The movie has not aged well (is this a good argument to use?

No, because there is no definition for "not aged well".

Now, it could conceivably be used for a movie made in the sixties that is set in somewhere around 1990, showing some future nuclear war that didn't occur. One could buy the argument that such a movie "did not age well".

But that's not what I've seen it used for.

I haven't made any sense out of the way it has been used by anyone here. Of course, I set each movie in its own era, with its own ideas. 

One difference between the older TV and movies from TV and movies somewhere after about 1965 is the way community self righteousness set in about 1965.

Community self righteousness is dangerous. Individual self righteousness isn't. By community self righteousness, I mean the idea that if enough people vote or agree to persecute, falsely accuse, and discriminate against certain people, that they don't need a reason. They're automatically right. Books, TV, and movies were made to feed this "demon" or ideology.

So now we have entire generations who believe they are always right. 

As an example, take an episode of THE RIFLEMAN in which the stalwart hero, Lucas, is told by his son that some day there will be modern conveniences which we did later have. Lucas scoffed at him like the son was off his rocker. Now, that bit of self abasement from the writer and actor who do the character, was credible, and would have been accepted at one time.

It's no longer accepted. Today, there are generations who would insist that the protagonist be the traditional Greek hero who was always correct, couldn't stumble, couldn't make a mistake, other than a moral one. 

This also includes dialects people don't like. Laurence Olivier is criticized today for a heavy French Canadian accent in 49TH PARALLEL, but that's the way they spoke, even into the seventies when I heard some speak that way. The accent doesn't hold well with one might call "sensitivity" of some people, but it isn't derogatory to French Canadians. Anyone who thinks it is derogatory is being self righteous, and since many people feel this way, they gather into a "community self righteousness" which gives them safe passage into unprovoked hatred against individuals they so choose. 

That's what people are calling "not aged well" on this site, and it makes no sense. It says more about the people who use that phrase for something other than not predicting the future well. 

Personally, I give the benefit of the doubt for science fiction movies that take such risks. Predicting a nuclear war just 20 years in the future is something that one knows is risky. There's little payoff. If you're right, you won't be around to say "I told you so". If you're wrong, you look like a fool. So it's the biggest risk taking adventure in movie making one can do. 

That's why good science fiction is almost always "credible characters in incredible circumstances". Probably most of us marooned on a planet with some creatures intent on killing us in a horrible way would fall apart and say something like "we're in deep sh.t now, man. Now what are we gonna do? Game over, man, game over!".

As long as the characters are credible, then the characters aren't "dated", and tht's what good writers try to keep from being "dated".

It is one of the worst arguments that anybody can use imo.

Some movies are meant for the time (Easy Rider for example) and must be watched with this in mind.

One of the worst arguments that has to do with this is visual effects. Visual Effects will always be a of their time until movies reach a point where all visual effects look 100% real. Some visual effects will always look less real because of the budget of the particular film.

The morality and views of society change as we gain more knowledge and become more aware. This is unavoidable and to fault movies for not being in line with modern social views is a bit silly, though there are extreme examples such as The Birth of a Nation. That movie was considered immoral by many people even at the time and is only praised for it's technical greatness.

I would say it's a legit argument for certain aspects of film making. Because Hollywood was still experimenting with it, I would say a lot of 90s CGI has aged horribly. Try watching "Mortal Kombat", it's laughably bad by today's standards. Also another example of this is blackface/yellowface/etc. Ask anyone the worst part of "Breakfast at Tiffany's" and Mickey's Rooney's performance will almost always be brought up.

I'm not sure what that has to do with when the movie was made. Witness for the Prosecution is a more laid back movie then Paths of Glory, so they add stuff that is meant to be humorous to lighten it up. Movies do this all the time. For me it adds personality to the film and definitely doesn't take away from the themes. He is a flawed character and the movie shows him as such. Movies still do this. 

You just dont like how the character is written in certain areas, that has nothing to do with the time it was made as far as I can tell. It seems like a Zodiac vs. Se7en contrast. They are both dark movies about serial killers, but Zodiac is a lot more humorous and often uses Robert Downey Jr. as comic relief.

I don't look at it that way. Movies are good or bad on the merit of their quality, not their age. For me those are 2 completely different things. If you are just asking are there old movies that feel like they are more similar to modern movies, the answer is of course. That doesn't make them better or worse necessarily. More realistic maybe, but movies are not reality.

I think this applies to a lot of comedies. Tastes in what's funny changes from generation to generation. A lot of the "sex comedies" of the 1950s-'60s seem quaint to later audiences, and something like Neil Simon's comedies are more like period pieces now.

Fair enough.

We seem to just have a fundamental disagreement that we aren't going to see eye to eye on. I respect your opinion though and am at least able to understand where you are coming from.

Are you suggesting that if a movie is dated it cant be powerful? I never said that Easy Rider isn't a powerful movie. It is. It was a very important movie at the time and the ending is no less upsetting now than it was in 1969. But there is not a hippie movement anymore and that movement was a direct response to the the social and political situation of the time and so was the movie itself.

Seriously though. Family Guy has a joke that insinuates that Quagmire rapes Maggie Simpson. I wasn't referring to the violence, I was referring to the rape and pedophile jokes that sometimes go way too far. They are shock value for the sake of shock value. At least in Revenge of the Nerds we understand his motive.