this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2024
30 points (75.9% liked)

Movies

7514 readers
295 users here now

Lemmy

Welcome to Movies, a community for discussing movies, film news, box office, and more! We want this to be a place for members to feel safe to discuss and share everything they love about movies and movie related things. Please feel free to take part and help our community grow!


Related Communities:

!books@lemmy.world - Discussing books and book-related things.

!comicbooks@lemmy.world - A place to discuss comic books of all types.

!marvelstudios@lemmy.world - LW's home for all things MCU.


While posting and commenting in this community, you must abide by the Lemmy.World Terms of Service: https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/

  1. Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, ableist, or advocating violence will be removed.

  2. Be civil: disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally insult others.

  3. Spam, self promotion, trolling, and bots are not allowed

  4. Shitposts and memes are allowed until they prove to be a problem.

    Regarding spoilers; Please put "(Spoilers)" in the title of your post if you anticipate spoilers, as we do not currently have a spoiler tag available. If your post contains an image that could be considered a spoiler, please mark the thread as NSFW so the image gets blurred. As far as how long to wait until the post is no longer a spoiler, please just use your best judgement. Everyone has a different idea on this, so we don't want to make any hard limits.

    Please use spoiler tags whenever commenting a spoiler in a non-spoiler thread. Most of the Lemmy clients don't support this but we want to get into the habit as clients will be supporting in the future.

Failure to follow these guidelines will result in your post/comment being removed and/or more severe actions. All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users. We ask that the users report any comment or post that violates the rules, and to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] MimicJar@lemmy.world 12 points 2 months ago (3 children)

It's a shame it isn't discussed in the article, but I wonder "What about TV?"

I watch a lot more TV shows than I do films, not just because TV is longer but usually TV has the more interesting story to tell.

That isn't to say films aren't interesting, it's just that I wonder if the shift is the dividing line between generations. Films were where all the big stars were. TV was seen as a stepping stone. Now TV has a similar and sometimes even higher level of prestige.

The article does touch on length for a moment, but doesn't dig in. When it comes to TV you might only need to watch 22 minutes, 44 minutes, maybe an hour to get a solid feel for where the story is going. Plus it has a logical stopping point.

For a film you might get 20 minutes in but you're not sure. Should you stick with it? I suppose better films aren't usually this way, but should you watch just a little more and find out?

Both have their place. Both can be great.

[–] KRAW@linux.community 8 points 2 months ago (2 children)

usually TV has the more interesting story to tell.

Hard disagree. I have always thought that movies have had stronger stories due to the fact that they have a much more focused story to tell. TV shows have a lot more time to fill, which leads them to bringing in random B-plots that often end up as distractions from the main story rather than supporting detail. The investment that a TV show demands is often not worth it in my experience, because 9/10 times the show loses steam before they can tie up the plotlines I care about. For every Breaking Bad, there are a ton of Yellow Jackets, Westworlds, etc. I find it much easier to curate a list of movies than a list of shows.

[–] stardust@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 months ago

As budgets have increased to crazy abouts it has felt like tv shows have become stretched out movies that would have been better off as movies. It's made even worse by how more TV shows despite production values being high have felt like filler and then have a two year long gap on top of it.

Miniseries are ones that haven't felt that way for me lately.

[–] Zorque@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I found those random b plots often do a lot better at providing character building then the constant ramp up of needing to focus solely on moving the serial plot along.

Then again, I'm also the kind of person who preferred the "monster of the week" episodes of X-files over the "main story" ones. The latter always just seemed so forced, while the former allowed them to relax into the characters.

[–] KRAW@linux.community 2 points 2 months ago

I actually prefer shows that have smaller stories to tell throughout rather than one large story, so we actually agree here. In these cases if the show loses quality at any point, then I can stop watching without leaving as much plot development unresolved. The downside is now you're either confining each story to a smaller runtime or you're chopping up a larger plotline into these smaller runtime units.

I suppose this is how I would put it: TV shows are a superior format for character development through smaller storylines. This is why Breaking Bad works so well. Sure you could say it's one large story told across multiple seasons, but the way it is told is through smaller stories that can almost stand on their own. The larger story isn't so much a story but one really long thread of character development of Walter. Movies have a disadvantage with character development due to the lower total runtime, but the singular story ends up more rich. One 2hr movie can often feel more satisfying that several hours of a TV show due to how little the viewer needs to invest both mentally and time-wise. That said, there are exceptions to these generalities I'm making, and I'm not exactly an expert when it comes to either of these mediums.

[–] delirious_owl@discuss.online 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I think the exact opposite. Shows run for so many hours that they're often filled with fluff melodrama. I call it the Dragonball Z writing.

Movies have such a shorter amount of time, so they have to make it with more care. They don't want to waste your time. Every minute is precious

[–] MimicJar@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

I do agree that some TV shows stretch and pull the DBZ style, however I think it's less and less. Seasons are shorter, 10 episodes or so, but it isn't a strict rule.

[–] Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I also prefer tv shows just because there's more time for proper story telling and character development.

If I watch a movie and the main characters fall in love within a week of meeting each other it kind of drives me nuts.

[–] Notyou@sopuli.xyz 1 points 2 months ago

I also prefer tv shows just because there's more time for proper story telling and character development.

This is why the Netflix Marvel shows are better than most of the MCU movies. They usually spend an episode fleshing out the villain and the villains having a good backstory makes an interesting story overall. The MCU did a good job telling us about Thanos because they didn't have to introduce anyone else during that saga.