Are Movies Just Commercial Products Now?

Where's the Art gone in the Film Industry?

Regarding movies, we live in the Age of the Rehash.

I should come up with a better term — the Replicant Age, perhaps, in honor the Blade Runners.

Because, in the last several years, all widely-released movies are overt replicants of previous movies.

Also, they signal within themselves that they are supposed to be watched as replicants.

They are not just paying homage anymore, while hiding what they ripoff, as ordinary art does.

This explains why I’m having a devil of a time coming up with even a presentable top-10-of-2024 list. Every movie I watch from this year is mediocre at best,

For proof, cultural critic Ted Gioia posted this on X yesterday :

To which I responded that he didn’t make his case strongly enough.

Check out this graphic for the box-office receipts for the entire world:

All told, two movies are original. Arguably, though, “The Wild Robot” spins off “WALL-E” and “The Iron Giant” too closely, so it’s at best semi-original.

That leaves “It Ends With Us” as the only total original in the top-20, a fitting title for my purposes.

Those of us older than 40 think of this as an abomination, I’m betting. We’ve lived through a movie Golden-Age, the 1990s, when something new and interesting came out seemingly every week. Often, there were two or three something-new-and-interestings every week.

Now all is just rehashed franchise fare, which is the failed artistic legacy of Marvel.

The youngsters do love their Marvels, but they don’t know what their love has wrought: the search for a commercial product that universally appeals to everyone, which produces low-risk, low-reward fare at best.

As such, the “mid-tier” or what has been called the “middlebrow” movies, have gone the way of G-rated kids’ movies and PG-rated adult fare.

Those are so-called thinking person’s movies, the ones that do what the Roman poet Horace said was the goal of art, to delight and to teach at the same time.

An example from this year is “Conclave,” the first PG-rated thinking-adult movie I can remember in years, maybe decades.

In the 2024 box-office list above, absolutely nothing has a winning didactic element, except arguably “Dune Part Two.” They are all the equivalent of roller-coaster rides. I have nothing against those at the movies; I liked “Alien: Romulus” a lot, just for that reason.

But movies that help people feel like they’ve improved their thinking? Nope.

Not when the entire American movie industry has gone all-in on trying to create the greatest commercial-product experience, complete now with swag that you can buy at the ticket counter.

For comparison’s sake, here’s a movie year I just picked at random, 1998, which in my view isn’t that great:

What Gen-Z needs to notice is the *lack* of franchise fare. Just one sequel, a couple of remakes, and a couple of TV shows converted to movies.

This is just the way it used to be. A flourishing arts-industry makes new things for the people of its day. A stagnant one makes new things that simply imitate the old. A rapacious one makes commercial products that simulate art, which could be called “kitsch.”

I wouldn’t suggest this 1998 list as a fine example of offering “better thinking,” the didactic element I’m calling for. But you’ll get it in the following for sure:

• Saving Private Ryan

• A Bug’s Life

• Good Will Hunting

• The Truman Show

• As Good As It Gets

• Enemy of the State

• Antz

• The X-Files

Imagine today that “The Truman Show” would be in the top-15 at the American or world box-office. Impossible.

What would happen to that kind of movie? It’d get released by a trendy art studio, a small-scale “limited release” to only select theaters in several big cities. Probably half the US couldn’t even get access to it.

Then, after the marketing push for the limited-release, it would be forgotten.

Then three months later it’s released on streaming, amidst a million other videos. You have to hope the algorithms will recommend it to you; otherwise you wouldn’t even notice it.

And even then, they’d charge you $19.99 to rent it, for the first three months on streaming.

And then it’d go behind a paywall, which if you don’t have a subscription to the service that has it, you aren’t accessing it.

Unless you know how to be a pirate.

The only thing spreading 2024’s version of “The Truman Show,” whatever that is, is word of mouth.

I’ve had too many people approach me and say that no only do they no longer go the movie theater anymore, they don’t even pay attention to what’s coming out there. They’ve switched to cheap and easier forms of entertainment, like Youtube or Steam.

But as I’ve indicated, there’s still lots of thinking-adult options at the movies. I’ve tried to highlight them.

And that’s why you should subscribe!

Because this publication and those like it are the last bastion of free, independent voices helping spread the word about watchable, intriguing Film Art. “It Ends With Us.”