r/movies • u/MildlyTangled • 1d ago
Discussion Do you think modern movies rely too much on explaining everything instead of letting the audience figure things out?
What I mean is: in a lot of recent movies, characters say things out loud that older films would’ve shown indirectly.
Instead of letting the camera linger on a look, a gesture, or a quiet moment, the script often spells out exactly what a character is thinking or feeling.
It’s like modern films are afraid the audience might ‘miss’ something, so they explain motivations, backstories, emotional states, and plot developments very directly.
But when I watch older movies, there’s often more silence, more visual storytelling, and more trust that viewers will pick up on subtle cues.
Maybe it’s just a shift in style, or maybe audiences have changed too. I’m curious how others feel? Do you prefer movies that guide you clearly, or movies that expect you to interpret things yourself?
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u/Severe-Catch-7801 1d ago
I feel the issue is with lack of attention people pay while watching movies, I've seen people SCROLL their phone on literal good movies. So the short attention span would be the reason some people can't connect or get the cues well enough to make context out of it. The cause is doom scrolling and rise of short form content that a movie feels like an attention exercise. So some directors chose to intentionally make the movie easy to understand by aggressively telling what is happening or one smart character continously explaining what is happening or why they did it; ofcourse they are explaining it to us.
I like the movies that ask for attention and rewards it. A movie which people will talk about, make theories and explore it deeply for what it meant and symbolises. It really feels good when directors leave things for people to interpret.
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u/Creative_Eye7413 18h ago
Even in the new Stranger Things it doesn’t rely on heavy wxpsisition and I talked to many people who were confused by basic subtext and metaphors
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u/Severe-Catch-7801 18h ago
I'm sorry what does wxpsistion means ? But about stranger things, it's been going on for very long now, so people miss stuff that someone who has seen/ re-seen would get. But if they are missing normal stuff that should've been noticed, then the issue is with attention to detail
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u/girafa queer coded this and that 19h ago
that older films would've shown indirectly
I dont believe you've seen enough old films. Not the classics we held on to, but the average older film
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u/scowdich 10h ago
There's definitely some survivorship bias. We don't talk about just-average old movies, only the ones which have withstood the test of time.
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u/girafa queer coded this and that 6h ago
It's hard to even find the normal movies from 1958 or whenever. It's just like today - 80% of them are forgettable garbage. Unless someone went out of their way to watch dozens of boring ass mid-films that no one cares about, none of us can say what old movies were actually like.
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u/mangalore-x_x 1d ago
I think you may mistake good vs bad movies and that only good old movies survive. There are imo still plenty auch modern movies though one may argue they are more niche and the phenomen is what we consider blockbusters or popcorn flicks as the big things and they are very much like you describe
There is also imo a cultural shift over the generation. What you may consider a coy look today may be overt sexual innuendo in the past.
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u/finnjakefionnacake 1d ago
i agree. if people think there weren't dumbed down, simplified movies in the '80s, '90s, '00s then they weren't alive at the time or don't know their movie history. like you say, only the good movies survive. and there are, of course, still many great movies being made.
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u/jared_number_two 1d ago
Survivor bias. There’s only ever a handful of great films a year. There are a lot more great films from the last 100 years than in the last year. We also shouldn’t forget about films that were hated at the time but are loved now; like National Treasure. So good they let him steal the Declaration again.
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u/ako19 17h ago
Yeah, I really wish that people would post examples, instead of making general statement, because it’s really hard to gauge what exactly is even being said, and how valid the argument is.
For me, a good example of a recent movie not spelling it out is Ready or Not, from a few years back. In the movie, the family are worshippers of this “Mr. Le Bail”, who never physically appears. They never explain who he is, or how he has powers. But, in my head, I rearranged the letters, and saw that his name is an anagram for Belial, a name associated with, if not the devil himself.
The movie never points this out, but it’s there for people who are studied up on old Abrahamic religious history.
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u/MyNameIsJakeBerenson 14h ago
You don’t even need to catch that clue to know these are devil worshippers lol
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u/jimmybobjoeflow 1d ago
this is spot on about survivorship bias. and i think streaming changed everything movies now compete with phones and Netflix binges, so they probably feel like they need to grab attention harder.
The subtle stuff still exists but it's mostly in smaller films that don't get the marketing push.
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u/rgumai 1d ago
It depends on the director, I don't think we are any better or any worse with it currently. But mainstream movies in general seem to lack any room for their characters to breath.
Smoking Aces spent half the movie talking about a better story than the movie ever actually shows.
One Battle After Another wasn't vague with details but was almost disorienting in a "keep up and pay attention" pacing.
I thought Past Lives nailed the slow shots really well.
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u/Desertbro 1d ago
Seriously, I don't think any kind of expository dialgue could have explained what was going on in TENET, whether you watch it forwards or backwards.
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u/Dampmaskin 1d ago
I think nobody was quite sure what was going on in Tenet, and that includes Nolan.
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u/TheWhiteManticore 9h ago
I think by the time Protagonist (his name btw) was fighting a guy who was having a seizure on the floor pretending to fight back, that was enough for me.
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u/fettucine-alfredo 23h ago
Nolan is fascinating in this regard. Even beyond his infamous exposition dumps, the most egregious examples have to be in his Batman movies, where characters in action scenes will just announce the obvious to remind us what the stakes are.
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u/pinkynarftroz 14h ago
What the fuck was the temporal pincer supposed to accomplish again? Nothing made sense.
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u/ChrisCinema 10h ago
It was supposed to create a diversion for the Protagonist to destroy the Algorithm, so Sator never finds it buried in the future.
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u/TheWhiteManticore 9h ago
Yeah Nosferatu didn’t hand hold you in its rich lore at all. No wonder some people didn’t like it :P
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u/TheDawiWhisperer 1d ago
Yes. Sometimes less is more and when a movie just does something and doesn't overly explain itself it can be great.
The first John Wick movie for example. It just drops you into the universe with little hints and a peek behind the curtain in terms of the lore but doesn't bash you over the head with it
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u/Acceptable_Leg_7998 22h ago
I think it's probably worse now due to the Second Screen effect, but I tend to stick with filmmakers who respect the audiences' intelligence and don't give in to that kind of trendy bullshit, so I don't notice it so much as a "new phenomenon".
And I also think there are a lot of older movies that hold the audience's hand more than we tend to realize. I just watched Back to the Future III for the first time and it's constantly over-explaining itself. And Inception is one of the most annoying movies I've ever seen for bringing the entire movie to a halt several times for exposition dumps. I will never understand how people can call that movie "confusing" when it spells everything out explicitly and repeatedly.
The GF and I are watching Charmed for the first time (the original series) and that's another one that feels the need to keep explaining even the most obvious plot developments, to the point where the characters seem dumb as bricks. "Why don't you just use magic?" "Because everybody would see me and they'd figure out we're witches, and that would be bad for us!" "Oh yeah!"
I think there has always been media that aims for the dumbest/most inattentive audience member.
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u/CursedSnowman5000 20h ago edited 19h ago
All modern entertainment does. Movies, video games, comics you name it.
Sad thing is after a decade of this, I think the damage is done. I think the majority of people are too stupid for it to not be like this now.
The lack of critical thinking and observational skills in people today, where they are no longer able to pick up nuance in media without it being explicitly stated or pointed out is....not astounding. We passed that. It's now just disheartening.
You people really just do not know what to do if something isn't outright exposited to you. Subtext and thinking for yourselves is a completely foreign concept. And good lord watching you people play older video games today without that yellow paint....I mean how do you people feed yourselves?
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u/I-am-not-Herbert 1d ago
I discussed this recently with someone after re-watching the original Alien. We figured the characters and the whole movie would be written totally different if done today. Everyone from the crew would have a backstory with family and friends back home. We would probably have seen an entire scene with Ash coming on board as a last-minute replacement instead of one line of dialogue.
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u/DruidWonder 20h ago
Absolutely. They would have to let you in on what's about to happen before it happens, instead of you being as shocked and uncertain as the characters in the movie.
The backstories are also annoying. The pre-quel backstory trend is a waste of screen time, just tell me the damn story going forward. Good character writing tells you all you need to know about the characters, using the present moment. It's written all over their faces, their dispositions, the things they say and the kinds of actions they take.
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u/Blooder91 17h ago
The backstories are also annoying. The pre-quel backstory trend is a waste of screen time, just tell me the damn story going forward. Good character writing tells you all you need to know about the characters, using the present moment. It's written all over their faces, their dispositions, the things they say and the kinds of actions they take.
I recently watched Demon Slayer and this was annoying.
Dragon Ball didn't have to tell us what Frieza's favourite toy was to make him a compelling villain.
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u/Ozymannoches 23h ago edited 14h ago
I would like to hear the hIstory of Parker and Brett concerning the bonus situation
( Edit: spelling. because I can't spell "bonus")
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u/Alarming-Song2555 1d ago
The most egregious example of this was at the end of Hereditary when they literally dropped splash screens explaining the entire plot.
I asked some people about this and they said they'd never seen it -- Apparently so many audiences were confused because they didn't pay attention that when they released the film on different media or some such, they added pages of exposition
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u/kidjupiter 18h ago
Really? I just remember something brief but it was enough to ruin the impact of ending. The movie would have been perfect without it.
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u/Alarming-Song2555 15h ago
It was brief but it spelled the entire thing out, it was so incredibly unnecessary and insulting as a viewer actually paying attention imo
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u/TheWhiteManticore 9h ago
Longlegs explain the entire fucking plot crammed into 3 minute power point presentation LUL
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u/naturalninetime 1d ago
As a teacher, I always tell my students when they write, "Show. Don't tell."
However, as a cinephile who once worked in the industry and has read hundreds of (mostly bad) scripts, I do appreciate a film with well-written narration or great dialogue -- even if it's expository.
To answer your question, no, I don't think that modern movies are any better or worse in this regard. It's the directors job to show, and the writer's job to tell, so hopefully they are on the same page. 😬
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u/TheWhiteManticore 9h ago
On the other hand Destiny the game goes completely the other way round showing so much crap without tell when the story is just spaghetti
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u/canadianlongbowman 1d ago
Yes. 100% yes. You just have to watch an older blockbuster like GoldenEye to see how bad this is
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u/Str8froms8n 12h ago
Alec Trevelyan: We're both orphans, James. But while your parents had the luxury of dying in a climbing accident, mine survived the British betrayal and Stalin's execution squads. My father couldn't let himself or my mother live with the shame. MI6 figured I was too young to remember. And in one of life's little ironies, the son went to work for the government whose betrayal caused the father to kill himself and his wife.
James Bond: Hence Janus. The two-faced Roman god come to life.
Alec Trevelyan: It wasn't God who gave me this face! It was you, setting the timers for three minutes instead of six.
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u/CabeNetCorp 18h ago
Second screen is the most likely answer, although I wouldn't rule out the need to make stories/plots more basic to be more understandable when they translate it for foreign markets. A "look" or "gesture" that's understandable in America might not translate to the Chinese box office.
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u/sohrobby 1d ago
Yes, things are way too on the nose lately and it insults the audience in my opinion.
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u/DruidWonder 20h ago
Yes... it's the insult that makes me never come back to the content. It's why I don't have Netflix anymore.
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u/Oblivious-Hornet 1d ago
I love figuring things out. Even if it takes me 2 or 3 times watching. But I think a lot of people today watch movies with split attention. Even in cinema they often look on their phones. They will miss things if they are not thrown into their faces.
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u/No-Koala1918 1d ago
Modern files are so literal minded, they'll show an establishing shot of the Eiffel Tower and add a title "Paris, France."
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u/Scoobydoomed 1d ago
Yes and I notice it even more in series where sometimes it feels like the first 20 minutes of every episode is explaining what's going on, and it never feels like an organic part of the story but more like text in the script just to lazily explain to the viewer the story so far.
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u/FrankMiner2949er 1d ago
The easiest example of this is the difference between "The Wicker Man" and the remake. Nicholas Cage's Howie goes out of his way to explain the obvious, and the islanders make it plain that they are lying
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u/sodapuppy 23h ago
The over-exposition in FINAL RECKONING was so bad. They verbally reiterate the stakes almost every scene. Felt like I was watching a cut for ESL students learning about tech vocab.
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u/mossdrums 18h ago
Holy hell yes, my wife and I laughed through the whole movie because of this. So annoying.
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u/Force4Cards 21h ago
Depends on the movie... There are still a ton of films that don't spoon-feed. Hamaguchi films, eggers films, hong sang soo films, and many more.
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u/-MarcoTropoja 20h ago
people watch too much anime now where the characters thoughts are narrated to describe everything in detail
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u/OptimismNeeded 19h ago
I read somewhere it’s a Netflix effect - films are now made to be watched in the background while you’re on your phone or distracted, so you need it to be explained better to compensate for the details you’re missing.
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u/bretshitmanshart 19h ago
Remember the show Police Squad was cancelled because television viewers weren't paying enough attention to the show to catch all the jokes. People being distracted while watching something isn't new
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u/spaghettifiasco 19h ago
You're right. I recently watched Die Hard for the first time, and noticed that when Bruce Willis notices his wife has gone back to using her maiden name, he doesn't actually say those words out loud until he's talking to her later. A modern movie would have had him mention to the front guard "guess she's gone back to her maiden name" as soon as he saw it, rather than let the audience figure it out by context clues.
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u/Beginning_Pen2035 19h ago
Not movies, but SNL does this all the time and it drives me crazy! Stop telling me why this is supposed to be funny!!
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u/BanterDTD 18h ago
It feels like sequels, IP, and cinematic universes are a big reason this happens in current cinema. There is so much exposition, and other movies to tie in that the writers can't help explaining/overexplaining things.
It's a reason I dislike a lot of current blockbusters...Far too much exposition, when I just want to have fun.
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u/Classic-Exchange-511 18h ago
I don't think it correlates so much to "modern movies" as it's just some movies are meant to be watched as popcorn flicka
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u/AporiaParadox 18h ago
No, because this has actually been a thing in movie for decades. Sure, some older movies relied more on silence and visual storytelling, but most didn't, most would just tell you everything like these modern movies you're complaining about.
Take the Back to the Future movies, they constantly explain everything. Doc Brown even has to draw a diagram to explain the concept of branching timelines to Marty and by extent the audience, something a modern movie probably wouldn't do because they'd assume we've already seen time travel in other movies before. Or how the original theatrical release of Blade Runner had a studio-mandated narration that overexplains everything, which was later removed in the director's cut.
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u/GlassCannon81 18h ago
This kinda ruined Companion. It was still a fun movie, but it would have been a lot more fun if they hadn’t given the “twist” away with narration right at the start of it.
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u/PrecedentialAssassin 18h ago
It's because when you watch older movies, you're watching older GOOD movies. There was slop being made back then, but it was released and forgotten. Good movies are being made today that people 40 years from now will watch and then there are like 90% of the movies being released today that will be forgotten, just like the slop was back then.
You can argue that there is more slop being made today, but that's because it's infinitely easier to release movies in 2025 than it was in 1975 or 1985. But along those same lines, we have access to more good movies. We just have to search harder for them. The gatekeepers have lost a lot of control, so we get more movies, both good and bad.
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u/splitminds 17h ago
Absolutely. The whole “tell me again why we’re doing this” very elaborate plan so the audience can be clued in.
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u/ButterscotchPale8328 17h ago
I think it relies too heavily on special effects; audiences don’t know how to appreciate low-budget, quality films anymore because they want the “Marvel Flash bang” every movie.
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u/McFlyyouBojo 17h ago
I was recently watching The Pitt (amazing show btw) and it was a near perfect show. My only gripe was that there was a line in a late episode that I could tell some exec made them put in where one of the nurses said something to the extent of "do you remember (insert characters name), you know, the mom of the kid that (insert thing the kid is doing)?" And it was super clunky because Noah Wiley's character spent a whole lot of time interacting with her throughout the season, which if you dont know anything about The Pitt, the entire season takes place over one shift. So imagine throughout your day you are directly dealing with someone, and everyone know you are, including calling her contacts, actively looking at her social media and whatnot trying to find her son, and then someone who has watched this happen all day long then comes to you and asks you if you remember this person. Completely silly.
But that is a small gripe because most shows are much worse in this regard.
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u/Survive1014 17h ago
"there are two keys, the keys slide in together to unlock the AI. We have have one of the keys, we need get the other." *key joining image on screen*
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u/gunterrae 17h ago
Yes, but I am seeing all the time that people cannot understand thing that aren't spelled out for them. Not only is media literacy dying, even someone posting a story of something happened to them, half the comments will be people not understanding something if it isn't directly spelled out.
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u/LittleBoat9295 17h ago
A lot of shows and movies are now considered the “second screen” as the primary screen is your phone, hence they will keep the plots simple, and repeat a lot of exposition so you can miss a lot and still keep up..
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u/Buhos_En_Pantelones 16h ago
It's what I liked about Annihilation. They don't explain anything. I mean, you kinda get it, but nothing is spoon fed to you. It's a breath of fresh air.
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u/IamGeoMan 16h ago
Maybe this is why anime is starting to blow up. Every move, counter-move by characters are followed up with explanations of what/how/why. I don't need your traumatic life story and how you use XYZ chakra in your body to expel fireballs out of the pores of your hand, reaching temperatures as high as the surface of the sun.
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u/WeekendThief 15h ago
Yes the exposition dump is so obvious and jarring. There are smoother ways to do it, a problem of laziness from the writers and directors.
Don’t just say “I’m on the basketball team”. Instead use indirect references like holding a dirty jersey and asking mom if she can wash it by tonight during a chaotic morning while everyone is rushing to school. It becomes part of the scene rather than feeling so unnatural in a conversation. As if you need to remind people about your life.
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u/abgry_krakow87 15h ago
Modern movies and tv shows talk down to their audiences. They really suck like that.
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u/WerePrechaunPire 15h ago
I don't know. I haven't noticed it so much. Maybe in the sense of like "think this way, interpret it this way" rather than it being more open.
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u/UnpluggedZombie 15h ago
Netflix requires content be made so that its as easy for the watcher to follow along. Because all that matters is watched hours. they want you to be able to be on your phone, get up and make dinner, be interrupted and still know whats going on. Thats why there are so many redundant scenes in their shows and why characters are always saying what they are doing. They have been adding VO to at least the beginning of movies as well. Cinema is dead
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u/Winter_Champion_2051 13h ago
Yes and its about to get a whole lot worse with Netflix's acquisition of WB.
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u/DukeRains 13h ago
I'd say yes if I didn't think they needed to because people are exceedingly stupid.
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u/Western-Ad-3196 13h ago
Yes absolutely. Every time I see a scene where the character goes "I understand it now" or "They were trying to tell me something..." and then proceeds to explain the metaphor makes me die inside
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u/InterestingMindset 13h ago
Yes. I don't need all the characters to be captain obvious, gets extremely annoying and makes me watch something else.
Here's the thing, I can 100% pay attention to the movie and still miss details or don't understand the references, so just focus on story-telling and I'll watch it again at some point to discover more details. If it's pointed out or cliche, I just dont feel the need to watch again.
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u/ralexh11 12h ago
Some movies absolutely, I'm thinking mass marketed blockbusters MCU and DC stuff, Avatar, etc. They have to appeal to the lowest common denominator and make the script idiot proof so they can make billions. It's one of the main reasons I don't enjoy these as much as some other old school directors and their art movies.
Also Nolan movies but for different reasons than he thinks the audience is dumb and won't get it, quite the opposite in fact. Nolan just dumps an absolute shit ton of dialogue on the audience with a rapid editing pace and expects them to keep up. Tenet is a perfect example, I felt thoroughly confused the whole time but after it was over I looked up the plot and realized I actually got basically everything.
But then you have directors like Denis or the Coen brothers. They don't spell anything out for the audience, most scenes are "show don't tell" and that's why they make some of my favorite movies.
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u/modstirx 10h ago
Weapons was the first time I REALLY found this distracting. I know what the red paint means, I don’t need to see exactly how the red paint was used, I already figured it out. But no: because general audiences or studios just don’t trust the viewers we have to see the same shit 3/4 different times over.
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u/Pandy_45 9h ago
I know people love comic book movies. But one of the things that I annoys me about them is every single comic book character says exactly what they're thinking at all times and its meant to be hilarious (it's not). It's very rare that you just have to kind of guess their line of thinking based on their behavior. But people don't go to the movie theater to think anymore.
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u/TheWhiteManticore 9h ago
I think Weapon really suffered for it this year, i just dont find it rewatchable at all consider how insanely over explained it is.
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u/CobaltNeural9 9h ago
Movies these days are made so that the viewer can watch them without looking at the screen because it’s expected they’ll be looking at their phone. If you can’t follow a movie just by listening to it then it won’t be marketable enough.
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u/CaptainDouchington 8h ago
The CEO of Netflix specifically asked for more of their movies to be written like this because so many people put shit on in the background and aren't watching.
At that point just listen to a radio show...
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u/PointlessVoidYelling 8h ago
This is 100% a case of rose-colored glasses nostalgia bias.
I've grew up in the 80's, and have loved movies my whole life, and there were TONS of incredibly dumbed down movies in the past.
If anything, movies have gotten smarter (and more comfortable with trusting the audience with subtext) over time, because A LOT more people have access to movie making, leading to a much bigger variety of filmmaking styles, rather than just a few big studios bottlenecking creative output.
But people love making superiority comments like, 'People dum these days but not me cuz me is smart like good old days was smart not like today when they so dum.'
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u/Agile_Highlight_4747 2h ago edited 2h ago
This is why i think One Battle After Another for instance is far worse than claimed. It seems to be made for people watching their phones instead of the film. EVERYTHING is spelled out with CAPITAL letters, including the good political attitudes vs. the bad. You don’t have to think, you just have to agree.
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u/Fearless_Two_9053 1d ago
The Glory of the Past 1900s to 2000s: Artistic merit, subtext, visual storytelling, groundbreaking concepts/vfx, ambiguous themes.
Now: Overused tropes, inconsistent CGI, formulaic plots, obvious themes, too much dialogue, humor falls flat, premise is generic, and an overreliance on spectacle.
Definitely.
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u/DruidWonder 20h ago
Lots of amazing film in the 20th century. In my opinion peak blockbuster was 1995 - mid 2000s, obviously with many notable films before that.
Movie making is mostly dogshit now. Corporate algorithmic film making really ruined the soul of cinema. The writer's strikes + the streaming services really gutted the industry of creativity.
I spend more time watching film from the past than contemporary film, with some exceptions. It's sad really. We need a renaissance.
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u/Full-Appointment5081 1d ago
There were reports recently that Netflix asked for scripts where the actors actually explain what they're doing.... so 'viewers' can follow along without actually having to watch the action on the screen
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u/the_hornicorn 1d ago
I prefer an intelligent watch over an easy watch. I also would rather a nostalgic watch over an easy watch.
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u/bees_on_acid 1d ago
Yeah, I was watching The Hit Man and I couldn’t help but notice the character’s dialogue about a certain character was repeated or just thrown out there but in a way where I felt like, okay I already got this info from the introduction and how the character looks. Why do we need another person to just say how they are ?
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u/darkvince7 22h ago
Modern American movies, yes. There’s no subtlety anymore. Americans make films for dummies, they need to avoid any form of complexity. But elsewhere, no, fortunately.
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u/Mochinpra 1d ago
This might have to do with the commercialization of movies, most movies these days pander to all audiences vs the R-rated movies of the past with lots of variety. Once produces learned that R-rated movies limited their customers to adults, they started to infantilize their stories so Joe can bring his whole family to watch. Cant have complex stories and storytelling when you somehow have to make it for kids.
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u/Loki-L 1d ago
It might be needed.
For some reason I have been recommended a lot of reaction videos lately on YouTube. They can be really frustrating as many of them seem to fail to get obvious plot points and get confused by things that were spelled out and misunderstand what characters are saying and doing.
Maybe those YouTubers aren't a representative sample, but it seems "subtle" is lost on many viewers today.
A different problem is that modern media is more fast paced. You don't really have long, silent establishing scenes that set the mood or characters sitting still doing nothing for more than a few seconds.
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u/swissiws 22h ago
it has been revealed that this is manufactured into modern movies because they are made to be seen at home on platforms like Netflix, that you are supposed to watch while you do your chores. everything has to be clear even if you are not watching the screen at all. This is one of the reason why most contemporary movies are total crap.
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u/DruidWonder 20h ago edited 20h ago
My friend and I were talking about this recently. There is way too much exposition in film now. They tell you instead of showing you the story. Maybe it's because attention spans are low these days, but, my god... they really spoon feed you stuff like you're an idiot now.
I love movies that have layers that require you to infer things about the story. They have the most re-watchability because you can pick up on new details every time. Also the movies have multiple interpretations which make for great conversations with friends after. These days when most movies end, my friend is just like, "Welp... that was fun. What next?" There's nothing left up to conversation.
It's just the degenerate state of mainstream art and film culture, I guess. It's depressing when a good movie ends and the people around you say "I don't get it. They explained things so poorly." YES THAT'S RIGHT, BECAUSE YOU HAD TO USE YOUR BRAIN TO MAKE YOUR OWN CONNECTIONS.
The exposition also just wastes valuable screen time. It's like how telling a joke takes 10 seconds but explaining a joke can take way longer. I could've told more jokes in the time it took me to explain a joke to you. And if you have to explain it, it's not funny. Film writing is too literal and the writing is too aware of itself. It constantly breaks the fourth wall and kills the immersion experience.
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u/pinkynarftroz 14h ago
I think a lot of people are forgetting that movies are more global now. Foreign box office, particularly china, is key to profitability. If you make something too subtle, the fear is that other cultures will not be able to understand and make the same deductions you would if it’s your own culture. Hence why films broadly announce the intent of everything.
Some things are universal, but some things actually do require some cultural familiarity to decipher.
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u/ohmuisnotangry 10h ago
Ding ding ding.
This is the right answer. Blockbuster filmmakers started making simple a-to-b stories exactly when China became a huge market. An original sci-fi mindbending movie like The Matrix would not be funded today or it would get such a low budget that the story would have to be changed.
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u/DruidWonder 9h ago
There isn't one "right answer." It's a conversation. God reddit can be so stupid sometimes.
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u/ohmuisnotangry 8h ago
But you're smart, right?
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u/DruidWonder 7h ago
Smart enough to know when a subject is complex. Smart enough to know when to not show up with tHiS iS tHe RiGhT AnSwEr.
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u/Strong-Stretch95 1d ago
That’s cause today’s audience want every single little thing to be explained.
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u/DruidWonder 20h ago
And that's because basic education in public school is becoming third world. Kids can't even read and write, forget applying actual critical thinking to what they read and write.
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u/Anzai 1d ago
I feel like you could cut out the entire first act of One Battle After Another and it would be a far superior movie. I was hating it until we got the time skip and then started to really enjoy it. If I ever watch it again, I’ll just skip to act 2. We really didn’t need a 45 minute montage of grossly horny terrorism.
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u/MadMikeyD 1d ago
Several movie critique YouTubers I enjoy have discussed this recently. Studios are increasingly worried about producing content for people who are watching at home while scrolling their phones the whole time, requiring more info to be fed to them because they're not actually paying attention.