books and music. This action has saved the nation from division in the words of the government’s propaganda. The Long Walk game is a symbol of hope to inspire the people.
How is watching a bunch of kids get shot on tv inspiring? Well, in the movie, this is directly explained to the boys and the audience by the Major. Mark Hamill as the Major explains that the United States has an “epidemic of laziness.” The country is in an economic depression because people aren’t working hard enough. The Long Walk inspires people to work hard because of how hard the kids walk. The Major concludes the speech by shouting that he believes the Long Walk could get the nation to raise the GDP until the US is the number one economic power in the world again. It is difficult to overstate how close the Major gets to outright saying the Long Walk will Make America Great Again.
Shortly after the contest starts, some of the boys get together and talk about how they were chosen to play. In the book, only some boys across the country sign up, and only 100 are ultimately chosen to compete, and every contestant is honored by the country as a hero. In the movie, every boy in the country applies to play. Why? Because, as one of the characters explains, they were socially conditioned to do so. The government and society brainwashed them. All that subtext about the male desire for glory and adventure and the willingness to endure pain goes out the window. The boys compete in the Long Walk because of politics.
Next, we get the changes to Ray Garraty, the protagonist. In the book, he signs up for the Long Walk for the same reason as everyone else, and he’s apolitical despite his father being killed by the state. In the movie, Garraty signs up because he’s a REFORMER. He wants to change the government and society with his prize. How? By getting a gun and personally shooting Trump, I mean the Major. To show the audience this deep motivation, we even get a flashback scene where the secret police drag Garraty’s father out of his house in front of Garrety, and then the Major PERSONALLY executes Garraty’s father. You know, sort of like how Hitler would follow around Gestapo squads and personally shoot German dissidents in the head.
To the movie’s legitimate credit, there is an attempt to add some thematic depth here. Garraty’s best friend in the game, McVries, learns of Garraty’s plan, and tries to talk him out of it. McVries makes the case that rather than martyr himself by assassinating the Major and then presumably immediately being gunned down, Garraty should win the contest, take the money and prize, and then live a happy life with his mother. Reading between the lines, McVries essentially argues to not let political worms eat your brain. He tells Garraty to touch grass. He urges him to see the “beauty” in life all around them and try to love every moment for what it is rather than killing himself for a cause. McVries vows that if he wins, he's going to use the winnings to charitably help people like himself, orphans who grew up in poverty.
In the end, in a twist from the book, Garraty dies and McVries wins with competition. McVries is congratulated by the Major and offered anything he wants. McVries asks for a gun and then assassinates the Major to fulfill Garraty’s plan. McVries then keeps walking along the road in a weak and nonsensical imitation of the book’s ending.
My interpretation of the thematics of the ending is that Garraty’s politics-obsessed martyrdom is not ideal, but in a world of sufficiently bad politics, everyone inevitably becomes a politics-obsessed martyr. The same social conditioning that made everyone sign up for the Long Walk (in the movie) also causes everyone to lash out against the political system, even a philosophically stoic/cheerful McVries.
I don’t hate the movie overall, but I HATE HATE HATE how the thematic core of one of my favorite books was trashed. A contemplative story about the nature of man (in both senses) and suffering and glory and the meaning of life and what’s worth pursuing and our self-destructive natures, was transformed into yet another story about fighting political oppression. Because that’s the most important thing on earth in all contexts.
Testing123
9mo ago
You’re actually underselling the wokeness of the Pitt. Some mildly SPOILERY events:
-
A black woman comes into the hospital with extreme pain. A white doctor thinks she is faking the pain to get painkillers, but a non-white doctor comes in and declares that she has sickle cell anemia and really is in pain. -
Later on, a white main comes into the hospital with extreme pain. The white doctors believe him, but a non-white doctor correctly infers that he’s a drug addict. -
A white family has a kid with measles because they didn’t get him vaccinated. They then delay treatment almost to the point of the kid dying because the mother “does her own research” with blogs. -
A white man in the waiting room is repeatedly rude and causes escalating problems because he has to keep waiting to be seen by the doctors while more injured people get treatment before him. At one point, the white man complains about other people getting treatment with his tax dollars. Later, the white man punches a female administrator in the face and says something MAGA-y. -
A white woman in the waiting room initiates a fight with someone because the latter person is wearing a hospital mask. IIRC, the white woman even screams something about Fauci lying. -
An obese woman comes in with a vague problem. A doctor tells her to lose weight and the obese woman gets upset. Another doctor comes in, finds the real problem (which isn’t related to obesity) and scolds the first doctor for being fixated on the obesity. -
A very old black guy comes into the hospital and prompts a speech by the main white doctor about how a group of black doctors made some important medical discovery 50 years ago that is underappreciated today.
This is just off the top of my head, I’m sure I’m missing a bunch of these.
Testing123
10mo ago
I'm finding this response - which is echoed by a few others on this thread - really strange and hard to wrap my head around.
Even if the population of Iran has little-to-no bearing on whether military intervention is wise, it still has major implications on a million other relevant variables that accompany military intervention, like the death toll, the economic impact, the refugees, the counter attack, etc. Ceteris Paribus, using strategic bombing to stop a country with the population of Slovakia (5 million) from getting a nuke has very different ramifications than using strategic bombing from stopping a country the size of Indonesia (population 280 million) from getting a nuke. If Jakarta is wiped off the map and the government of Indonesia collapses overnight, it could tank the economy of southeast Asia and lead to millions of refugees flooding borders and tens of thousands of deaths in chaos and mass civil war, etc.
Even if you shrug and respond, "I don't care, I just don't want Indonesia to get nukes at all costs," it's still worth understanding the ramifications of that policy. You should have a sense of what carrying out this policy entails, what its costs will be, and what sort of secondary effects it will have, and all of these factors will in-part depend on the country's population. And it's not like national population figures are esoteric statistical knowledge or something; it's really basic info about a country.
I feel like I'm talking to someone who confidently declares that he doesn't care about prices when selecting a restaurant, and then I point out that prices will impact the cost of going to the restaurant and prices are strong indicators of food quality and decorum and may indicate how you should dress when going to the restaurant, etc., but the guy just keep saying, "I don't care, I have a lot of money, so no matter how expensive a restaurant is, I can afford it."
Testing123
10mo ago
As far as anyone can tell, the US government is currently considering military action against Iran. Surely a factor in whether that occurs is the population of Iran. There are many direct and indirect differences between bombing a country with a population of 90 million and 5 million. The population has ramifications for the number of deaths, the economic impact on the country and region, potential refugees, potential enemy combatants, and many other variables.
As a basic conceptual matter, I can't take someone's commentary on a country seriously unless they at the very least have a rough sense of the country's population, GDP, GDP per capita, major religious groups, major ethnic groups, and basic government structure.
I recently watched the so-bad-it's-good movie classic, Hard Ticket To Hawaii. It came out in 1987 and the two leads were Playboy bunnies (or at least appeared in Playboy) who are frequently nude in the film. And speaking as a modern man, it's amazing how terrible their fake boobs are. I think I actually have a high tolerance for cosmetic fakeness - I usually like fake boobs when I see them - but holy shit those boobs are awful. These girls were considered to be among the hottest women in America at the time, and their boobs were far worse than any random no-name pornstar's today. It really made me appreciate that cosmetic surgery has evolved by leaps and bounds over the last 30 years.
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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