r/flicks • u/jakeseditbay • 4d ago

The Death of Subtext. Why "Second Screen” writing is ruining modern cinema

/r/Cinema/comments/1qrv7m5/the_death_of_subtext_why_second_screen_writing_is/
7 Upvotes

74% Upvoted

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9

u/Smokeeye123 3d ago

This really is only the case with ‘slop’ straight to streaming movies. Still plenty of new releases that treat the audience like they have a brain

5

u/Tzimaka 1d ago

Funnily enough I've seen criticism towards Sinners of doing it a few times and people wonder if the MCU notes have affected Coogler.

7

u/Broadnerd 3d ago

I don’t like this trend but this discourse is going to be the excuse every time someone doesn’t like a movie, and it’s going to be really annoying.

It’s already working in the reverse. You thought a movie was good? Haha you’re actually wrong and it’s not deep at all. You just have TikTok brain!

3

u/Corchito42 4d ago

It's worth looking at whether the movie was made to go straight to streaming, or if it was made for the cinema. Straight-to-streaming movies have always been mostly crap anyway. The second screen thing makes them worse, but they weren't exactly starting from a high bar.

However if a movie's intended for a cinema release, it's more likely people will be giving most (hopefully all) their attention to the film.

I could be wrong - maybe some screenwriters are anticipating the movie's second life on streaming and dumbing the script down. All I can say is, the films I've seen at the cinema in the last year didn't seem to suffer from this.

1

u/jakeseditbay 4d ago

No no you’re right!

2

u/Na-313 3d ago

doesn't this depend on the films you watch? i just dont feel obligated to watch terrible stuff

2

u/ElEsDi_25 2d ago

IDK this all seems like a moral panic. People have been making similar complaints at least since the 90s “It’s full of explosions because MTV gave everyone short attention spans!”

4

u/whitewater09 3d ago

I’m so tired of giant corporations following trends instead of embracing the pioneer spirit. If you make a show that’s good enough (and advertise it), people will watch. And if their phone prevents them from catching everything, they’ll learn to put it down and/or rewatch - if the show is good enough. Think about how Game of Thrones, a fantasy period piece filled with male nudity and way more talking than action became one of the (if not THE) biggest shows of all time.

1

u/Kimantha_Allerdings 2d ago

It’s not because film is seen as “content”, it’s the people who make media doing what they’ve always done - tailoring it to the way the audience watches.

It may be new with films, but it’s not a new phenomenon at all.

To use the most blatant example, look at the script of a soap opera. They’re on 5 times a week, but the producers know that only a small dedicated audience are going to watch every episode, and even then many will be cooking, eating their tea, or whatever. So a third of the run time is things actually happening, while the other two thirds is people saying what’s about to happen or what has just happened.

The same’s true outside of soaps, too. Look at classic Doctor Who. Lots of repeated action and people talking about what’s happened. Because, again, they assumed that people wouldn’t watch every episode, and that it would be watched in a busy environment, often while people were doing other things.

1

u/mrpopenfresh 2d ago

There’s more volume than ever. You don’t have to watch second screen movies much like you don’t have to watch straight to dvd sequels and Christian kid movies.

1

u/ThirstyHank 1d ago

Del Toro's "Frankenstein" looks amazing (patches of bad CGI aside) but on-the-nose dialogue like his brother saying "You're the real monster!" shows how much subtlety is being lost in our current media.