I’ve noticed dialogue is getting dumbed down across the board. The vocabulary is shrinking and plot is being explained more extensitvely (using basic vocabulary) so audiences don’t get confused regarding the plot. Basically, making it so the audience doesn’t have to think as much to fill in blanks. And as far as I’m concerned, filling in the blanks a little bit is part of what makes a good movie or book better. It makes it more personal to the viewer/reader.
One example I just experienced this weekend, and I’ll probably be crucified for this because apparently everyone loved this movie, was The Odyssey. Personally, I thought the dialogue was awful. I don’t mind that they went with the American accents, although I always think movies like that are better with British accents. It was the writers behind the dialogue. It just sounded like I was hearing dialogue written by junior high kids. I’m assuming it was a decision made on purpose, maybe to connect more with modern English speakers, but it just sounded bad and kind of ruined the movie for me. I ended up just having kind of a meh opinion of the film largely because of it.
Netflix apparently has a rule that movies they produce must explicitly state the goal out loud three times. Because they expect viewers to only half pay attention while browsing on their phones.
But yeah, the dumbed-down-ness really sucks. I only got 3 episodes into the Avatar live action TV show, and a big part of it was the quality of writing. It constantly felt like they were just telling me stuff instead of just letting the story happen. When the opening episode did a variation of the cartoon’s famous opening monologue three times I knew we were in trouble. And it just got worse from there.
There has always been a element of this in places but it has grown significantly in the last few decades.
Funnily enough my example is the film Grease. The dialog is astoundingly plain but presented well enough. Maybe this is why it is seen as a mainstream classic because of this simple language.
But then I see the works of some like Charlie Kaufman that was just wonderful but has rarely broken into the main stream.
I second this watched the first probably 90min and turned it off, I was bored out of my mind. Idk what people saw in it, the writing acting cinematography were all shit.
Just a quick note on movies.
I’ve noticed dialogue is getting dumbed down across the board. The vocabulary is shrinking and plot is being explained more extensitvely (using basic vocabulary) so audiences don’t get confused regarding the plot. Basically, making it so the audience doesn’t have to think as much to fill in blanks. And as far as I’m concerned, filling in the blanks a little bit is part of what makes a good movie or book better. It makes it more personal to the viewer/reader.
One example I just experienced this weekend, and I’ll probably be crucified for this because apparently everyone loved this movie, was The Odyssey. Personally, I thought the dialogue was awful. I don’t mind that they went with the American accents, although I always think movies like that are better with British accents. It was the writers behind the dialogue. It just sounded like I was hearing dialogue written by junior high kids. I’m assuming it was a decision made on purpose, maybe to connect more with modern English speakers, but it just sounded bad and kind of ruined the movie for me. I ended up just having kind of a meh opinion of the film largely because of it.
Netflix apparently has a rule that movies they produce must explicitly state the goal out loud three times. Because they expect viewers to only half pay attention while browsing on their phones.
But yeah, the dumbed-down-ness really sucks. I only got 3 episodes into the Avatar live action TV show, and a big part of it was the quality of writing. It constantly felt like they were just telling me stuff instead of just letting the story happen. When the opening episode did a variation of the cartoon’s famous opening monologue three times I knew we were in trouble. And it just got worse from there.
There has always been a element of this in places but it has grown significantly in the last few decades.
Funnily enough my example is the film Grease. The dialog is astoundingly plain but presented well enough. Maybe this is why it is seen as a mainstream classic because of this simple language.
But then I see the works of some like Charlie Kaufman that was just wonderful but has rarely broken into the main stream.
I second this watched the first probably 90min and turned it off, I was bored out of my mind. Idk what people saw in it, the writing acting cinematography were all shit.