In spite of the article's somewhat backhanded reference to such, I'd also mention Total Recall in a a positive light (and an example of something that Hollywood doesn't do anymore). The most unique thing about that movie is that it's effectively two different movies. I saw that movie when I was young and found it satisfying because of how it was advertised: action, Schwarznegger, explosions, and 3 titted Martians. Watching it 3 decades later, I only then realized what an amazing movie it really is.
The story is insightful, heavy on philosophy, extremely ambiguous, and digs into interesting questions about a very viable future technology. On a superficial level one can take the ending (which does provide closure) at face value, but it was intended to make one think. It's based on a Philip K Dick short story, "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale", and it shows.
It's a grandiose story, but only on the surface and only due to the fact it's set in the future. The plot is something that will affect everybody at some point. If you haven't seen it yet, I'd strongly recommend going in blind.
Total Recall has it all: The rather bloody action and shooting, the gimmicks (digital nail polish! Live X-ray scanners!), abstruse ideas and images (Kuato lives!), Arnie delivering zingers with an Austrian accent. And then, once you grow up and read Philip K. Dick, you actually understand how much of his ambiguous mind games made it into the movie, and watch it a couple of times with that additional perspective. There are very few films which deliver similar amounts of cinematic joy, unfortunately. The last two that I watched were Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men, and surprisingly a Tom Cruise film, Edge of Tomorrow. Both highly recommended if you like Total Recall.
As a Cruise film, it may fall off many people's radars, but it's got some really well worked out trippy stuff in there.
But I'm a sucker for non-completely-dumb time travel stuff. If you are too, be sure to check out Tenet and Predestination, if you haven't watched them already.
Both are well done, evoke consistent atmospheres, and didn't get the attention they deserve. Predestination is more physical in a Cronenbergian sense, while Tenet is pure Nolan administered intravenously.
Edge of Tomorrow was such a sleeper hit for me, I watched it on a plane while browsing for something mindless, and I was riveted. I must have watched it another five times since.
Tip: Don't read anything about it, just watch it.
I similarly loved Children of Men, they really nail the dystopian aesthetic.
> once you grow up and read Philip K. Dick, you actually understand how much of his ambiguous mind games made it into the movie
PKD didn't write "mind games"; according to one's own view of reality, he was either among the most sincere intellectuals since Kant, or a deeply paranoid, mentally ill individual - and everything inbetween. He was truly invested in the questions about perception that he poured over all his work.
Then there's Starship Troopers, another Verhoeven masterpiece of layered meaning and interpretation. On the surface it's a jingoistic pro-military recruitment poster as movie, full of shallow facile characters. But oh boy, if you read between the lines there's no bottom to how deep that movie goes.
Also both movies have Michael Ironside, which is always a plus.
I watched it as a child and I wanted to kill bugs too. Then I watched it again as an adult and realized “holy shit, I would have been a fascist. Like all people, I too have that capacity.”
It was a seriously enlightening moment. A satire subtle enough that I could see both sides of it at different periods of my life.
Starship troopers gets a lot of flack -- "Based on the back cover of the book by Robert A. Heinlein" was a popular critique, "90210 in outer space" was another, and Doogie Howser (as NPH was them known) wasn't a great casting choice IMO -- but the special effects are flawless and Peter Venhousen really nails underlying themes of the book and the anti-bug propaganda. I don't know anyone who saw the film and didn't want to go fight the bugs - thank goodness he wasn't remaking Triumph of the Will.
Dark City and The Thirteenth Floor are a few of my top sci-fi movies of all time. Both have themes that echo the Matrix, but done in a much more subtle and thought provoking way IMHO.
It's a shame The Thirteenth Floor came out the same year as the Matrix...
>I'd also mention Total Recall in a a positive light (and an example of something that Hollywood doesn't do anymore). The most unique thing about that movie is that it's effectively two different movies. I saw that movie when I was young and found it satisfying
I now honestly think that great entertainment is an action-lead plot that's executed by an auteur with a deep vision, helped by a crew of true professionals. I was reminded of how great and multilayered Conan the Barbarian (also with Arnold), and how perfect the soundtrack, sets and underlying themes work in the movie.
They never attempt anything begging for awards, nor the signaling that many modern filmmakers do just to impress, they just put in the things that seemed to work best.
I can't see it how you saw it. Me + brother watched it and thought it was 'disappointing' (me) and 'idiotic' (him). But to each their own.
The 'heavy on philosophy' - what do you refer to. The trope about what is reality has history (recently 'inception', going back to the early 70's with 'Night of Delusions' by Keith Laumer and I'm sure it goes back a long way more) and rarely gets answered properly, so nothing much philosophical there. We thought it was just a bad film.
You can piece together the entire movie by watching clips on YouTube. I try out a lot of movies this way, but Total Recall is the one I loved the most. It's a whole different world.
Asian cinema still produces movies with deep philosophical twists like that. Check out some YouTube recaps for any movie that seems out-there and you'll find out that more often than not it was made in Asia.
Unfortunately most movies these days are more about "the message" than a coherent story.
But GOOD NEWS!
This weekend I actually found a use for Netflix and watched "Hustle". Adam Sandler's latest offering for the platform. It is an astoundingly good movie. Even more so because normally I'm not really into basketball.
But it was WELL written, intelligent and there were plenty of challenges for them to overcome, right down to the very last 30 seconds of the movie. Edge of the seat stuff that keeps you engaged every moment.
The thing missing from many movies these days with "the message" is that the protagonists generally have no obstacles. No problems to deal with. No hurdles to cross. No challenges. There is generally no danger to the heroes. There is just a lot of ass kicking without any preliminaries.
And that's the reason why movies mostly suck these days. It's a shame really. It's all about politics these days and making sure there is some race/gender/cultural representation (I'm saying this as a black guy).
Someone's been watching The Critical Drinker - but I totally agree with him as well :)
The lack of obstacles to overcome and the general saint-like presence of protagonists these days is miserable. It's the same thing you see in political discourse these days; if you're not COMPLETELY with us on every issue, you are a fascist devil. Can't have that in your movies so you end up with perfect moral beings with no flaws.
That's why the new Top Gun is such a monster at the box office. It's a "woke zero" movie in which you believe the characters are actually competent because you watch them train. They're believable and you want them to succeed. It's just a fantastic action movie and is even better than the original. A great reminder of what Hollywood can do when it's firing on all cylinders and isn't distracted by trying to do ideological brainwashing.
Dr Who is a good example. There has always been a message in the shows but the story took precedence. Now the message takes precedence and the story and show suffers. It's unwatchable even with the audio muted!
Terry Pratchett's work is a good example of progressive ideas told so well that the story is all that anyone cares about.
I'm actually a bit sad about Doctor Who, I've not watched it since the Capaldi era which really wound me up because he's a fantastic actor who was dealt a crap hand with crappy scripts that have crawled entirely up their own arse.
>Terry Pratchett's work is a good example of progressive ideas
For their day, sure. If told today, the humanising of, and sympathy with, police would get him removed from "polite" circles as surely as the creator of a wizarding franchise.
This comment reminds me a lot of The Critical Drinker on YouTube. Sometimes a bit biting, but often accurate in analyzing what went wrong in some movie's plot. One of the most egregious and frequent is having characters who basically have zero or backsliding character arcs.
He likes to do alt right click bait and I mainly ignore him these days.. like I would tag him as a leftie and I mainly agree with him in terms of how obnoxious and cynical corpo-hollywood is in its execution of inclusion and diversity (to be clear: I want more diversity in entertainment) but he does play it up quite a bit and exaggerates “the message” thing he pushes. Months ago, I watched a ten minute video/rant on Loki where he complained about forced inclusion and gender politics ruining the show.. though I finally saw the show this week and I found it to be very good and no where near as annoying as he made it out to be.
He’s part of an alt right baiting group of youtubers like Nerdroitic who all flirt with this notion of white culture being under siege. Like I don’t believe any of these guys swing that way (as in MAGA) but they like the views on their channels.
He makes some decent points but I can't watch his content without cringing at the persona he makes use of. I find it very painful, but I guess it has an audience. I can also imagine people saying the same thing about redlettermedia, which I do enjoy.
He ruined movies and series for me. I now keep seeing horrific mistakes. like: The team of heroes has 1 character without a back story so he was designed to die.
What I love about the Fugitive is how slow the pace is and how relative down to earth the subject matter is. I find it difficult to watch action movies these days, with camera cuts every second and thirty seconds per scene. I’ve taken to watching Korean and Scandinavian shows on Netflix which I find far better paced.
Down to earth is the key I think. So many action films these days are "save the world" or some sort of incredibly over the top world-changing maguffin. Just a guy trying to escape going to prison for a crime he didn't commit is infinitely more relatable that it makes a massive train derailment seem down to earth.
The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent just came out this year. The plot was a bit over the top, but that was the point, and it was thoroughly enjoyable. Blackkklansman came out the same year as this article, and even though it was more comedy drive then most action movies, it had a down to earth plot of a black policeman infiltrating the KKK organization.
I agree that most action movies today have a pretty seen-it-before grandiose plot. But movies with down-to-earth original plots still come out (occasionally).
> Down to earth is the key I think. So many action films these days are "save the world" or some sort of incredibly over the top world-changing maguffin.
Ran across this observation with regards to Die Hard: the first two movies had McClain as basically a beat cop who gets in over his head. The latter movies he's almost a superhero.
Oh absolutely! This has been a major annoyance in, mostly, superhero movies. The first movie they're growing up, maybe getting rid of a city's villain. The next movie they're saving the universe. (And in the third they're traveling back through time.)
I rewatched The Longest Day last night, and appreciated much the same things in that. It's an action movie in a completely different style to something more modern, with some spectacularly long shots, and very little exposition. I was also struck by just how little dialogue there is for a three hour film, and how much of what dialogue there is was in subtitled German.
"I find it difficult to watch action movies these days, with camera cuts every second and thirty seconds per scene."
You know that dream most people have had, where they're running down the hallway that never ends, or running away from something they can't escape, or swimming up through endless water, or any of a dozen variations on the theme of reality no longer being composed of length and distance and height but instead being just a geometrically featureless abstraction of whatever experiential idea is currently stuck in your head?
Modern Hollywood action feels like that to me. There's no geography. Nothing changes because no matter how hard you punch the superheros (whether or not this is formally a superhero movie) they don't even so much as get their hair mussed. Things break and fall down, people get flung into concrete walls and break the concrete walls and pop back up so often it has lost all impact, you can't get your bearings on anything, you can't figure out where things are, nobody's winning or losing, it's not in any particular place, it's just never ending inescapable abstraction of fighting ideation, until the director or writer just decides it's over for basically no reason and we go on to the next thing, no different than a nightmare finally breaking not because you got away from the thing (you can't, it's in your head with you) but just because it is later.
Modern Hollywood action feels like that sort of nightmare you can't escape from for me... not the one that has you waking up drenched in sweat and terror, not the night terror nightmare, but the nightmare that drones on and on and doesn't let you go and makes no particular sense and you just can't get out of, with no real place or concrete events or anything else to hook your attention on to and break out of the loop.
Needless to say, I'm not particularly excited about throwing my money at them to produce this feeling in me.
(The last fight I really remember was the last on in Serenity. It sure isn't an action extravaganza like a Marvel movie, but that fight impacts everything and everybody. As Malcolm Reynolds hobbles away from that confrontation, there is no question. Something has happened. It happened in a place, and there was a sequence of events, that followed logic and biology. Events logically led up to it and consequences radiated out from it. Serenity isn't the greatest action movie in history or anything, the fight in the bar of the same movie also feels like the nightmare I describe above, it's just the last scene is the last fight I remember that impacted me.)
Watch Tarantino movies. "The Hateful Eight" in particular was fantastic. It doesnt look like an action movie, but as someone who really enjoys small details of realism it felt like a very good action movie.
It's important to note that "The Fugitive" was a remake of a 60s TV show by the same name (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fugitive_(1963_TV_series)), which is only briefly mentioned in the article. That's probably the origin of the down-to-earth storyline and also the relatively corny stuff like the one armed man. I wonder if the script would have had a chance even in the nineties if it would have been an original script rather than a remake of a relatively successful (4 seasons, 120 episodes) TV series.
And trying to recycle what makes money is not something Hollywood stopped doing. It just keeps doing it over and over. New ideas are risky, how about another Batman reboot?
I assume the reason is that it's not about a super hero and/or it can't have 5 prequels and 7 sequels spun off if it. Seriously, why can't we just have an occasional great story that has an ending?
I wouldn't really call U.S. Marshals a sequel, per se. It's more a film that takes place in the same universe as The Fugitive and features many of the same characters.
> Seriously, why can't we just have an occasional great story that has an ending?
China.
Foreign markets are now a significant chunk of the big studios' movie profits. If the story isn't super direct and generic, it won't work in translation, and that will cost money.
Are you sure? China's quota system makes it pretty hard for Hollywood films to make it in China [0]. Only a few of the absolute biggest films will have a chance of releasing in China.
Art produced for massive audiences typically requires a massive investment, so it’s produced with the same concerns as other massive investments.
Arthouse films still exist, but you know, there does seem to be something unique about an action movie that wraps itself up. I wonder if they’re out there.
Movies in the past were made for mass audiences. But they existed in a world before social media, cell phones, podcasts, streaming tv and all the other entertainment we have now.
People who enjoyed movies such as The Fugitive do not go to cinemas anymore as much. Cinema going audiences shrunk severly. The only reliable market is kids movies, superhero movies and established franchises.
I’ll offer “Riders of Justice” as an excellent recent movie that was marketed as an action film but which (while containing some action) is much more character driven.
You can write a lot of words but the fact is there's just an international appetite for movies with big American stars and lots of bullets. I think Mile 22 is the type exemplar. These are movies that you can watch dubbed, subtitled or even without translation and probably enjoy if you just want action. They're not making any political allegories. People are heroes because they help their friends or are faithful to their cause. They can get the rubber stamp of approval from any authoritarian government. They're even set in fake countries (Indocarr?) with Asian antagonists filmed in Colombia.
I'm hoping that we will see people get bored of these films and the international audience will start demanding more story and character development. Until then, well....
It's worth noting out bigger movies often need to target non English speaking audiences.
So any complex dialogue or nuance is off the table.
The average Marvel movie can have it's voice acting replaced by cat noises and you'll still get the gist.
I am very happy to see the cost of filmmaking drop so much though, I will lightly never see a big budget movie in a a cinema again. But there are tons of small movies I love to see.
I'd rather support a movie with a budget of a few million, then support a blockbuster which is censored to fit the political needs of various countries around the world
1. English is an unusually compact language. If you watch dubbed movies you will notice that the characters often have to talk extremely fast compared to the original and much dialogue is rephrased to be simpler. They can't refilm the sequences so in languages that take more words, the dialogue must be simplified.
2. A lot of people won't get dubbed versions anyway, so they'll be watching it as a foreign language.
> While “old-man action” movies like Taken and The Equalizer could be considered descendants of The Fugitive, they lack its character development. Those thrillers that are character driven—say, No Country for Old Men or Hell or High Water—are less popcorn, more art.
iow, don't discuss because the goalposts will be moved aggressively.
Readit News
The story is insightful, heavy on philosophy, extremely ambiguous, and digs into interesting questions about a very viable future technology. On a superficial level one can take the ending (which does provide closure) at face value, but it was intended to make one think. It's based on a Philip K Dick short story, "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale", and it shows.
It's a grandiose story, but only on the surface and only due to the fact it's set in the future. The plot is something that will affect everybody at some point. If you haven't seen it yet, I'd strongly recommend going in blind.
As a Cruise film, it may fall off many people's radars, but it's got some really well worked out trippy stuff in there.
But I'm a sucker for non-completely-dumb time travel stuff. If you are too, be sure to check out Tenet and Predestination, if you haven't watched them already.
Both are well done, evoke consistent atmospheres, and didn't get the attention they deserve. Predestination is more physical in a Cronenbergian sense, while Tenet is pure Nolan administered intravenously.
Tip: Don't read anything about it, just watch it.
I similarly loved Children of Men, they really nail the dystopian aesthetic.
PKD didn't write "mind games"; according to one's own view of reality, he was either among the most sincere intellectuals since Kant, or a deeply paranoid, mentally ill individual - and everything inbetween. He was truly invested in the questions about perception that he poured over all his work.
Also both movies have Michael Ironside, which is always a plus.
It was a seriously enlightening moment. A satire subtle enough that I could see both sides of it at different periods of my life.
And as far as sci-fi movies which are deeper than one might expect, I'd also recommend the original Planet of the Apes and its early sequels.
Took me a few minutes on DDG, but enjoy: https://agapow.net/misc/humour/starship-troopers-a-review/
and all the Verhoeven movies 1985-1997
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Verhoeven
Not based on P.K. Dick works but heavily (and beatifully) inspired by them I'd also mention "Dark City" directed by Alex Proyas (The Crow, I Robot)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_City_(1998_film)
It's a shame The Thirteenth Floor came out the same year as the Matrix...
The adaptations of his work are big names…
“Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” -> Blade Runner
“We Can Remember It For You Wholesale” -> Total Recall
“Minority Report -> The Minority Report
“Scanner Darkly” -> Scanner Darkly
“The Man in the High Castle” -> The Man in the High Castle
Me as a 12 year old: The lady has 3 boobs !
Me watching as an adult. Great sci-fi movie !
They never attempt anything begging for awards, nor the signaling that many modern filmmakers do just to impress, they just put in the things that seemed to work best.
Basil Poledouris is a true genius
Not surprisingly he worked with Milius on many other movies besides "Conan the Barbarian" and Verhoeven, who directed Total Recall.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basil_Poledouris
The 'heavy on philosophy' - what do you refer to. The trope about what is reality has history (recently 'inception', going back to the early 70's with 'Night of Delusions' by Keith Laumer and I'm sure it goes back a long way more) and rarely gets answered properly, so nothing much philosophical there. We thought it was just a bad film.
Dead Comment
That's a pretty strange way of say "an entirely different movie".
The biggest thing: it lacked the depth of the original.
But GOOD NEWS!
This weekend I actually found a use for Netflix and watched "Hustle". Adam Sandler's latest offering for the platform. It is an astoundingly good movie. Even more so because normally I'm not really into basketball.
But it was WELL written, intelligent and there were plenty of challenges for them to overcome, right down to the very last 30 seconds of the movie. Edge of the seat stuff that keeps you engaged every moment.
The thing missing from many movies these days with "the message" is that the protagonists generally have no obstacles. No problems to deal with. No hurdles to cross. No challenges. There is generally no danger to the heroes. There is just a lot of ass kicking without any preliminaries.
And that's the reason why movies mostly suck these days. It's a shame really. It's all about politics these days and making sure there is some race/gender/cultural representation (I'm saying this as a black guy).
The lack of obstacles to overcome and the general saint-like presence of protagonists these days is miserable. It's the same thing you see in political discourse these days; if you're not COMPLETELY with us on every issue, you are a fascist devil. Can't have that in your movies so you end up with perfect moral beings with no flaws.
Terry Pratchett's work is a good example of progressive ideas told so well that the story is all that anyone cares about.
I'm actually a bit sad about Doctor Who, I've not watched it since the Capaldi era which really wound me up because he's a fantastic actor who was dealt a crap hand with crappy scripts that have crawled entirely up their own arse.
He’s part of an alt right baiting group of youtubers like Nerdroitic who all flirt with this notion of white culture being under siege. Like I don’t believe any of these guys swing that way (as in MAGA) but they like the views on their channels.
[0]: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5727208/
Deleted Comment
I agree that most action movies today have a pretty seen-it-before grandiose plot. But movies with down-to-earth original plots still come out (occasionally).
Ran across this observation with regards to Die Hard: the first two movies had McClain as basically a beat cop who gets in over his head. The latter movies he's almost a superhero.
Jesus, have some pacing.
You know that dream most people have had, where they're running down the hallway that never ends, or running away from something they can't escape, or swimming up through endless water, or any of a dozen variations on the theme of reality no longer being composed of length and distance and height but instead being just a geometrically featureless abstraction of whatever experiential idea is currently stuck in your head?
Modern Hollywood action feels like that to me. There's no geography. Nothing changes because no matter how hard you punch the superheros (whether or not this is formally a superhero movie) they don't even so much as get their hair mussed. Things break and fall down, people get flung into concrete walls and break the concrete walls and pop back up so often it has lost all impact, you can't get your bearings on anything, you can't figure out where things are, nobody's winning or losing, it's not in any particular place, it's just never ending inescapable abstraction of fighting ideation, until the director or writer just decides it's over for basically no reason and we go on to the next thing, no different than a nightmare finally breaking not because you got away from the thing (you can't, it's in your head with you) but just because it is later.
Modern Hollywood action feels like that sort of nightmare you can't escape from for me... not the one that has you waking up drenched in sweat and terror, not the night terror nightmare, but the nightmare that drones on and on and doesn't let you go and makes no particular sense and you just can't get out of, with no real place or concrete events or anything else to hook your attention on to and break out of the loop.
Needless to say, I'm not particularly excited about throwing my money at them to produce this feeling in me.
(The last fight I really remember was the last on in Serenity. It sure isn't an action extravaganza like a Marvel movie, but that fight impacts everything and everybody. As Malcolm Reynolds hobbles away from that confrontation, there is no question. Something has happened. It happened in a place, and there was a sequence of events, that followed logic and biology. Events logically led up to it and consequences radiated out from it. Serenity isn't the greatest action movie in history or anything, the fight in the bar of the same movie also feels like the nightmare I describe above, it's just the last scene is the last fight I remember that impacted me.)
- Black Coal, Thin Ice
- Ash Is Purest White
And trying to recycle what makes money is not something Hollywood stopped doing. It just keeps doing it over and over. New ideas are risky, how about another Batman reboot?
Well c'mon man, it's been four whole months since we've had one, we're overdue by now...
There are still plenty of these stories. Everything Everywhere All at Once is a recent example.
China.
Foreign markets are now a significant chunk of the big studios' movie profits. If the story isn't super direct and generic, it won't work in translation, and that will cost money.
[0]: https://variety.com/2022/film/news/foreign-titles-squeezed-i...
If it's true, the implications for art are pretty worrisome in a globalized marketplace.
Foreign movies are generally much less formulaic than American ones. It doesn't make sense to say that good American movies are not translatable.
Art produced for massive audiences typically requires a massive investment, so it’s produced with the same concerns as other massive investments.
Arthouse films still exist, but you know, there does seem to be something unique about an action movie that wraps itself up. I wonder if they’re out there.
People who enjoyed movies such as The Fugitive do not go to cinemas anymore as much. Cinema going audiences shrunk severly. The only reliable market is kids movies, superhero movies and established franchises.
Money
I'm hoping that we will see people get bored of these films and the international audience will start demanding more story and character development. Until then, well....
So any complex dialogue or nuance is off the table.
The average Marvel movie can have it's voice acting replaced by cat noises and you'll still get the gist.
I am very happy to see the cost of filmmaking drop so much though, I will lightly never see a big budget movie in a a cinema again. But there are tons of small movies I love to see.
I'd rather support a movie with a budget of a few million, then support a blockbuster which is censored to fit the political needs of various countries around the world
> So any complex dialogue or nuance is off the table.
What a bad take! Do you seriously think complex thoughts can only be expressed in English and cannot be translated?
1. English is an unusually compact language. If you watch dubbed movies you will notice that the characters often have to talk extremely fast compared to the original and much dialogue is rephrased to be simpler. They can't refilm the sequences so in languages that take more words, the dialogue must be simplified.
2. A lot of people won't get dubbed versions anyway, so they'll be watching it as a foreign language.
Or that the dubbing was horribly inaccurate ?
Of course not. We came to see amazing fight scenes.
Likewise, with Marvel movies the plot is barely serviceable non-sense. We came for Sci Fi special effects, jokes and fan service.
iow, don't discuss because the goalposts will be moved aggressively.
That said, “ No Country for Old Men” and “Hell or High Water” are significantly better movies than “Taken” and “The Equalizer”.