Why do people want realism from movies all the time?
Why is wanting a movie to be super stylized and unreal frowned upon today?
The most popular movies are about men in tights fighting aliens and each other
Its not about "realism" refntino is just imdb trash
>>71674809
High concept scifi is such a huge thing right now that if you're not trying to make the fantastical seem as real as possible then people are automatically turned off by it.
>people want realism
>most popular movies are capeshit and cgi-fest action flicks
>>71674809
I'm sorry, but you make no sense.
http://www.imdb.com/list/ls074920894/
Also, I don't see why a "realist" film couldn't also be considered "highly stylized", or present elements of intersections between concepts of real/unreal.
That said, The Neon Demon seems quite like a generic film, such as Spring Breakers.
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/chart/?yr=2016
Another session of Scapism For The Whole Family...
>>71674809
people hate ambiguity and surrealism these days.
capeshit and cgi fests these days are mostly simple and easy to understand good vs evil morality plays.
most of the time a director goes for something more nuanced or surreal it gets shit on
>>71674809
aren't you really asking why dont people like incoherent nonsensical fantasy?
>>71674809
It's not that I hate super stylized movies, it's just that a lot of film makers that create them swing way too far into the realm of style over substance. It leaves a bad taste in your mouth after a whilem
>>71674809
Because the plot and writing says "consider this is real world" or "that could happen to you"
At least it has to be realistic or logical in itself.
And movies dont need to be need much realism see zootopia, batman, star wars.
>>71674809
Because the left wants everything to REPRESENT so no special-snowflake feels left out. That's why SW is also now completely human-centric.
>>71674859
See Hellboy 2 and Sin City for some stylized capeshit
>>71674809
i do not understand quite what you mean by stylized and why it's frowned upon
people want jokes and quips, it's what makes all the capeshit movies sell
the rest gets praised then quickly forgotten
>>71674809
post more of her
and she better be wearing heels
I hope Elle Fanning gets crucified for appropriating Swedish culture.
>>71675434
Style is substance you pleb
>>71676757
What?
Shes wearing a hiijab now? Fuck kafirs!
Because
http://breteastonellis.com/ideology-vs-aesthetics/
>>71676757
Make that a film.
A comming of age tale of a teen movie star that becomes Jesus while touring in Sweden.
kids haven't developed the capacity for critical thinking so they just assume that because something is realistic it means it is good. a lot of people are bringing up capeshit in this thread, but that's totally fucking wrong. you see, modern capeshit movies specifically aim for that realism. the characters don't adorn themselves with their whacky comic book costumes, for example. they are grounded in reality precisely because that's what kids think is what makes these movies good. nowadays kids are shitting on perfectly good movies like Raimi's spiderman for being too "camp", and tearing apart older classics like Donner's superman for the same reasons.
>>71674809
>Why do people want realism from movies
>main complaint about HFR is that it's too real
>>71675510
>That's why SW is also now completely human-centric.
Star Wars has always been ridiculously human-centric.
people think they know what good writing is and want to see their very narrow conception of what it is and only it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9PCxz3KyFc
if people aren't on the same wavelength of a movie immediately, they get confused and have a knee jerk reaction feeling dumb and thus resent the movie if they can't come to terms with the confusion
>>71677149
>a lot of people are bringing up capeshit in this thread, but that's totally fucking wrong. you see, modern capeshit movies specifically aim for that realism
this, exactly.
I think it's a western thing
videogame design has the same thing going on.
the west in general is obsessed with verisimilitude.
>>71674809
Because around 2003-2004 "hyperrealism" hit the major screens and it has shaped the modern face of cinema.
From James Bond, to Jason Borne, every fucking flick nowadays tries to instill the feel of realism within the modern world.
Even trash like capeshit is set in a semi-realistic modern world.
Magic realism and stylised flicks are passé, simply because the audience is too used to being spoon fed the plot and the "MEANING".
>>71674899
and they have to be gritty detailed instead of grand and operatic or people don't watch them
>>71674809
I actually like "style over substance" more than normal movies.
It feels like instead of watching a story unfold, you're taking a brief journey through the director's mind. Dunno if that sounded gay.
>>71677774
I think that style does add tension in an interesting way when properly employed (I really like post-brody homeland, or the many adaptations of John Le Carré novels for instance, and their bread-and-butter is trying really hard to get things to look/feel real)
what I like about them is they tend to avoid (or at least make an effort to avoid) character tropes, like someone getting angry or jealous over something which pushes them to go do X when in real life a person would just ask wtf was up.
>>71677891
A bit. But there was a story in the Neon Demon, it was bit a like a fairy tale.
Elle's character at first is glad to become a mannequin, and she went full on greed and make other people jealous of you, and it hit back on her pretty hard
>>71674809
It's especially annoying when retards act smarter than the movie when it doesn't conform to realism.
>Attend a panel dedicated to asian movies
>Hard-Boiled is brought up
>Long take of the hallway shoot up is shown.
>Moron behinds me is snickering, pointing out how stupid the gun play is and how shotguns don't do damage like it does in the movie.
Can we please drop this notion that every gunfight needs to have Michael Mann levels of realism?
>>71677891
I agree with you but I feel like there's a definite limit and I don't know how to delineate it
e.g. I love drive movies but hated sucker punch.
>>71677774
I think it goes back further than that, Michael Mann's style kind of fits the hyperrealism mould.
Actually I would almost consider Mann's movies to be highly stylized because the way he employs hyperrealism is so recognizeable. I have genuinely enjoyed every one of his movies, even his most recent works.
>>71678020
Fucking this. I was with a friend and decided to put on the church shootout from The Killer
This one dude is like "Really? You got shot in the arm, how are you still shooting?"I put the Gun Kata scenes from Equilibrium on next just to trigger him
>>71678020
HOL UP
someone actually had the audacity to hate on Hard Boiled?
>>71677768
>the west in general is obsessed with verisimilitude.
As with many synonyms, there's really a fairly profound difference between realism and verisimilitude. Realism strives to depict reality as it is, whereas verisimilitude is about giving the *appearance* of reality even to the unreal. Realism is what Nolan strove for on his Batman films. Verisimilitude is what allows you to accept that, in Star Wars, there's an all-powerful Force linking all life and allowing people to perform superhuman feats.
>>71678020
In fact, it's not about the movie being realistic.
It's about the movie being accepted as realistic by its audience.
It's always the same: one or two guys did it successfully, now it's being milked to death until a new trend takes over.
Story sucked
Get over it
>>71678064
>drive movies
You mean just Drive?
And I think it all depends on how coherent your stylization is. Sucker Punch had all the ingredients of a great stylish flick, but it jumped all over the place with it and didn't tell a real story, at least not an engaging one.
>>71675333
Oh like birdman?
>>71678467
Birdman was parodying that, and got the Oscar because Hollywood hates itself.
>>71678467
Birdman was liked by critics because it gave kino-lovers an occasion to feel superior to mainstream audiences. Muh magical realism. Muh fake long shots. Muh meta references. Muh open ending.the movie was enjoyable but pretentious and not that great
>>71678227
mmm I dunno, I feel like "the appearance of being real" is exactly what nolan was trying to do by gritting up batman, trying to say "realism" was being applied to the bat-mobile/bat-plane or whatever and all that shit is a bit of a stretch to me
>>71678420
>you mean just drive
yeah originally I'd written "Refn's movies" but opted to pick specific examples since I actually at least enjoyed Snyder's 300
>>71677774
I'd say we're getting somewhat past that now... the previous Bourne/Dark Knight/Black Hawk Down and Reality TV and post-cinema verite pseudo documentary dry / cold look.
For a while it was that kind of cold, digital realism (but with a bluish tint, Mtv-editing and a kind of fast, 'cinema verite'/handheld shooting style).
Now it's still super-real digital but there's more sensory experience suddenly, whereas previously digital was used to create an atmosphere-dispelling cleanness like in Nolan's flims. The new look introduces radiating, pulsating lights and globby colors.
There's less cinema verite / reality show logic and handheld quality too. Longer and wider shots are replacing the erratic, dizzy fast cuts and extreme closeups of the 00s. The shots are getting more aesthetic, and more sensory and immersive. Look at The VVitch, Nightcrawler, Neon Demon, Pacific Rim, Enter the Void, Spring Breakers. Horror films ditching the jumpscare reality show or found footage thing for more atmospheric and stylized approaches.
I'd say the hyperreal quality hasn't gone away, but it's not as cold now, and the hyperrealism has merged with style. More of a design and aesthetic to things.
Things seem less flat too, there is a chunky, textural 'thingness' to stuff now. In a way it's 'realer' (as in you feel you could touch or taste it) than the former 00s cold realism style but it's weird and beautiful as well, and there's a kind of magical, fantastic quality seeping into it. It's like as the digital finally has evolved/complxified enough to loose its flatness and fakeness, then nature and even 'life' / magic is kind of bubbling up through it now.
>>71678988
The 00s style, being described in this thread, was so-called 'gritty realism', related also to the 'grimdark' sensibilty, aka what you might call fedora realism.
On the cutting edge, style is actually really coming back. It's just that it's fused with hyperrealism. It's like an augmented or heightened real, that sometimes veers into dream logic or genre logic or experimental art logic.
>>71679469
The high priesthood of relativistic culture 'movements' are pushing metamodernism as the epoch sweeping catch-all moniker for what you're describing.
>>71679794
That's one of the little angles out there. It gets at a couple aspects of such things.
I would point out that they're starting to find a way to poke holes in relativism in a way. We're definitely past postmodernism and poststructuralism now.
And as far as movies, all the dry shit is still out there to an extent, there are still dry gritty realist films shot really coldly, but there is a more vibrant, textural thing on the ascendant.
Similar to other areas right now. Identity Politics and poststructuralism's legacy has become the status quo. But the fresh new shit is very decidedly rejecting those themes and theories and the aesthetics as a result are really changing. In fact, the very fact that aesthetics are coming back is due to a rejection of identity politics and poststructuralism by some, a shift in focus away from the socio-political, which, as it happens, was anti-aesthetic. This is why filmmakers like Refn, von Trier, Lynch, and Refn might be accused of being apolitical and problematic if assessed according to feminist or marxist critiques. They're not in it to push those agendas, the focus, as it has similarly with some artists and thinkers, has moved to other things.
You even see this division on Tumblr. There are the Identity Politics side of Tumblr, and there are the A E S T H E T I C S people. If you look at the whole 'a e s t h e t i c' thing in the many forms it takes, it is almost always indifferent to social justice stuff, and in many cases, when it mutates through meme culture, will even shamelessly take on offensive /pol/ or other 4chan-like content without compunction.
>>71680215
>Refn, von Trier, Lynch, and Refn
and *Korine
>>71674809
its not but studios are cheap asses and they pay for reviews to be unfavorable for more cool things
the thing remake is a prime example. every one said they hated it because nobody wanted to spend money on effects
>>71674809
They don't want realism. They just want what they expect. Nobody wants realism out of Finding Dory.
>>71674809
Abbey Lee is so beautiful.
>>71678988
>The shots are getting more aesthetic, and more sensory and immersive. Look at The VVitch, Nightcrawler, Neon Demon, Pacific Rim, Enter the Void, Spring Breakers
Under the Skin is another good example.
>>71680628
or The Canyons, or The Bling Ring.
>>71678988
>Longer and wider shots are replacing the erratic, dizzy fast cuts and extreme closeups of the 00s.
I mostly agree with your post but not with this. The examples you mention go against the current aesthetic, which draws heavily from television. I would argue that now more than ever in the history of Hollywood, we have movies that play almost solely in close-ups. It's a aesthetic that has leaked from tv. Boring master, boring cut to maybe over to shoulder, then often scenes play in either over the shoulder or just blatantly in face close ups.
Most American indie films now look like HBO tv movies. The focus isn't on the aesthetic, visual storytelling anymore, it's about relying information and exposition. Again the whole ideology trumps aesthetics thing is full at play. Something like Spotlight is a good example of this television look.
>>71681016
In most films, yes, I see it too. I suppose I tend to give more attention always to where the interesting new approaches are, and tend to have a faith that they usually catch on. In the case of these slower aesthetic shots, I mean more in the case of some of the films I mentioned, especially in some newer horror.
Interestingly, some films like those of Korine or von Trier mix long atmospheric, almost 'painterly' shots with quicker closer shots (but that have an impressionistic or even expressionistic quality)
I think there really is a push back from aesthetics right now. Ideology started to win in the 70s and by the 00s, aesthetics seemed almost non-existent in film, and were already near non-existent in art in many of the approaches from the 60s through the 90s (there were aesthetic practices too but a lot of conceptualism, performance, some approaches to video, and a lot of politically-inspired stuff like institutional critique and social practice were pretty anti-aesthetic).
Right now, there is a return of aesthetics, but the anti-aesthetic, linguistic/political/ideology-centered approach is the current establishment to be toppled. It's definitely about to go, though, as there's nothing good happening in art coming from that approach.
