How does it feel knowing that you will never see anything new in your lifetime?

[Fairykang]

Gotta try finding independent creators and stuff who do things. Stuff is going on in underground scenes/weird internet pockets.

this
the experimental stuff is hard to find because of the algorithm

 

[Warii]

The mainstream for media and other things kind of sucks right now but people will simply live on the outside of that system and create their own things. I think this forum is a good example, like people will reject things once they become stale and start their own projects, they just aren't in the mainstream so its hard to find. I imagine there are Agora Road type communities were people make their own Media but we just don't know about them yet. I hold out hope that in this decade the mainstream in terms of media will try and reinvent itself or more people will make their own things.

 

[Codex]

i was born in 1990, so i grew up seeing many innovations come to life, like the waves of the internet spread, the web 1.0, all of that
i don't believe i am going to face new innovations with the same attitude i had when i was legit young (0-25-ish y.o.), but i believe we are all going to witness many new things spawing. we're gonna be alive to see the proto-cyberpunk phase of our existence taking shape

 

[Rikstah]

You either achieve contentment or you don't. You can't always remain an excited kid for eternity. Yeah, it's time of decline, but also time to look inwards and find meaning.

What a perfect response.

It isn't the apps / games / tv / platforms, its ourselves and the changing seasons of our lives.

High school 01-06 and uni 07-09 will always occupy an extra special place in your memory, but there is meaning and joy to be found in all seasons of your life.

 

[handoferis]

Just be glad that the not-mainstream is more accessible now than it's ever been before.

 

[manpaint]

I think the problem is not the lack of new things, but rather how everything now just sems like worse iterations of their predecessor.

I can think of two example:

• Windows: The Windows 10/11 UI has been made with less with less efforts than Windows. This is an objective fact to anyone who works in graphic design as the Windows 7 UI had 3D renders as icons whereas Windows 10 use simple minimalistic SVG icons. Furthermore the general consensus is that Win10/11 is very anti-consumers with things like Cortana and forced updates.
• Pokemon games: The general consensus is that recent pokemon games are a buggy mess. Things lik reduced Pokemon count and anti-consumer practices don't help either.

That being said, it is clear that creativity and new things still exists. As far as I know, this place has no specific predecessor (aside from forums in general). It does feel that creatity is more sparse, you perphaps this post has a kernel of truth to it.

In absolute theory, it should be possible to make an analysis of how dereviative media has been in the last decade. I might try to do this one day.

 

[Some_porcupine]

This is a very materialistic mentality. Who cares if Hollywood product #193473 isn't as good as Hollywood product #34. Living for 'culture' is a meaningless existence and there are way better/more important things to care about in life.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjPxyIirTNc&list=PLaWLiMKNuKMmlM3WzA5PhxJu0SWegglmH&index=36

 

[Some_porcupine]

how i? man, i am tired already

 

[RisingThumb]

The turn of the new millennium set the stage for a sea of originality and innovation. Almost everything from 2000-2010 was new and fresh. It makes me sad to know that every new app, platform, game or other piece of media will forever be riding off the success of its predecessor. The culture of the early 2000's felt genuine and happy and leaves me with a warm feeling whenever I reminisce upon it. It makes me sad I will never be able to experience the feelings I felt then. It makes me sad to know I will never again go through it all for the first time as I did then.

This is a corruption of novelty, and a corruption of nostalgia. As children we have new raw primal experiences that we have nothing to base our understanding of it on. As we grow older, we stray away from wanting novelty, and model what new experiences we have with understandings from the past. Consider people for example. Do you view them as unique individual personalities, or as personalities containing bits and pieces of people and personalities you've encountered in the past? Nostalgia is also typically a model for how you want the future and the present- due to the believed goodness of it. As a result it corrodes and hurts novel experiences, but I don't think it has to.

Now as for the idea of making *new* things, and thinking it rides of predecessors... well yes, everything does, because everything fits into a timeline. Now as for the greatest new things? With the advancement of tech equalising the playing field more and more, I believe it will come from polymaths... generalists who have skills and knowledge in a great many areas rather than overspecialising and conquering their one hill. Leonardo Da Vinci, is probably one of the original Polymaths, and we credit a lot of brilliant insights to him as you pull thoughts from disconnected areas into new and *good* ideas, though that requires both the ability to learn a lot of areas effectively, the ability to use them as skills, and the ability to draw upon them for creating new ideas, AND lastly for it to be the good form of creative that provides value to people's lives... for those new ideas to be good.

It's so rare that people can do this, that they are lightning to most people, and to those people the future of media you want belong to them.

 

[nsequeira119]

I don't understand this sentiment at all. The 2000s were a VERY regurgitative time period, full of unoriginal crap. Like the Halle Berry Catwoman movie, for instance. That wouldn't come out today. As much as I dislike a lot of modern movies, I can at least rest assured knowing that it's not the 2000s anymore. I grew up amid the 2000s and it was the worst. I have absolutely no nostalgia for it whatsoever, and that's because it was an underwhelming decade full of crap and commercialization. I think if I grew up in the 90s or 80s, when movies worth giving a shit about like Jurassic Park or Indiana Jones were coming out, I'd be nostalgic about it- but the 2000s were so empty, comparatively. Just Avatar and stuff.

By contrast, today seems better than ever. Hipsters are much less popular as a subculture, the MCU has petered out, everyone is sick of Disney's stranglehold on media and people seem to have started realizing that streaming services are a ripoff. There are way more good movies coming out these days than came out during the entirety of the 2000s. Wide open frontiers, a whole expanse of possibilities, ripe for anyone who wants to give them a try. I can actually enjoy going to the theater again.

 

[Ross_Я]

~snip~

First of all, 2000's were the peak of video gaming. 3D finally managed to make it good, and the ideas were wild. That was the time of unlimited creativeness, and corporative conveyors didn't dominate the triple A scene yet. 2000's brought us:
All the GTAs from III to IV, plus Manhunts and Bully
All the Burnouts, even though it only really matters from 3 to Paradise
All of the Bugbear's Flatout games
Hitman games, from the very first one to Blood Money
Silent Hill 2 and 3
And much, much more. A lot of the best Need For Speeds, a gore galore of japanese horros like Forbidden Siren and Haunting Ground, a lot of simply awesome games like Second Sight...

You can argue if 2000's were bad for anything, but for video games it was the last great decade, and, as I've said, probably the greatest. 90's a darn good as well though, but 2000's are still a very good candidate, full of original ideas.

Anyway. Next. Music! 2000's were quite awesome for a lot of indie and alternatice rock and metal bands and, I think, 2000's pop punk is the best flavor of pop punk. Also, pretty much the emo decade, as emo sound pretty much started and ended in 2000's. A number of goth and epic metal bands raised to prominence during 2000's as well, even though a lot of them started in the 90's. Electronics! House is at its best in zeroes! Benny Benassi with his best albums. Daft Punk at the top. Alive 2007!
Several rap acts were still going strong, even though, granted, rap music pretty much entered a state of decay at this point. But fuck that, zeroes were quite good for the music.

And movies? I doubt they are as good as the movies today. First of all, 00's were the time when a lot of international movie scenes truly shined. I cannot say why, but the hastily baked theory is in the lines of quality movie-making hardware being advanced, cheap and widespread enough to be available to everyone worldwide, and, at the same time, domination of american culture is not so global yet, because internet, so far, is still somewhat of an oddity outside of US. There are a lot of good 2000's movies if you take a look outside of US. South african, australian, argentinian, brasilian, danish... Japanese movies are still strong during 2000's. Korean movies, you may say, start to rise during 2000's, and, unlike others, korean movie industry is still going quite strong. Even Hong Kong movie scene, even though it is pretty much going straight down by this point, still manage to make couple more bangers with its last breaths.
But even among US movies only, I still highly doubt modern movies are better than 2000's movies. Especially if we pitch modern garbage pile against, as you say, the whole zeroes. Early zeroes had the style, late zeroes had the power. Here are just six movies from 2006-2007 to keep it brief:
No Country For Old Man, 2007
Death Proof, 2007
Shoot 'Em Up, 2007
Music Within, 2007
Apocalypto, 2006
Children Of Men, 2006

Name six modern movies that can top this small selection. I've picked them across a multitude of genres, and I doubt it is possible to top even half of'em. The only genre that I've ignored - and that was likely worse in 2000's than today - is horror, because everyone is fucking crazy about horrors for whatever reason for the past 10 years or so, and quantity inevitably became quality at this point.

Also, it just so happened, but some of my all-time favorite movies - Idiocracy, The Best Bar In America and Into The Wild - happened to come out in zeroes (2006, 2009 and 2007 respectively). So no, I highly disagree modern movie industry is that good.

2000's may have been the start of the whole regurgitativeness we see today, but it still was very original decade, and you can argue that even old ideas that were used again - they were used much more creatively than they are used today. Really, modern hellscape of a culture is nowhere near 2000's.

 

[punisheddead]

...the MCU has petered out, everyone is sick of Disney's stranglehold on media and people seem to have started realizing that streaming services are a ripoff. There are way more good movies coming out these days than came out during the entirety of the 2000s. Wide open frontiers, a whole expanse of possibilities, ripe for anyone who wants to give them a try.

You say this, they say this, everyone says this and yet I still see people champion capeshit and it making money in the box office, plus everyone being subscribed to every shitty streaming service under the sun. The sentiment is arguably shifting yes, but actions are the only thing that matters. As long as this makes money and is being made all that talk is just talk. If god wills I'll be alive long enough to see capeshit finally completely implode and fail.


Anyways... I wouldn't be too bothered if there were no more "new" things and no more "innovation". There are enough good "old things", enough old media to last me a life time. There's also smaller and independent creators, indies. But that's not even the problem imo, the problem is all the garbage being pushed as "innovation" that just makes stuff worse, planned obsolescence, stripping down features, renting everything... None of these are innovations but they are being pushed as such. That's why it feels that there's nothing really new, that there's no real innovation, because it gets over shadowed by mainstream rehashed shit (which I remind you is what people want, the box office proves that) and by corpos trying to convince you that paying extra for the whole gear shift in your car is innovative and for your own benefit.

 

[Ross_Я]

Anyways... I wouldn't be too bothered if there were no more "new" things and no more "innovation". There are enough good "old things", enough old media to last me a life time. There's also smaller and independent creators, indies.

My dude!
I actually do tend to say that perhaps it is even good new things suck - I can easily ignore them. Just imagine if all the modern things were as good as old things - there would be absolute tons of them, I would've been completely overwhelmed. I still am, but at least I can concentrate on the old things, easily avoid the hype and all the rest of shenanigans that follow the releases of new things.
And when I want something new, i just go onto the indie scene. It is hit or miss, but it is honest (willignly or not), easy to browse, and therefore it is easy to pick whatever is actually of interest to me, without having to work through tons of paid PR and dubious reviews of the masses.

Overall though, I tend to avoid term "new" in terms of art altogether. Art doesn't need to be new to be entertaining or thought-provoking. Old things can be remade creatively and splendidly - take 1996 Romeo + Juliet movie as my example. And when it comes to technology, "new" doesn't necessarily means "good" - anyone else here likes cars? So, to be on topic, how does it feel knowing that I will never see anything new in your lifetime? Fucking splendid, if anything, I want to see more old things in my lifetime. I want to see those old non-branded shops that simply said "Convenience" on their signs instead of whatever fancy name and '67 Barracudas on every corner. Now, knowing that I will never see that - now that really makes me sad.

 

[Chuffed]

... and '67 Barracudas on every corner...

Car culture is still great if you like $70,000 pickup trucks, you're a Tesla fanboy, or you like the color grey :D.

 

[punisheddead]

...'67 Barracudas on every corner

Car culture is still great if you like $70,000 pickup trucks, you're a Tesla fanboy, or you like the color grey :D.

God yes modern cars look like complete ass and are full of unnecessary and restrictive tech, not everything needs a computer.

 

[punishedgnome]

I don't understand this sentiment at all. The 2000s were a VERY regurgitative time period, full of unoriginal crap. Like the Halle Berry Catwoman movie, for instance. That wouldn't come out today. As much as I dislike a lot of modern movies, I can at least rest assured knowing that it's not the 2000s anymore. I grew up amid the 2000s and it was the worst. I have absolutely no nostalgia for it whatsoever, and that's because it was an underwhelming decade full of crap and commercialization. I think if I grew up in the 90s or 80s, when movies worth giving a shit about like Jurassic Park or Indiana Jones were coming out, I'd be nostalgic about it- but the 2000s were so empty, comparatively. Just Avatar and stuff.

By contrast, today seems better than ever. Hipsters are much less popular as a subculture, the MCU has petered out, everyone is sick of Disney's stranglehold on media and people seem to have started realizing that streaming services are a ripoff. There are way more good movies coming out these days than came out during the entirety of the 2000s. Wide open frontiers, a whole expanse of possibilities, ripe for anyone who wants to give them a try. I can actually enjoy going to the theater again.

The 2000s was a high point for comedy movies which saw the return of the R-Rated comedy which has since gone away again. There will be nothing like Step Brothers or American Pie made ever again.

*Edit* American Pie was in 1999. Pretend I said Old School, Tropic Thunder, Idiocracy, Dodgeball, Superbad, The 40-Year-Old Virgin or Wedding Crashers. My point was I think the 2000s set a high water mark for comedies.

 

[nsequeira119]

First of all, 2000's were the peak of video gaming. 3D finally managed to make it good, and the ideas were wild. That was the time of unlimited creativeness, and corporative conveyors didn't dominate the triple A scene yet. 2000's brought us:
All the GTAs from III to IV, plus Manhunts and Bully
All the Burnouts, even though it only really matters from 3 to Paradise
All of the Bugbear's Flatout games
Hitman games, from the very first one to Blood Money
Silent Hill 2 and 3
And much, much more. A lot of the best Need For Speeds, a gore galore of japanese horros like Forbidden Siren and Haunting Ground, a lot of simply awesome games like Second Sight...

You can argue if 2000's were bad for anything, but for video games it was the last great decade, and, as I've said, probably the greatest. 90's a darn good as well though, but 2000's are still a very good candidate, full of original ideas.

Anyway. Next. Music! 2000's were quite awesome for a lot of indie and alternatice rock and metal bands and, I think, 2000's pop punk is the best flavor of pop punk. Also, pretty much the emo decade, as emo sound pretty much started and ended in 2000's. A number of goth and epic metal bands raised to prominence during 2000's as well, even though a lot of them started in the 90's. Electronics! House is at its best in zeroes! Benny Benassi with his best albums. Daft Punk at the top. Alive 2007!
Several rap acts were still going strong, even though, granted, rap music pretty much entered a state of decay at this point. But fuck that, zeroes were quite good for the music.

And movies? I doubt they are as good as the movies today. First of all, 00's were the time when a lot of international movie scenes truly shined. I cannot say why, but the hastily baked theory is in the lines of quality movie-making hardware being advanced, cheap and widespread enough to be available to everyone worldwide, and, at the same time, domination of american culture is not so global yet, because internet, so far, is still somewhat of an oddity outside of US. There are a lot of good 2000's movies if you take a look outside of US. South african, australian, argentinian, brasilian, danish... Japanese movies are still strong during 2000's. Korean movies, you may say, start to rise during 2000's, and, unlike others, korean movie industry is still going quite strong. Even Hong Kong movie scene, even though it is pretty much going straight down by this point, still manage to make couple more bangers with its last breaths.
But even among US movies only, I still highly doubt modern movies are better than 2000's movies. Especially if we pitch modern garbage pile against, as you say, the whole zeroes. Early zeroes had the style, late zeroes had the power. Here are just six movies from 2006-2007 to keep it brief:
No Country For Old Man, 2007
Death Proof, 2007
Shoot 'Em Up, 2007
Music Within, 2007
Apocalypto, 2006
Children Of Men, 2006

Name six modern movies that can top this small selection. I've picked them across a multitude of genres, and I doubt it is possible to top even half of'em. The only genre that I've ignored - and that was likely worse in 2000's than today - is horror, because everyone is fucking crazy about horrors for whatever reason for the past 10 years or so, and quantity inevitably became quality at this point.

Also, it just so happened, but some of my all-time favorite movies - Idiocracy, The Best Bar In America and Into The Wild - happened to come out in zeroes (2006, 2009 and 2007 respectively). So no, I highly disagree modern movie industry is that good.

2000's may have been the start of the whole regurgitativeness we see today, but it still was very original decade, and you can argue that even old ideas that were used again - they were used much more creatively than they are used today. Really, modern hellscape of a culture is nowhere near 2000's.

I don't play video games, so I have no idea when the peak of video games was. I only view pop culture through the lens of movies and TV shows- and mostly movies. Even then, between those 6 movies you listed, I would only count No Country For Old Men among my favorites. All 2000s movies have this weird veneer around them- they're extremely dated compared to movies from before and after, like they're caught in this transitional state of limbo. And it could easily be that I view 2000s stuff like this because, again, it's the decade I grew up in- except instead of being nostalgic for it, I feel a deep-seated aversion towards it. Like an anti-nostalgia.

No Country For Old Men isn't even the best Coen Brothers movie. The golden age of their filmography happened during the 90s. Raising Arizona is probably my favorite, The Big Lebowski is a lot of people's favorite, and it came out in 1998. Fargo came out in 1996. I would argue that Hail, Caesar! which came out in 2016 is actually better than No Country For Old Men, simply because it lacks the echo chamber of the 2000s, and therefore functions more effectively as a period piece because it has the benefit of perspective. The 2010s has seen the rise of directors I actually like, who actually have a coherent aesthetic of their own that's interesting and different.

The 2000s saw the inception of the MCU, with movies like Iron Man, the first two awful Hulk movies, and stuff like Daredevil with Ben Affleck, which first popularized the idea and got the train moving. I don't think it's even fair to blame the 2010s for the MCU, it was largely Disney's acquisition of Marvel in 2009 which caused the current monopolized media landscape. If they hadn't acquired Marvel, Disney wouldn't have nearly as much power as they do today, they'd still just be making trash like Chicken Little and Home On The Range.

I can easily name 6 movies from the 2010s and 2020s that are better than the 6 you listed. I'll name 10:

Beau Is Afraid, 2023
Arrival, 2016
The Master, 2012
Bad Times At The El Royale, 2018
The Lighthouse, 2019
BlacKkKlansman, 2018
The Love Witch, 2016
John Dies At The End, 2013
Captain Phillips, 2013
The Batman, 2022

All these are better than the 2000s ones, and you only wouldn't know about them if you exclusively watch the MCU. They display more technical prowess, more perspective, more ambition- there are some directors who are new to the field, some directors who have been in the field a long time and come back with great entries- I don't know why the 2000s lacked that so much, but it did. There are very few movies from the 2000s that anyone remembers anymore. Even a great movie from the 2000s, like Be Kind Rewind with Jack Black and Mos Def, is never mentioned these days, and that's because the morass of forgettable crap around it has created this weird sort of cultural blind spot in the American consciousness where we jump from 1999 straight to 2010.

The 2000s was a high point for comedy movies which saw the return of the R-Rated comedy which has since gone away again. There will be nothing like Step Brothers or American Pie made ever again.

*Edit* American Pie was in 1999. Pretend I said Old School, Tropic Thunder, Idiocracy, Dodgeball, Superbad, The 40-Year-Old Virgin or Wedding Crashers. My point was I think the 2000s set a high water mark for comedies.

Holmes And Watson came out in 2018, was written by the exact same guy as Idiocracy and Tropic Thunder, and is easily one of the greatest comedies ever made, but nobody paid any attention to it. That's what happens when you ignore the wonderful output of the present.

 

[Ross_Я]

Beau Is Afraid, 2023
Arrival, 2016
The Master, 2012
Bad Times At The El Royale, 2018
The Lighthouse, 2019
BlacKkKlansman, 2018
The Love Witch, 2016
John Dies At The End, 2013
Captain Phillips, 2013
The Batman, 2022

Arrival? BlacKkKlansman? Man, come on! Especially BlacKkKlansman - I was hyped for that movie, and that doesn't happen often, but it just straight away cock down the throat sucks. You could've at least named Sorry To Bother You, but this one... ooof. Really, the addition of these two sounds like a bell that calls to check your tastes, mate.

The Lighthouse? That's just typical arthouse, and arthouse... simply doesn't change much in my eyes. And even if you count that as a horror, I've admitted that horrors is probably the only thing that is better today (due to sheer numbers of'em), so I'm not sure why you've even included it. And even then, The Lighthouse... Yea, it's mediocre. There are better horrors, both around the time The Lighthouse came out and in zeroes. Pretty much sums up my opinion about Beau Is Afraid as well.

The Love Witch - didn't watch that one, cannot a tell a thing here. Also, The Batman, really? I... think it is needless to say that I do not watch those kind of movies too often, so I did not watch that one either. Though in the rather small selection of superhero movies I've watched there is The Dark Knight trilogy, and I really doubt that The Batman is cooler than that. Alright, third movie is 2012, but still, cooler than first two movies? Dooooubt.

I do not want to touch 2012 and 2013 movies from your list, because I feel they are much close to 2000's rather than to modern movies - and mathematically so too. And note how you have to go across the whole decade - darn, even more than a decade - when I've only picked several movies from 2006/2007. I can name much more across the zeroes. The percentage of good movies dropped down hard.

So... this leaves us with Bad Times At The El Royale... and, well, this one is a good call. This is probably the only one I can agree with. Awesome movie, hands down. Fucking A. Everyone gotta watch this title.

They display more technical prowess, more perspective, more ambition- there are some directors who are new to the field, some directors who have been in the field a long time and come back with great entries- I don't know why the 2000s lacked that so much, but it did. There are very few movies from the 2000s that anyone remembers anymore. Even a great movie from the 2000s, like Be Kind Rewind with Jack Black and Mos Def, is never mentioned these days, and that's because the morass of forgettable crap around it has created this weird sort of cultural blind spot in the American consciousness where we jump from 1999 straight to 2010.

Technical prowess? It all gets replaced with the darn CGI nobody knows how to work with! Where's technical prowess in that?! Even in Terminator 2 CGI was better than what we see today. Technical prowess in Children Of Men alone throws half of the decade worth of modern movies out of the window, have you seen those scenes, that camera work, those long shots without a single cut where everything explodes, people run around and stuff, shoot at each other - and it's all practical for all that's holy - now that was technical prowess.
Perspective? Well, I'm not sure what you mean here, so maybe? Ambition though? That's a very vague one, and it really doesn't depend on a decade... at all.
It's fun that you talk about the morass of forgettable crap around, giving that nowadays there are literally babylonian towers of absolute junk being made one after another by conveyors such as Netflix or Disney. Guess we will have to wait and see how much of these movies from today will be remembered a decade later.
And people in general have tought times remembering anything that is not in a completely legendary position. Either that, or it must be one exceptionally long-running franchise, like Star Wars. Otherwise few people will not remember it, not matter how great it is.

No Country For Old Men isn't even the best Coen Brothers movie. The golden age of their filmography happened during the 90s. Raising Arizona is probably my favorite, The Big Lebowski is a lot of people's favorite, and it came out in 1998. Fargo came out in 1996. I would argue that Hail, Caesar! which came out in 2016 is actually better than No Country For Old Men, simply because it lacks the echo chamber of the 2000s, and therefore functions more effectively as a period piece because it has the benefit of perspective.

I didn't say it was the best, and I kind of agree that The Big Lebowski is better? I mean, it works in my favor. My point is: pretty much everything after 2012 or so sucks, everything that was before is better. It doesn't matter if it wasn't in the 90's or 00's - the modern times still lose. Or, if you want, you can call it a tie, because a 90's movie is better than both the 10's one and 00's, but... really, what's, what's the point of bringing up other decades?

Holmes And Watson came out in 2018, was written by the exact same guy as Idiocracy and Tropic Thunder, and is easily one of the greatest comedies ever made, but nobody paid any attention to it. That's what happens when you ignore the wonderful output of the present.

Idiocracy was primarily a Judge's screenplay, not Cohen. And I really just do not want to see a parody on these characters - I like them too much - so I do not want to watch it. Kind of a personal thingamambob, sorry.

All 2000s movies have this weird veneer around them- they're extremely dated compared to movies from before and after, like they're caught in this transitional state of limbo. And it could easily be that I view 2000s stuff like this because, again, it's the decade I grew up in- except instead of being nostalgic for it, I feel a deep-seated aversion towards it. Like an anti-nostalgia.

I'm not sure what kind of weird veneer you mean, but ultimately, it seems, it all boils down to your tastes. Fun. I never felt anti-nostalgia towards the time I grew up in, but I guess it is personal, so... I dunno. I usually say that it is useless to argue about tastes, but BlacKkKlansman... I feel like some tastes need a fixin'. I mean, if it were not for bad tastes, things like Disney would've never been a problem in the first place.
But, well, at least you didn't name anything worse.

 

[Chao Tse-Tung]

I don't play video games, so I have no idea when the peak of video games was. I only view pop culture through the lens of movies and TV shows- and mostly movies. Even then, between those 6 movies you listed, I would only count No Country For Old Men among my favorites. All 2000s movies have this weird veneer around them- they're extremely dated compared to movies from before and after, like they're caught in this transitional state of limbo. And it could easily be that I view 2000s stuff like this because, again, it's the decade I grew up in- except instead of being nostalgic for it, I feel a deep-seated aversion towards it. Like an anti-nostalgia.

No Country For Old Men isn't even the best Coen Brothers movie. The golden age of their filmography happened during the 90s. Raising Arizona is probably my favorite, The Big Lebowski is a lot of people's favorite, and it came out in 1998. Fargo came out in 1996. I would argue that Hail, Caesar! which came out in 2016 is actually better than No Country For Old Men, simply because it lacks the echo chamber of the 2000s, and therefore functions more effectively as a period piece because it has the benefit of perspective. The 2010s has seen the rise of directors I actually like, who actually have a coherent aesthetic of their own that's interesting and different.

The 2000s saw the inception of the MCU, with movies like Iron Man, the first two awful Hulk movies, and stuff like Daredevil with Ben Affleck, which first popularized the idea and got the train moving. I don't think it's even fair to blame the 2010s for the MCU, it was largely Disney's acquisition of Marvel in 2009 which caused the current monopolized media landscape. If they hadn't acquired Marvel, Disney wouldn't have nearly as much power as they do today, they'd still just be making trash like Chicken Little and Home On The Range.

I can easily name 6 movies from the 2010s and 2020s that are better than the 6 you listed. I'll name 10:

Beau Is Afraid, 2023
Arrival, 2016
The Master, 2012
Bad Times At The El Royale, 2018
The Lighthouse, 2019
BlacKkKlansman, 2018
The Love Witch, 2016
John Dies At The End, 2013
Captain Phillips, 2013
The Batman, 2022

All these are better than the 2000s ones, and you only wouldn't know about them if you exclusively watch the MCU. They display more technical prowess, more perspective, more ambition- there are some directors who are new to the field, some directors who have been in the field a long time and come back with great entries- I don't know why the 2000s lacked that so much, but it did. There are very few movies from the 2000s that anyone remembers anymore. Even a great movie from the 2000s, like Be Kind Rewind with Jack Black and Mos Def, is never mentioned these days, and that's because the morass of forgettable crap around it has created this weird sort of cultural blind spot in the American consciousness where we jump from 1999 straight to 2010.


Holmes And Watson came out in 2018, was written by the exact same guy as Idiocracy and Tropic Thunder, and is easily one of the greatest comedies ever made, but nobody paid any attention to it. That's what happens when you ignore the wonderful output of the present.

Haven't posted in like over a year but I got a notification for this and can't pass up a chance to respond to THE mr sequeira himself.

Speaking as someone who grew up in the 2000s, I feel like it almost had a purposefully baked-in in-the-moment nostalgia. This could he a personal experience more molded by having older siblings than the media itself, but there was this overbearing buzz that "everything is better now than it ever has been before." Just for example, every kind of movie was advertised and heralded as "groundbreaking" for the genre, people (myself incl.) wondered if video game graphics would ever get better than they were then, and ofc science is amazing and fixing everything and at this rate the world will be totally fixed in 5-10 years (which could be some of the roots of the "quirked up pop science" you've recently talked about, but I digress).

In that way, I think a lot of the nostalgia that people hold for the early 2000s can be boiled down to the fact that once the financial crisis hit, the schtick of "whoooa, guys, it's the freaking TWO-THOUSANDS, guys, everything is AWESOME!" was dropped in favor of a more relatable grittiness that there are, indeed, major problems we still have to solve. Building off the recession point because I'm a commie who's got to bring some dialectical materialism in somehow, a lot of people remember having more stuff, less worries, and more time and resources to fully enjoy the movies, games, and shows that they watched. Whether they were kids like me who suddenly had less gifts and a more tense atmosphere at home, or they were already adults who were now directly facing financial issues which they hadnt been before, it caused a pretty marked difference in most Americans' lives that seems to brighten the lead-up to it and cast a shadow past it to the present day.

I think that the rest of that nostalgia honestly just comes from people missing the ignorant bliss of childhood naievity, and people stuck in the consumerist mindset equate those happy childhood feelings with the products which they consumed at that time, in part because the corpos literally try to manipulate you into feeling that way. The hyperconsumer culture that's dominated the 2000s has really exacerbated the phenomenon described in that "Capitalism and Schizophrenia" paper, wherein the brands you use and the movies and shows you watch and the music you listen to in part becomes your personality, trends are considered personality traits and the like. In that way, nostalgia functions under capitalism to reinforce your relationships with those products that you enjoyed at some previous time in your life so that in theory they can extract profit from your childhood all the way to your death. That's bolstered even moreso by the built-in "nostalgia cycles" of advertising where they actively encourage (read: try to manipulate) you to remember how great your childhood years were and how it was those awesome products and all that shit on the screens and remember, that brand is still making stuff just for you, after all it practically raised you!

Got a little unhinged towards the end there, but yeah, I think people definitely hype up the early 2000s a little too hard when tbh most of the shit outta that era was pretty stupid in hindsight.

 

[Ross_Я]

~snip~

I feel it is important to note that this post doesn't quite apply to me anyhow. In my country we didn't have all those advertisements where everything was groundbreaking and stuff. Neither my country had much brands - if anything, you can tie it into my hate towards the post-2012 time, because by that time everything became solidly branded. Et cetera. I feel like my feelings towards 2000's are genuine. Though I still love 80's more.