30 Things People Hate The Most About Modern Movies

"Story lines that are entirely dependent on special effects."

Damjan

• Published in Interesting
• January 15, 2023

It's often said that "the old days were the best days" when it comes to films - and, considering the nostalgia that many of us feel for movies from the past, that sentiment might be true. If you take a look at cinema from the perspective of a discerning viewer, it's easy to see that films can be thought of like fine wine - the older, the better.

We may have criticized Peter Jackson's adaptation of The Lord of the Rings two decades ago, but today, it's considered an immortal classic. Similarly, Leonardo DiCaprio was once "just another handsome guy," but his career was ultimately rewarded with an Oscar.

However, modern films have a lot of aspects that can be critiqued. Although the visuals and technical aspects have improved, many things remain to complain about.

So it's easy to see why many people believe that the best movies were made in the past - and that sentiment might just be true.

Recently, a thread in the AskReddit community sparked a lot of interest with its question: "What annoys you about new movies these days?" The thread has gained 5.8K upvotes and 8.7K comments, with people expressing their grievances about everything from Eddie Murphy's characters in his own films to sound mixing, plot misses, and endless sequels and remakes.

It's safe to say that modern Hollywood has managed to cover all bases.

1. How dark they are. Like literally dark. It's difficult to see what's going on, especially for those of us with vision problems.

2. The sound mixing

Turn up the volume to hear the dialogue and suddenly you have damaged ear drums because there was an explosion. It's insane. Looking at you Nolan.

3. Poor job translating on the screen

Not just movies but TV shows - they take a book that's got great reviews, make a poor job of translating it on screen and then flip the ending so its the opposite of what happened in the book. Proceeds to blame the audience when they pan it for being c**p.

4. Gay characters

That instead of actually making gay characters that are legitimately good, and have purpose in the narrative, they just make being gay that character's entire thing. Like: "Hey look at how gay this person is.

We aren't homophobic at all" This is gonna sound awful, but no representation is better than s****y representation. Just talk to a gay guy, if you need information. I'm sure you'll get a lot of insight, and it'll make what you're working on even better.

5. Trailers.

They're always about 4 minutes long, give away the entire plot, show all the best scenes and jokes and basically ruin the movie before you've even watched it.

6. 300 million budget, plot written out in crayons.

7. Lack of originality and a reliance on franchises.

8. Mumbling

That it's somehow seen as avantgarde to have your actors mumble. If I can't understand what they are saying I *will* lose interest. Also when an entire movie is too dark to see anything. Sure, there are times it needs to be dark for the plot, the time etc, but if I have to spend the whole flick squinting, I'm not going to enjoy it.

9. Practical effects

I miss practical effects and props because it forced people to shoot more in real locations. Kept movies feeling more "real" and grounded even with more fantastical setting. I think alot of 80s 90s movies and a perfect balance of practical and computer effects.

10. "Strong female character"

= Frowny unlikable b***h contrasted with oblivious, stupid and petty men.

11. "New"

When they aren’t “new” but an unnecessary sequel to something from 30 years ago, or a sequel to a movie that had a definitive ending and never needed a sequel. I’m looking at you, A Christmas Story Christmas.

12. Or the 5 minute sex scenes that have nothing to do with anything but happen 5 times a movie.

13. For horror and mystery, everything having to be explained.

A movie like the original Alien would be lambasted by online critics if it were released today, for the simple reason that by the end of it you know next to nothing about what happened. What was the creature? What was the derelict? Why did the company want it, really? The movie has stood the test of time precisely because it avoided answering those and other questions.

14. A lot of movies feel like a marketing department wrote them.

It feels likot 10 execs in a room and everyone wrote down ideas, characters, plot-points, etc that they know will sell - and then tried to organize them into a narrative structure.

There's no vision. There's no plot progression. Its just one random event next to another random event, and characters delivering s****y one-liners. Like writing madlibs.

Even B-movies from the 80's and 90's have better narrative structure and story-telling than half the new movies out today.

They don't make movies - they make 'content'

15. Pandering to China

16. Lack of originality

Cant apply this to every new movie but most of them are recycling movies that have been made before.

17. It’s just Marvel movies.

I’m so freaking tired of regurgitated superhero formulas. Please god just give me one morsel more of original story. Everything, Everywhere, All at Once can only go so far.

18. Most movies are getting watered down for the sake of mass appeal. I get why, but it just sucks

19. Several things, really.

There's no Hero's Journey.

No character development that amounts to anything.

Lots of movies go out of their way to not offend the loudest 10% of Twitter trolls.

More and more movies are portraying men as weak, bumbling, incompetent, children.

Fight scenes look like they were shot in an earthquake.

110lb lingerie models with no muscle tone flat-lining a guy that outweighs them by 80lbs like they were Brock Lesnar or Mike Tyson.

"That's NOT how cars work! Like at all!" - me

"That's NOT how physics works!!" - everyone who passed middle school physics

20. Worst thing is lack of logic/realism.

Inconsistencies within the world movie is in. Unrealistic physics. Awful stories, dumbass `funny` scenes that have nothing to do with the story. List goes on forever.

21. Forced Comedy

22. Movies getting too many sequels.

23. The overreliance on CGI

It just looks too plastic. CGI should be used where it makes sense, not for the whole movie.

Most movies are remakes. We are currently living in a time of close to zero creativity.

Forced diversity when it doesn't even make sense in the movie. I don't mind diversity, but it shouldn't feel out of place in the movie.

24. New Disney movies

I hate the new Disney films the animated characters made to look half real half not real and they’ve made them look the same, they should make a new movie but in the old style animation like a lady and the tramp animation(without the racism obviously)

25. Fight and Action scenes.

It took weeks of training back in the days just to get one shot. You cannot fix that with 4 cuts per second. Bad Example: Taken 3, Good Example: Creed or John Wick

26. Story lines that are entirely dependent on special effects.

27. The color palettes of the nowadays movies

Either they have to be way too colorful which destroys the atmosphere of the movie's plot (sometimes improves it too ngl but that's just a small fraction) or maybe just way too dark which sometimes is just hard to watch and make out what's happening with the scene itself.

Perfect example being most of the nowadays Netflix shows and movies, you won't make half of the scenes until the brightness is throttled all the way up to sun in your monitor. Lazy acting on their behalf for sure.

28. Blatant trend hopping.

It’s barely even been a year of the multiverse trend and I’m already so tired of it, and how many “Look guys, it’s a children’s property but it’s a slasher and has gore, isn’t that shocking and subversive????” have cropped up lately? It’s just annoying and unoriginal.

2) How American remakes/releases of foreign/international films soften all the edges and hate dark/morally ambiguous endings, i.e., Insomnia, The Descent, Oldboy, etc.

Awful lighting, bad color grading, frequency of cuts, and why is every movie f*****g 2 hours and 45 minutes now a days? Make movies an hour and a half again, obviously I know there are exceptions to everything I said, tons of new movies come out every year that kick a*s but the big budget studio features just aren't doing it for me.

Theundercave

They're so LONG.

Where are my snappy, well-paced, 90 minute films? Why is everything two and a half hours long now?

SteampoweredFlamingo

This is an interesting list, and we are pretty certain most of these things also bother you. But, interestingly, in another twenty years, we may be singing the praises of the very films that we are now criticizing with such passion - something that has proved true time and time again.

Damjan