Hacker Cinema
The Ten Commandments
1956 · Film · 220 min
Directed by Cecil B. DeMille
Escaping death, a Hebrew infant is raised in a royal household to become a prince. Upon discovery of his true heritage, Moses embarks on a personal quest to reclaim his destiny as the leader and liberator of the Hebrew people.
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10 comments on Hacker News
perhaps the stupidest thing about this is that the specific text prescribed by the legislation was written to promote the de Mille/ Heston “The Ten Commandments” film of the 1950s.
I ‘m watching “A new hope” and “Waterworld” and it’s amazing how practical effects can hold up. I’m not against CGI, but they’re all over the place in Marvel’s movies. Even “The Ten Commandments” is more watchable than “Love and Thunder”
Charlton Heston's peak was in the 1950's, which was a very different era for movies. Judging him by his performances in cheesy sci-fi movies isn't entirely fair if you haven't seen Ben-Hur or The Ten Commandments, and avoided the trap of thinking that our modern fashions are the last word in good art (be that acting or filmmaking more generally).
Some movies benefit greatly from having room (runtime) to breathe.
Historical epics like Laurence of Arabia, Ben Hurr, The Ten Commandments and Spartacus immediately come to mind. Their length adds to their "epic" character.
I can think of plenty of films that are overlong and suffer for it too of course. A recent example is the Danish film Godland. There were people literally asleep by the end of that one in the cinema showing I attended. I wished I could have done the same.
Say what you will about the Hays Code, but I would hardly consider Gone With the Wind, The Great Dictator, Casablanca, It's a Wonderful Life, Sunset Boulevard, The Ten Commandments, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Ben-Hur, Spartacus, Psycho, West Side Story, Lawrence of Arabia, To Kill a Mockingbird, Paths of Glory, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music, or, you know, Citizen Kane to be especially "crappy" movies.
A coincidence was that it was on same day as the traditional showing of the Ten Commandments movie on Easter Saturday. Two of the Kings Seti I and Ramses II are depicted in the that movie.
Like they've survived the past 20. Hollywood ticket sales have been declining sharply since 2002. [1] That's also the year that their inflation adjusted profits also peaked. Hollywood started making more and more awful movies while trying to argue that 'this is what people want.' Well, it clearly wasn't, isn't, and won't ever be. Nonetheless they'll continue down their current trajectory because they think they're right, as this article emphasizes.
Here's an extremely relevant article about Hollywood. [2] Hollywood has been one of the earliest adopters of active utilization and commercialization of "AI technologies". Scripts are actively analyzed using machine learning systems to try to predict profits. Guess what the AI says? Stuff that made money in the past will keep making money, and things that didn't won't. And what do we get out of Hollywood? Repetitive rubbish whose only novelty is tossing in some identity politics to, in this article's phrasing, offer a "more representative portrayal of the world in which we live."
More to the point, think about some of the all time greatest movies (as well as money makers). Here's [3] a list of the top 10 by gross. Tellingly, only 3 of the top 10 were made after 2000. But now consider the other films - Gone with the Wind, Titanic, Star Wars, The Sound of Music, ET, The Ten Commandments, etc. These films were all, if not extremely unique, certainly not derivative rubbish. Now look at the 21st century films and you'll see a whole bunch of generic superhero movies and sequels. Even if not the product of AI, it's certainly the product of a mindset that's no different than a profit oriented regression analysis of the past - the less glorified truism of what "AI analysis" is.
Maybe the biggest problem with Hollywood is summed by one sentence in the AI article I referenced: “[AI analysis] takes a lot of the risk out of what I do.” No, it just makes you comfortable releasing crap that you'd otherwise recognize as crap. Interestingly the producer that gave that quote ended up releasing two mega-flops after the article and has not released anything since. It's not like we've even scratched the surface of possible ideas, but Hollywood has become uncreative, lazy, and averse to any and all risk - to the point that they'd rather drown than try something else, so long as it happens slowly.
[1] - https://www.the-numbers.com/market/
[2] - https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/06/business/media/solving-equation-of-a-hit-film-script-with-data.html
[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films#Highest-grossing_films_adjusted_for_inflation
That's reasonable, but again this is the #2 grossing film for the year in the US. #1, #4, #5, #7 where PG kids movies. #3, #8, #9, and #10 where comic book movies in a long string of comic book movies.
So, yes revenue was down, but the movies where also very derivative. The top grossing films adjusted for inflation are Gone with the Wind, Avatar, the first Star Wars, Titanic, The Sound of Music, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, The Ten Commandments, Doctor Zhivago, Jaws, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
The Force Awakens might make #10 on that list while being the only franchise movie to do so. But, no movie from 2016 is even close.
Some of the listed titles, since the site seems to be under heavy load:
Books:
* Winston Churchill, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Volume I and Volume II
* Philip K. Dick, Minority Report
* Ian Fleming, Diamonds are Forever
* Fred Gibson, Old Yeller
* Billie Holiday, Lady Sings the Blues
* Alan Lerner, My Fair Lady
* Eugene O’Neill, Long Day’s Journey into Night
* John Osborne, Look Back in Anger
* Dodie Smith, 101 Dalmatians
-
Movie titles:
* Around the World in 80 Days
* The Best Things in Life are Free
* Forbidden Planet
* Godzilla, King of the Monsters!
* It Conquered the World
* The King and I
* The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956 remake by Alfred Hitchcock of his 1934 British film)
* Moby Dick
* The Searchers (1956 film version with John Wayne from Alan Le May’s 1954 novel)
* The Ten Commandments (1956 version by Cecil B. DeMille, who also directed a similar film in 1923)
If you adjust for how ticket prices have grown over the years, the highest-grossing films of all time are:
1. Gone with the Wind
2. Star Wars
3. The Sound of Music
4. E.T.
5. The Ten Commandments
So in those terms, we haven't actually had a new highest-grossing film of all time for seven decades. The nominal biggest movie ever, Avatar, really only comes in 14th.
Source: http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted.htm