When does a movie become "old"?

[Prowler]

Similar to my thread about *when does a game become retro"?

Well, if we're talking about movies that are very reliant on special effects you can tell if one is old based on their outdated effects. But movies that don't have them? That's harder. I suppose you can judge by the image quality or the kind of plot and setting it has. For example, movies about genocides and war in Africa like Hotel Rwanda were once popular for a while in the early-mid 2000s. They're not popular anymore. Traditional action movies like the ones we saw in the 80s were kind of passe by the time the 21st century roled in.

I remember mentioning a movie from 2006 or so around 2009 or 2010 and being told "that movie is very old", which blew my mind. I was 19 at the time, as was the other guy. I know teenagers tend to think things that came out over a year or two ago are old but still...

But for example, Django Unchained. That movie is about a decade old by now or very close to it. Is it "old", though? And what about Batman Begins and The Dark Knight? Considering how common and popular superhero movies are nowadays, I don't think the Nolan Batman movies look or feel outdated in comparison to the latest superhero movies. At least not in terms of genre.

Movies like The Godfather and Rocky are obviously old, but they're classics and I'd still recommend them to anyone regardless of age these days.

Some say the first Die Hard movie is outdated because there were no mobile phones at the time it came out. And nowadays, the movie would finish faster due to the existence of phones.

Thoughts?

[Leo656]

I think when a decade has passed you can at least make the case, but man, sometimes it hurts. And some of them definitely don't feel "old".

Ten years is inarguably a decent chunk of time, though. When I was a kid, it felt like Elvis had been dead Forever, but it hadn't even been ten years. Ten years seemed like forever.

So I'll just say "ten years" for the sake of simplicity and the fact that we use a decade as a standard measurement of time having passed.

[neatoman]

You know MCU Spider-Man calls Empire Strikes Back and Aliens "old movies" to demonstrate how young he is, despite both of those movies being close to 30-40 years old by that point? And you know how how movies made in the 50's and 60's were considered old in the 80's and 90's despite being about as old as ESB and Aliens are now?

Old is kind of subjective.

... Although, I guess when the technology used to make the movie is obviously dated, that might be a good benchmark? So when a movie is in black and white, not because of a stylistic choice but because it was all they had or it was actually a budget thing back then, then one might call it old once color film was cheap enough to no longer justify black and white as the norm? That's probably not a good metric because it would mean Night of the Living Dead is "older" than The Wizard of Oz, which is objectively wrong.

Hm... How about this, a movie is old when it's been over 20 years after it's been released and there hasn't been a sequel or remake in over 10? Basically, when the studio don't care about it beyond DVD sales and streaming revenue and it's probably just going to be without derivatives until it enters the public domain. That's not objective either though.

[Prowler]

Both good answers.

As for Elvis, well I have a similar example. I was born in 1990. But by the time I knew something about the world and about history, the Berlin Wall and the Cold War already felt like ancient events to me. Even though the Cold War only officially ended in 1991. But by 1998 or 1999, it all felt so ancient to me.

As for videogames, the NES was discontinued in 1993 I think. I remember it already being an old console by 1995 when I first played it. I mean, next to the SNES and the Mega Drive I could very well tell it was older.

[Original TMNT Cartoon Fan]

Originally Posted by Prowler

As for videogames, the NES was discontinued in 1993 I think. I remember it already being an old console by 1995 when I first played it. I mean, next to the SNES and the Mega Drive I could very well tell it was older.

The NES was discontinued in North America and Europe in August 1995 and in Japan in September 2003.

The NES was outdated by late 1992 and early 1993, when developers stopped caring for making any good NES games. The console experienced its last major Christmas in 1991 in North America, and in 1992 in Europe.

[sdp]

As a kid a good guide was that if a movie was airing in non-cable tv channels then it was OLD. No kid felt those movies were still current. I don't know how long it used to take back then but it felt forever. When movies finally came out on VHS they were still relevant, and when they hit cable they were old but still not too old. Goes without saying that any 80s movie always felt ancient to me.

I'm sure kids today think the MCU is from forever and it's true, I mean iron man has a non-ironic myspace joke, that's what I used when I was in highschool, forever ago. FB was only used by the "cool college" kids back then. It wasn't until the end of HS that anyone could register to FB and we all did when it was finally open, so long ago.

The wait from SWs episode 1 to 3 felt like a lifetime and it literally was for me, I went from being a kid who had not finished Elementary to a teenager worrying what college I would go to once HS finished.

Also this is why checking Wikipedia is silly, sure the NES might've had a game made in 1995 but that's console was not relevant at all, even the SNES felt older by that time compared to 3D games that were already coming out on consoles.

I'm hyped for Jurassic World 3 but JW2 which came out in 217 feels like a long time ago, hell anything prepandemic definitely feels old to me now. It also helps that the 2020s feel like a fresh new decade compared to the 2010s which further makes anything from that era seem older than it is.