Bring back dirty movies

Movies are losing their humanity and are harder to connect with now more than in decades past, and a large component as to why is a lack of basic emotional responses and overly clean cut shots.

One of the factors that makes a movie great is its ability to make the audience feel something. Regardless of how fictional or improbable a story is, if it’s translated well onto the big screen, viewers will be able to connect with the characters and feel empathy. A big part of how humans feel empathy is through our most basic emotional responses, especially in intense situations, like sweat or tears.

A good example of this can be found when comparing “Superman” (2025) to “The Batman” (2022). While both among the most successful superhero movies of the past decade and both movies that I personally love, “The Batman” easily takes the cake when it comes to making the viewer feel emotionally involved with the characters and the plot. “Superman” even had the upper hand in the battle by having one of the main characters be a dog, because who could hate a dog, but still managed to fall a little flat in establishing a reason to care about the characters.

“The Batman” on the other hand, grabs the viewers attention with its grime and display of visceral and charged reactions from characters. You can see the smeared makeup and sweat dripping down Bruce Wayne’s face as he unmasks. You can hear The Riddler’s voice cracking and shoulders shaking when he gets especially invested in his work. The Penguins’ clammy hands and face when he realizes he’s screwed feels so genuine that it’s sweat-inducing in of itself. Their reactions are pure shows of human nature at work, it’s messy.

The only time this level of messiness is seen in Superman is during the fight with Ultraman or when an innocent civilian gets killed, giving an easy explanation as to why Ultraman became a fan favorite and why the execution scene stuck with viewers despite these characters barely any screentime compared to others. For the majority of the movie, everything is shot clean and smooth. The characters almost always look perfect despite the terror in Metropolis. It’s simply not human.

If there’s no more grit and grime in Hollywood, there’s no more connection between fictional worlds and the reality of the viewer’s life, often diminishing the artistic value of the film itself. There’s no human nature meaning there’s no reason for compassion. Sure, clean cinematic shots are pretty and nice to look at, but with the frequency of cinematic shots in a lot of today’s movies, they often mean nothing beyond being a stylistic choice.

If movies want to achieve the same long life span and relevancy of a lot of movies of the past, the switch from focusing on cinematic shots to human nature will be a necessary one.