Death of the American Gangster Flick (Video Essay)

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Word.

 

[Roid Jones]

Saw that video in 2019, good breakdown

 

[Wild self]

All that when
Really its the fact that the consensus is that the mafia has been shut down in America


The 90s u still actually knew of real life mob figures like Gotti
So u knew at that time the mafia was around


Since Gotti
The belief of the mafia is done

And back in the 90s, there were everyday people getting extorted by the Italian Mafia if they owned a successful business.

Nowadays, that is unheard of. Society today is unrecognizable from 30 years ago.

 

[Originalman]

• The actors have aged out and there aren't any younger thespians to take the mantle. Sopranos was the last hurrah for anything Italian crime related. The cartels don't have the intrigue that the Italian/Sicilian Mafia has especially considering that the latter is pretty woven in the fabric of American history (New York to Vegas to JFK himself).
• Despite there being plenty of stories to tell that have never seen the silver screen, the appetite isn't there anymore due to film consumption being dominated by the Chinese who love terrible, action packed movies. Hollywood will go with a narrative driven IP here and there, but the Chinese owned studios aren't making those types of movies anymore. Why do you think the Hoffa film was a Netflix venture?

You are exactly right about the actors. People fail to realize the great method actors (some who were italian) like De niro, Pacino, Pesci and Brando (who wasn't italian). Carried these movies and each or all played in every last memorable mafia movie of the last 40 years.

We don't have the new blood of great actors like this nor do we have great producers like Coppola or Scorsese. Think about it Pacino, De Niro and Brando are considered 3 of the greatest actors who have ever graced the screen. And they have been in how many of the greatest mafia movies and movies in general of all time?

Its like saying why don't we have great hand held machine guns any longer. When there is no Mikhail Kalashnikov to develop them.

 

[NZA]

i dont think it killed anything that wasnt ready to go. i think the genre ran its course because of the changing times. OUATIA is merely the sign of the times. white people were broke in the 30s, disillusioned with morality in the post ww2 era, rebelling against social norms in the 60s, getting high on capitalism in the 80s, and gen xers were slacking off in the 90s. if you look at all those eras, you can see the gangster movies giving movie-going aged white audiences what they wanted. today, non-whites are more associated with the gangster life. older white people are the only ones who probably can remember a time when you had to watch yourself when hanging out in certain all white areas, and i guess they dont see any useful metaphors in gangster life to help them understand what it means to be a millennial white person.

 

[Edub]

Every horse can be beaten to death.....add all the gangster documentaries that would run on a and e, tru crime network and elsewhere.......the American audience knows the story and has pretty much tired out....


Plus John Gotti and the rest of the mob turned into sloppy greaseballs in the eighties and no Hollywood producer can romanticize that ....



John Travolta was the last big star to play a gangster and that was meh...

 

[Nero Christ]

Every horse can be beaten to death.....add all the gangster documentaries that would run on a and e, tru crime network and elsewhere.......the American audience knows the story and has pretty much tired out....


Plus John Gotti and the rest of the mob turned into sloppy greaseballs in the eighties and no Hollywood producer can romanticize that ....



John Travolta was the last big star to play a gangster and that was meh...

ehh I'd say De Niro, Pacino, Pesci, & Scorsese getting together was a bigger deal than that Travolta Gotti flick which everyone could tell was gonna be trash