The folks at moki.tv have created a visual chart detailing the quality of movies and how polarizing the reviews have become over the last 20 years. This is particularly interesting given the media buzz surrounding some recent stories about the death of the original-story blockbuster as of late (something I reported here on The Movie Blog earlier this week).
Movie studios, they say, are taking the easy way out: recycling old ideas that are a sure bet to attract audiences, regardless of quality. Comic book sequels for the geeks. Twilight adaptations for the teenage girls. We process a lot of movie data here at Moki.tv, so we wondered whether this trend would be observable.
We looked at the 20 most popular movies each year, for the past 20 years. The key, we think, is to look for movies that some love and some hate, which is the likely profile of a bad movie that’s “safely” manufactured for an existing fanbase. In other words, movies that are polarizing.
They have a bunch of great charts and graphs made from their results. I really encourage everyone interested in clicking over to them and checking them out. I couldn’t share them here because they are interactive (it’s actually really cool).
I said in the last blog on the matter, I don’t think movies are dead. There is definitely a creative shift occurring, and it is fascinating to me the way that shift is actually readable in critical and audience reaction on these charts. In particular, the way movies are becoming more “love it or hate it” polarizing is really amazing, and something I’ve noticed is true amongst my friends.
I also think this whole subject is polarizing, based on the comments from the last article. What does everyone think of this new info?
