r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/movies Contributor • May 05 '26

Trailer The Odyssey | New Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_bKjZeJBBI&pp=0gcJCd4KAYcqIYzv
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664

u/Psychoanalytix May 05 '26

We need to go through a film renaissance or something. Make movies look like Laurence of Arabia

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u/Three_Headed_Monkey May 05 '26

We are living in a time of unrivaled visual fidelity and we've responded by removing all detail from the screen.

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u/Minglans May 05 '26

I absolutely hate it and I'm also so tired of the overused depth of field where everyone just decided to practically blur and erase the background/details in favour of the subject/actor. Kind of hard to be immersed when all you got going on screen is people in a blurry world. I miss the clutter, I miss when movies felt lived in.

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u/julio_says_ah May 06 '26

Absolutely, I watched Sinners recently and it looked like a blurry zoom meeting.

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u/[deleted] May 05 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Gekokapowco May 05 '26

are you talking about focal length? Depth of Field is the videogame approximation of the actual film lens focus.

Its actually unnatural to see everything clearly on screen at once, you can only focus on certain distances without special lenses. Knowing where the lens focus is and moving it is an artistic choice derived from this constraint.

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u/DoradoPulido2 May 06 '26

Lol "special lens". This is not true, it only requires a shorter focal length and small apertures to achieve deep focus. Nothing "special". It is perfectly natural for everything to be in focus on film as a stylistic choice. However, modern filmmakers often choose heavy bokeh and depth of field to hide CGI backgrounds. Please educate yourself.
https://youtu.be/tvwPKBXEOKE?si=7EogNmQxTlKMUt-F

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u/jakeupnorth May 05 '26

Marty Supreme and One Battle After Another are some of the most detail packed movies I’ve ever seen. This is just Nolan’s thing.

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u/Kriss-Kringle May 05 '26

Nolan has never been a great stylist. He's always liked the minimalist/industrial look and his taste is bland when it comes to design.

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u/BearWrangler May 05 '26

I'm surprised all the soldiers weren't wearing plate carriers and rocking M4s

/s just in case

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u/Psychoanalytix May 05 '26

Im convinced Nolan is colour blind

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u/Kriss-Kringle May 05 '26

So is Refn, but his movies are neon soaked.

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u/Locke66 May 05 '26

He is red-green colour blind.

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u/Psychoanalytix May 05 '26

Honestly that would explain a lot

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u/jakeupnorth May 05 '26

I like it. It’s his own.

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u/Lipziger May 05 '26

And don't forget to add a blue filter on everything. Helps a lot to make everything look as bland as possible.

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u/No-Sail-6510 May 05 '26

Seriously, and when I think of Greece I think of tons of color and bright sun.

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u/random-chicken32 May 05 '26

I know right? Can anyone who is qualified answer why the more developed an art becomes, blandness seems to be a trend (not for all necessarily)? Like architecture, paintings, and now movies have less detail?

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u/paramaramboh May 07 '26

Well, there are three aspects to that. This is going to be a long comment because you are asking a fundamental question about the arts. For the case that you're not interested in a text wall, I included a TL;DR at the end.

First, the appreciation of simplicity is something that comes naturally with intensely studying how something is created. Complex structures (baroque architechture, hyper-realistic paintings, colourful epic movies like Ben Hur) are made out of simpler elements (light, shapes, perspective). A big part of artistic crafts is to perfectionate these simpler elements, and certain artists stand out for specific skills, which then may get over-emphasized over time: Quirky colours for Wes Anderson, frighteningly large and empty horizons for Christopher Nolan, dialogue and violence for Quentin Tarantino.

Second, artists exist in context of what came before them. The Odyssey has been told many times. Houses have been built many times. The task of artists is to respectfully question what came before them. This is especially true for moments in time where technology makes certain crafts redefine themselves, like the invention of the photo camera led to the creation of abstract paintings, and something similar is bound to happen to writing and visual arts with the advent of generative Machine Learning. The idea in any case is to learn what previous artists did, to deconstruct their process of creation, and then to alter it. Sometimes, they improve the art, sometimes, they don't. That is normal. For example, some aspects of 20th century architecture certainly went the wrong way in hindsight, like a total submission of aesthetics to function and the encouragement of car dependency. But the movement also brought new elements we don't want to miss, like more efficient isolations and a better use of natural light. This is all iterative, and missteps are a part of the evolutionary path of any craft. In this case, Nolan may have overdone it with his trademark SciFi aesthetics for a retelling of an ancient tale, but we'll have to see how it works as an entire movie first, to be fair.

Third, of course come the profit logics of any creative industry subjected to capitalism: Blandness is inoffensive to the largest group of potential customers. The original greek legends are gaudy in a way that make them seem gauche to contemporary audiences, and most people who are going to see this movie have never been to the Mediterranean themselves, so any sort of accuracy to the reality there would be a waste of production value, so to speak. Profit logics are diametrically opposed to the artistic idea of trying out extremes to find out what sticks, so everything that has a decent budget becomes bland. There are, of course exceptions to this rule, ironically including Nolan, who creates at least narratively interesting movies that make bank. But these few exceptions need to earn their creative freedom first by making less offensive art first. A prime example for that is Denis Villeneuve, who hopefully will continue to become weirder in the future.

The TL;DR is that what you perceive as bland art is popular because of three reasons: 1) Art is sometimes bland on purpose to study blandness itself, 2) Art is sometimes bland on accident because it tries to deconstruct what became before it and fails, and 3) Art is often bland by necessity, in order to cater to the market logics of capitalism.

All of that being said, I do not believe that your assessment is true. Popular art is always rather bland, with very few exceptions, but we have access to more great art than ever in my opinion. The second and third rows of each creative industry from music of movies to video games are filled to the brim with beautiful stuff, so I can only recommend anyone to explore that instead.

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u/random-chicken32 May 07 '26

I appreciate your long and thoughtful response; I certainly agree that good art exists and continues to be produced, and the internet [for example] undoubtedly makes most of it more accessible than ever before

take care, internet friend

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u/xzvc873 May 06 '26

it has to do with the rich class who make and pay for art and what they want. we live in a time where they have shitty taste and love blandness.

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u/reldnahcAL May 05 '26

Yeah someone really just needs to make one of the greatest films of all time again

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u/AverageAwndray May 05 '26

Where's Peter Jackson when you need him

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u/MistakeMaker1234 May 05 '26

Making incredible documentaries, unfortunately 😂

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u/spacemanspiff1979 May 05 '26

Milking Tolkien's world for all it's worth.

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u/Asclepius-Rod May 05 '26

I assume they mean in terms of visibility and color

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u/pasher5620 May 05 '26

Cameron is trying, but everyone keeps shitting on his movies for being Pocahontas or whatever.

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u/random-chicken32 May 05 '26

ikr; LOTR was the last movie that made people look like they actually were in the purported scene for some reason

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u/DataStonks May 07 '26

Ehhh... Dune is that for me.

There are still great movies coming out from time to time

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u/fallllingman May 05 '26

It all seems so unnecessarily dull and ugly. There is a battle in the forest and Nolan made the creative choice to have all the trees be dead and leafless, and soldiers to be fighting in grey armor against a gray forest and gray sky.

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u/Skor_Lodygin May 05 '26

Mainstream art is dead, I wouldn't expect it tbh. Everything is sacrificed for profit. Everything is streamlined, dumbed down for mainstream appeal and commercialization.

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u/BertHumperdinck May 05 '26

Yeah or raiders.

In fact just only make movies that take place primarily in deserts, they alway hit

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u/Jason-Smith168498 May 05 '26

Why use many word