It’s so true what you’ve pointed out about the analysis of SINNERS’s success. People are going to try and reconstruct it based on superficial traits — genre, target audience, aspect ratio (lol) — when what audiences are really connecting with is simply that it was made by someone with a genuine creative vision and the skill to masterfully realize it. Alas, “Quality” is too vague a word to train an algorithm on.
This is great, and admittedly I'm quite guilty of having done this in the past - can't help but hang my head in at least some shame over all of that. Thanks again for this piece, Esther!
Think the box office stuff relates to a sort of Moneyball-ification of everything now. Did it perform to its "relative value," as if the budget signifies what that movie is worth entirely. So dumb! Couldn't agree more with what you wrote here
Absolutely! A big part of this that I didn't mention is the explosion of billion-dollar grossers in the last decade or so. Prior to 2010 there were exactly *four* films to EVER break a billion worldwide (Avatar was the fifth). There have been SIXTEEN films to break a billion since the end of 2019, and that's with Covid shutdowns and major industry strikes.
If you open Microsoft Edge the homepage is just a bunch of headlines like "Brad Pitt's movie debuts to higher rottentomatoes score than Bruce Willis action classic" or "Movie hits big on streaming despite low rottentomatoes score"
It’s so true what you’ve pointed out about the analysis of SINNERS’s success. People are going to try and reconstruct it based on superficial traits — genre, target audience, aspect ratio (lol) — when what audiences are really connecting with is simply that it was made by someone with a genuine creative vision and the skill to masterfully realize it. Alas, “Quality” is too vague a word to train an algorithm on.
Great post as always, Esther, thanks!
This is great, and admittedly I'm quite guilty of having done this in the past - can't help but hang my head in at least some shame over all of that. Thanks again for this piece, Esther!
Think the box office stuff relates to a sort of Moneyball-ification of everything now. Did it perform to its "relative value," as if the budget signifies what that movie is worth entirely. So dumb! Couldn't agree more with what you wrote here
Absolutely! A big part of this that I didn't mention is the explosion of billion-dollar grossers in the last decade or so. Prior to 2010 there were exactly *four* films to EVER break a billion worldwide (Avatar was the fifth). There have been SIXTEEN films to break a billion since the end of 2019, and that's with Covid shutdowns and major industry strikes.
If you open Microsoft Edge the homepage is just a bunch of headlines like "Brad Pitt's movie debuts to higher rottentomatoes score than Bruce Willis action classic" or "Movie hits big on streaming despite low rottentomatoes score"