[bexsella]

>The writing for new shows is predicable and boring. Actors are featureless blobs that all look the same

I would argue this is a symptom of the money men exerting too much control over entertainment. Everything has to be safe and neutered, every investment has to be as sure as possible. This isn't down to writers, there's interesting writing going on, you just won't see it come out of the big studios unless it's a smaller subsidiary.

[TazeTSchnitzel]

Eventually the money men become so risk-averse that they give up on originality entirely. Hence the endless stream of remakes, adaptations and formulaic additions to existing series.

[slg]

It is always the businesspeople at fault for it. Creatives don't naturally want to create bland and uninteresting work any more than software developers want to naturally build CRUD apps for ad-tech companies. The employees go where the businesspeople and their money lead because working class folks need to make a living and most Hollywood creatives are working class.

[kristopolous]

Reminds me of a movie from the 1960s, The Fabulous Baron Munchausen, I was watching recently.

I couldn't help but notice how the wild artistic risks taken in the movie would likely never happen today unless the artists paid out of pocket for both the production and distribution

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Na1h7ozW9VQ

Putting money behind stuff like this is dead.

[rob74]

Yeah, over the last years (at least according to my impression) 90% of movies have been either remakes, sequels or comic/video game adaptations...

[throwawaysleep]

They print money though. That is what the customer has demonstrated they want.

[juujian]

The only thing that baffles me about that is that there are so many people who want to watch that.

[watwut]

I don't think it is entirely. Even with safe and neutered, writing could have been much better then it is. The butchering that happened in Witcher or Game of Thrones was purely on writers. It is not just money men.

It is that contemporary screen writing is unable to engage with characters and complexity outside of, like, 5 stereotypical tropes. That they internalized set of rules about how to simplify things and just can't comprehend any slightly realistic psychology of adults or set of events.

The money men did a lot of damage and are the ones who set the rules. But the bad writing we see now is because writers insist on cproducing bad writing even having choice. Maybe all the good writers left, maybe it is something else, but they screw it up even when having freedom.

[drunkenmagician]

Yes, this exactly - the quality of writing on a lot of shows these days is absolutely abysmal. Not just dialogue, the plots - so much 'tropes copying', pointless or stupid 'reveals' or just plain dumb twists to make things edgy and exciting. I feel like the average IQ in Hollywood writing departments as dropped significantly in the last 20 years ... sad

[mst]

One could argue that there's a selection effect during the up and coming phase that means a different subset of writers are the ones who make it to the top these days.

(I hear tell that as adaptions go The Expanse was relatively well done, though I haven't watched it myself as yet)

[ryandrake]

Another problem is that everyone is aiming for the broadest international market, so any dialog must be easily translate-able to Mandarin, Japanese, French, German, and so on. No more clever wordplay, double entendres, puns, regional dialects... It all has to be vanilla and the themes need to be simple and straightforward (not to mention politically uncontroversial) so it can be palatable across the entire globe.

[jbm]

Was this ever REALLY a problem?

I've seen Japanese subtitles before (I mean Japanese language subtitles) and almost all subtext is lost regardless. Far worse than the english subtitles on anime.

You might as well make the movie you want, the end result abroad will be bland regardless. The translation issues are just an excuse.

[ctrlp]

Can you recommend interesting "unsafe" shows that, but for the money men, you think would/could be made today? Or are being made but on smaller subsidiaries?

[NovaDudely]

A lot of shows on Adult swim. I have seen many folks that have worked with the network basically say they have near 100% creative control. Mind you it is about 90% animated stuff.

You see absolutely crazy stuff like The Eric Andre show get 6 seasons. A talk show that is basically just out to torment all their guests. 'Off the air' while only a few episode every few years, is much more of an art experimenter than anything you would consider a show, it is wonderful.

Every few months there is something new and twisted that comes along, it feels like Adult swim is that TV studio that the main company complete forgot exists and that head corporate hasn't checked on since the late 90's.

But the budgets also show, there are no million dollar budgets here.

[sandworm101]

The Young Pope. It is new and different. It is edgy and definitely not like other stuff these days. (The young pope, not the new pope which is the second season.) It was made in europe and couldnt be made in north america, not today.

The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. It only existed because of a special relationship with the late show. Without worry about ratings, he did some great stuff that wouldnt get past the moneymen today.

The older seasons of Top Gear. It was wildly popular but got its energy from an old form of "blolky" male-dominated humor that just doesnt fly these days. The Grand Tour continues but is a pale comparision of the previous energy.

Note that all of these are dominated by male protagonists, a rare thing in recent years.

[OO000oo]

Where to begin? The Criterion Collection pretty much exists to preserve and make such films available.

[nntwozz]

Primal (basically no dialogue).

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt10332508/

[WeylandYutani]

Entertainment is made for money. It wouldn't exist without it.

Nobody is giving 200 million dollars to a director just to break even.

[bambax]

Yes and no. Entertainment is made for money, yes. But many of the best / most original movies are the ones that cost the less.

As the budget increases, more and more people get involved; and decision by committee is a terrible system.