>>4233152I mean the mcu has had a long dominance over the global box office despite being laregely shit.
If you judge quality by success then you're basically saying that any film that didn't crack over $500m at the box office is trash.
There aren't popular auteurs because the hollywood system adapted to strip them of their influence. Same reason why actors don't sell films anymore.
That model was too unpredictable and took much power away from the studios.
If Good Time had come out in the 70s, it would've permeated pop culture in a similar manner to Taxi Driver. But there's mass oversaturation of media at the moment that prevents any film from being talked about for more than 6 months unless the internet mentions it due to its memes.
So a film like The Neon Demon, which is divisive sure, doesn't have the impact it would've had 50-70 years ago when the majority of films released weren't worth talking about so any film that excelled would immediately be discussed.
Take 2001, when that released it basically flopped because audiences didn't "get" it. But it carried on playing in theatres because what else were they going to show? So a bunch of stoners and hippies watched it because it vibed well with taking lsd. And this caused people to reevaluate the film.
If it had come out now, they would've just taken it out of theatres after 2 weeks and released it silently on vod where it would've been forgotten.
Or take A Fistful of Dollars. The critics at the time hated it because it was too violent and a desecreation of the romantic west. But audiences loved it. And it took decades to be reevaluated along with the rest of the dollars trilogy.
If it was released today, it would've scored terribly on rottentomatoes and there would be constant internet debates about it. Eventually the studio would've released a focus-tested sequel to capitalise on its popularity but to also try and get higher critical scores. And the sequel would've been complete shit because of it.
