I finally watched the two movies that come before The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. I loved them. They were exciting and dramatic and had some decent storytelling.
What I liked most was they don’t spoon feed you everything. If you’re not paying attention and are on your phone you’re not going to know what’s going on. For example, I was on my phone, looked up, and saw that the hero was doing terribly at target practice. I had to rewind to see that they broke his right hand and was learning to shoot with his left. I swear modern movies just have actors narrating and renarrating what they’re doing because they know you’re on your phone not really paying attention.
Also, I realized that when a cowboy does a super quick draw and shoots 3 men before they can draw it’s just like an anime when there is a flash and the hero sheathes their sword, with enemies falling over dead.
Western are really underestimated, to say the least. Obviously, there is a lot of crap but also a lot of great (and daring) content.
/me (sadly but) approvingly nodding. Either it is because the audience is not paying attention or because the audience is (quickly) losing its ability to follow a story-line and needs things to be constantly and heavily underlined for them?
Replying to myself, for anyone reading this: don’t pass over novels either. Western was a written genre as well as a movie genre.
I mean, Western once was a highly popular literary genre and not just because they were easy reads.
Like with movies there was a lot of crap but there was also some true gems. Works that are still really relevant nowadays… and there is still the occasional new novel that is published that will have you wonder why there isn’t more like it.
To name just 1 old-ish (I’m almost the same age as this book so, no, it’s not old it’s just getting aged enough to deliver all its qualities to the amateur :p) and 2 recent-ish books:
There are so much more, not forgetting short stories too, or essays and memoirs! All those books are waiting in many public libraries barely ever read, always willing to surprise the adventurous reader that will be daring enough to change their habits and pick them instead of what they usually read.
And if you’re an audiobook person, Willie Nelson has narrated some Louis L’Amour novels. They’re not terribly long and interesting enough.
Wasn’t there an article recently where [some streaming company] openly admitted to exactly that?
Fake edit: Pretty much, yeah
Real edit for context:
holy cow(boy)!
And that’s why AI will be our next screenwriter. And that’s also why most audience will demand even more of it.
Sad times we’re living in, that will cost us a lot more than loosing our ability to focus on a effing story with animated picture on the screen. Because it’s the exact same people with the attention span of a goldfish, unable to follow already simplified story-lines, that will be persuaded they know perfectly well what they do and need not to inform themselves before they elect this or that candidate. Democracy is officially on its way out.