I just watched The Big Short last night and I find it interesting that people liked Spotlight more. I did enjoy Spotlight and I do appreciate many aspects of the movie but I feel The Big Short did what Spotlight was trying to do but in a better way in almost all aspects.

They are very similar movies plotwise; they both follow a somewhat investigative journey of multiple characters to unravel and take advantage of a huge problem around the world. They both showcase unique, nuanced characters with different emotional connections to the problem and really capture their reactions as the stories unfold. However, I really believe that The Big Short captured this through cinematic style and technique in a much better way.

The characters in The Big Short were much more interesting to me. They weren't all non-practicing Irish Catholics who could have been a victim of the crimes of the Catholic church, but were rather separated into three different classes of bankers trying to succeed in capitalist America. You had the extremely intelligent and Asperger-stricken metalhead who physically looked through every number in the banks' mortgage portfolio; the manic, stubborn, and reasonably skeptical banker and his posse who have all suffered emotional distress but stumble upon this fortune through accident; and the young up-coming duo who have nothing but optimistic aspirations to run an investment fund because they love the American capitalist system. All of these characters were uniquely able to be related to and were clearly shown to have different motivations and opinions on the impending economic collapse.

In contrast, I felt the characters in Spotlight were all dull journalists stuck in a dying organization who just wanted to expose a problem that was handed to them on a platter (twice, mind you). Liev Schreiber's character just walks in and within an hour of having the job tells them that the Catholic church is molesting people and they should cover it. There is no personal investment with the problem other than their force feeding of the issue which they are tasked to resolve.

As for style, I felt The Big Short was a beautiful and interesting snapshot of the mid 2000s and this was conveyed through many cinematic techniques. There were sequences of real media coverage that portrayed the disillusionment at the time, and it showcased both the excitement and decadent lifestyles of the bankers who were responsible for the collapse as well as the dry and sterile lifestyles of the "small time" hedge fund investors who are taking a big hit from these guys. I got tired of every scene in Spotlight being a cold autumn day in Boston reminding you of the movie's problem by showing a church looming over a public space. It was powerful, I will admit, but it became banal by the middle of the movie.

The Big Short had a much more interesting photographic style as well. I noticed it immediately in the beginning during the early scenes in the 1970s which seemed to be filmed on a film camera (possibly digitally made that way) but the warm color and that light fuzz in the image really got me hooked from the beginning. It then shifts to the crisp and grey world of the modern financial system.