Visualization: Movies Are Getting Worse

Two things:<p>* I don't think polarization is a good signal for poor quality; I would rather suggest it means a more niche product, more highly focused. That the niche being served is largely adolescents is unfortunate.<p>* I think big-budget movies have been getting more conservative and predictable, but I would hazard a guess that it's due to financial industry turmoil and consequently less desire for risk taking.

Interesting. I'd just been thinking about this. The last two new releases I tried watching were so bad that I couldn't finish either of them. I know this is only 2 data points, but they were both bad in the same way: they were completely predictable. That's something you commonly see in a declining medium. People recycle old ideas instead of having new ones.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spolia" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spolia</a>

This article makes two huge assumptions:<p>1) Critical meta-ratings as THE measure of quality<p>2) The Top 20 popular movies per year as a representation of the entire year's quality.<p>The author's final result seems to be that movie studios prefer to make movies that have a built-in audience (at least for big-budget blockbuster movies).

Although I agree with the statement in general, I have to ask: is polarization really a good measure of declining quality? With ticket prices these days, maybe a higher percentage of audiences are more likely to think it was good so they don't feel like they wasted money...<p>Either way, nice visualization and it's always fun to read catty reviews about bad movies.

Its a really interesting article, but their methodology doesn't support their conclusion. I'm willing to accept critical rankings as a measure of quality, since I can't think of a better way of mapping the subjective notion of quality to a quantitative measure. There are still some dodgey things being done here though:<p>1. Polarization as a measure of quality 2. Choice of the top 20 movies as a selection measure.<p>The article should really be title: "Popular movies are becoming more polarizing". Though I concede that blogs like this are written to attract hits and "Movies are getting worse" is probably more likely to achieve that.

Huge Moki.TV fan (<a href="http://moki.tv/2481" rel="nofollow">http://moki.tv/2481</a>). But also a huge movie fan. I entirely disagree.<p>Think about this years movies:<p>The Social Network<p>The Kings Speech<p>Inception<p>Black Swan<p>True Grit<p>Will all almost certainly become classics.

One explanation behind increasing polarization could be the internet.<p>I would assume that there are more movie critics now, or at least critics are more visible. Thanks to sites like Rotten Tomatoes, even a local newspaper critic can have global reach.<p>Due to this visibility, it's harder for critics to stand out. The easiest way to stand out is to be extreme or contrarian which would lead to more polarization.

The appropriate measure is not whether bad movies are made; (or popular) it's whether <i>good</i> films are still produced. There is some room for concern - mid-budget films for adults like, for example, 'Master and Commander' are essentially dead. The economics of film push studios to make blockbusters or low-budget films. Still, there are enough good low-budget films still being produced that I won't give in to despair just yet.

&#62; The key, we think, is to look for movies that some love and some hate, which is the likely profile of a bad movie that's "safely" manufactured for an existing fanbase.<p>But according to the graph, Toy Story 3 was the least polarizing movie of 2010 and that seems like a prime example of a movie "safely" manufactured for an existing fanbase.

The 80s was the greatest decade for movies. Sadly I cannot prove that from this graph.

Why would extremely polarizing movies be an indicator that movies are getting worse? If anything, more polarization would seem to mean that critics are finding movies more difficult to come to consensus on, which could mean that movies are getting MORE complex and nuanced in their storytelling, which in tern could be taken to mean that movies are getting BETTER.

<i>The key, we think, is to look for movies that some love and some hate, which is the likely profile of a bad movie that's "safely" manufactured for an existing fanbase.</i><p>Some people love death metal and some hate it. Some people love classical music and some hate it. Polarization is hardly a quality indicator. Indeed, it seems more like an indicator of memorability.

<i>People recycle old ideas instead of having new ones.</i><p>IMO this is a weak argument - you could say the same thing about startups. When it comes to creative work, it's all about the execution.<p>Just because a story is being retold doesn't automatically make it bad. Similarly, just because a story has been told before doesn't mean you can't tell it again.

If you look closely at the graph, notice that while there are more poorly rated, highly polarizing films, there is also an increase in less polarizing, very highly rated films... They're just hidden because your eyes are drawn upwards to the red. If you only pay attention to the red, it's just a chart about polarization.

Polarization is a measure of the assertiveness of an artist.. the degree to which they have executed an opinionated concept for a specific audience.<p>A niche film should be as highly opinionated as possible, with the objective of both catering to your chosen market and excluding all others intentionally.<p>For example, the musical act Prodigy do not do TV performances. This is a mainstream marketing method that does not appeal to their audience. By avoiding it, they increase their appeal to their true fans, while ignoring uninterested listeners. Likewise, the singer Adele does not perform at music festivals for the same reason.<p>The ideal niche product would repel exactly half the critics and attract the other half. This would create a core of hardcore evangelists, a bigger group of fans, a big group of uninterested bystanders and a small group of haters. The haters and bystanders can mostly be ignored, making marketing super-efficient.<p>Lack of polarization is a measure of beauty and popularity. Beauty is a measure of average-ness and normality. The most beautiful person in a given society is the one that looks the most an average of all the people. The most popular movie is the one that everyone can relate to.. the most profoundly average.<p>Case in point.. the Shawshank Redemption. This is a movie that is consistently voted one of the best ever made, but it's highly rated because of its familiarity. It's a near flawless execution of common mythologies that everyone can relate to: fall from grace, redemption, justice, freedom and so on.<p>Toy Story is another example. Pixar's entire methodology is to distill the world's archetypes and mythologies down into the "perfect" movie with every "i" dotted and every "t" crossed. The result is profoundly familiar, yet kept fresh with just enough plot twists and humour to keep it interesting.<p>Niche movies are just popular movies for specific groups instead of a general audience. Polarization is a measure of how effectively they achieved the goal.

It's all relative, and trying to apply "scientific visualization" to literary criticism is not an especially useful activity. (Applying it to literary markets is another matter...)<p>Interestingly, I liked the Matrix sequels, the 3rd Spiderman movie, and thought the Star Wars prequels were pretty good (though not as good as _Empire_). And having been around at the time depicted in the latest Indiana Jones movie, late 50s early 60s, I enjoyed it tremendously.<p>I'm in my early 50s, and one of the things I've noticed over the years is that I become _less_ critical of movies and literature as I get older. That is to say I'm much more tolerant of elements in a movie or story that would drive me nuts when I was younger.<p>When you are very young, everything is new and wonderful, then you become an adult and suddenly you start to notice that "hey, I've seen this type of story before. And I liked it better then!" Of course most likely the story wasn't all that new when you saw it first, but it was new to _you_. There are very few truly new storie.<p>As you get older, though, you often start looking not at the flash and the surface of stories, but at the quality of execution, at the subtleties of exposition, and the nuance of character. You also can view the story in a larger context, both your own context, and the context of history. And, more importantly, you stop comparing the _qualities_ of works to the _feelings_ you had when you were twelve years old. I can tell you for sure, _nothing_ is ever going to be as much fun as whatever it was that was pushing your buttons when you were a kid.<p>As they used to say in old school science fiction fandom, "the golden age is twelve."<p>Sad, but true. In compensation, though, you do get a possibly deeper appreciation, and, if you let it happen, a broader range of tastes. If you had told me 30-40 years ago that one of my favorite genres would be josei anime and manga I would have laughed in your face; once you'd explained to me what that was...<p>Having said all that, the vast bulk of movies at any given time follows Sturgeon's Law pretty closely. Mostly shit. We remember the gems of the past and in aggregate they seem to add up to a larger sum than the current year's turkeys. I seem to go to the movies about as much as I did in my 20s and seem to be enjoying them at about the same rate.

I think its more that no one is taking the time to write great and compelling stories.<p>It takes time and patience and a lot of effort to create a story like the The Lord of the Rings. And the movies that are really good are ones with a great story behind them.<p>Hollywood seems to be just mining stories from the past. Its gonna run out at some point and all we'll get are sequels.<p>There needs to be some infusion of creativity. "Contemporary" creativity. Ie new but compelling and interesting stories. It seems to be a lost skill.

Might want to mention that your chart works fine in Firefox 4 as well. The "Works best in Google Chrome" gives me eerie memories of the "Best Viewed in Internet Explorer" days.

Anyone know how they created that really nice graph with the mouseovers, filtering, etc?

A bit over 25 years ago, I saw _Top Gun_ and told my girlfriend that people had forgotten how to make movies, though they did know how to make commercials and music videos. I don't think that I was wrong, but I may have implicitly given too much credit to the movie makers of years past.There were a lot of awful movies made during times that at least the film critics look back on with nostalgia.

I'm not sure if I'm reading the visualizations correctly, but thankfully, they put Christopher Nolan on there, so I can have a reference as to whose work is best. ;-)<p>I do have to agree with AndrewO though, there are many movies that I consider to be of the highest quality that I would consider as eliciting heavy polar reactions. Primer is perhaps the best geek example.

It probably hasn't helped that TV can now feature long-running complex shows (Lost, the Sopranos, the Wire, Dexter, Mad Men, the Office, etc) that 2 hour movies can't beat in terms of character exploration and plot depth.

In other news, those damn kids have it too easy these days, had to walk 10 miles, bare foot, in 10 feet of snow, up hill...<p>Sensationalist title and a data visualization that's useless. Try average Rotten Tomatoes score or something, not some random stat with no formula made up on the spot. Seriously, what does "polarizing" actually stand for?<p>This kind of thing has been going on since the beginning of time and will continue until the end of it. Sorry, nothing to see here.

The coolest thing about this is the visualizations. That's great work creating an interactive piece in HTML5.

There was a great article about the decline in the quality of movies in GQ recently. <a href="http://www.gq.com/entertainment/movies-and-tv/201102/the-day-the-movies-died-mark-harris?printable=true" rel="nofollow">http://www.gq.com/entertainment/movies-and-tv/201102/the-day...</a>

As a bit of a tangent, I'd like to mention a movie ranking site I think is pretty underrated <a href="http://www.phi-phenomenon.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.phi-phenomenon.org/</a> which uses some interesting statistical methods to aggregate "best of" lists

Some recent good movies:<p>-Animal Kingdom (Australian crime film)<p>-True Grit (Western)<p>-How to train your dragon (Pixar film)

When were those movie rated? Now or at the time of the release?<p>If they were rated recently then there is obvious bias there. Yes/no?

OT: that website is horrible in Firefox, 100+ assets, 25 secs to the onload event, and afterwards it locks up periodically because of the chartbeat analytics ajax call. In Chrome, it's a breeze, fast load and then completely fluid. Chrome is magic.<p>PS: the Firefox UI freeze on ajax calls seems to be a Mac specific problem.

Eh non-english speaking movies don't exist anymore?

1992 was a good year in movies!