Hollywood is screwed and the studios are to blame

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by CoryS, May 17, 2017.

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  1. CoryS

    CoryS Forum Resident Thread Starter

  2. audiomixer

    audiomixer As Bald As The Beatles

    This article is so true. When "summer blockbuster" season arrives, I cringe at the trailers on TV. All of my watching is now at home. Many great shows on the pay channels, cable and streaming services. I never need to walk into a movie theater again.
     
    goodiesguy, Coricama, hellion and 3 others like this.
  3. eddiel

    eddiel Senior Member

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    This bit made me laugh
     
  4. tommy-thewho

    tommy-thewho Senior Member

    Location:
    detroit, mi
    Very well done article.
     
    longdist01 likes this.
  5. artfromtex

    artfromtex Honky Tonkin' Metal-Head

    Location:
    Fort Worth, TX
    We are definitely in a period of disruption. The studios have a lot of money and will be able to hang on for a long time. If one of them actually would embrace a paradigm shift and break away from the old mold it would probably end up benefiting everyone.
     
    DigMyGroove and hellion like this.
  6. JFS3

    JFS3 Senior Member

    Location:
    Hooterville
    The studios are to blame (as they always have been) to a large extent, but so is the public - After all, you get the culture you deserve.
     
  7. dkmonroe

    dkmonroe A completely self-taught idiot

    Location:
    Atlanta
    I don't know that that's necessarily true. The only thing the public did to "deserve" this is to have made the original movies (Ghostbusters, Star Wars, etc.) so successful to begin with. Hollywood has been trying to pick the low-hanging fruit for years now. The Wizard Of Oz was a blockbuster at the time but Hollywood didn't just created eight sequels to it because they were like, "Well, that's been done." Now the attitude seems to be the opposite - "That hasn't been done, therefore let's go with something that has. No use taking unnecessary risks."
     
    googlymoogly likes this.
  8. Brendan K

    Brendan K Forum Resident

    Location:
    California
    A24 is a perfect example of a sort of a production company with a "break from the mold". Every time I go into one of their movies (fantastic or not-so-good), I know I'm in for a unique and original film. We need some more!


    EDIT: Now that I've thought about it, Blumhouse probably falls into the mold as well. Although some of their horror movies are bland recreations of the 70s horror atmospheres, films such as Get Out and Split are unique, distinct and original horror films that ended up being box office smashes.
     
  9. BeatleJWOL

    BeatleJWOL Senior Member

    Well, when they take risks (which at this point is any story that's not adapted from a comic book, TV series or an older film / film series), it doesn't pay off, so why would they?
     
    lightbulb likes this.
  10. RayS

    RayS A Little Bit Older and a Little Bit Slower

    Location:
    Out of My Element
    It's my impression that the overriding notion at every major Hollywood studio is that either: a) everyone in their potential audience is a *****, or b) the number of potential non-morons in the audience for their films is statistically and therefore economically negligible. The other night I was in fairly crowded theater and listened to an audience belly laugh at the witless, sub-mental trailers for "Snatched" and Whatever-the-new-Weekend at Bernie's-meets-Bachelorette Party-why-on-Earth-did-Scarlett-Johansson-agree-to-be-in-this-crap-is-called-movie. And I was thinking, "B", and they might be right.

    This article makes no mention of the fact that one can go to an art house and see worthwhile independent and foreign films on a very regular basis. So like the endless "rock is dead" argument in the music forum, the "film is dead" argument misses the mark. One just has to go looking in other places for quality.
     
    rmath84, royzak2000 and longdist01 like this.
  11. Pinknik

    Pinknik Senior Member

    The Onion’s 2017 Summer Movie Preview

    The Mummy


    In this action-adventure flick, a mysterious, long-dead franchise is unearthed and brought back to life by a group of foolhardy Universal Studios executives
     
    goodiesguy, Malina, PHILLYQ and 7 others like this.
  12. balzac

    balzac Senior Member

    Blumhouse is a mixed bag; they've backed some interesting, different type of pictures that are good, and they’ve also done some pretty mediocre if not downright awful horror flicks (some of which have still been financially successful, others not so much).
     
    Brendan K likes this.
  13. balzac

    balzac Senior Member

    Public certainly should shoulder some of the blame too. Some decent (if not great) non-sequel/franchise type films have done poorly because people would rather see the 8th "Fast and the Furious" film than something they don't know about.

    Two examples of "not great, but at least somewhat interesting" relatively "big" films that did pretty poorly are the sci-fi-ish flicks "Passengers" and "Life." I'm sure some will contend these movies are awful. I found things I liked about both of them, though both had more potential than they did actual quality in execution. But they were still better than some of the sequels/franchise stuff that stomped them at the box office, and were two examples of films that were relatively original and had intriguing trailers that nobody went to go see even on the first weekend.

    I'm always bummed now when original films, whether indie or big studio, fail, even in cases where I don't like the film or don't care, because it does send the message to the studios to not take chances on non-franchise films, even with big stars in them.

    The two examples above also speak to what appears to be a weird downturn in interest in sci-fi stuff in general among moviegoers. The last "Star Trek" film didn't do that well. I sense the new "Alien" film won't do stunningly well. I think people are more into adventure and fantasy and comic-book-film-ish stuff than spaceship-based sci-fi sort of stuff.
     
  14. alexpop

    alexpop Power pop + other bad habits....

    Thank god for HBO and ilk.
     
    goodiesguy and audiomixer like this.
  15. BeatleJWOL

    BeatleJWOL Senior Member

    thisthisthisthisthisthisthisthisthisthis

    Studios are for-profit organizations. They do something that doesn't make them a buttload of cash? A little mark goes in a little book or in a computer somewhere that says "no money here, try something else", and that filters over to their divisions that choose what films to make.

    So every time you or somebody you love passed over seeing a movie that didn't feature characters you recognized from somewhere else? Congratulations, you're now part of the problem! :D
     
  16. The Panda

    The Panda Forum Mutant

    Location:
    Marple, PA, USA
    I thought most movies were still aimed at teens and twenty somethings because of their disposable income.
     
  17. TeddyB

    TeddyB Senior Member

    Location:
    Hollywoodland
    Foreign market is driving all the blockbusters.
     
  18. seed_drill

    seed_drill Senior Member

    Location:
    Tryon, NC, USA
    Or disposable time. Of course, retirees have more of each, but I don't see too many movies aimed at the geriatric set. Ron Howard's Beatles documentary, maybe. :hide:
     
    showtaper likes this.
  19. Another side to this is the VAST amount of recorded stories already on file. Watchable movies have been around long enough that basically every kind of theme has been used.
    Cinderella....lots of them.
    Love stories...plenty.
    War, either pro, con, or documentary....LOTS.
    Science fiction...Yup, covered well.
    Trapped with any number of hostile entities making the experience harrowing....been there done that, again and again.
    Political...they always seem ready to give some more regardless of how corrected it has become.
    Angst...covered.
    Loss...plenty.
    Anger and revenge....all too common.
    Fantasy...certainly.
    Animation, all kinds.
    When you cover all this with the heavy hand of being correct you get ultra limited output...and boy do we have plenty of that.

    This list could go on for thousands of more examples. The point is we already have plenty of accessible, well done, movies that cover all bases of human existence.
    Until about 35 years ago most people were relegated to watching movies at the theater or waiting for something to be broadcast on TV. When this happened it was a limited engagement so you better go lest you miss it. Now a person can watch anything, anytime, pretty much anywhere for very little investment and with pretty much zero planning.
    This has greatly diminished the need for new offerings. Especially when that "new" offering is a theme well covered already by many excellent films I can access right now.

    It is difficult to grab the attention of anyone when they are already engaged in what they seek.
     
  20. mpayan

    mpayan A Tad Rolled Off

    Good points
     
  21. BeatleJWOL

    BeatleJWOL Senior Member

    This also applies to the endless number of direct-to-video "who made this? I've never heard of them" "starring who?" films that are out there on Youtube, on various other streaming services, etc...

    It's a glut of options, for sure.
     
  22. Strat-Mangler

    Strat-Mangler Personal Survival Daily Record-Breaker

    Location:
    Toronto
    Exactly. All I see are comic book and 90-minute CGI commercials disguised as films. Puke is more appealing to me.

    When the public finally stops being entertained by flashy effects and starts to value content and story, things might change. Until then, it'll be countless Spider-Man reboots and other such garbage that'll pollute the movie landscape.
     
  23. MikaelaArsenault

    MikaelaArsenault Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Hampshire
    Wicked true.

    Here are some other reasons why:

    $$$$$

    The actors

    The production companies (TV, not movie)
     
    Strat-Mangler likes this.
  24. Ghostworld

    Ghostworld Senior Member

    Location:
    US
    Competition is nice, but nepotism is still king. Like so many other writers, I was excited to see Amazon open up its Amazon Studios at as a completely new venue for talent, only to see Woody Allen, Chris Carter, Jason Schwartzman, etc., get the series. Naturally.

    What if the studios stop sharing movies with the digital providers or raise their fee tremendously? What kind of leverage would that be? I honestly don't see anything wrong with another sources of movies. Hollywood will always exist as "the place" to come and work, so the movie industry will always physically be there. And it's not like the studios are going to shut down when the digital providers need Hollywood's blockbusters as premiere content. When movie theaters die, then Hollywood will die. But who wants to sit home all the time? Christ, the only thing to do in my town is go to the movies.
     
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  25. Dillydipper

    Dillydipper Space-Age luddite

    Location:
    Central PA
    Oh thank god...and here I was worried it was all Schlotsky's fault...
     
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