131 points by RickJWagner 14 hours ago | 422 comments on HN
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Editorial · v3.7· 2026-03-15 22:45:11 0
Summary Privacy & Surveillance Neutral
This entertainment news article about the Hollywood Oscars crisis contains no substantive human rights content. The observable human rights concern centers on structural privacy invasion through undisclosed tracking mechanisms (Google Analytics, LiteSpeed referrer manipulation, multiple third-party services) deployed without visible consent interfaces. Secondary concern involves accessibility barriers that exclude users with disabilities from accessing the content.
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Art 12 ↔ Art 19 —Privacy tracking mechanisms (Article 12) undermine conditions necessary for free expression (Article 19) by creating surveillance infrastructure that enables monitoring of reader information interests.
The cultural relevance of movies, and American made movies isn't going anywhere anytime soon, but I think the economics of streaming is finally playing out in the loss of the geographical concentration of power in Hollywood and California.
This is the endgame of the feedback loop of streamers causing industry consolidation... the direct connection of dollars people spend to sit in a theatre seat was slowly declining, but now I think it's gotten so small that it no longer matters- and once the whole box-office feedback loop disappears a lot of the economics of how films are produced are being forced to change.
One of the reasons that people have loved to make fun of Hollywood for literally it's entire existence (besides the fact that the meta talk is self-indulgent artist stuff) is that making movies with so much money and waste is fundamentally ridiculous.
The optimistic viewpoint is that maybe new AI production tools will trigger a re-democratization of creative movies in the next wave, like in the 70s and the 90s indies.
There just aren’t as many good new movies. Most movies we watch at home are from decades ago. If we didn’t have streaming maybe we’d go to the movies more often, but it’s hard to say.
A few movies we watched are not worth the money. To stay afloat they have to raise ticket prices, but if we’re paying so much, the movie better be absolutely outstanding, and the are just not usually, so we stopped going.
I haven't been in cinema in the past ~10 years and to be honest I wouldn't care if no more movies were ever made, simply because there are hundreds, if not thousands, amazing movies made since the beginning of the cinema that I didn't watch. Most of the new movies are crap anyways, so why waste time and money when I can watch a classic movie instead which has a much higher probability of me enyjoing it.
Nobody else to blame but themselves. Of course, Hollywood is full of narcissists so they'll blame everyone else, e.g. streaming, prices, etc. but the reality is of the last 10-15 years of mainstream US cinema is:
- Scripts that sound more like an HR meeting than a good story.
- Blockbuster superhero movies that are all the same movie.
- Lots of remakes that added modern CGI flare and destroyed the artistic value of the original.
- As consolidation of studios happens, way more "safe" stories that aim to not offend anyone. I think the only one able to get away with it right now is Tarantino.
Prices, streaming, theaters, etc. -- they're all accessory to the problem. People went to the movies for enjoyment, why would they go to endure them? There's no cultural collective experience anymore in the sense of going to see Lord of the Rings or Matrix with your friends for the first time.
Also this is happening throughout all media. Music and video games have the same kind of discussions.
My 2c: They should stop concentrating on appealing to the broadest audience. Formulaic heros' journeys, franchises, predictable characters acted by the same narrow set of the the most-attractive people etc.
Safety and mass-market appeal over creativity.
For contrast: Books, non-AAA video games, and movies from smaller studios still produce high-quality, creative efforts I continue to be excited about. Big-budget movies (and games), and Netflix shows are mostly bottom-feeder stuff.
The little dinosaurs are ignoring the great big elephants in the room: gaming. The article doesn't mention it. The market for video games in 2024 was around $225B, compared to movies at around $33B. Hollywood has worked very hard not to realize that their industry has become niche and have succeeded.
My last week may be an indicator. I've watched zero TV or movies but have spent about 40 hours helping a small colony of scrappy hard working beavers survive on post apocalyptic earth. Steam got my money, Hollywood didn't.
So many more products are competing for finite attention now. And the solution to that problem is not to productize your commodity imo, art created for the sake of selling is not art.
I watch a film every single day since Covid. There are great films everywhere every year. I'm not american but the sooner you ignore the american cultural imperialism is the better (or at least the films that don't premiere at competition festivals). There is a whole world outside of America.
Good riddance. It won’t be missed. Very little of Hollywood benefited humanity - it was mostly a tool of the rich and governments to propagandize. It was just an another opiate for masses. It was built on ruthless exploitation of labour and consumers.
Everyone is complaining about movie theater prices. But, I'll also complain about streaming prices. I want to watch The Secret Agent and it's $9.99 to rent on Apple TV. It doesn't seem to make sense in comparison to month all-you-can-watch subscription prices.
If Sinners and One Battle After Another are up for movie of the year then it's no wonder no one is going. One is a fun but ultimately forgettable horror action movie. The other is a movie that just based on its major theme would attract less then half the country and even in those remaining is a very polarizing movie. It's up for best picture because to preach, not because it's actually good.
I started watching 1960s era movies with my kids and I understand why Hollywood had the power at the time. Entertainment and solid values crafted into a "picture".
I can imagine back then eagerly awaiting a new release. Now, who cares. Some depressing trauma story of someone I can't relate to or rehashed superhero flick. Yawn.
One new problem for theaters is that entertainment now comes in other time formats than the 1-3 hour movie or the hour-long TV show. Netflix is not constrained by the need to push groups of people through a movie theater.
The only reason I like going to the theater now is to see movies in "4dx". It's a ridiculous format where the seats move and there are other special effects including air, water, and smoke which are custom edited for each chosen movie. It's like a combination between a movie and one of those amusement park rides. I think most people hate it, but my kids and I enjoy it. Tickets are ~$30 each though.
Otherwise I would just rather watch a movie on the couch at home. They come to streaming so quickly there's no problem waiting for it.
I was already complaining about the price when it was only $30 for two tickets, two drinks, and popcorn. To think it's more than double that now!
Add in the fact most anyone can have access to a pretty good quality 60" display. It's not as large as the theater, but it's pretty good-sized, has better color reproduction than a lot of older (read: less-maintained) theaters' gear, and you don't have to deal with people using their phones or talking over the movie.
Lastly, let's just consider that for most people the number of movies you'd actually want to watch on a yearly basis has probably decreased in general while the cost of actually producing those movies has skyrocketed-- it's the same problem with AAA gaming. Your costs are so high that if a movie/game isn't an immediate massive hit, you're doomed.
Yeah, the bottom has dropped out of that market entirely. Gaming will be saved by indie and AA games, but I'm not sure if there's anything like that for movies; sure, smaller films exist but distribution, etc. doesn't really have anything like Steam.
As much as I support unions and labour rights, the last SAG-AFTRA strike mostly just helped the big studios realize they could do more with less.
Hollywood is a factory town at the end of the day, and we all know what happened to most factory towns in America. This one is just getting there a few decades after the others.
Cultural relevance of movies is already greatly diminished. Maybe these AI tools will trigger a reversion of movies to the days of the nickelodeons where plot, story, and character are irrelevant and people just shell out money (attention) as long as the moving image looks cool.
> To stay afloat they have to raise ticket prices, but if we’re paying so much
What are you paying when you go to the cinema? Just went to the cinema today to see Hoppers, and was slightly surprised that the tickets were only 8 EUR per person, then we spent maybe 5-10 EUR per person on snacks too, so ended up paying maybe ~15 EUR per person overall. This was outside a metropolitan city in South-Western Europe, maybe that's why, or I've just lost track of what's expensive/cheap.
This is a boring opinion. It's the equivalent of what happens to many older adults when it comes to music. All of the best songs came out in their teens to about 30 so what's the point of listening to anything new? It assumes there is no innovation and the person just traps themselves in the past.
You could say there hasn't been any good new music since 1970 and humans have been making music for thousands of year. Or you could try out the many new genres and eventually find something new and exciting.
it just seems like a very boring way to live out your life.
There is very little incentive to make good movies now, especially when zoomers' attention spans are maximum 2 minutes. I still enjoy a classic movie or two but I'm running out of movies to watch even then.
Theatres don't just show new movies. There's something very special about being locked in a dark room with a big screen to watch Alien or Barry Lyndon. Older movies especially look great in a theatre and some of the magic is lost on a smaller screen.
90% of any content is crap but you're missing out if you like movies and you haven't seen Sinners, The Bone Temple, or NOPE (to name a few recent great theatre watches).
I think it’s the finance people. They have decided every creative movie made represents resources and time that can’t be used for a “sure-thing” franchise schlock movie.
We pay $6 tickets for first run movies on Tuesdays at the Studio movie grill as a cheapish date night with movie + dinner + drinks and reserve seating
Movie theatres hardly make any money from ticket sales with 80% of the ticket price going to the studio during the first two weeks and then declining. They make money off of concessions
Of note here too: There's been a lot of (social media at least) backlash against AAA studios lately. Anecdote: 2025 had a number of great (High quality, popular, award winners/nominees etc), and they weren't from big studios. There seems to be a niche middle-budget level that produces wonders. Just to limit scope to 2025: KCD2, Expedition 33, and Blue Prince were all incredible games. Expedition 33 has my favorite sound track (Or album in general?) of all time. Death Stranding 2 is another great one. By a big studio, but let a creative person run wild with it.
I suspect the problem with AAA games is the same one movie studios face; mass-market appeal and profit-driven-design degrades the experience.
I think the issue is that content creation and distribution has already been fully democratized. How many hours do people spend watching videos shot by individuals on their phones in their apartments?
Combined with streaming, there's just an overabundance of "good enough" content at everyone's fingertips. The moat that protected big-budget feature films is gone. You don't see a trailer for a movie and salivate and wait for it to come out, it just blends in to the stream of 5000 other things you can watch right now.
That’s because Hollywood makes movies, not videogames. You also spent a few hours driving but Hollywood hasn’t done anything about it because they are not in the business of making cars.
Hollywood seems to have never realized that the point of works like LotR and Star Wars was to take the ridiculous extremely seriously. The bad CGI didn't matter because every actor took it seriously. A marvel-ized star wars with great CGI is still a bad movie because nobody on screen takes it seriously despite how realistic the graphics are.
Where is that? Tickets here are only $7-10 each (except maybe some IMAX or similar showings) and two drinks and popcorn would be $15-25 for two people (size dependent). This is in Colorado.
EDIT: I was going off of memory, but matinee/child/senior pricing is apparently $9.75 at the theater I usually go to, evening is $13.25 (I never go in the evening, had forgotten what that price was). They have a two drink and popcorn combo for $22.10. So the worst case of evening prices (again, not considering IMAX, just regular screens and seats) for two with that combo is $48.60. That's not cheap, but it's not $86 either. And if you're willing to share the drink and go to a matinee you can cut the price to $34.80. This is a Cinemark, a pretty big theater chain.
There are some studios who do this already (A24 for example who have produced a number of relatively popular films). But agreed that the big studios have focused on sequels and formulaic content for the most part
I don't game at all but watch at least one movie a day as my relaxing time: criterion collection, mubi etc. I go to an indie cinema about once a month, often to see older movies as much as new ones. The cinema is rarely full but they have a good café and affordable subscriptions and I'm guessing some municipal funding, they won't ever run out of films to show. Though the day A24 goes out of business will be my sad day.
The last movie we attended people were incredibly disruptive throughout the film, to the point that it was difficult to focus on the film. Some people enjoy screaming, laughing, and talking as part of the experience, but it's apparently been normalized beyond my tolerance threshold. Add in the cost and overall movie quality decrease of Hollywood productions, and it's difficult to justify.
Presently, we watch foreign movies at home 95% of the time and maybe a Hollywood production when they manage to find their roots and create something worth watching.
Hollywood produced some of the most influential pieces of art of the last century and it permeated global culture in a way only comparable to Renaissance-era Florence. Even if your simplistic take stained by marxist propaganda is true, you shouldn't just casually dismiss the labor of hundreds of thousands of artists and technicians over a century simply because you've become jaded by Marvel slop.
To be fair, there's plenty of that in older films and TV series as well, particularly "golden age" material from the 1940s -- 1970s, which played strongly off WWII, Cold War, and pro-business themes, with occasional ventures into counterculture works for the latter.
The original Top Gun (1986) was describe at the time as the US Navy's most successful recruiting campaign ever, noted in this 2004 account citing 1990 correspondence with then Secretary of Defence Dick Cheney: <https://archive.org/details/operationhollywo00robb/page/180>. Similarly endless war, cowboy, biblical, and rom-com films of that period.
Is this true, or you just can’t discover them anymore because everything else competes for your attention? Arguably in the last decade more great content in both movies and TV shows produced than ever, it’s just so much, that it’s hard to choose.
The biggest competition for movies is actually from Youtube.
While the streaming business led to a growth of the movie industry, pre Covid and pre strikes at least, it's difficult to compete when millions of people can produce good content for low prices.
On top of that, it doesn't help that movies stopped innovating, 2025 box office was entirely dominated by prequels and sequels.
I don't care about avengers, I really don't, the first bored me enough.
Small but important correction: the biggest issue for the movie industry aren't streaming services or them filming in locations with good tax incentives like UK or Australia but Youtube.
It's hard to compete with millions of videomakers, some of them extremely skilled and able to produce interesting content on a budget.
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