Greentext

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.

Watching it with wife and son. Haven’t seen it in 20 years. Read books as kid.

Only 45 minutes in and we could barely make ourselves stop (bed time).

That said, I never bothered to finish the 3rd book and I don’t remember the 3rd movie. Turned into a typical war film/book from what I recall. Little interest to me.

I hope my memory is wrong.

Show, don't tell

It works wonders

I'd say most of the time it's an age thing the younger we are the easier impressed/amazed we are. growing older makes us sometimes cynical sometimes overloaded with imagery. The more you've seen the harder it gets to be impressed by stuff, cause you have seen so much. And we keep fond memories of the things we liked as kids and teenagers.

a lot more care was taken with movie production in general in prior years than now and it shows

They'd rather have the protagonist run around screaming like a moron for 20 minutes for comedic effect instead instead of putting any effort into developing characters

the problem is that a lot of modern shows/movies spend 2 hours explaining a characters backstory before you give a shit. there’s also a lot of “tell, don’t show” going on

Gandalf's actor really helps.

“Modern movies”

Well, it's Magic ✨