Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

Same with Mrs. DeLonghorn.

To ELA's comment and utee's response, I too blame the general population who can't stay off their phones, but at the point that you change the way you make a movie specifically to combat it, it's basically admitting that you're not making the movie you otherwise would've made if people weren't stupid, and I contend there's a valid point to be made that the objective quality has thus decreased.

That said, like I mentioned above, there's still plenty of movies I come across which I think are very good, so I don't agree with a generic "movies suck now" sentiment. 

I'm not sure we can say the objective quality has decreased, there's no objective way to measure that, it's completely subjective.

Are they making a movie that is more tailored for a specific audience and one that is probably not my preference because I'm neither stupid nor addicted to my phone?  Sure.  Does that make it objectively worse?  No way to say that, since the evaluation is subjective by its very nature.

And also, this is really just one studio so far that's doing it, and they're doing it not for theater audiences, but for specific streaming platform at home television audiences.  So there's no evidence thus far that theatrical-release movies have anything of the sort.

And finally, there have always been made for TV movies, at least there have been since the 70s, and they have always been different in nature and had a different target audience when compared to movies intended for theatrical realease.  So it's not really fair or appropriate to compare one against the other, IMO.

this thread can easily handle that traffic

This is where we may diverge, though I'm not exactly sure what your position is on some of this and I don't want to put words in your mouth. 

I think that some aspects of art are subjective, while others are not.  If everything is subjective, then there is no definition of the thing in question and we're just in a purely relativistic world.  But pure relativism leads to logical contradictions and is not philosophically tenable.  OTOH, if something is defined, then there is some base level of rules or standard to which it conforms.  Doesn't have to be everything, but it has to be something. 

On that view, we can say that while the enjoyment of TV/movies is certainly subjective, there are "rules" to which they should conform, and if they don't, then they've failed to reach a non-subjective bar and may be said to be "worse." 

What rules those might be is a subject for the "Philosophy of TV and Movies thread," which I am not going to start. 
 

Theoretically I can probably agree with you.

In practice, your definition of the rules is highly likely to be different than mine, so once again we reach the impasse of subjectivity.

And Stranger Things...curious where people are coming out on that. I loved seasons 1 and 2. Enjoyed Season 3, but thought it was ridiculous. Season 4 seemed to get back on track, although I felt like they were trying a little to hard to forgive the main characters for their past actions--and the continuity was getting harder to believe. Then Season 5...sigh. I enjoyed the resolutions for the main characters. I think they handled that (the denouement) well. But particularly the second half of the season was rushed, poorly written, poorly acted (they focused on the wrong characters/actors given the talent they had to work with), and has continuity problems that are impossible to ignore.

I loved Season 1.  Season 2 I really enjoyed, but I think mainly because I hadn't watched it until Season 2 came out, so I watched Seasons 1 and 2 together.  I know some people felt like they just artificially extended Season 1 once Netflix gave them money.  I get that, but watching them together, I enjoyed it.  I liked Season 3 enough, but it felt like you could really tell they had not planned on stretching this out this much.  I gave up midway through Season 4.

A show I felt similarly about was The Killing on AMC.  Season 1 was amazing.  Then it did so well, they made Season 2, which revealed that Season 1 was a false ending.  And led to a bad conclusion.  Then Season 3 sucked.  Season 4 was slightly better, and then ended with a romance that made absolutely no sense.  I don't blame the studios, but you see all of these series where they have a great idea, and then it just gets worse as it gets extended out beyond the original plan.  As great as TV is right now, I think the potential open-endeness threatens it.  Just end it, and have a shitty sequel/spin off.  At least movies have the decency to end with a solid movie, before making 8 bad sequels

It's so low on my list of complaints, but it sticks in my craw for some reason...

Season 5: Demogorgon's withstand .50 cal. machine gun fire, and wipe out entire platoon of soldiers.

Next episode: kids survive demogorgon attack by kicking demogorgon in the face.

Hmmmm.


And @jgvol , our family had to binge seasons 1 and 2 to cleanse ourselves of the abomination that was Season 5.

In our view, Season 3 kind of stands alone as a silly action adventure.

Yeah, I highly recommend seasons 1 and 2. Just ignore the post-credit scene at the end of Season 2, and assume that the story is, in fact, concluded.

I don't blame the studios, but you see all of these series where they have a great idea, and then it just gets worse as it gets extended out beyond the original plan.  As great as TV is right now, I think the potential open-endeness threatens it.  Just end it, and have a shitty sequel/spin off.  At least movies have the decency to end with a solid movie, before making 8 bad sequels

I read a lengthy and very good interview with the guys who wound up heading up the TV show Lost.  They talked about how J.J. Abrams had the idea for the premise, pitched the show to the network, got it off the ground, and then left after producing a few episodes and handed it off to them, basically saying, "Here you go, you guys can probably handle it."  They talked about how inexperienced they were and how it was a major undertaking for their "level" at the time, but that they felt like they had a pretty good handle on it for what it been designed for.  Which was a much more limited series.

But it became such a runaway hit near the beginning that ABC said "Great!  Let's do 6 seasons!"  At which point they looked at each other and said "Well, crap."  They talked about how they had to introduce a bunch of new stuff to try and fill up the time they were committed to and keep the story new and fresh, and how it got so convoluted because of that.  Eventually they felt like the show suffered because of it, and going by the ratings, viewers must have felt the same.  

I wound up watching the show all the way through, but it did need some serious tightening up and would've probably been a great 3-season show of about 13 episodes a piece.  Prime example of what you're talking about.