Monday, August 01, 2005
What Slump?
I am so sick of hearing about "lackluster" box office returns this year and how the movie industry is suffering. Sure they are: home video and DVD sales are higher than they've ever been, box office is down 8% from last year - are they really losing money? Of course not. All this money they're bemoaning not getting now will be theirs in six months when all of these movies come out on DVD. Of course, even DVD will not be able to rescue DOA films like The Island, but does anyone really care what happens to that movie?
If anyone is hurting from this so-called slump, it's movie theater owners, because they don't have any other way to milk money out of their products like studios do. But they certainly aren't the ones gnashing their teeth the loudest every Monday morning, blaming everything from TiVo to DVD to piracy to the internets to bad timing of their releases - anything other than the blatantly obvious truth: people do not want to see these stupid movies. The studio may know how to market a remake or a sequel better, but, on the whole, the audiences would rather skip it. Not to quote a movie, but if you build it, they will come, and if you build it better, more will come.
I don't expect this slump to slow down either because all the movies further down the pipeline are more of the same: movies based on Broadway musicals based on movies based on TV shows. Is it any wonder why movies like Mr. & Mrs. Smith and The Wedding Crashers are some of the major home runs this year? I don't want to say that everything remade is bad, but the truth is that the studios' current approach to remakes is plain lazy. They don't seem to put nearly as much effort into the remake as they do into the new story. Why? Because they think the remake will do a certain amount of business no matter how good it is. The problem is that that's just not true. It may be true for the first weekend, but not for the third or fourth. Such shortsightedness reveals that Hollywood only wants to sell short these days, to buy it and flip it as quickly as possible. But the audience doesn't want to be flipped, to be dismissed, to be used, so don't expect them to get dressed up and be excited about it when they can get used on the couch for less money and free snacks.
The bottom line is this: make better movies and your troubles will be over. Stop complaining about new technology that you are simultaneously profiting immensely from, because that's just stupid.
The movies had a similar problem in the 1950s: Television. And they dealt with it by creating widescreen films and stereo sound. The threat was much more serious then, but the studios endured and thus created their last golden age in which output and quality were one in the same. They drowned in this spectacle later, of course, because they thought all the public wanted was spectacle without substance (sound familiar?).
I guess that's the strange truth: once the movie business figures out what's working, they've broken it. The moment something works is the moment it starts to die from overuse and a more fundamental mistake of missing the point of the success entirely. The spectacle years worked because no one had ever seen a film like Bridge on the River Kwai before. When you shove it down their throat eight times in as many years, it doesn't taste as good and they go somewhere else. Sure, it's a tall order to "make it new" over and over again, but that's why the rewards are so great. Nobody said it's easy, but these days it seems like the studios think it's all too easy. No wonder they wake up Monday morning and can't understand what happened.
If anyone is hurting from this so-called slump, it's movie theater owners, because they don't have any other way to milk money out of their products like studios do. But they certainly aren't the ones gnashing their teeth the loudest every Monday morning, blaming everything from TiVo to DVD to piracy to the internets to bad timing of their releases - anything other than the blatantly obvious truth: people do not want to see these stupid movies. The studio may know how to market a remake or a sequel better, but, on the whole, the audiences would rather skip it. Not to quote a movie, but if you build it, they will come, and if you build it better, more will come.
I don't expect this slump to slow down either because all the movies further down the pipeline are more of the same: movies based on Broadway musicals based on movies based on TV shows. Is it any wonder why movies like Mr. & Mrs. Smith and The Wedding Crashers are some of the major home runs this year? I don't want to say that everything remade is bad, but the truth is that the studios' current approach to remakes is plain lazy. They don't seem to put nearly as much effort into the remake as they do into the new story. Why? Because they think the remake will do a certain amount of business no matter how good it is. The problem is that that's just not true. It may be true for the first weekend, but not for the third or fourth. Such shortsightedness reveals that Hollywood only wants to sell short these days, to buy it and flip it as quickly as possible. But the audience doesn't want to be flipped, to be dismissed, to be used, so don't expect them to get dressed up and be excited about it when they can get used on the couch for less money and free snacks.
The bottom line is this: make better movies and your troubles will be over. Stop complaining about new technology that you are simultaneously profiting immensely from, because that's just stupid.
The movies had a similar problem in the 1950s: Television. And they dealt with it by creating widescreen films and stereo sound. The threat was much more serious then, but the studios endured and thus created their last golden age in which output and quality were one in the same. They drowned in this spectacle later, of course, because they thought all the public wanted was spectacle without substance (sound familiar?).
I guess that's the strange truth: once the movie business figures out what's working, they've broken it. The moment something works is the moment it starts to die from overuse and a more fundamental mistake of missing the point of the success entirely. The spectacle years worked because no one had ever seen a film like Bridge on the River Kwai before. When you shove it down their throat eight times in as many years, it doesn't taste as good and they go somewhere else. Sure, it's a tall order to "make it new" over and over again, but that's why the rewards are so great. Nobody said it's easy, but these days it seems like the studios think it's all too easy. No wonder they wake up Monday morning and can't understand what happened.
