Help me understand human nature

[Elok]

Do any of you like Titanic? That movie was stupid

Never saw it, didn't interest me. Still doesn't, though that might be because I've had more or less the whole plot revealed for me by pop culture references.

[Colonâ„¢]

Seen Rocky, it's surprisingly good considering the lame story. Stallone could have taken a different path with his career: less Schwarzenegger, more De Niro.

[Ben Kenobi]

When the personal attacks continued, I assumed that you just had some crazy The Monarch thing going on for me. It honestly never occurred to me that you were that hostile to everyone

This is just occurring to you now, Elok?

[Elok]

Seen Rocky, it's surprisingly good considering the lame story. Stallone could have taken a different path with his career: less Schwarzenegger, more De Niro.

You mean . . . he could have been a contender?

Or that, instead of becoming a state governor, he could be known to the current generation mostly as the guy from Meet the Fockers?

[Sava]

kids these days

[Bereta_Eder]

I'm always like that getting out of the shower and having forgotten the towel

[Elok]

Okay, this got me thinking. Forget about LiT itself, at least for now. Colon, you say that Hollywood taught us to demand movies with a strong plot. But I've been racking my brains trying to think of any example of a fictional work prior to the late nineteenth or twentieth century which had characters interacting at length without a conflict or a strong narrative form. My knowledge of ancient, renaissance and early modern fiction is far from exhaustive, but everything I do know or know of--Homer, Virgil, Aristophanes, Beowulf, Chaucer, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Swift, Voltaire, sundry folktales, etc.--has a definite story to it. Characters are set against something and either overcome it, or are overcome by it. Even well into the modern era: Dickens had stories, Dostoyevsky had stories. Tales with characters sort of drifting around in no particular direction seem to me to be a hallmark of . . . I don't know what to call it. Postmodernism, maybe? Personally, I regard it with suspicion as a morbid reaction to modern nihilism. Whether it is or not, though, I don't think that Hollywood taught us not to appreciate the aimless anymore, but that the aimless came along and Hollywood, following the general and popular taste, said "no thanks."

[molly bloom]

Colon, you say that Hollywood taught us to demand movies with a strong plot.

Films based on videogames and 'Battleships' say not so much.

[Elok]

Ahem. "Strong" in the sense of "there is a clear if not necessarily logical sequence of events," Mr. Nitpick.

[Colonâ„¢]

Tales with characters sort of drifting around in no particular direction seem to me to be a hallmark of . . . I don't know what to call it. Postmodernism, maybe?

Wouldn't be post. Altman already did it with MASH and subsequent movies and he wasn't the only one, nor probably the first.

[molly bloom]

Ahem. "Strong" in the sense of "there is a clear if not necessarily logical sequence of events," Mr. Nitpick.

If we looked at Hollywood's total output (even rather than just say the blockbusters of summer or Christmas or the unlikely chart hits) I still don't see this as being true.

Most of the stuff I've watched recently has been either non-English or indy.

[Elok]

Wouldn't be post. Altman already did it with MASH and subsequent movies and he wasn't the only one, nor probably the first.

Never saw the movie, since I wasn't all that fond of the series it spawned, but I'll take your word for it. That's from what, 1960 or so? And was MASH not a Hollywood movie? The point I'm trying to make is that the plotless work is a relative novelty that was only ever popular among a niche audience, not something we've tragically lost to Ah-nuld's muscles and big-budget CGI or what-have-you.

[Elok]

If we looked at Hollywood's total output (even rather than just say the blockbusters of summer or Christmas or the unlikely chart hits) I still don't see this as being true.

Most of the stuff I've watched recently has been either non-English or indy.

Okay, is this a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the dubious quality of Hollywood writing, or do you mean that literally most movies don't have a sequence of events with a conflict to be resolved, etc.?

[Colonâ„¢]

And was MASH not a Hollywood movie?

That was before the high-concept revolution that has almost thrown character depth overboard. Maybe you're right to say that character-driven stories are a recent invention, but to say they only ever appealed to a nice crowd is a lie. Taxi Driver, Midnight Cowboy, Five Easy Pieces, Barry Lyndon...

[Elok]

You have me at a disadvantage here; I recognize three of those names, but have seen none of them. Been a long time since my community college American Film class, too. But, prior to the rise of the huge blockbuster and the breakup of the distribution monopoly, didn't the studios churn out a massive number of movies every year--basically making each movie in a couple of weeks, having a half-dozen movies going on at a time, etc.? And almost all of them were cheesy adventures, romances, sword-and-sandals, Robin Hood, pulpy crime dramas, westerns . . . you seem to be describing a drop in the bucket.