ListNook

I am not saying there are no good movies today, because there definitely are. But it does feel like fewer of them really stand out or stay with you the way older films often did. I think part of it is tied to streaming services and the constant push to keep putting content out. There seems to be so much emphasis on volume, speed, and feeding platforms that a lot of movies end up feeling thinner and less memorable. Even when they are decent, they often do not feel especially polished or lasting. A lot of the writing also does not feel as profound to me. Fewer movies seem to have that depth in the dialogue, character development, or emotional weight that makes them linger in your mind. Sometimes it feels like films are more focused on being instantly watchable than on saying something meaningful or building something that really stays with the audience. I also wonder whether franchises, safer studio decisions, and shorter attention spans have made it harder for movies to feel special in the same way. Or maybe part of it is just nostalgia, and we remember the best older films while forgetting how many average ones there were too. Do you think movies have actually declined in quality, or does it just feel that way? And how much of it do you think is tied to streaming and the pressure to constantly produce content?

52 Comments

HappyGilOHMYGOD Mar 24, 2026 +11

Because you aren't looking

[deleted] Mar 24, 2026 -2

[deleted]

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HappyGilOHMYGOD Mar 24, 2026 +1

Lmfao you kids on here have no clue what "objectively" means. If it's an opinion, especially one pretty quickly shut down with facts, it's not an objective truth. The f****** bleedover from TikTok onto this sub is arguably worse than the Ai takeover, and that's saying something

[deleted] Mar 24, 2026 -1

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HappyGilOHMYGOD Mar 25, 2026 +1

Thank you for reminding me to vet people's accounts before engaging with them. Had I known you were trolling, I wouldn't have responded. Appreciate the training opportunity bud

bds0105 Mar 24, 2026 +9

This c*** again?

Relevant_Session5987 Mar 24, 2026 +1

I know, right? There seems to be a variation of this post on this sub every single day ffs.

So only big budget original movies matter? Also, OP is referring to 'Truly good' movies, didnt say they have to be original.

Relevant_Session5987 Mar 24, 2026

So, people who love movies like The Godfather ( Based on a novel ), The Godfather 2 ( a sequel ), Blade Runner 2049, Terminator 2, The Empire Strikes Back and so many more such 'non original' films are 'terminally online basement dwellers'? Jesus Christ, the stereotype about redditors really is true.

WasteAd7284 Mar 24, 2026 +8

There are, you just don't put any effort into looking for them. Most of them aren't mainstream and many are not in english.

Cold_Box_3219 Mar 24, 2026 -4

Yep, I agree with this take. I liked the new Count of Monte Cristo in French, for example, but haven't seen too much else non-English material.

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Ajibooks Mar 24, 2026 +1

I really liked all of the Best International Feature Oscar nominees this year. They are all solid movies with unique approaches to storytelling. Check them out, and if you don't like them, at least it's something different.

I was hyped for the new Count of Monte Cristo as a big fan of the book. It was an utter disappointment imo, mainly because they cut out/abridged all the more interesting parts of the story and some of the best characters only to drive up the focus on the love story aspect.

flingebunt Mar 24, 2026 +6

When Netflix first hit they pulled out all the old series and movies that had been written, rewritten, rewritten again but never made for TV or the theatre. These movies and series were so good. You can see that most movies now are one or two drafts from being really good. There are plot holes, structural issues or character issues that didn't get fixed before the movie was made. There is also the film theory issue. You see they know what all the beats are that need to be in a movie, but they might not know how to script these well. The most famous is the "Save Martha" bit in Batman .vs. Superman. The filmmaker knew that there had to be something that unites them, that makes Batman both go back to his original roots and to have a connection with Superman, which is the death of his mother. But it is so stupid everyone hated it.

GuildensternLives Mar 24, 2026 +5

It’s survivorship bias. There were so many average, and below, movies that no one thinks of or talks about anymore from whenever “back in the day” was for you. You only recall the best movies from whenever that golden time was and forget all the total shit material. However, there is a lot more media being produced these days, and lots of average-to-below material out there but also lots of good-to-great material as well. It just takes more work to sort through to find the better stuff. Branching out of the average recommendations helps.

briancalpaca Mar 24, 2026 +2

This. there are amazing movies being made now and in 20 years everyone will be wondering why they don't make movies as good as they did in 2026 but they will only mention the winners from these years just like people do when they compare with the movies of the early 2000s or 1990s or 1980s.

Cold_Box_3219 Mar 24, 2026

I agree, I know there were tonnes of bad movies in the past as well, no question. And as others mentioned here as well, and you too--I feel it's also related to the enormous volume, unlike in the past, it's much harder to recognize the nicer movies as well out of the rough. On the other hand, because everything was on film, and not easily edited, produced, etc, I think a lot more movies had more investment of thought. Not too many classics nowadays like The Godfather, The Sopranos, etc. I think Breaking Bad was one of the last major TV series who still filmed on physical film for example.

ILookLikeKristoff Mar 24, 2026 +1

Being filmed on physical film has absolutely nothing to do with writing. That's an inane idea. Parasite, Sicario, 1917, Ford v Ferrari, The Northman, Arrival, Annihilation, Oppenheimer, Dunkirk, The Revenant There's tons of good stuff still coming out even if you ignore the legit quality popcorn flicks (Get Out, Nope, The Menu, Sinners, La La Land, all of Tarantino, Avatar, Knives Out). This is totally a self inflicted problem my man.

GuildensternLives Mar 24, 2026 +1

Time is also a factor that you’re forgetting. It takes time for all-time classics to gain traction. New things can’t just catch fire like things that have been around for 50 or even 20 years; there’s too much media and too much segmentation for that to happen as quickly as it used to, but there’s still plenty of good stuff being produced.

Pendragon235 Mar 24, 2026 +9

Because the truly good movies don't get as much of a marketing push these days. They're definitely there, you just have to look a little harder for them.

Expensive-Sentence66 Mar 24, 2026 +3

There are plenty of good movies being made. There are good streaming movies and series being made. Marketing is just more saturated and tastes in films are more polarized. Director's are far more more cautious and and are more risk adverse than they were in the mid 70's, but good films are being made. The mid 80's was the low point of cinema for me. If it wasn't a dumb ass actions flick with moronic one liners and an ear splitting score appealing to single digit IQ's and dates with big hair it didn't even exist at the cinema. Multiplex syndrome was far worse than streaming movies competing with smart phones.

So many 70/80/90s "classics" are hot trash unless you watched them 25 times as a kid. People act like OG Jaws/Star wars/Jurassic Park are high brow cinema when really they're the MCU/Avatar of their day. ET is somehow enlightened but Project Hail Mary is BAD because it was written to be a movie and that's terrible (but please don't ask me to explain why)! 👿 Stuff like Top Gun, Scarface, Boondock Saints, American Beauty, Road House, are considered classics but are no "smarter" than something like Sinners. Somehow style over substance + huge spectacle is great in old movies but it's the worst most immoral thing you can possibly do today. Remember, Avatar is low brow idiot fuel but Jurassic Park had a lot of deep stuff to say.

Wazula23 Mar 24, 2026 +6

The film industry still hasn't recovered from COVID. Or the Hollywood fires. Or the various writers strikes. Or increasing production and marketing costs. Or an audience that's increasingly hostile to original or challenging films. Or a culture that's more prone to just watching everything on their phone.

VectorJones Mar 24, 2026 +3

Studios have become increasingly risk adverse about their tent pole movies, while simultaneously budgeting in a certain amount of failure. This means big budget stuff becomes more and more formulaic and safe, while smaller productions only receive a pittance so as to make them predictably poor performing and thus easily written off as tax break losses.

Cold_Box_3219 Mar 24, 2026 -7

Agreed. I also heard that production studios are gearing production for audiences that just watch on their phones. Which is nuts.

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JesseVenturaVoter Mar 24, 2026 +2

Because everything feels profound when you’re a kid. And if you’re looking back to before you were born, you’re generally watching the cream of the crop. There was plenty of garbage back then too.

Sphartacus Mar 24, 2026 +2

You should specifically seek out more independent movies. If you live in a reasonably sized city you'll have a theater or two that play them. Look up the Wikipedia article 2026 in Film and go down the list looking for anything interesting. I used to plan way ahead and look for good stuff to watch. Big studios do make safer choices and lean on franchises, and they can still be good, but if you want to see interesting stuff you've got to expose yourself to it.

WitchBrew4u Mar 24, 2026 +2

Could be partially advantage of hindsight. When I say there were truly good movies in the past, they aren’t all from the same year. They could be years or even decades apart. And I don’t even know what all the duds were simply because I never saw them or even heard about them.

ILookLikeKristoff Mar 24, 2026 +2

100%. Same with old music. Same with old SNL skits. Same with old art. Same with idolizing the antiquated Gentleman, old fashioned mafiosos, the Roman Empire, anything really. There were idiots and duds and assholes all through our history. But if you compare the greatest deeds of an era vs random stuff from today, it's always gonna look better.

Cold_Box_3219 Mar 24, 2026 -2

Agreed

longjumpingtote Mar 24, 2026 +4

In the 1980s and 1990s there were thousands of films released. Sure, some were direct to video. But of the films that had theatrical releases of some kind, there were (on average) 291 per year. That's almost 6,000 movies over those two decades show in theaters. Now how many of those do we remember? 2% at most. Same thing today, only there are many more films getting much wider distribution on streaming, as well as theatrical. The average is well over 1,000 a year. More than three times the 80% and 90%. It's just that a small number of them take up all the oxygen in the room.

Yeah there were some dogshit movies that did commercially well back then too. Comparing today's top 10 vs the highlight reel from the previous 50 years in anything will always be an unfair comparison.

fox112 Mar 24, 2026 +4

you have depression

No_Tamanegi Mar 24, 2026 +3

You may not have depression (though you still might, don't ignore that) you certainly have expressed symptoms of burnout. You don't get the same level of joy from activities that used to bring you joy.

TheGreatBeldezar Mar 24, 2026 -1

No you

Early_Accident2160 Mar 24, 2026 +2

Well, movie magic is harder to come by these days

Helmut1642 Mar 24, 2026 +1

It's because the speed of demand and investors wanting fast profits, they don't spend as much time and effort on scripts and with some films you see 2-4 writing teams credited with rewrites to fix the poor script, tends to disperse the power/meaning/flow of the script. You can't make a good movie without a script. You can have good acting, good score, good FX but end up with a average or poor movie but with a good script and average acting, score, and FX you get a good movie. The other is the reboots and remakes to strip mine the fanbase for money. The biggest offender here is Star Trek which hasn't been good for years. This means there are few original movies and many are written with one eye on starting a franchise rather telling this story in this movie, now.

Mr_Evil_Dr_Porkchop Mar 24, 2026 +1

You might just be feeling nostalgia or no longer interested in movie genres you used to watch . There are a ton of highly acclaimed movies every year

xenomorphbeaver Mar 24, 2026 +1

You are probably comparing the general selection of today to the best of yesteryear. Try comparing the fifth highest grossing movie from this time of year in 1986 to the fifth highest grossing movie at the moment to get a clearer view of the comparison.

mydadisyourdad2 Mar 24, 2026

I think it’s because there aren’t. There are some sure but we’re more inundated than ever with legacy sequels, adaptions, reboots and remakes. And what is original studios only go with the safest options around. We don’t get the lower budget experimental movies from unknown directors anymore. That’s where a lot of old gems that people were sure would flop came from

longjumpingtote Mar 24, 2026 +1

> I think it’s because there aren’t. There are. There have always been tons of shitty movies, for the last century and more. We just remember the good ones. These days there are ~500 movies released in the US and Canada alone each year. There are great, great ones among them. There are lots of low-budget movies, lots of experimental movies. My favorite movie of 2025 was Little Trouble Girls. Best film I saw that year. In 2023 it was A Still Small Voice. They are just not going to pop up on people's feeds. Check out festival lineups. There's always something amazing, but having to search through 500+ is tough.

ElkTemporary4695 Mar 24, 2026

Am I the only one? That looks up movies and fun facts while they’re watching the movie?

LetDouble471 Mar 24, 2026 -1

Disney/Marvel/Netflix did huge numbers creating formulaic movies. Not just formula but the bar was lowered for writing, cinematography, vfx, etc also. Everyone else followed suit so now we just get derivative slop. Sadge.

Yes, so many movies are formulaic and very predictable. But not in a good way, in a way that doesn't make you excited.

Helpful-Attorney-924 Mar 24, 2026 -3

Because there aren't. It will be even worse after WB(one of the best studios) got acquired by Paramount

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Cold_Box_3219 Mar 24, 2026 +3

That acquisition makes me concerned about the future of film for sure. Not as much competition.

Helpful-Attorney-924 Mar 24, 2026 -2

And I'm sure it will also affect the HBO original shows

If you truly believe that, then you may want to consider that you simply don't like watching movies now. I simply can't be arsed with downright stupid takes like this. We live in a world where we're spoiled with choice on actually good movies, despite what Reddit says. Don't blame the movies for you not seeking them out.

Mikethebest78 Mar 24, 2026 -2

Just another guy with an opinion out here but the rise of the superhero film hard alot to do with it. Films became standardized kind of AI before there was AI the model became what movie can make money V. what movies are fun or interesting. You can coast on that for a long time but eventually everything becomes old hat and suddenly all those francize movies no one wants to see anymore. COVID also didn't help matters. Before COVID I went to the movies at least twice a month but I have a home theater now I can stay home and watch what I want to watch. Streaming has to take some of the blame as well in the old days if there was a c*** movie it was released on VHS and no one heard of it agian but now it is given as much fanfair as the next Netflix release. You can't tell whats good and whats bad anymore none of the old rules make sense. So on the rare occasion when a movie is actually somewhat decent all it has to do is be better then average. All of the big hits of the last half decade or so starting with Top Gun Maverick really weren't good films they were just entertaining and not awful that is not a particularly high bar anymore.

Good_Mirror6002 Mar 24, 2026 -6

They all follow a really bad formula.

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Why does it feel like there aren’t as many truly good movies anymore?

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52 Comments