One thing I've noticed is that is seems more recent movies lack character observations. Everything is done is in service of the plot.
I think it was in Doctor No there was a conversation between Q, M and Bond. Bond's favourite weapon was the Beretta, and Q explained their downsides. Bond was ordered to use the Walther (IIRC) as a replacement. It was in a box. At the end of the scene, Bond picks up the box, surreptitiously hiding the Beretta underneath. As he is about to walk out, M, continuing with his writing and without looking up, says to Bond, "Oh and Bond, leave the Beretta behind on your way out." (Or something like that).
It's a small scene, but it tells you a lot about the characters. It just adds to storytelling, even though it isn't a key scene.
Another example is the difference between the original Robocop and the remake. In the original, the villain Boddicker is hailed into the police station. Battered and bruised, he spits blood on some paperwork on a desk and says "Just give me my fucking phone call."
How badass is that? The villains in the remake were much less interesting, and it made for a weaker movie. I guess modern screenwriters /could/ write decent if they wanted to, but I assume that gunning for a 13 certificate really neuters the possibilities. I also suspect that there is more influence by the producers, who insist that certain things need to be in certain ways "for the demographics". So what you end up with is a story that's bent to suit the demographics, rather than just telling a good story.
I call that sort of "good" plots "character-oriented plot".
One best example is Breaking Bad, which is not movie, but it is a great show anyway. The episode of Fly is a good example how well BB portrayed character's personality.
with character-oriented plot, we have character first, and let them play drama. It is like having initial condition and seeing how things evolve in Ordinary Differential Equation. Everything seems natural. I don't think screen play is not that simple, but good plot makes people think in that way.
On the other hand, with plot for the sake of plot, there is a predetermined plot
at the outset, and as the show progresses, the actions and personalities of the characters are adjusted accordingly. There is no real personality there, just a cog in the wheel.
Breaking Bad is my usual example of bad plot building. I'm sure I haven't given it a fair chance as it's universally so highly liked, but the plot events were very much built up so that you could see what's coming. You are already anticipating some events, or they feel predictable and made up, as if precisely to serve the show. They don't come through as authentic.
I stopped watching Breaking Bad in the first or second season due to this poor plot building, and Better Call Saul after a couple of episodes when I realized it's just more of that very same style of bad plotting. The difference to well written shows such as Sopranos is like night and day.
Negative comments about Breaking Bad and pointing out its flaws seems to often receive controversial reactions. I suppose it's because it's the favourite show for so many.
Well, if you only watched 1.5 seasons and you have this strong an opinion about it, you deserve the downvotes. Like any good story, the ending is completely inevitable from the outset, when if you don't always see it coming. I hate when stories are unpredictable in an unearned way, just to be surprising, particularly when it betrays who the characters actually are.
I'm not claiming I got the overarching plot or character development of the series. It was the small plot hooks during the episodes that I found poor enough to make the show unwatchable. I've stopped watching a bunch of other shows for the same reason so it's not exclusive to Breaking Bad, it's just the most popular show to suffer from this style of writing.
The thing with tropes is that they weren't always tropes.
This reminds me of the Seinfeld effect.
Seinfeld was arguably brilliant, but even if you disagree with its brilliance, enough people thought it was brilliant that practically every bit in its entire run has been ripped off so many times that they've all become boring clichés.
So pervasive has the ripoff been, that watching Nickelodeon episodes of Hannah Montana and Sweet Life of Zack and Cody have ripped off (and watered down) Seinfeld plots to the extent that trying to watch Seinfeld now is burdensome. Despite the bits in Seinfeld having been mostly original and novel at the time they were made, they have become tropey enough that it feels unoriginal through the slow attrition of time.
People trying to get into the show at this point would likely see it as tropey, and those who still adore it as doing so more through fond remembrance than appreciation of its originality.
The first time you see a huge trope or cliche, its not actually a huge trope or cliche because to you its new and you get the full impact of whatever it is.
Its only over time that you get the "I know this situation", "I've been here before" possibly reaching the point of not wanting it again because you're oversaturated with said trope/cliche and now recognise them as such.
But the first ones stick with you and you remember them differently to the others.
There was a lot of trope in those movies, but I think we'll look back at today's bad movies as 99% trope. It's just we don't see the tropes so clearly right now without a little distance.
The 99% trope thing has an associated concept of its own: fan service.
Once you go past a certain level of tropey-ness (tropiness?) you're unavoidably telegraphing a message to genre fans because everyone else rejects your work as derivative.
But giving it a name -- fan service -- is kind of a new version where all parties are aware of it and actively engaged with it.
And it gives rise to a new way for directors to have all the fun of breaking the fourth wall without breaking the fourth wall -- to have the characters also aware of the tropes of the circumstances in which they find themselves.
There's so much of this in TV in particular and a lot of it is
because of the influence of Joss Whedon, but Rocke S. O'Bannon did some of this in Farscape (and then much more explicitly as I understand it in Cult, which I haven't seen yet).
You could argue that a certain strand of films of the late 80s and early 90s really kicked it off, not least the original, quite underrated Buffy The Vampire Slayer, which is all about trope awareness.
Tropes are nothing more than patterns we can observe in multiple stories. Clichés are tropes used extremely frequently. There's nothing inherently wrong about either of those things, it's only the way they're being used, the execution, that can be good or bad.
The James Bond one manages to add a touch of comedy, gives more information to the viewer about the characters who the characters are and how well they know each other, and makes the viewer remain attentive in what would otherwise be a fairly boring exposition scene.
It has become used over and over again in various precisely because of how effective it is.
I feel like I'm going to call bullshit on this. I'm not convinced at all that this is less common in modern films. This one off example is nothing noteworthy. Plenty of similar examples in recent films.
The 70's were a great time for character driven film.
A more recent character-driven film that reminds me of the 70's was "About Schmidt" with, of course, that veteran of 70's films and filmmaking, Jack Nicholson.
Oh, "Frances Ha" comes to mind as well. You'll probably have to pick through the indie films to find character these days.
I think it was in Doctor No there was a conversation between Q, M and Bond. Bond's favourite weapon was the Beretta, and Q explained their downsides. Bond was ordered to use the Walther (IIRC) as a replacement. It was in a box. At the end of the scene, Bond picks up the box, surreptitiously hiding the Beretta underneath. As he is about to walk out, M, continuing with his writing and without looking up, says to Bond, "Oh and Bond, leave the Beretta behind on your way out." (Or something like that).
It's a small scene, but it tells you a lot about the characters. It just adds to storytelling, even though it isn't a key scene.
Another example is the difference between the original Robocop and the remake. In the original, the villain Boddicker is hailed into the police station. Battered and bruised, he spits blood on some paperwork on a desk and says "Just give me my fucking phone call."
How badass is that? The villains in the remake were much less interesting, and it made for a weaker movie. I guess modern screenwriters /could/ write decent if they wanted to, but I assume that gunning for a 13 certificate really neuters the possibilities. I also suspect that there is more influence by the producers, who insist that certain things need to be in certain ways "for the demographics". So what you end up with is a story that's bent to suit the demographics, rather than just telling a good story.