Television vs. Movies- 2011

powderfinger · #1 11-10-2011, 10:06 AM

I know we have all debated and beat the dead horse with our "music today isn't as good as the old stuff" topics, but this one might be friendlier

I've noticed, over the past couple years, that television has been really good... much better than in past years even. Walking Dead, American Horror Story, and others have really interested me, and I am quite ingrigued by both. I know HBO and Showtime also have lots of popular, good shows too, such as True Blood.

However, with the quality of tv on the rise, its my opinon that the quality of MOVIES has gone down. Everytime I go to see a movie at the theater, I am very let down. Sure, there are some good ones, but most of the stuff is just horrible. The amount of remakes has gotten laughable. Most of the new hero movies, such as Green Lantern, Thor, and Capt America.. IMO sucked. ANyhow.. thoughts?

stratovani · #2 11-10-2011, 10:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by powderfinger

I know we have all debated and beat the dead horse with our "music today isn't as good as the old stuff" topics, but this one might be friendlier

I've noticed, over the past couple years, that television has been really good... much better than in past years even. Walking Dead, American Horror Story, and others have really interested me, and I am quite ingrigued by both. I know HBO and Showtime also have lots of popular, good shows too, such as True Blood.

However, with the quality of tv on the rise, its my opinon that the quality of MOVIES has gone down. Everytime I go to see a movie at the theater, I am very let down. Sure, there are some good ones, but most of the stuff is just horrible. The amount of remakes has gotten laughable. Most of the new hero movies, such as Green Lantern, Thor, and Capt America.. IMO sucked. ANyhow.. thoughts?

Nowadays TV is a vast wasteland of moronic garbage, unless you have what they call "extended cable", which includes HBO, Showtime, and others. The only network I like to watch is PBS, and even then they're always shilling for money. I'd rather earn extra money working nights than waste my time watching TV.

As far as movies go, I go to maybe one movie a year. I'd rather rent the DVD. I am thinking of checking out the J. Edgar Hoover movie coming out soon. Leonardo Di Caprio is IMO probably the best and most underrated actor in Hollywood these days.

electracoyote · #3 11-10-2011, 10:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by powderfinger

I've noticed, over the past couple years, that television has been really good... much better than in past years even. Walking Dead, American Horror Story, and others have really interested me, and I am quite ingrigued by both. I know HBO and Showtime also have lots of popular, good shows too, such as True Blood.

The "upstart" networks have put the Big Three to shame for a long time now. In the past 20 years of Big Network TV, 99.9% is unwatchable shite IMHO. I have only "gotten into" about two shows from the Big Three over that time period. Yet AMC, HBO, et. al. have been coming up with many relatively outstanding, engaging television programs.

Quote:

However, with the quality of tv on the rise, its my opinon that the quality of MOVIES has gone down. Everytime I go to see a movie at the theater, I am very let down. Sure, there are some good ones, but most of the stuff is just horrible. The amount of remakes has gotten laughable. Most of the new hero movies, such as Green Lantern, Thor, and Capt America.. IMO sucked. ANyhow.. thoughts?

Agreed. I thought with the latest Dark Knight and Spiderman series we might be on the upswing, but a lot of the movies you mentioned are pretty unspectacular.

But there are still some pleasant surprises in theaters. The new Bond series is great.

MatticusMania · #4 11-10-2011, 10:39 AM

Both the movie industry and television networks are comprised, largely, of nothing but crap. Its been this way for a while. Every now and then something good crawls up from the dredges and makes an impact. There are very few movies or TV shows that actually interest me.

dxbass · #5 11-10-2011, 10:42 AM

Game of thrones is currently airing in South Africa and easily in my top 3 of the last 5 years. Good cast , proper story line and awesome sets. Whats not to like?

Apart from that, good television is a rarity. Same goes for cinema. I actually spend more time playing ps3 than watching tv. I can buy exactly what i like and dont have to buy a big sattelite subscription with tons of crap just to watch one or two decent shows.

Thrust Meatnozl · #6 11-10-2011, 11:10 AM

TV (quality TV, not the Big 3) absolutely rapes movies lately. The garbage to quality ratio is massive in both industries but (as far as run-time) a single season of Breaking Bad probably equals an entire year of quality movie output. You also have to dig around pretty hard to find the quality in either medium (hint: it isn't Thor & it sure as heck ain't Dancin' With whoever).

baalroo · #7 11-10-2011, 06:27 PM

Although I disagree with some of the specific examples given so far in the thread (for example I think the Spider-Man series was terrible and aside from Heath Ledger's performance the Nolan Batman films have sucked), I mostly agree with the sentiment here. Non-big 3 television has been overall better than the hollywood produced films over the last few years. I think it's because the budgets are considerably lower, and thus you get less oversight by non-artistic people interfering with the talent.

Bard2dbone · #8 11-10-2011, 08:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by baalroo

Although I disagree with some of the specific examples given so far in the thread (for example I think the Spider-Man series was terrible and aside from Heath Ledger's performance the Nolan Batman films have sucked), I mostly agree with the sentiment here. Non-big 3 television has been overall better than the hollywood produced films over the last few years. I think it's because the budgets are considerably lower, and thus you get less oversight by non-artistic people interfering with the talent.

I disagree about Nolan's Batman films. Batman SHOULD be darker than the cartoon-like movies we got previously. On the other comic book based movies I agree with everything except the dis of Captain America. I thought it was surprisingly well done, especially considering the travesty that was committed against Green Lantern readers. I haven't been a Thor reader since about '77, so I wasn't nearly as committed to that one, and therefore didn't mind how bad it was. But GL was one of the last comics I collected back in the '80's. I really wanted it to be good. It made me sad.

For network TV, yeah. It's pretty depressing. But the extended cable channels have a lot of good stuff. I don't have cable. But now you can see most of them online. I like Psych, and Burn Notice, and NCIS from USA. Walking Dead is better than I was afraid it would be. True Blood isn't bad. In general there are a lot of good choices out there. I haven't seen Game Of Thrones yet. But I'm looking forward to it.

Jinro · #9 11-10-2011, 08:14 PM

Personally, I'm boycotting movies until they stop producing this "3D" garbage, and I'm usually too busy to watch any TV. But I have noticed that TV miniseries have gotten better. TV shows on the other hand, not so much. When I was a kid I used to enjoy Toonami after school, History Channel's historical documentaries, Discovery Channel's interesting shows/military documentaries, Military Channel, etc. Now it's all crap. No more Toonami, bogus shows like "Pawn Stars", "Swamp People", "American Chopper", and I've lost my Military Channel (I probably have to pay extra for it). A&E's "#1" show is about people auctioning off abandoned storage spaces.....how friggen retarded is that?

Next on "Modern Marvels"..............BEANS!*

*there actually was a Modern Marvels episode entirely about beans

DaddyFatBass32 · #10 11-11-2011, 01:10 AM

I love tv and film. Absolutely love both, probably more than playing bass. (Blasphemy!)

But I agree with the OP. TV has definitely gotten better and the movies are definitely in a decline. It seems like theres one good movie for every 10 crap movies. A previous post mentioned something about huge budgets on films and that has a lot to do with the "crap" movies being made. Big money equals big amounts of people making decisions about movies. With all the money being put into movies, the "safe" choice (i.e. Remakes, Reboots, Adaptations) always gets picked by studio execs over the new and original choice. As a filmmaker and lover of film, I hope this is only a phase. You can trace the fluctuation within the movie industry and if the pattern follows, movies are going to start getting better. Fingers crossed, friends.
With all that said, theres a fairly simple explanation for the rise in "good" tv. Creative minds who get denied an opportunity to do something potentially great in movies, turn to TV. The Walking Dead was created by Frank Darabont who directed and wrote The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption, for example. Although, theres also a ton of crap on TV too. I guess we just got to weed out the crap.

As a side-note, I think Leo Dicaprio is awesome too.

baalroo · #11 11-11-2011, 04:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bard2dbone

I disagree about Nolan's Batman films. Batman SHOULD be darker than the cartoon-like movies we got previously.

It's not the "darkness" that I take issue with, it's the lack of character development. TDK felt to me as if the only reason Batman existed was as a simple plot device to get to the next action sequence. I personally think that the last few animated Batman films (Under the Red Hood and Year One) were better films. It took me multiple tries to get through the horribly boring Batman Begins, and with TDK the only thing that made it worth watching was the action sequences and Heath Ledger hamming it up with his own interesting take on the Joker. Also, don't let that statement be confused with the idea that I felt that the joker was well written, he was not... Ledger was just fun to watch hamming it up for the cameras. Nolan and Goyer are no Miller or Morrison, heck they're not even Scott Snyders. For the record, I thought the Batman films were considerably better than Inception, that movie was complete hollywood garbage.

Quote:

On the other comic book based movies I agree with everything except the dis of Captain America. I thought it was surprisingly well done, especially considering the travesty that was committed against Green Lantern readers.

Yes, Captain America was a fantastic prequel to a film that doesn't exist yet... on it's own it was just sorta ok IMO. It's entire purpose was to set up the basic premise of the modern Captain America, the man out of time scenario.

Quote:

I haven't been a Thor reader since about '77, so I wasn't nearly as committed to that one, and therefore didn't mind how bad it was. But GL was one of the last comics I collected back in the '80's. I really wanted it to be good. It made me sad.

I enjoyed Thor, but I was quite thoroughly inebriated when I saw it. OTOH, I knew Green Lantern would be terrible as soon as I heard Geoff Johns was involved, that guy has been pooing all over Green Lantern in the comics for quite awhile now. IMO, he is one of the worst comic writers currently in the game... with him everything is constantly about exposition, fan service, and BAM,POW, BOOM. Absolutely atrocious writer 95% of the time.

kanonfodr · #12 11-11-2011, 06:33 PM

Three shows that I watch: Top Gear (Proper British Top Gear, that is, although the American take isn't too bad), NCIS, and the new Hawaii 50 (only because I love catching all the places they film that I've been to, plus a friend of mine has done some shooting for them).

As for movies, ya...I keep meaning to go see some but I end up a year late when it comes on cable or one of my friends happens to be watching it when I'm around. 'Cept for Scott Pilgrim

But as long as people keep buying the garbage, production companies will keep them around. What can ya do??

Peace,
Greg