Why don't directors set films in the Present any more?

Why don't older directors make films set in the present any more? It's really fricking with the culture because everything is set in the past, and we no longer have films of our time period any more.
>Tarantino - last movie set in the present was Kill Bill, 2003
>Wes Anderson - last movie set in the present was the Darjeeling Limited, 2007
>Coen Brothers - Burn After Reading, 2008
>Paul Thomas Andersen - Punch Drunk Love, 2002
>Guy Ritchie - only one film set in the present over the past decade of filmmaking
>Christopher Nolan - Tenet was set in the present, but was like a weird alternate reality so I'm not sure if that counts. Prior to that it was Inception in 2010.

What's going on?

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  1. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    You really don't know why? Everybody and their mom complains about how modern times are garbage compared to whatever caveman shit you guys had going on in the 20th century

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Sure, but that doesn't mean you can't set films in this time period.
      In the 1970s, there were tons of films set in NYC that were grungy and showed how shit the area was.
      Why aren't there any films that take place in shitty areas of modern cities? Is it to dangerous to shoot in areas like that? Or have modern directors lost their balls?

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        >wahmen are being sexually harassed and catcalled!
        >oh shit it's mostly Black folk shut up
        >stop asian hate!
        >oh shit it's mostly Black folk shut up
        >stop mass shootings!
        >oh shit it's mostly Black folk shut up
        >stop trans genocide!
        >oh shit it's mostly Black folk shut up

        repeat ad infinitum

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        Because even back then times were not as shitty because creative freedom was in more abundance and even coming off the Vietnam War there was less polarization. Imagine trying to make kino nowadays about some city during the 2020 summer of love. Can you imagine the amount of hysterical wailing that would produce? That's if you can even imagine it being greenlite, which it would not

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          But Nancy Pelosi said that having Tax-payer funded healthcare would allow creative types to flourish, since they no longer had to worry about healthcare!

          Why would Nancy Pelosi lie like that?

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            I'm a Bong and I love how as soon as I shit on universal healthcare, the provoked the ire of Europeans immediately accusing me of being an American and 'cucked' for not wanting """free""" healthcare. Fricking smoothbrained homosexuals.

            • 2 years ago
              Anonymous

              Tories have been fricking up your health system for 50 years now. Anytime single payer comes up in he USA, your Murdoch paid shills show up here with your cherry picked horror stories about how bad national health is anywhere in the Commonwealth, everyone else in Europe First World Asia does fine by it.

              • 2 years ago
                Anonymous

                I had a relative who got treated fine by the NHS when he got a brain tumor and had a seizure and could have died had he been alone when it occurred, so don't strawman me with your homosexual partyline about how I'm claiming it does nothing but murder people, etc. I still think little of socialised medicine or some shitty mixed market half-in half-out model.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        Watch Red Rocket
        Set in modern day Texas City, TX
        Total shithole

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        >Why aren't there any films that take place in shitty areas of modern cities? Is it to dangerous to shoot in areas like that? Or have modern directors lost their balls?
        *blocks your path*

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        1 - cellphones and social media make for bad stories and uninteresting people. Seinfeld couldnt work in the age of cellphones, great dramas cant happen in the age of smartphones, epic romances cant happen in the age of social media and jaded women

        2- filmmakers cant be honest about things happening currently

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          >2- filmmakers cant be honest about things happening currently
          That's the crazy thing. In the 1970s and 1980s, it was common for films to explore social issues and hit back against things like gang warfare and illegal immigration.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            It also at some point becomes uninteresting and simply ugly and demoralizing.

            I don't want to get involved with some modern ugly woman's story, I dont care to have my empathy be exploited and abused by some story about a immigrant, I dont want to get depressed by some bougie media homosexual trying to shock me or show me nasty truths etc

            you look at this list

            Depends on what you consider good. I dont particulary like any of the directors you mentioned except Coens and PTA who are fine.
            I will just name the directors
            >David Lynch - last period piece in like 1980
            >Leos Carax - exclusively makes films set in present or slightly alternate present
            >Bruno Dumont - 8 films (including TV shows) since 2010, 4 set in present, everything he made before 2010 is set in present too
            >Safdies
            >Philippe Grandrieux - everything in present iirc
            >Tsai Ming Liang - everything in present
            >Harmony Korine
            >Von Trier - 1 period piece since 2010
            >Thomas Vinterberg - 3/6 since 2010 in present
            >Malick - made whole trilogy set in present during 2010s
            >Lee Chang-dong
            >Apichatpong Weerasethakul
            >Philippe Grandrieux
            >Claire Denis
            >Carlos Reygadas
            >Jia Zhangke
            >Assayas
            And Im sure there are plenty of middlebrow directors working in America who made films set in present this decade Refn, Cianfrance, Chazelle, Fincher from the top of my head.
            etc.

            and it's like someone you look at and wonder why they enjoy sniffing a toilet

            • 2 years ago
              Anonymous

              >you look at this list
              i'd bet my left testicle you haven't shit from that list except for lynch

              • 2 years ago
                Anonymous

                why are you pretending Von Trier, Malick, Vinterbeg, Korine are obscure, you mid?

              • 2 years ago
                Anonymous

                because i'm replying to a moron who most likely only watches fast and furious

              • 2 years ago
                Anonymous

                The worse fast and furious is better cinema than your masturbatory reddit midwit shit who couldnt even recreate a buster keaton scene

              • 2 years ago
                Anonymous

                what buster keaton scene now? lots of buzzwords, that's how i know you're probably moronic

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            Those social issues were never presented as soft-boil civil war before. Yes you have race riots, but no one was throwing around the word 'coup' and no one was getting charged with sedition.

            You can't touch the current political environment right now without it getting labled as propaganda for one side or the other, because social media bubbles mean that the two opposing sides don't live in the same reality anymore. Things are only facts withing your bubble, one step outside of that and everything you don't like is a psyop by some vast conspiracy.

            The whole thing is just too volatile to touch.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      kys zoomer, you are the downfall of civilization

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        It's the previous generation's fault that we are this way. Also something tells me you're not even 20 years old yet

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      That would make for better stories I would think. Maybe people don't want to face down their current issues and find ore creative catharsis from transposing their stories into perceived better times? It's a little sad if I'm right.

  2. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    because the shit going on in the present is race war build up and political pandering. it's too divisive to sell to the biggest audience possible.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Kind of, but if you have a lower budget film, you can still make back your budget even if the film was more targeted.
      Even comedies aren't set in the present any more, the only genre that is still set in the present is Horror, but most new horror films are completely awful.
      I definitely think it's because of "wokeness/leftism" and all that bullshit, people are way too sensitive these days, so if you call out political bullshit going on, they're more likely to side with the government than they are to realize that it's the government that's creating these problems in the first place.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        >the only genre that is still set in the present is Horror

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Thats what the 60s were too and there are plenty of movies set then

  3. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Smart phones are plot breaking for a lot of stories.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Agreed, this is definitely a big part of the problem. So many times in Seinfeld, a plot could've been solved in a matter of minutes if a cell phone was around.
      Or like in The Sopranos, they get around it by saying the Feds have everyone's phones tapped, and it's a "face to face business".
      By that measure, we're living in an excellent time period, but most people are b***hing more than ever.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      The only factual answer here. You either go pre-smartphone... or you write a story that revolves around smartphone usage, and if it does not revolve around it, 1/5th of the movie has to be devoted to bullshit reasons why they dont work etc

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        Yeah, basically this:
        >Criminal movie - don't use smartphones because phones could be tapped
        >Horror film - set in the woods (no cell phone reception)
        >Sci-fi - set in the future anyways
        >Action/spy-film - may get around using cell phones, since it deals with criminal groups, espionage, surveillance, etc.
        >Modern drama/comedy films set in the present era - basically non-existent because of the iniquitousness of cellphones, internet, wi-fi, etc.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      If smart phones are so goddamn good at solving problems then why do we still have problems? You stupid mother fricker.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        That's the point. We don't have a lot of the trivial problems that people faced before smartphones, and a lot of stories either revolve around those trivial problems and their implications or escalations, or else stories revolve around fictional/fantastical problems that don't exist in the real world, but could be solved or massively reduced by smartphones.

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          So your point is writers are too uncreative to create things not using the same problems we've already solved? Sounds like the problem is shit writers, not the existence of cell phones. Ironically it might be the existence of cell phones that has created shit writers by sapping them of cognitive ability.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            >Ironically it might be the existence of cell phones that has created shit writers by sapping them of cognitive ability.
            I think that's a large part of it. Too many writers grew up not reading great books, instead reading comic books or trash by Stephen King or JK Rowling.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            >So your point is writers are too uncreative to create things not using the same problems we've already solved?

            LITERALLY YES.

            Hollywood writers are very much stuck in the past and the tropes of those previous eras. I can't remember the name of the movie, but I remember sitting in a theater in like 2015 and watching a movie set in the modern day and seeing someone listening to a recording on a tape recorder SPECIFICALLY so they could do the 'rewind and listing to an important bit again' thing. And it just completely took me out of the movie because even then it was like 'who the frick has a working tape recorder anymore'?

            But they did it anyway. Because the people writing these modern movies grew up on older movies and want to do all the same things, even though it no longer makes sense.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      THIS
      H
      I
      S

  4. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    >cherrypicking directors
    Lol.
    They don't set film in present due to aesthetic and being fixated on the past. Plenty. Of directors who do set their films in present times.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Okay, list for me some good movies set in present-day 2010s and 2020s. I'd appreciate it.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        Depends on what you consider good. I dont particulary like any of the directors you mentioned except Coens and PTA who are fine.
        I will just name the directors
        >David Lynch - last period piece in like 1980
        >Leos Carax - exclusively makes films set in present or slightly alternate present
        >Bruno Dumont - 8 films (including TV shows) since 2010, 4 set in present, everything he made before 2010 is set in present too
        >Safdies
        >Philippe Grandrieux - everything in present iirc
        >Tsai Ming Liang - everything in present
        >Harmony Korine
        >Von Trier - 1 period piece since 2010
        >Thomas Vinterberg - 3/6 since 2010 in present
        >Malick - made whole trilogy set in present during 2010s
        >Lee Chang-dong
        >Apichatpong Weerasethakul
        >Philippe Grandrieux
        >Claire Denis
        >Carlos Reygadas
        >Jia Zhangke
        >Assayas
        And Im sure there are plenty of middlebrow directors working in America who made films set in present this decade Refn, Cianfrance, Chazelle, Fincher from the top of my head.
        etc.

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          >David Lynch - last film was in 2006
          >Leos Carax - will check it out
          >Bruno Dumont - Joan of Arc, based on book from 1910 but set in modern times, not sure if that counts
          >Philippe Grandrieux - French film maker
          The rest I haven't heard of, may check them out eventually.

          Are there no good american directors making modern films these days?

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            I counted The Return as a film. Dumont's last was in present day, before that he made 2 miniseries in present day and Outside Satan which is also present day.

            Some indie filmmakers - Patrick Wang, Kelly Reichardt, David Robert Mitchell. They all made some decent films but contemporary American cinema is weak in general.

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          based, assayas just did modern day irma vep. i hope it's good, his last one was a big miss.

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          Yes, there are plenty but you assume people here watch non American films. Hong sang soo makes like 3 per year. Hamaguchi made one last year. Serra made his first present day piece this year. Guiraudie, Mungiu, Ostlund, Jarmusch, Bi Gan, Dardennes, Filho, Verhoeven, Ozon, Sorrentino, Haneke, Ceylan, Zvyganistev, Seidl and the list goes on. People really need to watch more instead of r/movies approved shit.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      What are some good recent ones?

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      How's that list coming?

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        Pretty well.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      What a homosexual

  5. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    They set stories before the plot would be ruined by ubiquitous smartphone usage. Also there's been a general trend towards nostalgia for the past and dread for the future. All the movies set in the future are disaster movies or dystopia, there has been very little genuinely optimistic sci-fi in the past 20 years. Westerners have lost hope.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      >Westerners have lost hope.
      Can you blame us?

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Arrival is optimistic. Humanity works together in the near future.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      what about druk? to me it was one of the best movies and it was made in this time
      it's both things that these guys pointed out

      It's very very simple. Because everything is ugly now.

      Cities are stained with grafitti and littered with garbage. There are homeless everywhere. People dress like shit and the sea of multiculturalism makes every western country look exactly the same: filled with brown ugly people. In Europe all shops are kebabs or cheap chinese junk stores while in America it's a bunch Starbucks or any other chain surrounding a Walmart in every city. Cars are ugly and boring too, which is why there hasn't been a modern racing movie in ages (fast series don't even care about cars anymore).

      Funny thing is, they are still making movies set in the present, except they lie and manipulate by showing a pristine version of society which doesn't exist and never will. Movies before the 2000s never did that

      altho they don't even wanna try to make it work out it's like they are lazy as frick. drive was another good movie from the last decade they didn't avoid cellphones.

  6. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    We live during shitty times. You'll get midwits that do the whole smug 'HEH, romanticizing the past, UM, REALLY?! Don't you the past wasn't perfect, heh' bullshit but frick them. Shit doesn't progress in a linear fashion and we unfortunately are living in a clownish dystopia.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      I disagree. Things were so good during the Trump years, people had to find things to b***h about. Enter SJW politics, BLM, etc.
      Now, Biden is starting to ruin things again, so maybe films will be set during the present again.

  7. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Modern day is such an ugly setting. Imagine your background filled with people looking at their smartphones, your main characters talking to each other behind surgical masks and having to tip toe around every single subject matter out of fear of offending someone.

  8. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Alot of modern technology like mobile phones, security cameras ect removes alot of storytelling opportunities and would make alot of situations devoid of tension

  9. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    I've actually noticed this too. Problem is, no one romanticizes todays aesthetics. The Safdies do it well though

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Mann and Refn portray a brilliantly visceral contemporary aesthetic too
      (Well, Mann when he bothers to get out of bed that is)

  10. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    2 reasons:
    >the directors you mentioned are getting older and it's a combination of nostalgia for their youth and a desire to establish a legacy (historically, the most renowned directors have made period pictures)
    >hollywood can't compete with the low-budget raw indie dramas that are coming out of other countries

  11. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    I'm 35 and can't relate to today's world at all, imagine being a 60+ year old

  12. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Because the world sucks now

    The world ended in 2012, just not in the way we thought.

  13. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Many shots of Los Angeles during night time. A security guard stops a tricenarian who is trying to cut through chain wire fencing. The protagonist starts to explain what he's doing with the bolt cutter. After getting choked by the protagonist we see the security guard's expensive watch on the main character's wrist in the next shot driving his car. We follow him stealing a bike and trying to sell it at a pawnbroker or straight out trying to sell himself, applying for various jobs. He stumbles across a crime reporter who tries to record video footage of crimes and sell them to TV station within hours of the event happening.

  14. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Because reality is bleak and people watch movies to escape reality. Also, it's easier to not have to fill diversity quotas in period pieces.

  15. 2 years ago
    Anonymous
  16. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    It's very very simple. Because everything is ugly now.

    Cities are stained with grafitti and littered with garbage. There are homeless everywhere. People dress like shit and the sea of multiculturalism makes every western country look exactly the same: filled with brown ugly people. In Europe all shops are kebabs or cheap chinese junk stores while in America it's a bunch Starbucks or any other chain surrounding a Walmart in every city. Cars are ugly and boring too, which is why there hasn't been a modern racing movie in ages (fast series don't even care about cars anymore).

    Funny thing is, they are still making movies set in the present, except they lie and manipulate by showing a pristine version of society which doesn't exist and never will. Movies before the 2000s never did that

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      yeah everything looks the same now, things that are made to look expensive look cheap and tasteless, back in the day things like houses and cars looked classy and the brands differentiated themselves from each other,

  17. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    >last movie set in the present was Kill Bill, 2003
    didn't watch death proof?

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      That's not considered one of his main films, but sure, Death Proof was made in 2007, over 15 years ago. Which still proves my point.

  18. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    2010 was the last year I was happy

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      why

  19. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Because we live in one of the most uninteresting, lamest fricking times ever.

  20. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    I was just thinking about this. I'm sick of these nostalgic boomer directors.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Yeah, I'm kind of over watching films that aren't set in the modern day. Though good ones are hard to find, which is why I mostly watch TCM that I haven't seen before.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        >Though good ones are hard to find

        Here are the only recent ones I can think of

        The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
        Pig
        Another Round
        Uncut Gems
        Parasite
        The Art of Self Defense

  21. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Simple. Racism. That's the answer. Go to the past, revise it. Now you have a moral, you get to pander to a quadrant and you get buzz. It's always deliberate and always for this very simple reason.

  22. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    I mean, if nothing else covid makes 'modern day' movies extremely hard to do because you have to write around the fact that nobody wants to meet face to face in large groups anymore, and scenes out in public your pretty big name actor is supposed to cover up half their face with a mask.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      >cover up half their face with a mask
      what the frick are you talking about nobody uses mask anymore

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        Maybe where you live. I live in a city, and while mask use has dropped its still roughly 50/50 in terms of people using masks in crowded areas. Covid hasn't gone away and people don't want to get sick. I had to go and get a test just last week because someone I was hanging out with came down with it.

  23. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    bump

  24. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    because modern life is complete shit and we'd all rather look back to times when things made sense and there weren't 3000 made up genders for example

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      It's 3020 you toxic fricking mayonnaise chud.

  25. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Because if it's set in America you'd need at least 1 mass shooting scene which gets annoying. It's like cellphones. You need THAT line of dialogue saying there's no connection. You can't do that with mass shooters

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      lol holy shit you're literally brainwashed m8

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      >NOOO THE GUNS ARE BAD!
      You're part of the problem. You're part of why we're living in a dystopia.

  26. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Technology. AI, computers, smartphones. The only two directors who I know can properly tackle this are Johnnie To and Assayas. The smartphone usage in the latter's "Personal Shopper" was excellent.

  27. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    It's because writers are shit, and are mostly women and diversity hires

  28. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Test

  29. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Druk.

  30. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Reality jumped the shark.

  31. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Safdies and Sean Beaker

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      *Baker

  32. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    My theory is that writing for universes with the internet and phones is more difficult, especially when you throw new surveillance tech into the mix (every house and car is a security camera now more or less).

  33. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    culture died in the 2010s
    we’re living in hell im pretty sure

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