| Soundwave said: If anything I think this is completely backwards. |
I agree with the point about variety, in the big-budget department anyway. The Indie scene is thriving, creatively speaking, but not raking in the cash.
However, I would argue that "making movies for nerds" is not what studios have engaged in. Superheroes, fantasy, sci-fi, all these things were pretty undesirable and uninteresting for the average consumer. Through its writing, casting, and immense focus on spectacle, above-mentioned genres and works have undergone huge changes to appeal to mainstream audiences ("Whedon-ification" of dialogue is a common term now, for instance). I think that that's the real issue; you reach a point of "peak-spectacle" and if your only tool is upping the noise with each iteration, things grow stale. Not to mention the sheer breadth of it; so many productions vying for the same eyes on them.
The recent decade or so has, unquestionably, seen a shift towards trying to appeal to "modern audiences" - this is a very heavy and present talking point on stages, PR-tours, in interviews, and in the project descriptions themselves (no, seriously, this is literally the spoken mantra, impossible to miss). What we're seeing is interesting though, from a demographics perspective at least. Not only have the major studios managed to alienate swaths of would-be viewers; they have failed to sway the very demographics they themselves claimed to be fishing for. This, to me, suggests that the main issue is the above-mentioned mainstreaming of concepts and productions, in that there's a tipping point where the base material, coupled with poor aim and writing, simply lacks the gravity to maintain any audience. One parallel I'm seeing is the dilution of more complex genres and IPs within the gaming industry, things like RTS games, which are niche things sales-wise, dumbing down mechanics to appeal to a "broader audience". In so doing, they lose their original fans because it has become too basic, while still failing to replace that audience with fresh blood, since the core concept is still too geeky or unappealing. RPGs have gone much the same way, with more focus on action, and they're having similar issues with maintaining audience interest and engagement.
So, for me, however reasonable much of your post is, I just can't see the issue being "making movies for nerds", at least not fully (as per my point above). Lack of variety is a huge issue in and on itself, and it's showing across the entire entertainment industry (publishing, tv, video games, music, the issue persists).
TLDR; the issue, as I see it, is that the "nerd" is having to give way for mainstream audiences when it comes to big-budget productions, leading to dilution and, ultimately, a product that stops appealing to the nerd, while also still failing to entice the "broader audience". Movies and TV-shows end up in a PR-wasteland with poor connection and lousy figures to show for it.
