From VHS Magic to Big Data Blockbusters: Why Modern Movies Have Lost Their Soul

(Image: a mock pulp poster titled “A MOVIE GENERATED BY AN LLM — BIG DATA — COWBOY-SUPERHEROES IN SPACE!”)

“Why?” you ask me. “You hate contemporary movies so much?”

(If you were born after 2010, you probably want to check out the words VCR and VHS on Google before reading this article.)

Well, let me explain. I used to like movies when I was a kid — mainly because they were scarce. Our family purchased the first VCR in 1996. I was 10 years old at that time, and it was amazing. My father had brought a couple of tapes for my mom, and he had also brought home a tape with a handwritten note: Aladdin & The Lion King. That handwritten bootleg VHS had been sold in the official Sony store in Moscow. Times were pretty interesting, and there was no way of purchasing any official copies of anything in Russian. Those simply did not exist.

Well, that VCR was like a window into a new world of magic. I could watch The Lion King over and over again. In fact, I did watch it so many times that I knew it by heart — word for word.

By 2003, our VHS collection had grown bigger and had become quite copious. Over time, bootleg copies were replaced with nice official tapes. Some shows were recorded directly from TV. We had 212 tapes at that point — I knew, because I catalogued all 212 of them. That seemed like good entertainment for a kid when the Internet was scarce.

And to this day, I remember some of those films. Aside from the impressive Disney collection, Tom and Jerry and some other cartoon series, we had (and were definitely not limited to):

• The Matrix
• Amadeus
• Scent of a Woman
• Taxi
• The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
• The Fifth Element
• Light Sleeper
• Requiem for a Dream
• Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai
• Reservoir Dogs
• Rain Man
• Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
• A full recording of Pink Floyd’s The Wall, The Doors film, and Jesus Christ Superstar
• And many others

The thing was — I was not the one who picked all of those movies. My mother did. She carefully selected films she loved and that were generally accepted as masterpieces. And if not universally accepted, they were at least interesting, challenging, and often quite strange. For example, I’ve seen Requiem for a Dream only once in my life — when I was 13. The only lesson I learned was never to come anywhere close to drugs. But I never had the guts to watch that movie again.

Yet the only thing missing in those 212 tapes were “tops of the charts.” We never had any current releases, nor did we ever go to the movie theatre. Late in 2002, a VHS rental store opened in our city, so we started renting some things. That was fun at times, but never truly interesting to watch. Indeed, Back to the Future and Short Circuit made some impression on me, but I will never forget the last speech of the colonel in Scent of a Woman, nor could I stop being impressed by Tom Cruise’s acting in Rain Man.

That all changed in 2002. That was the first time I picked a movie. I was quite keen on watching sci-fi, and I was amazed by the abundance of such films. I was 13, and for the first time in my life my parents allowed me to go to the cinema with only my friend. And we saw Star Wars: Episode II. Gosh, was I impressed. That was something new. That was an experience.

We were slightly late, so we walked in just at the moment when a spaceship flew over a planet. That was something I had never seen in my life. The sound surrounded me, the bass got into my bones, and I was amazed. I loved Star Wars II.

Before that moment, I had never seen any Star Wars, so I had some catching up to do. And boy, was I on a roll. I saw all of them. And a lot of other things. Since that moment, going to the movies became something I did as a treat. It was AWESOME.

In 2010, I went to see something that should have impressed me a lot: Tron: Legacy. Visuals were stunning, and I certainly wasn’t expecting to see Daft Punk on the soundtrack. It should have been a total WOW, but it wasn’t. Although I loved the visuals, halfway through I was bored. I suddenly realized there was no acting whatsoever. The main actor had fewer emotions on screen than the first AI-generated video of a person. And while the film was named after the protagonist Tron, Tron himself had almost no storyline. His ending was equally useless — just a setup for a future sequel.

At that moment, I realized — I was screwed. I still believed that going to a theatre to see the latest release was a good idea. I saw the first Iron Man, but it too ended with some idiotic “cliffhanger” that wasn’t a hanger at all. I saw a couple more Avengers movies, mainly because my friends wanted to, but I honestly have no idea which ones I’ve seen.

From 2010 to 2015, I tried my best to pretend that movies were still those amazing moments in your life when you surrender control of your emotions to the filmmaker. You’re ready to go on an emotional roller-coaster to experience something new.

And then it ended definitively — Star Wars VII. My friends were all excited. At first, I felt anticipation when I saw the teaser. But the first trailer disappointed me, the second made me feel worse, and gosh, did that movie suck. There was no story. No emotion. Nothing. The film was full of actors who were supposed to signify something, and I had no idea why I should be amazed to see Adam Driver. I’d never even seen him before. One thing I knew — he was totally miscast.

I rewatched the original and prequel Star Wars films, and I was horrified. What had seemed entertaining when I was 13 turned out to be a drama full of nonsense. True, the original trilogy has its place in cinema history thanks to its stunning effects at the time and some novel storytelling. The prequels brought the industry up to the visual standards we now expect from almost any film. They were full of epic visuals. But the one thing missing was acting. Even Alec Guinness didn’t do anything remarkable on screen.

Well, Star Wars VII now has its prominent place in cinema history — as a total showcase of how to turn a movie into a complete disaster. And it didn’t end there. My friends dragged me to see the rest of the latest Star Wars films. Oh my God. What a hellhole. No plot — just things happening. It looked like the Big Data Boys had analyzed every scene of previous Star Wars films, put all the “best” pieces into a blender, and made it worse.

And again, no acting. The story goes who-knows-where, but it sells merch and leaves you with nothing but cliffhangers.

And that’s basically any movie released since 2010. We’ve put them on a conveyor belt. You buy overpriced popcorn and a nasty hot dog, sit through 30 minutes of ads (even though you paid for the movie), and watch something everyone tells you to watch. Then you’re supposed to go online and gush about how awesome the new Shit Wars or Avengers movie was.

You know the main thing about a good movie? It might or might not put you on the edge of your seat. But if you like it — you like it. It changes you emotionally and makes you think. There’s nothing wrong with watching a stupid slapstick comedy if you enjoy it. Maybe you’ll rewatch it in 10 years, or maybe you’ll forget it entirely. Either way, it’s fine.

But we’ve lost that.

Watch any ending from the 1980s. It’s mundane. Nobody cared about the ending. You enjoyed the joyride of the movie — why would you need some massive crescendo at the end?

Nowadays, you have to wait for the very end. People don’t wonder about the ending anymore — they wonder, “What will the cliffhanger be?” They expect “Sequel is coming…” without realizing the real sentence is: “…if you give us good reviews, otherwise we’ll dump it.”

Movies used to be made by someone with a vision — something that would impress, disturb, or elate you. Now they’ve become just data points to produce money. Your reaction is recorded, analyzed, and turned into the formula for the next film.

Welcome to 2025. I’m fond of Christopher Nolan and Wes Anderson, but I don’t like every one of their movies. I appreciate Daniel Radcliffe — he’s awesome. I didn’t even recognize him in the Weird Al movie until the credits. I enjoyed Guns Akimbo. Maybe it’s not the most important film ever, but I liked how it was structured. I was content after seeing A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence. What We Do in the Shadows was funny — too long, but funny.

The thing that makes those films stand out is that they aren’t made to recycle lines you’ve already heard. They give me something new. I generally like Tom Cruise’s films, but I’ve never seen any Mission: Impossible movies. They’re not my style. Yet Tropic Thunder was.

Just recently, I saw When the Wind Blows. If you’ve got the nerve — watch it. It boasts an 88% rating across platforms. But I warn you — you’ll need a walk afterward.

The problem is that we can’t start and end something anymore. Why do I trust Christopher Nolan? Because he doesn’t do sequels. He can start and end a movie, and the ending will be distinct — like the spinning top at the end of Inception. You get a complete story. Then you get another film from him — but it’s a different story.

There will be no Inception 2. No Tenet 2. No Interstellar 2. One is enough. And yes, his films are long, but I forgive him because they give me something different. We won’t see another Arrival. And yes, maybe it has flaws (people ask why they sent a linguist instead of an astrobiologist), but who cares — the ending was epic. The flow was amazing.

Mark Hamill is amazing on stage in live performances. Adam Driver is amazing in complex dramas. Robert Downey Jr. is great — as long as he stays away from yet another Marvel film.

The thing is — I want a story with a beginning and an end. I don’t want to spend 20 minutes figuring out who’s whose nemesis while my friends shush me because I didn’t read 200 pages of lore or watch the previous 20 films. I want a beginning that hooks me, a story with twists, and an ending that makes me say either “Oh wow, I got it” or, days later, “Oh wow — now I really got it!”

Is that too much to ask?

I’ll rewatch a movie if I liked it. In fact, I’ve seen TENET an unholy number of times. I like it. Not all of you do, and I appreciate that.

“Having an opinion” is a luxury that has become obsolete in the age of BIG DATA. If you’re not on the bandwagon, you’re missing out. You have to like the next big Smavengers movie, or you’re just not normal. I will detest you if you don’t like Star Wars. I will spew acid at your face if you dare to say something bad about Dr Storage!

We are now at a point where having an opinion is like living in a bastion. You open the door to some, and you fend off others.

But it shouldn’t be like that. I should be able to have a conversation about a movie with my friends and get their opinion on it. And if they don’t like the movie I like — we’ll just know that.

We somehow came to the conclusion that this world has two sides. But that never works. This world has over 8 billion sides. And it all depends on whose eyes you’re looking through.

I like TENET. Do you think it was bad? Okay, we can have a discussion. We might become friends talking through the good and the bad sides of that movie. That’s how people used to meet in the early days of the Internet. They’d go to the cinema and discuss what they’d seen. And the boy could be pissed at the movie, and the girl could be delighted by it, and they’d have a good talk and spend a great night together — just ‘cause they had a subject to talk about.

Now you’re given the subject before you go to the theatre. You’re then given the opinion you’re supposed to have about a movie. And you’re expected to broadcast that opinion on all channels.

It doesn’t work that way. Today, talking about a movie can be as hard as talking politics. But hey, what do you know — politics is just the same. There are gay conservatives and anti-LGBTQ+ Democrats. There are people who have other viewpoints, and there are people who have changed their viewpoint. And that’s okay.

We can have those viewpoints. Because we are human. It’s normal. The only time someone tries to squash everything into one big consolidated viewpoint is when they’re running BIG DATA analysis on something and have to divide it into “good” and “bad.”

Well, there’s an infinite spectrum between those two points. And you have to accommodate the infinity between the good and the bad.