movies Very Few People I Talk to LIKE Modern Day Oscar Winning Films....

Is Filmmaking getting divided between film critics and the general public?

Most of the the films I enjoy are Oscar winning or nominated films. (Everything, Everywhere, All at Once/Parasite/Birdman/Babylon...)
Or popular among the other filmmakers I know.

But most films I consider great, are considered crap by the majority of people I talk to. Is there a divide between filmmakers tastes and the general public? I look at the past films that won Oscars... And they were much better recieved in the past. Films like The Departed, Titanic, Gladiator, Braveheart.... No one contests these films as being great and deserving. But the newer films, most of the people I speak with hate them.

What is going on?
 
A recent example... Just watched "Gone Girl" with people at work, and they hated the ending of it. In my mind, it was perfectly constructed. When I watch that movie, I think "masterful storytelling". They watch, and get "I hate this woman".

Just wondering if it might be because I'm mentally dissecting the scenes, the plot, the acting, the look... While the audience only cares about the characters.
 
I came to a similar conclusion when trying to participate in a recurring "photo challenge" competition on another forum - the kind where you had to submit one photo on a particular theme, taken within a particular time-frame. The winner was decided by the number of likes from the forum membership as a whole (well, those who found their way into the photography sub-forum).

"The people's choice" was almost inevitably one of the bog-standard compositions with a tenuous link to the topic of the week (usually something with pretty flowers or cute animals :rolleyes:). The photos that really took the topic to heart and demonstrated a genuine challenge were usually relegated to the lower ranks of the also-rans.
 
Could be a society shift as well? TikTok is causing quick fix entertainment... Digital AI is chopping up other works and blending them together into what appears to be "new" material... People like a show because of how screwed up a characters life can get, or what shocking event unfolds in that character's life. I don't know, maybe its always been like this?

I've just noticed a change in what qualifies as a good film over the last 20 years.
 
Could be a society shift as well? TikTok is causing quick fix entertainment...

TikTok users still watch long form content like television shows, but to reach those users you need clips of your television show to trend on tiktok.
If people see enough clips of your show then they will want to watch it. It's gotta trend under a lot of different clips.
 
Last edited:
A recent example... Just watched "Gone Girl" with people at work, and they hated the ending of it. In my mind, it was perfectly constructed. When I watch that movie, I think "masterful storytelling". They watch, and get "I hate this woman".

Just wondering if it might be because I'm mentally dissecting the scenes, the plot, the acting, the look... While the audience only cares about the characters.
Gone Girl is a masterpiece. Not everyone can fully appreciate one though, and you'll hear different things. Barry Lyndon was a masterpiece, but you have to ask a lot of people before you actually find someone who likes it. Same reason, it shows a realistic human character, rather than a fiction friendly character. If you like stories with genuinely complex characters who aren't spoon feeding you a specific archetype, you might really enjoy the series "The Shield"
 
As to the OP, I think everyone knows this, but these awards are now judged more on how closely they match the political views of the judges, rather than based only on their quality as films. You can hear almost any filmmaker talking about it. "Lets make a movie where a guy amputates his foot for sexual reasons" then we can win an Oscar for being so accepting of random kinks. Essentially, the academy members are mostly older, entering a state of cognitive decline, with no monetary needs to motivate them to actually do a good job. If they rolled a dice to see which movies won, they'd still get paid 200 average salaries a year for doing it. That being said, they use the platform to signal alignment with their own clique since that motivation is more relevant to them, and they no longer feel any obligation to perform their actual job.

There's definitely some overlap, where truly great movies win. I watch every Oscar winning film. Parasite was brilliant, and I loved it, but in some other cases, they slighted excellent films to show preference to whatever work supported their ideologies, rather than which film was best.

I may sound old here, but the reality is that I hated tribalism when I was in high school. I'm from south high school, where everyone is better than those animals from north high school. I'm going to wear a "south rules" t shirt and only vote for or give money to other people that wear a "south rules" t shirt, on account of cuz we the best!

Screw the academy. They picked some good films, but I'm just totally sick of the wall to wall ingroup/outgroup bias I see everywhere these days. They should rate the quality of movies based on the quality of the movies, not the sex, color, or orientation of whoever wrote it.
 
Last edited:
As to the OP, I think everyone knows this, but these awards are now judged more on how closely they match the political views of the judges, rather than based only on their quality as films. You can hear almost any filmmaker talking about it. "Lets make a movie where a guy amputates his foot for sexual reasons" then we can win an Oscar for being so accepting of random kinks.
Sometimes, (and I'm sorry, but I can't help it) I worry about you, Nate. You're such a sarcastic fucker :)

Everything, by the systemic nature of meaning itself, is unavoidably enclosed by ideology. And as far as ideologies go, there are worse ones than this--having some social conscience. My point, I think, is that this, humor aside, is, I think, hyperbole. I can't help but think, and of course i may be wrong, that it is a straw-man.


Anyway.
 
Last edited:
The only thing I'd like to add is that the Oscars are not the 'peoples choice' awards. Each category is voted upon by the 10,000 plus member of the Academy, not the general public... That's why popular films don't win best picture, because, in general popular films do not project the lofty image the Academy has for itself.
 
The only thing I'd like to add is that the Oscars are not the 'peoples choice' awards. Each category is voted upon by the 10,000 plus member of the Academy, not the general public... That's why popular films don't win best picture, because, in general popular films do not project the lofty image the Academy has for itself.
That's a good point. I forget sometimes about this part of it.
 
Back
Top