10 Things Everyone Hates About Modern Movies
It sure would be nice to hear what characters are saying.
As much as people love to complain that "they don't make movies like they used to," cinema has really never been better or more diverse than it is today.
Sure, it might take longer to trawl through the sheer amount of content to find a truly great movie, but there are more voices sharing their stories on more screens than ever before, and that's definitely a beautiful thing.
Well, mostly.
As democratic and expressive as contemporary film is, there's no denying that many modern movie trends are incredibly frustrating for audiences.
From Hollywood's infuriating over-reliance on franchises and Cinematic Universes, to the seemingly ever-expanding runtime of blockbuster movies, the insanity of "spoiler culture," and non-existent industry standards for sound mixing, there's a lot that grinds everyone's gears about film in 2021.
We only complain so much because we love it in equal measure, of course, but if these nagging trends could just go away - most of them won't, sadly - that'd sure be a load off all our backs.
Before we know it there will be another exhausting host of new cinema trends to complain about, but until then here's what really gets the collective cinematic goat...
10. Everything Wants To Be A Cinematic Universe
The unprecedented success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has made it clear to the rest of Hollywood that a carefully constructed tapestry of interconnected movies within the same rich world is something audiences really love.
And while there are certainly compelling cinematic universes beyond the MCU - Star Wars, Fox's X-Men, Kevin Smith's Askewniverse, and so on - movie producers have become utterly obsessed with the notion of spinning even single movies off into their own starry-eyed cinematic compendia.
The last decade has seen numerous films come rushing out of the gate with blatant setups for future movies before they've told even one truly compelling story.
Universal's Dark Universe must surely be the most embarrassing example - which died a death with the commercial failure of Tom Cruise's The Mummy - though we're also seeing streaming vehicles like The Old Guard aggressively hedging their bets on more movies which may ultimately never come to pass.
And so, we're left with dozens of films so committed to the bigger picture that, when those plans don't materialise, what remains feels strangely malformed and incomplete.
And even when we get a single, standalone movie, we have to endure countless tired discussions about when a sequel or spin-off will "eventually" happen.
Seeing a unique, one-off movie like Inception is so rare these days - especially at the blockbuster price point - because Hollywood wants to find excuses to drill for oil anywhere it can.
After all, despite its undeniable success, was anyone really angling for a Conjuring Universe?