10 Ways You're Thinking About The Movie Industry All Wrong

3. Movies Are Worse Now

What You Think: We're in a nadir for cinema right now. We've just learned that the real king of 2014 is Transformers, the same franchise that has dominated the box office for the past seven years, and in between all the sequels, remakes and reboots there's little opportunity for good films to thrive, leaving us with a terrible state of movies. The Truth: We have one answer to any of this talk; Boyhood. Richard Linklater's epic coming-of-age movie may be spectacular in its own right, but it also serves to highlight how film-making creativity is far from dead. We're not going to say that this is the best time for movies, but it's certainly no worse than any other. This summer has seen a slew of great blockbusters that show sequels aren't a terrible thing (X-Men: Days Of Future Past, Guardians Of The Galaxy, Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, How To Train Your Dragon 2) and each modern awards season offers up more than Oscar-bait; last year we got films as diverse as The Wolf Of Wall Street, Gravity and 12 Years A Slave. Even more arthouse fare, like Boyhood, is still thriving if you look beyond the crap. Compare that to years gone by. Sure, there's lots of classic movies from decades past, but what most people forget is that there was a lot of tat too; the forties didn't see a new Casablanca every week.