Calling film watching mindless consumption shows you’re missing the point, perhaps the same way your parents are missing the point of video games. Hell even Tom Cruise is working on a level of craft that no one else in the industry is doing as consistently as him.
Each medium has their strengths and weaknesses. I love video games, I was born in 85, the year of the NES so I lived my life with controller in hand. I do however recognize games still struggle to keep up with story telling in other mediums, mostly because gameplay and story telling are frequently at odds with eachother. And yes of course I know there are games with good story but rarely to they ever stick with me the way multiple films and shows do every year. Even a story like Last of Us was simply told better as a show. The best part of that show was the Frank and Bill episode, something that simply won’t translate back to a game at all. The only game to really stick deep in my soul was What Remains of Edith Finch. So often I’ll pour hundreds of hours into a game with nothing lasting on the other side. It’s why I’ve given up on grindy games all together.
Games also have a barrier for most people on the outside. It’s tough to look at an Xbox controller and not get a little daunted by the buttons, sticks and triggers. Credit to Nintendo for historically finding ways to bring the whole family together for a game night. There’s a reason grandma was playing Wii Bowling.
Great recommendations, I’ve only played about a third of these, I’ll dig in a bit!
Being a huge Movie and TV buff I’ll definitely push back on movies being shallow husks. The year is only half over and we’ve already gotten a bunch of exellent original movies. Love Lies Bleeding, Last Stop in Yuma County (favorite movie of the year), I Saw the TV Glow, Problemista, Challengers, Ricky Stanicky. Even the franchise stuff has been pretty good, Dune 2, Inside Out 2 and Bad Boys Ride or Die was tons of fun. Last year was even better, I think it was one of our best movie years in a long time. Oppenheimer, Past Lives, Killers of the Flower Moon, The Holdovers, Zone of Interest, Society of the Snow, All of Us Strangers, The Killer, Iron Claw, Boy and the Heron, Elemental, American Fiction. All original or adapted from a book. The earlier 2020s were a little softer because we stopped going out in public but even still we got Everything Everywhere, Aftersun, the start of the X/Pearl trilogy, Talk to Me, Bodies Bodies Bodies, Worst Person in the World and my favorite movie of the 2020s Pig.
TV as well. I feel like there’s constantly something well worth my time. In the same year (2022) we got some absolutely top tier television The Bear, Severance, Andor, The English, SAS Rogue Heroes and House of Dragon. Once again the past year has been full of excellent stuff Beef, Ripley, Shogun, Sugar, Bodkin, Baby Reindeer, The Gentlemen, The Curse.
I could go on like this for hours but the point I’m trying to get across is there’s a huge supply of good eating but if you only look to the biggest budget commercial products, you’re going to get big budget commercial products. I guess for me watching everything at the Summer Games show left me feeling a little bit empty. Except for Mixtape, that looks fucking sick.