People Twitter

Easy: the effects got worse /hj

The pacing got much faster over time. Comparing LotR with a new MCU film, you clearly notice the shift. (Admittedly, LotR was a little slower than the average movie at the time)

There's actually quite a lot that's changed in cinema since then. Since digital cameras and effects are incredibly common these days, we light everything very flatly so that it's easier to change in post without reshoots. It makes lighting abysmally bad. (See wicked where the actress in vibrant green makeup looks a little grey the entire movie).

Pacing is also much faster, there's more emphasis on not confusing audiences rather than letting things have mystery. Dialogue is more quippy rather than grounded.

Oh! And since there's no more mid-budget movies, there's a whole lot less comedies running around. Everything is either high budget, wall-to-wall action or grounded indie films with very little in-between.

Cellphones changed shape.

90s movies did not have 'MillenialSpeak' / 'Marvel-isms'. They had cheesy one-liners. Which were better.

Club scenes are no longer filled with Goths, they're filled with Jocks and Popular Girls.

Scores are generally much less unique and interesting these days.

More frantic pacing, contemplation is not allowed, outside of arthouse films.

That's actually quite an interesting topic. Some good things in the comments, too.

i recently rewatched the first jurassic park and wow is it so incredibly different from new movies. i don't dislike it though.

Like the other comment says, the CGI doesn't hold up that well. Luckily, the LotR trilogy doesn't rely on it that much. I still hope they have the original unedited footage stored somewhere and we get a new version with modern CGI capabilities. That'd be amazing to see. It holds up mostly fine though, so it isn't a huge issue.

A marathon of the extended editions is exactly what they need. Phone locked away during viewing.

That's like saying "I refuse to drink wines older than 2000." Just because it's old doesn't mean it's good. But, some of the old ones are very, very good.

I find myself dreading watching anything made after 2010.

I'm not saying everything is bad, or that everything that was earlier was good. But dang...it seems like a good 90% chance the modern movie or TV show is just a bunch of flashy and disruptive CG, incredibly fast editing to try to compete with cell phones for attention, tons of with clips and one-liners. Everything is poorly lit, the dialogue is inaudible, and all the other sound is way too loud.

And I don't think it's just "things were better back when I was a teenager" bias. I can still find older movies with those some annoying traits earlier, 2010 is just the arbitrary cutoff I'm using here. And I can look back at movies from before I was born, like Hitchcock movies, and see how much better they are at handling a lot of those things.

I know a woman in her thirties with that same rule. She won't watch the first Matrix movie.

I finished rewatching all 6 movies yesterday and damn they are long. The last one is fuckin 4h long. But i still didnt have an attention span problem.

i thought they released new movies all the time

I mean, look at the source material. One's an epic saga the other's a monthly brochure at the magazine corner shop.
I guess, it fits.

LotR has been done a few times. The Peter Jackson one is just so good that no one wants to be compared to it though. I'd argue that even Peter Jackson's The Hobbit felt so bad because the LotR trilogy was so good. (It was also just bad, but the comparison made it feel even worse.)

Where'd sound mixing peak?

Prequel even harder and pry the Silmarillion rights from the cold, dead bodies of the Tolkien Estate, then run it into the ground with new films, or worse, a TV show.