Author Topic: When did you notice your favorite films showed their age?  (Read 1363 times)

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Offline Accelerando

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When did you notice your favorite films showed their age?
« on: January 23, 2018, 01:15:14 AM »
I watched Field of Dreams on Netflix last night. It has always been one of my favorite movies growing up in the 90's. When the credits rolled, I looked at my girlfriend slightly bewildered, and asked "Is it me, or did that look like an old film?" Never in my 30 years of existence did I watch that film and was like "That movie was made in 1989!"

Tonight, we saw Netflix dropped The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring into its library. That film might be my favorite film ever. It's the movie that inspired me to go into the film production industry, which I'm working in today. By the time Frodo and Sam leave Hobbiton...I was like "Babe...this movie looks like it was made 17 years ago!"

Not saying that it lessened the quality of both those films...I mean, The Lord of the Rings is still one of the greatest cinematic achievements of all time, and still looks great. Still top in my "Films I would like to see in the theater again". Maybe it was because we watched it on Netflix and not on my Blu-Ray set...but there's something that would make it look like an older film to the eyes of a teenager.

By the way, people born in 2000 turn 18 this year.

Anyway, what are some of your favorite films or a film in general where you were like "Holy shit im getting old."
« Last Edit: January 23, 2018, 01:32:47 AM by Accelerando »

Offline Logain Ablar

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Re: When did you notice your favorite films showed their age?
« Reply #1 on: January 23, 2018, 02:08:11 AM »
Interesting topic! I was talking with a friend yesterday about the The Fast And The Furious movies. I've only really seen the first two, but I was saying to him that the first movie was pretty much Point Break with cars. He'd never heard of Point Break and I couldn't believe it.

It was one of my favourite movies as a teenager in the 90s, but having watched it recently, it is definitely showing its age. Still a great movie though.

Also, in work recently, we had a discussion about The Goonies. One guy had the audacity to suggest that it was also showing its age and wasn't as awesome as everybody else knows it is. Nobody speaks to that guy anymore... ;)

I also love the LOTR movies. I think the thing that might age them is the CGI. What they did at the time was groundbreaking, especially the likes of Gollum, modelling large numbers of people in battle scenes etc, but there have definitely been advances in technology since then. I'd say that all the non-CGI shots with actual sets and those of the natural scenery of NZ will still hold up pretty well.

Offline MirrorMask

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Re: When did you notice your favorite films showed their age?
« Reply #2 on: January 23, 2018, 02:28:29 AM »
Also, in work recently, we had a discussion about The Goonies. One guy had the audacity to suggest that it was also showing its age and wasn't as awesome as everybody else knows it is. Nobody speaks to that guy anymore... ;)

I never saw the Goonies (yeah, troubled childhood  ;D) and a friend insisted I would watch it some years ago. Sorry to confirm what the other audacious guy said, but it's definitively a product of its era  :D

I also love the LOTR movies. I think the thing that might age them is the CGI. What they did at the time was groundbreaking, especially the likes of Gollum, modelling large numbers of people in battle scenes etc, but there have definitely been advances in technology since then. I'd say that all the non-CGI shots with actual sets and those of the natural scenery of NZ will still hold up pretty well.

I agree that LOTR still holds up pretty well, I don't think it will ever looks old to me.
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Offline Logain Ablar

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Re: When did you notice your favorite films showed their age?
« Reply #3 on: January 23, 2018, 02:36:22 AM »
I never saw the Goonies (yeah, troubled childhood  ;D) and a friend insisted I would watch it some years ago. Sorry to confirm what the other audacious guy said, but it's definitively a product of its era  :D

Oh dear oh dear, not another one..  :lol

Offline bosk1

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Re: When did you notice your favorite films showed their age?
« Reply #4 on: January 23, 2018, 06:55:56 AM »
Yeah, I know what you mean.  This is a tough one.  I can't say when I noticed.  But I definitely notice.

Kind of related to that, there are movies where the plot is either obsolete or becoming obsolete due to technology.  For instance, The Matrix came up in conversation the other day as we were all in the car, along with ne of my son's friends, who is 14 like my oldest son.  He made a comment that something was a "glitch in the matrix."  When I asked him if he knew what that meant, he said he had actually never seen the movie, but just that that quote had become a meme of sorts.  My son hadn't seen it either, and I was thinking maybe we should watch it soon.  And that got me thinking how some things in that film are getting to a point where they don't really work.  The cell phones, for instance, look ancient.  And pay phones really don't exist anymore.  I feel like if we don't watch it soon, there are things that just won't even make sense in a few years.  :lol  There are plenty of other films that fit that as well.  For instance, while I am not a big horror guy, I think the first Scream film was brilliant.  But that film was released at a time when, although cell phones existed, they weren't ubiquitous.  The tension and creepiness of the entire opening sequence with Drew Barrymore derive in great part from the fact that the killer is using a cell phone and is actually there outside.  Nowadays, that tension would be gone.  Of course the killer would have a cell phone!  He was probably sitting in his car outside the victim's house playing Candy Crush before murdering her!
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Offline MirrorMask

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Re: When did you notice your favorite films showed their age?
« Reply #5 on: January 23, 2018, 07:04:40 AM »
Cellphones really killed all the "Isolated away from everyone" scenarios, really  :lol

There are also cultural changes that suddenly make a movie look so dated. If I had watched it back in the day it was released I would have probably enjoyed it more, but I saw the '90s movie Dazed and Confused by Richard Linklater (awesome soundtrack), about the last day of school of a group of various teenagers, and even if it was listed as comedy I was almost horrified as seeing portrated as normal and comedic "teens will be teens" stuff the vicious and active stalking of freshman boys to phisically beat them up, or the casual slapping on the ass of girls who shrugged it away with a smile.

Also I wonder how the new audiences for It (Pennywise of course) would react to see the 1990 miniseries. I was never a big fan of horror so I never watched it back in the day, and I watched it last year or so... and boy, the spider at the end was horrible and laughable  :D also the helldogs of Ghostbusters I reckon were pretty terrible, but Ghostbusters has absolutely no flaws at all so that's fine.
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Online El Barto

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Re: When did you notice your favorite films showed their age?
« Reply #6 on: January 23, 2018, 08:43:19 PM »
Anyway, what are some of your favorite films or a film in general where you were like "Holy shit im getting old."
All of my favorite films are older than you.  :lol

It does interest me how social awareness has made older movies problematic. Modern audiences would have a ton of trouble with older movies. Blazing Saddles, anyone? Fast Times? Hell, in the original Pink Panther (1963) the always gallant David Niven essentially tries to date-rape the shit out of the always lovely Claudia Cardinale. The scene was actually fairly charming at the time, but there'd be hell to pay if it were shot the same way today. None of these things matter much to me, partly because I was around when much of this stuff was still perfectly acceptable, or at least not frowned upon, and partly because I'm intelligent enough to recognize that things shown in movies aren't real. Not sure that applies to the younger generation, who certainly weren't around to appreciate the authenticity of Dazed and Confused.

Last time I tried to watch T2 it was pretty bad. In that case I think it stands out because much of its brilliance was in how great it looked.
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Re: When did you notice your favorite films showed their age?
« Reply #7 on: January 24, 2018, 06:43:43 AM »
Great movies transcend the effects.  I've got no problem with T2 - I still think it holds up pretty well.  Of course movies are going to "age", and certain aspects (eg, cell phones) aren't going to hold the same relevance today as they did when they were made.  That will hold for every decade - past and future.  War Games for instance, and the dial-up modem that the phone handset is physically 'plugged' in to.  In 20 years or so, when self-driving cars are more ubiquitous, will people be saying every movie with someone driving a vehicle is 'dated'?
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Offline The Walrus

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Re: When did you notice your favorite films showed their age?
« Reply #8 on: January 24, 2018, 07:30:31 AM »
I still regularly watch Uncle Buck (I love that film). 1989. Have a Blu-ray copy. With each passing year it shows its age more and more yet it still looks amazing and holds up today. I miss comedies like that, before the cell phone and Internet era. If you've ever watched that film, take note of just how little phones are used (beyond say the first 10-15 minutes). Not even a hint of a computer in the whole film, either. Pretty cool to me. John Hughes was the man (so was John Candy).

Now that said I feel like Planes Trains & Automobiles shows its age about ten times more than UB... but it's still a good film.
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Online soupytwist

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Re: When did you notice your favorite films showed their age?
« Reply #9 on: January 24, 2018, 07:42:36 AM »
80's fashion and hair styles tends to have aged really, really badly - even something like Terminator 1 isn't immune to this, some of Sarah's outfits/big hair - yeah....

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Re: When did you notice your favorite films showed their age?
« Reply #10 on: January 24, 2018, 08:12:45 AM »
Great movies transcend the effects.  I've got no problem with T2 - I still think it holds up pretty well.  Of course movies are going to "age", and certain aspects (eg, cell phones) aren't going to hold the same relevance today as they did when they were made.  That will hold for every decade - past and future.  War Games for instance, and the dial-up modem that the phone handset is physically 'plugged' in to.  In 20 years or so, when self-driving cars are more ubiquitous, will people be saying every movie with someone driving a vehicle is 'dated'?
I think what I realized was that T2 was a good movie rather than a great one. It became great when it was a huge spectacle to be seen in theaters. Now that the spectacle is commonplace, and the special effects pretty average, it falls back to just being a good movie, and at times somewhat cheesy.

The thing about self driving cars is interesting. At some point we'll start seeing car chases where the tension is in which driver can hack and reprogram their car faster than the other. Sounds thrilling.
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Offline The Walrus

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Re: When did you notice your favorite films showed their age?
« Reply #11 on: January 24, 2018, 08:26:09 AM »
Great movies transcend the effects.  I've got no problem with T2 - I still think it holds up pretty well.  Of course movies are going to "age", and certain aspects (eg, cell phones) aren't going to hold the same relevance today as they did when they were made.  That will hold for every decade - past and future.  War Games for instance, and the dial-up modem that the phone handset is physically 'plugged' in to.  In 20 years or so, when self-driving cars are more ubiquitous, will people be saying every movie with someone driving a vehicle is 'dated'?
I think what I realized was that T2 was a good movie rather than a great one. It became great when it was a huge spectacle to be seen in theaters. Now that the spectacle is commonplace, and the special effects pretty average, it falls back to just being a good movie, and at times somewhat cheesy.

The thing about self driving cars is interesting. At some point we'll start seeing car chases where the tension is in which driver can hack and reprogram their car faster than the other. Sounds thrilling.

Thanks for spoiling Fast and the Furious 37, EB :(
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Offline Accelerando

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Re: When did you notice your favorite films showed their age?
« Reply #12 on: January 31, 2018, 01:08:03 PM »
Hmm...it's been a few years since i watched T2, but I remember still feeling that was a great film to watch. Guess I still need to pull out the blu-ray!

I think with me having watched these films, it was moreso the grainy look of the movie than it was props, wardrobe, hair, etc. But maybe, especially for Field of Dreams, those are elements that would make a movie look old.

Let's touch on music for a moment. Because we watched Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, and while that film had that grainy look of an older movie, we realized the score made the movie sound and feel like an action/comedy movie from the early to mid 90s....the electric drums, the guitar roar, the keys. These tropes make a film less timeless than let's say John William's score to E.T. or Alan Silvestri's Back To The Future. We know that those scores came from the 80's based on movie knowledge, but those scores are timeless that if you listened to them today, it still sounds fresh.

Offline bosk1

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Re: When did you notice your favorite films showed their age?
« Reply #13 on: January 31, 2018, 01:45:04 PM »
Hmm...it's been a few years since i watched T2, but I remember still feeling that was a great film to watch.

I think it is.  The only issue I have is that I REALLY have a hard time with the motorcycle jump scene.  From the time the opening credits start, I just developing this uncontrollable anxiety in the back of my mind leading up to that scene where the inner bosk is shouting, "You can totally tell it's Arnold's stunt double and not Arnold!  I hope my mind is just playing tricks on me and it isn't as obvious as I remember it!  Why can't I think of anything else but that scene even though we're still a long way away form it?!  Why?!  WHY?!"  :dangerwillrobinson:

I'm getting all tense just thinking about it.
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Re: When did you notice your favorite films showed their age?
« Reply #14 on: January 31, 2018, 02:06:29 PM »
Hmm...it's been a few years since i watched T2, but I remember still feeling that was a great film to watch. Guess I still need to pull out the blu-ray!

I think with me having watched these films, it was moreso the grainy look of the movie than it was props, wardrobe, hair, etc. But maybe, especially for Field of Dreams, those are elements that would make a movie look old.

Let's touch on music for a moment. Because we watched Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, and while that film had that grainy look of an older movie, we realized the score made the movie sound and feel like an action/comedy movie from the early to mid 90s....the electric drums, the guitar roar, the keys. These tropes make a film less timeless than let's say John William's score to E.T. or Alan Silvestri's Back To The Future. We know that those scores came from the 80's based on movie knowledge, but those scores are timeless that if you listened to them today, it still sounds fresh.
I don't guess dated soundtracks bother me much, as long as it's reflective of the film. Like I said, I watch a ton of old films and for the most part the soundtrack always fits. Beverly Hills Cop is the perfect example of a late 80s soundtrack and though it makes me think "oh, late 80s" it's not a problem because so does everything else about the movie. Sometimes they really suck ass, Scarface might take the crown there, but even if the movie itself isn't necessarily time specific the film and the way it was made certainly is. Scarface made nowadays would be a very different movie and the soundtrack would reflect that.

Thinking about crappy 80s soundtracks has now put me in the mood to watch To Live and Die in LA again. Great movie. Top 10 car chase. A sickening amount of Wang Chung.
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Offline pg1067

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Re: When did you notice your favorite films showed their age?
« Reply #15 on: January 31, 2018, 03:37:50 PM »
I don't know if this quite fits with the original question, but a couple summers ago we showed Ferris Bueller's Day Off to our kids who were then 14 and 12.  I was taken aback with the amount of cursing in it.  I simply didn't remember that aspect of the movie.  I don't think you'd see that sort of thing in a PG-13 movie these days.  Of course, that was all aside of how "80s" the movie looks.
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Offline jammindude

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Re: When did you notice your favorite films showed their age?
« Reply #16 on: January 31, 2018, 10:14:16 PM »
Dead Poets Society....

When I was late teens/early 20's, I thought that was the greatest movie on planet earth....now it just pisses me off.

If Neil was really that talented, he could have just played ball for one more year, and then (as per his dad's own words) "do whatever the hell he wanted"....but NNNOOOOOOO  "I have to be an actor NOW or I'm going to kill myself!!!  WAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!"   And every kid that stood on his desk?  ....is now working at McDonalds.     They could have infiltrated from within the system...BUT NOOOOOOOO, I have to make a statement at the cost of my entire future!!!

I love the character of Mr. Keating....but the kids are all freakin stupid as hell.
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Offline SystematicThought

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Re: When did you notice your favorite films showed their age?
« Reply #17 on: January 31, 2018, 10:18:48 PM »
I’m gonna have to think of some that show their age when I watch them now. Recently I sat down and watched Saving Private Ryan and I was expecting that movie to not age well in terms of effects and overall quality. I was wrong though, it still really holds up well. On HD, it looks like it could have been released this year. Maybe it’s nostalgia, but I was impressed
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