I don’t think that’s a particularly new take. Lots of people find it boring, but recognize its importance because it’s the first place you ever see a ton of filmmaking techniques that are considered standard today. Welles basically invented modern filmmaking with Citizen Kane.
That’s the thing. Citizen Kane was a fantastic, groundbreaking film. So innovative that bits and pieces were copied and remixed over and over until they became trite and predictable. Now it just seems trite and predictable.
TV Tropes used to call this the Seinfeld is Unfunny effect, but has since renamed it to Once Original, Now Common.
The basic idea being that things that are groundbreaking at the time eventually become copied so much that people looking at the original don’t understand why it was such a big deal. My favorite examples are The Matrix (absolutely blew my mind in the theaters, but my kids think it’s just ok) and Golden Eye for the Nintendo 64 (I couldn’t believe how incredible it was to zoom in with a sniper rifle and see people moving on the other side of the map, but playing it today it looks laughably bad).
I don’t think that’s a particularly new take. Lots of people find it boring, but recognize its importance because it’s the first place you ever see a ton of filmmaking techniques that are considered standard today. Welles basically invented modern filmmaking with Citizen Kane.
That’s the thing. Citizen Kane was a fantastic, groundbreaking film. So innovative that bits and pieces were copied and remixed over and over until they became trite and predictable. Now it just seems trite and predictable.
TV Tropes used to call this the Seinfeld is Unfunny effect, but has since renamed it to Once Original, Now Common.
The basic idea being that things that are groundbreaking at the time eventually become copied so much that people looking at the original don’t understand why it was such a big deal. My favorite examples are The Matrix (absolutely blew my mind in the theaters, but my kids think it’s just ok) and Golden Eye for the Nintendo 64 (I couldn’t believe how incredible it was to zoom in with a sniper rifle and see people moving on the other side of the map, but playing it today it looks laughably bad).
For me it’s David Letterman. What he did was wild in the early eighties until others emulated him. History always needs to be viewed in context