One thing I’ve noticed with newer movies is they do a lot more “tell, don’t show” than old movies.
For example, compare the live action Disney Cinderella to the original animated version. The live action version is mostly a voiceover telling the story of Cinderella. They literally say “Her stepsisters weren’t very good at art or music” and then have a scene showing them being bad at art and music. The animated version spent the first 20 minutes or so like a Tom & Jerry cartoon.
And this is across movies. I watched Predator recently and there wasn’t a lot of exposition about how they’re there to fight communists or whatever. You pick that up in snippets of dialog in between the action.
One thing I’ve noticed with newer movies is they do a lot more “tell, don’t show” than old movies.
Main character seeing old friend: Well if it isn’t my old friend Daniel, we used to roam these streets as kids, I used to have dinner at your house every day, you were like my brother, I would have done anything for you, I haven’t seen you since our other old friend Jake died mysteriously, remember when we used to play videogames all night and made that life long pact that if “HE” returns we will do what it takes to send him back to the world where he emerged from when we were kids and lived right next door to each other, our mothers were best friends until the incident but they never stopped us from being life long best friends forever, we used to play in the streets all night, me you Daniel and Chris, the rat Pac they called us, best friends for life.
The incident is what shaped them into the adults they are now, it’s why they ended up in their chosen professions and is what brings them together at the 20 year high school reunion coming up, but they must never speak of it.
What did the rat pac play in the street? Music? Baseball?
They hustled marbles for cash in the street to anyone willing to lose to them, they ran that rural suburban street untill the incident changed everything.
What video games were you guys playing? Nintendo, Sega, Atari, Sony, SNK, NEC, 3DO?? Whose house?
NBA Jam on the Sega Mega drive, because they were the cool kids and that’s how you showed it in the early 90s
Were there any leads in Jakes death?
The policed ruled it ‘natural causes’ but the rat Pac know it was Him that killed Jake after they unintentionally released Him.
I feel like Dune was a good outlier to this. It’s the only movie I’ve seen in theater in the last few years and I really enjoyed not having everything explained to me
they do a lot more “tell, don’t show” than old movies
Geez the Netflix Avatar adaptation (a show, not movie, but still) was so bad for this. Despite actually having more runtime and fewer distinct plot points (due to the removal of and consolidation of different side-plots) than the cartoon it was based on, it spent less time showing us why characters think and feel how they do, and straight-up told us every single thing.
I love listening to the original intro 3 times in the first episode.
I would have never known that the 4 nations lived in harmony until the fire nation attacked, or that the Avatar, master of all 4 elements was the only one who could stop them.
I also love learning that Aang wants to eat banana cakes and goof off with his friends instead of being the Avatar by him outright saying it instead of us meeting ANY of these friends in the first place.
I feel like they make movies to appease the hot take internet culture. If a few people don’t understand how a guy with magic powers in a room full of cloning tanks could be brought back from the dead, you end up with endless “Somehow Palpatine returned” memes and it becomes a whole thing. So they’ve compensated (maybe over-compensated) and make sure every detail is explained fully to avoid that kind of reaction. They also have to make sure they make jokes about something being corny before people on the internet make the lame jokes.
Rise of Skywalker was probably the last popcorn movie where there was a lot of “show don’t tell” going on and pretty much all of the commentary about it on the internet indicates people think it’s wrong to do that. To be sure there were other problems with that movie, but people got very fixated on criticizing the decision made to not over-explain.
Somehow… movies have to explain every little detail now.
One thing I’ve noticed with newer movies is they do a lot more “tell, don’t show” than old movies.
For example, compare the live action Disney Cinderella to the original animated version. The live action version is mostly a voiceover telling the story of Cinderella. They literally say “Her stepsisters weren’t very good at art or music” and then have a scene showing them being bad at art and music. The animated version spent the first 20 minutes or so like a Tom & Jerry cartoon.
And this is across movies. I watched Predator recently and there wasn’t a lot of exposition about how they’re there to fight communists or whatever. You pick that up in snippets of dialog in between the action.
It really does feel like movies are dumbing down.
Main character seeing old friend: Well if it isn’t my old friend Daniel, we used to roam these streets as kids, I used to have dinner at your house every day, you were like my brother, I would have done anything for you, I haven’t seen you since our other old friend Jake died mysteriously, remember when we used to play videogames all night and made that life long pact that if “HE” returns we will do what it takes to send him back to the world where he emerged from when we were kids and lived right next door to each other, our mothers were best friends until the incident but they never stopped us from being life long best friends forever, we used to play in the streets all night, me you Daniel and Chris, the rat Pac they called us, best friends for life.
Man there’s so many loose ends.
What was the incident?
What did the rat pac play in the street? Music? Baseball?
What video games were you guys playing? Nintendo, Sega, Atari, Sony, SNK, NEC, 3DO?? Whose house?
Were there any leads in Jakes death?
How long has it been since you last saw Daniel?
The incident is what shaped them into the adults they are now, it’s why they ended up in their chosen professions and is what brings them together at the 20 year high school reunion coming up, but they must never speak of it.
They hustled marbles for cash in the street to anyone willing to lose to them, they ran that rural suburban street untill the incident changed everything.
NBA Jam on the Sega Mega drive, because they were the cool kids and that’s how you showed it in the early 90s
The policed ruled it ‘natural causes’ but the rat Pac know it was Him that killed Jake after they unintentionally released Him.
About 3 hours before that line of text.
I feel like Dune was a good outlier to this. It’s the only movie I’ve seen in theater in the last few years and I really enjoyed not having everything explained to me
That’s such a good point. I really appreciated how it wasn’t scared to let viewers figure things out.
In comparison, the old Dune film used a lot of voice over
Geez the Netflix Avatar adaptation (a show, not movie, but still) was so bad for this. Despite actually having more runtime and fewer distinct plot points (due to the removal of and consolidation of different side-plots) than the cartoon it was based on, it spent less time showing us why characters think and feel how they do, and straight-up told us every single thing.
I love listening to the original intro 3 times in the first episode.
I would have never known that the 4 nations lived in harmony until the fire nation attacked, or that the Avatar, master of all 4 elements was the only one who could stop them.
I also love learning that Aang wants to eat banana cakes and goof off with his friends instead of being the Avatar by him outright saying it instead of us meeting ANY of these friends in the first place.
I feel like they make movies to appease the hot take internet culture. If a few people don’t understand how a guy with magic powers in a room full of cloning tanks could be brought back from the dead, you end up with endless “Somehow Palpatine returned” memes and it becomes a whole thing. So they’ve compensated (maybe over-compensated) and make sure every detail is explained fully to avoid that kind of reaction. They also have to make sure they make jokes about something being corny before people on the internet make the lame jokes.
Rise of Skywalker was probably the last popcorn movie where there was a lot of “show don’t tell” going on and pretty much all of the commentary about it on the internet indicates people think it’s wrong to do that. To be sure there were other problems with that movie, but people got very fixated on criticizing the decision made to not over-explain.
Somehow… movies have to explain every little detail now.