Quentin Tarantino says the current Hollywood era is tied for the worst in history
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If I had to vote, I'd say that late 90s-2000s era where everything had that fast editing with chemical bros-esque music in their trailers trying to be the next Fast and the Furious or Matrix.
Yeah Hollywood seems very risk adverse probably due to increasing budgets and consolidation, like a lot of other industries.
Feels like a repressed frustration of not making movies during that era, combined with a loss of the 70s personal dramas. But 80s were flying in terms of new concept films, Arnold's run, comedy stars, fantasy films, and a number of different types of films/genres. Films like Bttf, Terminator, ET, Indiana, Who Framed Roger Rabbit. But also maybe larger sense of artifice and spectacle enamored audiences, less reality on film
Thank you. 2010s definitely has the most movies that I actively dislike.
Dafuq? Epochal films such as Empire Strikes Back, Thing, Aliens, etc., Nothing in the 2000s comes remotely close.
It's hard to disagree. Hollywood's batting average has been fucking abysmal lately.
And I think we have to understand this dude has always been a movie consuming machine. He's throwing the 50's and 80's eras under the bus but he probably has a broader view of those eras than most of us because he's spent much of his waking life watching anything he can get his hands on. Dude is obsessed.
Our perception of those decades is skewed towards thinking the good stuff we see is more representative of their eras than they really are, but whew, if you really dive into what was getting cranked out during the 50's it is a massive pile of shit.
And I think we have to understand this dude has always been a movie consuming machine. He's throwing the 50's and 80's eras under the bus but he probably has a broader view of those eras than most of us because he's spent much of his waking life watching anything he can get his hands on. Dude is obsessed.
Our perception of those decades is skewed towards thinking the good stuff we see is more representative of their eras than they really are, but whew, if you really dive into what was getting cranked out during the 50's it is a massive pile of shit.
This got me good.
He's right about the 80s. When you look at the best films from the 70s-00s, it def stick out as the worst of the bunch. I don't have much of an opinion on pre 70s films since I haven't seen as many and I'd agree that we're in a pretty dry spell at the moment compared to the 2000s
Anyone who thinks Tarantino is being a curmudgeon should listen to his Video Archives Podcast with Roger Avery. you'll wonder if you've ever thought about anything as much as QT has thought about film.
I loved marvel until endgame, well maybe didn't think they were anything special but saw them as great entertainment.
But as time goes by I can't even finish them, I think I got halfway through love and Thunder.
To be fair apparently 1917 was a great big budget movie recently and I haven't seen it yet although I am not a big war movie guy either tbh.
Horror movies are my first big love, superhero movies are my second. Oscar bait my third.
So this is pretty much my golden age of Hollywood! This year has been absolutely incredible for cinema for me, not just big budget stuff. Just saw The Fabelmans and left that theater glowing.
This image is so bizarre I can't tell if it's a troll or not lmao. Some genuine classics in there mixed with Little Monsters and Porky's and Dream a Little Dream and fucking Cocktail.Imagine thinking the 80's is one of the worst eras in cinema.
It's a great podcast. And also makes me feel guilty for only have seeing around 3-4 thousand movies in my life. They're on a different level.
Looking at the wall of movie covers I think more of the best movies I've seen were released in the 2010s than any other decade.
Billionaires influenced creative decisions second most in 2010s, though, lol.
The MCU and its imitators are an indictment of the current era, not vindication lol.
Apparently I just like bad movies. I can't stand the 70s-era bleakness but I know that's what the artsy types love.
Eh, I'm not surprised this ropey fella is pining after the old days when people like his pal Harvey ran amok ("I Knew Enough to Do More Than I Did").
Having said that, arbitrarily dividing movie making (or music or anything) into "eras" is dumb. It's not like peoples tastes change every time a decade ticks over. Great stuff is created all the time.
Having said that, arbitrarily dividing movie making (or music or anything) into "eras" is dumb. It's not like peoples tastes change every time a decade ticks over. Great stuff is created all the time.
I really feel like people saying "but I like X 80s movies" are missing the point. There's lots of great movies that were made in the 1980s, of course we remember the stuff that floats to the top of every time period. He's talking specifically about Hollywood studio trends, and I think it's hard to disagree.
Looking at it from QT's perspective, the reason why he does not like the 1980s era was because this was the time when the blockbuster mentality first really took hold of Hollywood and films were more producer driven by committee. Compare that to the 1970s, when the director had much more creative freedom or the 1990s when QT started out, the independent film scene was a viable method for filmmakers to keep their independence from the studios.
The absolutely staggering level of access the vast majority has to just about everything today is far more important in general than specific questions about quality here or there. Something like the MCU being so big frankly just doesn't matter that much when you have so much trivial access to so much else. In any other era, if you didn't love what was most popular at the time, you pretty much just didn't get to watch movies.
Personally, I have the strongest distaste for the 90s as a decade. It's the era I grew up with, so to speak. Most of my friends and many people of my age speak overwhelmingly fondly of the era. But I just don't get it. I've recently rewatched a bunch of major 90s films and they just…aren't that great. Independent, foreign language, big budget Hollywood. I would absolutely take both decades since, zero hesitation.
Personally, I have the strongest distaste for the 90s as a decade. It's the era I grew up with, so to speak. Most of my friends and many people of my age speak overwhelmingly fondly of the era. But I just don't get it. I've recently rewatched a bunch of major 90s films and they just…aren't that great. Independent, foreign language, big budget Hollywood. I would absolutely take both decades since, zero hesitation.
I don't necessarily agree that the current era of Hollywood film is inherently terrible but it is disappointing seeing the films that achieve even modest box office success nowadays from audiences, let alone are allowed to make it to theaters by studio executives in the first place. It's largely dominated by action-adventure/superhero blockbusters and CG animated family films; with some success stories from low-budget horror and maybe a handful of indie films. It almost feels like everything else that doesn't fall into that category has been backed into ghettos that can usually be found on streaming platforms.
It also doesn't help that with the directions taken with the big studios, especially in regards to M&As like Disney/Fox and Discovery/WB; it's arguably being enforced. The likes of Touchstone, DisneyToon Studios, Fox 2000, and Blue Sky (which all either dealt with lower-budget fare and/or produced films that weren't as expensive as Disney's current silos of department blockbusters) all expired under Disney's watch over the following decade and then some. Zaslav has gone on record for wanting more theatrical releases (to the point of curbing HBO Max's streaming film slate) but also only seeing value in major blockbuster films (as seen with his displeasure with Cry Macho's budget, despite Eastwood's storied history with WB; and arguably the cancellation of Batgirl).
It also doesn't help that with the directions taken with the big studios, especially in regards to M&As like Disney/Fox and Discovery/WB; it's arguably being enforced. The likes of Touchstone, DisneyToon Studios, Fox 2000, and Blue Sky (which all either dealt with lower-budget fare and/or produced films that weren't as expensive as Disney's current silos of department blockbusters) all expired under Disney's watch over the following decade and then some. Zaslav has gone on record for wanting more theatrical releases (to the point of curbing HBO Max's streaming film slate) but also only seeing value in major blockbuster films (as seen with his displeasure with Cry Macho's budget, despite Eastwood's storied history with WB; and arguably the cancellation of Batgirl).
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He's kind of right. Hollywood's output is pretty dire while tons of incredible non-hollywood (indies and foreign markets) are creating some incredible stuff. If we're just looking at the big budget productions pumped out by hollywood right now, it's pretty bad for the most part.
There is no bad era in film if you only cherry pick the great films and ignore all the bad/mid ones, he's approaching this holistically as someone who watches too many movies
I knew that would get comments. But ya'll keep watching that factory shit. Enjoy!
I don't understand why people can't read it like this.
He's not calling your favorite movies garbage, folks.
He's right, in a way. Overturning the Paramount decision in 2020 combined with the ongoing consolidation of film companies into a small handful of corporations is fast-tracking the industry into a new kind of golden age studio system.
You already see it in the way promising actors and directors get scooped up and chained to decade-long contracts, or how new Marvel movies take up like 75% of movie screens when they come out, pushing out smaller independent films. And the audience response is always "well those are the big movies people want to see, of course they get all the screens!" as though this isn't a problem. Depending on the continued viability of the theater industry I'd bet we're not too far from Disney or Amazon buying up chains and exclusively running their own movies at branded theaters.
You already see it in the way promising actors and directors get scooped up and chained to decade-long contracts, or how new Marvel movies take up like 75% of movie screens when they come out, pushing out smaller independent films. And the audience response is always "well those are the big movies people want to see, of course they get all the screens!" as though this isn't a problem. Depending on the continued viability of the theater industry I'd bet we're not too far from Disney or Amazon buying up chains and exclusively running their own movies at branded theaters.
Nerds always get defensive when they think their sacred cows are being attacked.
I agree with him in that it's rare that a drama would come to my local cinema. It's only ever super-heros, cartoons or horror.
It sucks if you live somewhere that doesn't have a good cinema showing arthouse/independent/'world cinema', because I think we are in a golden age for them.
It sucks if you live somewhere that doesn't have a good cinema showing arthouse/independent/'world cinema', because I think we are in a golden age for them.