Exactly.. Not to mention Movie stars were freaking Movie Stars, they were the king of the universe, freaking Legends man....
I care about those celebrities as much as I care about the current ones. That is to say I don't really care at all.
Didn't mean to denigrate 1930's Hollywood....main point was that I wonder what the circumstances were surrounding the astronomical success of Gone With the Wind. It's pretty impressive, but there had to be factors involved that catalyzed it like the ridiculous promotion spending of today. Like, did everyone just go to the movies or something? I think teens make up such a huge market today, but not sure if that existed back then. Just curious. And it makes it even more impressive if GWTW was that successful just trouncing every other movie out there when the other movies were also critically acclaimed. Maybe I should watch it someday to see what the madness was all about.
There was much less to be interested in back then. Inter...net. Let's turn turn on the television...oh wait, doesn't exist yet (didn't become mainstream until 1946 or so). Let's watch professional football (1930s)/basketball(1946)...nope not really, no TVs unless you went to a game (and I'm sure it wasn't as easy as today). Don't get me wrong, I respect classic films. At the same time, I don't like hearing people (not you or the other poster per se) always spouting off about how much better things were in "those" days. We have problems here, but let's just be honest media is a lot more interesting now. I'm about as interested in watching a silent film as I am watching a silent version of Avengers (and the Avengers movie would be 100 times more watchable, minus the lack of subtitles).
Exactly You guys don't seem to understand what life was like. There was no internet (and no computers of any kind). No portable music devices (If you wanted portable music, you played a musical instrument). No cable TV... No color TV... No TV at all. People listened to serial shows on a large am radio. Shows like like Little Orphan Annie and The Shadow... on only a handful of available radio stations. Movies were, by far, their primary source of recorded entertainment. Today, we have so much more entertainment options to choose from, it is MUCH more challenging for a movie to bring people to theaters and break records set by older movies.
...correction - record players were probably their primary source of recorded entertainment. Movies were their only source of recorded video entertainment.
U guys make great points but I'm not talking about the availability of technology and whether it was harder for people to get their butts in the movie theater, I'm mainly focusing on film-making, the quality of films that were being made back then to like now.. It's because of the lack of technology and equipment that makes movies back then even more insanely awesome... We've become too jaded as a society to really be that impress nowadays, we get everything instantly with just one click of a button... Have you guys seen Chaplin's Modern Times??? Might be one of the greatest movies I've ever seen... It also doesn't hurt that Chaplin was one of the greatest screen stars of all time, don't matter what era you put him in, he'll shine above them all... <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/GLeDdzGUTq0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Star Wars and Jaws were great movies that were terrible "for" movies. It pretty much ended the era of deeply personal films based on relatable characters not explosions. After all, who wants to make a mere 30 million when you can make 300 million. I liked Avengers, and will be in line early for the third Batman movie, but I would not watch a Transformers flick for free...and I don't expect any new American movie to find its way unto my personal top 20 for some years, as long as we are obsessed with spectacle.
At what point in this thread did people stop talking about the movie. I just saw the movie yesterday and came to register that it was a piece of crap. I wasn't really intending to see it in the first place because I'm a bit burned out on comic book movies. But, it was getting good buzz and whatnot and was led to believe they had done a good job with this one. Hulk was cool. Robert Downey Jr is charismatic. Johannsen is hot. But, the writing wasn't terribly good, more like a series of justifications for mass mayhem. And that's about all the movie really was, just hours and hours and hours of destruction. Some of the destruction was cool, but it actually got boring after awhile. And Captain America was just as lame a character as I thought he was as a kid.
I agree with you on every part of this. But, my question to you, were you not entertained? Going into the movie, you had to know that everything you said was going to happen. Super hero movies don't usually have award winning writing. A movie with the Hulk, Ironman, etc etc is obviously going to center around fighting and destruction. They already had character development in the previous individual movies, so you can't expect much of that. I enjoyed the movie. I didn't come in thinking I was going to be blown away and this would rank up there with my favorite movies like Pulp Fiction, Shawshank, etc. The public like mass mayhem. They like watching stuff blow up on screen (even CGI) and not having to think. That's how Michael Bay still gets work. Captain America sucks.
Besides other peoples comments, you need to keep in mind there was no television. This resulted in 2 things: a greater percentage of people went to the movie theaters instead of waiting to see on video or on TV and good movies were repeatedly re-released every 5-10 years. Gone With the Wind was in theaters in the 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s. I even think I saw it in the 70s on the big screen.
