Why Do Movies Feel So Different Now?

Top Gun: Maverick is a movie where a big movie star plays a man who rides a motorcycle, poses behind American flags, says things like. Show me what you are made of. Uses the power of great determination, well, a little teamwork to overcome any challenges faced with.

But despite its massive success, it's also a movie that feels wildly out of place in 2022. It's a little known law of the universe that anywhere there's a discussion being had about Top Gun Maverick, you can find the phrase, they don't make them like that anymore, laying around close by. But when people say that, what exactly do they mean?

People aren't referring to the fact that Tom Cruise and the rest of the cast flew their own aircraft. This honestly has never been how they were made. They didn't even do this for the original Top Gun.

Tom Cruise himself has been doing plenty of this crazy do your own stunts stuff in very recent years. If we want to figure out what Maverick has that they don't make anymore, we first have to ask ourselves, what do they make them like now? Scene 17, take 1.

Mark. There'll be 100 more Jack Conrad’s 100 more me’s, 100 more conversations just like this one over and over again. God knows when.

What we're doing is important. What we document. [inaudible] good.

At a time when cultural anxiety about the state of the world is escalating on many fronts, many artists seem to be turning their attention inward to examine the validity of the art they love and the mediums they work within. Don't worry, sometimes just entertain them is of what I stave off the inevitable. Movies have gained an increasingly self-referential bent.

The value of the art of movies and the institutions that are required to make them are being questioned by those who love it most dearly. That's dream you are chasing on one way you end up to the top of the mountain. All eyes on you.

It's a dream I never wake up from. Here come. But in the midst of this self-reflection, the movies still want to be movies.

Show off. I can see a red light. They aren't just deconstructing the value of art or film, but are caught in conflict with themselves.

Containing deconstructive self-criticism and sentimental sincerity together. An earthquake could wipe this town off the map, and wouldn't make a difference, it's the idea that sticks. Just in the year 2022, we saw Nope, which criticizes spectacle even as it tries to be one, the Banshees of Inisherin, which is in dialogue with itself about the value of art.

We saw Steven Spielberg looking back at his own life and the fablements, and examining the role cinema has played in it for both good and bad through cinema. The man who critiques not just the artist, but our collective response to artists after Sun framed its story within the context of memories being recorded by its characters, which reflected its reality as an autobiographical film. Damian Chazelle's Babylon examined the excesses of the film industry and the way it's alienated people while celebrating why cinema can be so exciting using Cinema.

Then we saw everything, everywhere all at once, which feels like the culmination of something new. It explodes into a chaotic whirlwind of film styles and references, declaring everything meaningless in the midst of this chaos and then somehow still finding meaning there. But I don t think it's just these self-aware A24 dramas or movies about filmmaking, I felt a shift in the way movies feel across the board.

It seems like there's very little straightforward storytelling and film anymore. Movies are either part of a multidimensional franchise or our satirical, surreal, or absurd. They might contain a multiverse or twists on a classic trope, break storytelling convention, or some combination of all those things.

Some of these elements have been around in the movies for a long time. There have always been movies about making movies or art, but I think more recently, these things have gone from the occasional novelty to the norm. With that, there's a distinct shift in tone that we can identify and describe one that is part of a broader cultural shift.

This is the metal modern era of film. You got this. What really makes Top Gun feel like a throwback is its complete lack of irony, self-consciousness, or self-doubt.

There's no subversion of well-established tropes. There's not a big twist where we find out Maverick is actually the bad guy. It's not an anti-hero story.

It's a sequel to another well-known film, but it's a sequel, pretty much the most straightforward kind imaginable. There's no spinoff or multiverse here. Top Gun Maverick is a rare thing these days.

I think it's what we could call a modernist movie. Modernism is the thing they don't make them like anymore. In this video, I'm going to argue that the shift in how movies field can be described as a shift first from modernism and post-modernism, and then from postmodernism into the meta-modernism we see now.

To really understand that shift and what meta-modernism looks like in film, we first need to broadly understand both modernism and post-modernism in film. Because meta-modernism is reacting to both of them and incorporating both of them into itself. All three of the ''big-isms'' we're talking about here are hard to pin down.

Philosophers, all critics and media critics all disagree on what exactly they are and how to best describe them. Some people refer to modernism, postmodernism and Metamodernism as areas of thought, philosophy, or even art movements. Some academics refer to these three as structures of feeling and that's the sense in which I'm going to be using them in this video.

A structure of feeling is essentially a culture-wide vibe that encompasses philosophy, politics, design, and most importantly for this video, art. In the case of modernism, we're giving a name to a specific culture-wide vibe that starts to show up in philosophy with Descartes, as early as the 1600s and then continues through to Nietzsche, but which really shows up in culture and art from the 1900s to the 1940s. Film itself is a modernist medium.

The technology started to emerge rate as modernism was hitting the culture. In the same way science and reason seemed to provide a more objective view of realities and tradition did, photography seems to provide a more objective image of the world than paintings did. In a sense, film being 24 photos a second presented the most startlingly real and immersive images aren't had ever been able to create.

I think in this way the form of film ideologically aligned with modernist philosophies that promoted this idea of an objective view of reality. A lot of ways I think modernism is the default state of cinema, but we can get a little more specific than that. There are movies that feel modernists, not just because of their traditional storytelling structure or film-making, but because they specifically promote modernist philosophies or values.

Returning to Top Gun Maverick is going to help us understand modernism here. The movie's sincerity and traditional story structure are a big part of what makes it feel modernist to me. But I think another big element of its modernism is the way it displays specific values, and then unapologetically seems to argue for those values as good and beneficial.

Success now more than ever comes down to the man or woman in the box. Maverick is embodying the American values of individualism, freedom and determination to do what nobody else is willing to do. By embodying these values, along with his superior jet flying skills, Maverick is able to accomplish his goals and defeat the bad guys, but not before learning a lesson that other people can help out sometimes too.

The marshal turn in your badge. Truth, I hate to do this without your new marshal being here. In the 1952 film High Noon, US Marshall Will Kane just got married and is about to give up his badge and leave town when he receives word that an outlaw he wants locked up, Frank Miller has been released and it's going to arrive on the train at noon to take his revenge by killing Kane for his new wife, who is a Quaker pacifist.

The solution is simple, just leave town. But Kane has a sense of responsibility and duty to his stations since there's no new marshal to replace him yet, and he believes staying is the smartest decision for him to make. They're making me run.

I've never run from anybody before. The film is well staged and shot. It's pretty tense.

There's a decent amount of nuance here, it's a classic Western. But in the broad strokes through the power of his determination to take a stand that nobody else will, there's that American individualism again. His dedication to honor, along with his superior gun slinging skills, Kane is able to defeat the bad guy, but not before he learns the lesson that other people can help out too sometimes.

This is a great example, I think, because it shows how modernism is itself responding to traditional values. I know it's against your religion now. Amy ultimately rejects her Quaker beliefs in pacifism in order to side with Kane's modernist values, which are grounded in his sense of civic duty to the democratic government.

The movie strongly puts forward that, Kane being a good Marshall, has clearly made the town a better place. Clean this town up a bit for women and kids to live in. Modernism is looking at traditional governments, art and religion and saying a lot of this seems flawed.

Why aren't you in church? Why aren't you? If we apply the tools of science, reason, and rationalism we can become more enlightened beings that have a more objective understanding of the truth and are therefore better and make the world a better place because of it.

Parson, you've got anything to say? I don't know. Here, traditional religion is depicted as not really having answers for the moral dilemma that Kane is facing.

The right and the wrong seem pretty clear here. But if you're asking me to tell my people to go out and kill and maybe get themselves killed. I'm sorry, I don't know what to say.

Instead, the film sense that Kane is making the right decision, is grounded in a democratic weighing of different views. There is a difference of opinion, let everybody have a say. But let's do it like grown-up people.

Ultimately Kane's own reasoning. But the movie isn't just modernist in its values, its also modernist in another way, it's storytelling structure. What's really surprising about watching a film like this now 70 years later, is not just its unabashedly sincere advocation for honor duty and being able to shoot really good.

It's that there are pretty much no twists. It just sets up its story and then good guy wins, bad guy loses. For audiences who have grown up on postmodern and middle modern media, this is going to feel uncannily straightforward.

I want to be clear about two things, first, I don't think every movie during the early period of film as a modernist one, I think there were even some post-modern films during this time, although the language to describe them as that didn't exist yet. Second, I don't think these filmmakers were intentionally engaging with modernism or trying to make modernists stories, they just existed in a largely modernists culture and so those modernist values and ideas came through in the kinds of stories they told. The important takeaway here is that this general traditional story structure, advocacy of specific values and generally optimistic feeling, was the dominant one in film for awhile and this is largely the modernism that postmodernism in film is responding to.

To get a handle on what postmodernism and film looks like, let's look at No Country for Old Men, one of my favorite post-modernist movies which deconstructs the Western and is a great comparison to High Noon. In this Neil Western, gone is the villain with the straightforward motive of a grudge in his place is an aimless, imposing figure who seems to have no morality beyond the arbitrary whims of fate. In High Noon, there's this character, the older, previous Marshall before Kane.

If you're honest, you pour your whole life and then the end, you wind up dying all alone on some dirty street. You can almost hear him giving voice to the post-modernist anxiety that would have been starting to arise in the '50s, but while High Noon brushes this character aside in favor of Kane's modernist sense of morality in No Country for Old Men, it's this world weary perspective that takes center stage in the form of the sheriff. That's all right, I left myself sometimes in a whole lot else you can't do.

Kane's confidence, self-assurance, and unwavering convictions about right and wrong is replaced by a sheriff who does his job, but laments the state of things wondering if he wants to be a part of the world he sees around him. Llewelyn and the other key protagonists meanwhile, isn't a hero, he's not motivated by honor or duty, he's just trying to get away with a bag of money that he accidentally found. This isn't a gunslinger by gunslinger deconstructed.

I'm not going to spoil the movie, but let's just say it doesn't unfold with the Hollywood ending we get in High Noon, instead of things just unspool as if the outcome of the plot was decided by the flip of a coin. If High Noon is saying, the good guys will win because they have honor duty and determination, No Country for Old Men is a tad more nihilistic. Postmodernism in film arose as questioning modernist values became more than norm in the broader culture, as the 20th century wore on and the World Wars gave way to the possibility of nuclear annihilation in the war in Vietnam and as decolonization and civil rights gave way for previously disempowered voices to speak up about how they'd been harmed.

A whole way of life, a whole system of thoughts, but just kept me in prison until this hour. Many people began to question whether or not modernist values were actually objectively good and really making things better for everybody. So here postmodernism steps in and importantly, instead of returning to traditional narratives, starts to question the value of narrative itself.

Postmodernism is saying, maybe this idea that we can come to an understanding of the objective truth using science and reason is itself a narrative like the narratives of old in tradition that modernism rejected. Postmodernism is also looking at things like the rise of fascism in the 20th century and understanding how the narrative surrounding that are part of what made it a powerful force for evil in the 20th century. Postmodernism in broad strokes is really critiquing modernism by critiquing narrative itself, saying maybe we should be skeptical of any broad overarching narrative that thinks that can explain the world.

When you start to question the value of narrative itself in what is essentially a narrative form, things understandably start to get a little weird. As we move towards the end of the 20th century in film history, we start to see more and more movies that don't just question and deconstruct modernist values, but which also start to deconstruct the way stories are told in film. I thought you said you are a writer.

This postmodern skepticism of narrative starts to show up in deconstructions of modernist film-making, many of which draw attention to the act of storytelling. Time becomes fragmented in movies like Pulp Fiction, forth walls are broken, stories become more self-aware. Sincere storytelling gives way to irony, pastiche, surrealism and self-reflexivity, genre conventions are deconstructed.

If modernist films were trying to create an illusion of reality so that you, the viewer, could suspend your disbelief and become fully engrossed in the film, some post-modernists films were trying to remind the viewer that they were a viewer and that everything they were seeing was a story and that stories are constructed and that the director and actors are the ones controlling the narrative. I think another great example of a post-modernist film is Monty Python's quest for the Holy Grail, where everything is just one big joke. By the end, even the film itself is treated as a big joke.

The story never gets resolved because why take it seriously? Why take anything seriously? The characters aren't real, the place isn't real.

This isn't even real. But I think postmodernism, especially in narrative forms, eventually runs its course. You can only deconstruct things for so long before everything turns into chaos.

You can only subvert expectations so many times before the new expectation becomes that expectations will be subverted and it all starts to get a little bit old. Irony and cynicism are hard to sustain they eventually get tiring. While postmodernism might have some very valid critiques to level against modernism showing how it created a bunch of problems in the 20th century, postmodernism itself didn't do anything to really solve those problems nor has it prevented or solved all the new problems we have in the 21st century.

As our fears of increased polarization, late-stage capitalism and climate change are added on top of pre-existing fears from the 20th century like nuclear annihilation that never really went away, I think people start to long for a modernist optimism again, that maybe we can actually figure out a way to solve some of these problems and make things better. Postmodern deconstruction can be helpful for a while but it can also give you a cynicism that tears everything down and leaves you unable to sincerely engage with anything. People want meaning.

Deconstructing all the ways we find narrative meaningful doesn't suddenly remove our desire for it or make the comfort it provides disappear. People still want to go see a movie. People still want to tell stories and listen to stories.

What comes after postmodernism? Now it's time for what I know you've all been waiting for. By the time we get to 2022 with a movie like Everything Everywhere All at Once, many of the elements of postmodernism still remain.

The movie is a never-ending pastiche of pop culture and film references much in the same way the postmodern Pulp Fiction was. Everything Everywhere constantly plays on genre tropes and has a silliness that rivals a film like Monty Python and the Holy Grail all while leaning heavily into anihilist postmodern deconstruction of modernist philosophy like we see in something like No Country for Old Men. Right is a tiny box invented by people who are afraid.

But unlike the postmodern films, Everything Everywhere All at Once also contains a sincere depiction of sentiment that most postmodern movies never have. It also harnesses optimism and emotional sincerity that rivals that of modernist films like High Noon or Top Gun: Maverick. Metamodernism in general can be thought of as a response to postmodernism.

It builds on postmodernism. It's not just an opposition to postmodernism. In Everything Everywhere All at Once, nihilism is a big theme.

But if it were merely a postmodern film it would stop there. But instead in one of the culminating scenes, Evelyn, the mother, she and her daughter reconcile by accepting the nihilism. Then I will cherish these few specs of time.

Life means nothing and therefore it means everything instead of just life means nothing. It's a metamodern update of a postmodern insight. One of the ways metamodern media response to postmodernism and modernism is by swinging wildly back-and-forth between modernist sincerity and postmodern deconstruction.

This is what a lot of metamodern commentators call oscillation. There's more to matter modernism than this, but this is one of the easy ways to identify it. What this means practically is that a lot of metamodern films still use or contain the techniques of postmodernist film.

An example of this is the self-aware meta elements in the movies that I highlighted at the beginning of this video. This meta self-awareness is what academics and media critics often call self-reflexivity. This self-reflexivity was originally used by a lot of post-modern films, but it's still used by metamodern films.

How do we tell the difference between postmodern and metamodern metaness? In postmodernism, this meta self-awareness is usually used to draw attention to the limitation, structure, boundaries or subjectivity of the work itself. For example.

What are you doing? I'm making a video about metamodernism. I'm right in the middle of explaining how self-reflexivity is used to call attention to the context of a work.

Yeah, but why? Isn't this just a bunch of academic over assessment of artists self obsessing about their own work? Don't people just want to enjoy their entertainment in peace?

That's a good question. I think a big part of why we see this kind of self-reflexivity is that viewers and artists feel self-conscious about art that is just passive entertainment. There's a lot of concern about things that are happening in the world, things we see in the news every day and there might be a feeling that maybe we should do something about that.

If you are involved in creating a multi-million dollar art project for entertainment, you might be asking yourself, should I be doing something better with my time? Exactly. Self obsession.

Well, I think that self-consciousness also extends to the viewer. Postmodern self-reflexivity is drawing the viewer's attention to the fact that what you're seeing might feel really compelling but ultimately it's flawed and subjective. Like me breaking the fourth wall to inject a counter-argument?

Sure. One interpretation of this moment could be that it's deconstructing the video essay format by reminding the viewer that I'm just a guy who's reading what I've written in a script and I have my doubts about what I'm saying, which I'm representing in you as my double. Then what's the difference between postmodern and meta-modern self-reflexivity?

We've already mentioned how a sketch like this is a great example of postmodern self-reflexivity by deconstructing the video essay. Yeah, but you're not using this metal layer just to deconstruct the video essay or yourself, you're actually using it to construct a more effective argument for what you're trying to say. I'm affirming what I'm doing is worthwhile if nothing else for me because I like this deconstruction and examination of art.

I think I get it. Metamodernism is just postmodernism but more optimistic and less cynical. That would be probably a bit of an oversimplification, but you're definitely on the right track.

What we just did was we went from the video essay format to this, which is a post-modern deconstructive, self-reflexive meta sketch, and then we oscillated back into a more modernist optimism that tries to find value in this video by grounding that value in my own personal experience. While not ignoring the flaws and critiques that you've acknowledged. While still holding onto an awareness of the limitations.

I think it's true that a lot of the tropes or aesthetic methods that metal modernism employees have the exact equivalent and postmodernism and the differences in what they're saying with it. The 1996 Coen Brothers movie, Fargo opens with this text. This is a true story.

The events depicted in this film took place in Minnesota in 1987. At the request of the survivors the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurs, except the Coen brothers eventually admitted that nothing about the story was true.

Joe Coen saying in an interview, the only thing true about it is that it's a story. To me, this is a post-modern framing device, one that is deconstructing the way that narrative films claimed to be based on true stories, is playing on that trope in some sense to provoke us into considering the fact that even movies that claim to be based on true stories are often largely a fabrication. Now compare this to the opening statement for Donald Glover's recent show, Swarm.

Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead or actual events is intentional. To me, this is a metamodern twist on the same framing device. It's saying, sure, this is fictional, but within that fiction, there's truth.

Metamodernism began to emerge in the '90s and in film began to really take form throughout the 2000s. One of the key early figures in movies is Wes Anderson, who really showcases how pastiche reference and metanarrative framing devices can be used in a metamodernist way. Wes is using all of these things to call attention to the act of storytelling, but not to deconstruct story.

Instead, he uses it to revel in the value of stories themselves, using those stories as an avenue to communicate heartfelt emotions. I think we can see how some directors who started out doing very post-modernist work like Tarantino, had become more meta modern. If Paul fiction subverted audience expectations by deconstructing the Hollywood ending Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, I think one of the best examples of metamodernism and film recently subverts expectations by deconstructing a true story to give us a Hollywood ending.

I think we're starting to see metamodernism all over film and TV now, not just in media that is explicitly self-aware or self-referential, but also in genre deconstructing shows like succession, Atlanta, Barry, more recently beef, and even in reality TV shows like Jury Duty, all of which keenly balanced both comedy and a erotic detachment with truly sincere, heartfelt, dramatic sentiment. You might wonder why culture and art have moved into metamodernism as a reaction to postmodernism. Instead of just returning to modernism or tradition.

There are some attempts to just return to those as with Top Gun Maverick, but I think those are the exceptions rather than the norm. From an artistic filmmaking perspective, we can't so easily undo postmodernism impact on what is considered to be a normal, entertaining way to tell a story now. Greg pointed out how many of the postmodern elements of storytelling are in and of themselves.

pretty fun. But that this postmodern art often just didn't leave very much room for personal meaning in the midst of that. When you get into metamodern forms including film, you can't just go backwards and forget about all that stuff, or viewers will think, you don't get it.

Viewers will think, you're cheesy or corny. Metamodern stuff has a way of working all of the fun postmodern games in, but doing it in such a way that it preserves a sense of interiority, of personal interiority or what I often call it felt experience. But another reason that Greg proposed for why metamodernism is developing that I agree with is that it isn't just a response to postmodernism.

It's also simultaneously a response to something we could call hypermodernism. You have modernity, then post modernism comes along. Modernity doesn't just stop existing.

It's a kind of continues as a thread that now is still this thing that we would describe as hypermodernity. Yeah. Everything, everywhere all at once.

It's whole metaphor of the multiple realities. I think as a metaphor for the way life in the real-world often feels like we're in multiple realities so the insane pace of change and of narrative switching and flipping and points of view and to be able to be aware of the points of view of people from all over the world and people who have diametrically opposed political views to you all coming at you is something that we have to deal with very much now and it threatens to pull apart your sense of self. Now we make art that's not just protecting the self from other art that was undermining the cell, but we make art that protects the sense of self from the world that we live in moment-to-moment as we just go about our lives.

Whatever modernity was has continued in some senses intensified, you have people who are trying to deconstruct those things. They continue in this other trajectory, but they don't necessarily negate each other. One doesn't get to win culturally.

All of the traditional stuff is still right there. Right [inaudible] is still as well. It still have the traditional stuff we would die like we like.

[inaudible] That's just fabric, that's right, everything together. The hyper-modern world is one where because of the Internet and social media, were constantly inundated with traditional, modernist and post-modernist narratives all at once. The digital citizen has a perspective of the world that was never before possible.

This is something I've talked about in the video I made about hyper-modernism and everything, everywhere all at once last year. Meta- modernism, I think is an attempt to make sense of this new perspective. To pick and choose positive elements from each of these old philosophies and to recognize the multiverse that exists around us, while still trying to stay grounded in the reality of what is truly meaningful in front of you.

Unlike No Country for Old Men, which deconstructs the Western genre, everything, everywhere all at once doesn't deconstruct a genre it transcends genre. It understands that in the hyper-modern world, genre isn't a box that you either have to fit into or deconstruct. Now, it is just another tool in the storytellers toolbox.

You write out. We can really see how this plays out in the Western sequences from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, or Tarantino presents the act of filming a Western in the style of a Western. If No Country for Old Men is deconstructing the Western genre conventions that we find in high noon.

Then Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is simultaneously deconstructing and drawing our attention to those conventions while reinforcing their inherent value and using them to entertain the viewer. Whatever metal modernism is, we're still in the midst of it. It's still emerging and being defined.

There's at least one interview of Daniel Kwan, one of the two Daniel's who created everything, everywhere all at once where the writer who's interviewing him tries to describe it as post-modern. They're talking about the way it references a bunch of other fillings. Daniel Kwan gently correct her and says, well, it's not so much post-modernists.

I would say meta-modern. He explains what he means by that. He says something along the lines of that their references are in there to say this is actually the world that we all live in like we in our lives.

We now live in a world where we're inundated with narratives coming from all over the place and we feel through those narratives and so everything, everywhere all at once. If you catch a reference to something like rat tattoo or whatever, you don't just stop at the charcoal on the wink and a nod. I don't know how to really describe, but it brings in a feeling of connection.

Metamodernism itself isn't good or bad. It's not a style or a technique or even something I necessarily think artists should consciously try to apply to their work. It's just a reflection of changes in cultural attitude, feeling, and philosophy that I think naturally start to appear in our storytelling.

Some meta-modernist stuff to me feels like it's overly concerned with its own self-doubt. Sometimes I think storytellers should just get on with it tell the story, and stop worrying about whether storytelling is meaningful in some ultimate sense. It's absolutely not necessary for somebody to be aware of meta-modernism as a trend they can enjoy and appreciate everything just on its own terms and they should.

That's mainly what I hope people would be doing. But for the people who think in this way, I feel like it creates a story about the stories. You then can appreciate any particular individual artwork as its own thing, but you can then also appreciate it as fitting into this larger quilt that's going on.

There is a thing there. I don't think like we're just making it up. Then being able to tune into that and tap into that, I think just adds another layer of richness to our experience.

Metamodernism, I think, brings back in appreciation for storytelling for just its own sake because it's something we enjoy. If post-modernism breaks the fourth wall in order to take you out of the story then metamodernism breaks the fourth wall to open the story up and invite you in because we love a good story.