Why Older Doesn't Equal Worse - Jack Budofsky

Godzilla (1954)

Godzilla (2014)

     I've been having a lot of conversations with my brother over the past few months about old movies and remakes of old movies. It turns out the pretty much every time I prefer the original and he prefers the remake. He liked the new Godzilla movie, while I thought it completely lost everything that made the original great. He thinks the new Star Wars trilogy is the best Sart Wars trilogy while I think nothing has come close to the originals. In fact, I found out that my brother won't even watch anything that's in black and white, and is reluctant to watch anything made before 1990. My brother's reasoning has always been "its because it doesn't look as good," which made me wonder how much that really matters.

     Looking at the example of Godzilla, its easy to see why someone would think visuals and technology is what makes a movie good. The original Godzilla looks terrible by today's standards, the monster looks like a toy. Its hard to believe that at one point, Godzilla was considered scary. Today, its more funny than anything else. But watching the original all the way though, its easy to see why the movie is so imoprtant. The way the story is told without really following a main character and still keeps watchers captivated is unique, and was a technique that defined monster movies up until recently, with movies like the newest Godzilla abandoning that completely. That's not the say the new Godzilla is a bad film, but the original, despite not being scary anymore, is still as great as it ever was. 

     And that's the thing about a lot of old movies: the visuals often not nearly as good as they were once thought to be, but the story and other elements of the film are still the same as they were when the movie was released. Of course, there are a lot of older movies that don't hold up at all any more, especially ones that relied on their visuals rather than acting or a story, but those movies are rarely talked about anymore.

     The idea that something can still be great even if the technology used to create it is outdated doesn't only apply to movies, either. Old music may not have the same quality of production that today's music has, but the song writing can still be appreciated. Old books may use old language that's hard to understand, but thay can still be appreciated for their stories. In the same way you can't judge a book by its cover, you can't judge a movie or song or any other piece of media by how old it is.