Reader Question: Have Movies Gotten Worse Over the Last Ten Years?

First off, this isn’t about politics…

Some of you might remember that Film School Rejects and I have had some public disagreements posted on our respective sites over the past few months. Well, yesterday FSR’s Cole Abaius and Robert Hunter were kind enough to ask both Screen Rant’s Vic Holtreman (who’s also a BH contributor) and myself to participate in their weekly one-hour podcast. I thought this was a very gracious invitation on their part, especially when you consider that I was the one who kinda-sorta started our round of disagreements. You can listen to the whole podcast here.

The four of us not only debated a number of political issues, including whether or not there’s a liberal bias in Hollywood’s product, but we also covered a recent GQ article written by Mark Harris titled “The Day the Movies Died.” It’s a good piece, insightful and informative, but it’s also — at 5300 words — about 4700 worlds longer than necessary. Half-jokingly, Harris blames “Top Gun” for the fall of Hollywood creativity claiming that Tom Cruise’s 1986 blockbuster ushered in the era of the Big Dumb Summer Film Season that these days pretty much lasts from April to September. But Harris gets to the real meat of the problem at right around word 650:

“The scab you’re picking at is called execution,” says legendary producer Scott Rudin (The Social Network, True Grit). “Studios are hardwired not to bet on execution, and the terrible thing is, they’re right. Because in terms of execution, most movies disappoint.”

Rudin is correct. The simplest answer is usually the right one and the problem, of course, is execution. Period. End of story. Harris then goes on at length to blame marketers running things, the franchise mentality, an over-reliance on high-concept, and executive cowardice when it comes to taking chances on something new and fresh like an “Inception. ” But those are separate problems and have nothing to do with why movies suck. Since the beginning of the film business, movie makers have been told by others to fit whatever it is they’re doing into a certain box. If that box today happens to be franchises and high-concept, that doesn’t excuse every high concept franchise film from sucking. It’s perfectly valid to complain about the box, but the box didn’t force Pirates 3, Transformers 2, G.I. Joe, The Bounty Hunter, most every RomCom of the last five years to be so bad. Lousy execution did.

During the FSR podcast there were a number of spirited disagreements over the course of the hour, but the one that surprised me most wasn’t political. In my mind the quality of films — both studios and indies — has collapsed over the last decade. You can say that I’m prejudiced and carry some kind of political grudge against Hollywood, but I’ll be the first to declare that television is currently going through an unprecedented golden age. The Sopranos, Dexter, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Battlestar Galactica, The Wire, 24, The Shield, Lost… When it comes to pure, addictive dramatic storytelling, television is kicking the film world’s ass. Movies, however, suck like never before.

Or am I wrong? I’m willing to consider that. After all, age might have something to do with it. In 2001 I was 35 and now I’m 45. You can outgrow things. Furthermore, all I really have is the anecdotal evidence regarding my own DVD purchases of new films, which have slowed to about a tenth of what they were in the late nineties. But I hang my hat on one thing. I’m not alone. Overall DVD sales have collapsed, collapsed to a point where Hollywood’s more than a little freaked out over it. The main blame for this collapse is always laid at the feet of Netflix and Redbox, but that’s never really made complete sense to me. Because it’s cheaper to rent DVDs, people are no longer buying them? Maybe that has something to do with it. But I think a large part of the problem, the part of the problem no on wants to consider goes back to Harris’s column. Movies just aren’t very good anymore.

Ten years ago the public, myself included, purchased more DVDs because there were more movies we wanted to own in order to watch again and again. Today there are fewer movies made worth owning, fewer films we want to watch more than once or twice. Is that too simplistic?

And so I throw the question over to you. Have movies gotten worse over the last decade? Is this at least part of the reason DVD sales have collapsed? Or is it that I might be getting too old to appreciate them like I used to? Or am I missing something else? This is a serious question, by the way. Smart people vigorously disagreed with something I was pretty sure of, so I’m very curious as to what others think.

UPDATE: To be clear, I am comparing apples to apples. Sales of DVD copies of new theatrical releases compared to sales of DVD copies of new theatrical releases. This isn’t about back catalogues. People used to buy enough DVD copies of a new theatrical film to make it profitable, even with disappointing box office. I used to buy a ton more DVDs of brand new movies than I do now.

That’s not the case as much anymore.