Movies Have Always Sucked

Think Tank #65

Yesterday, John and I watched An American Werewolf in London.

It was good. A fun, solid film. And it got me thinking.

I tried to imagine if the movie were made today, and the intricate, carefully-done makeup was replaced by lazy CGI, and the whole thing was filmed in that ultra-high-definition soulless way that modern movies so often are. I couldn’t imagine enjoying it as much as I enjoyed watching this 1981 classic.

Maybe film technology has gotten too advanced, I thought. Maybe that’s why movies have no charm anymore.

This is probably somewhat true. No one can argue that we’re living in a good era for film. But are old movies as good as we think they are, looking back?

In all likelihood, probably not. The reason why we think they were is because only the classics have had any staying power, and all of the average, lazy, unoriginal movies that no one really cared about have faded into obscurity.

Have you ever watched Turner Classic Movies on a Wednesday afternoon with your grandma? Sometimes you stumble upon an actually good movie, but an overwhelming majority of the stuff is unwatchable. And those are movies that made the cut! There simply aren’t enough good classic films to broadcast something enjoyable and different for twenty four hours each day.

The overwhelming majority of everything that has ever been made is utter garbage. It’s the same for books, movies, music. There was never a magical era where the average, run-of-the-mill nonsense was worth paying attention to.

So wait twenty years. Once hindsight has filtered out the hours and hours of crap that you can’t believe someone actually filmed, you might actually find a couple dozen films that were made this century that are actually worth watching.