Slashdot Mirror
Movie Industry Blames Texting for Bad Box Office
cybercuzco writes "The movie industry is blaming poor sales of such movies as Gigli, The Hulk and Charlies Angels not on the fact that they were poor quality, but because people text message other people telling them that the movie stinks. Industry executives say that this undermines a carefully crafted marketing image. Expect texting to be banned by the MPAA in the near future."
This article made me laugh more then Mario Cantone on the Denis Leary
roast. Who thinks this stuff? Colin Quinn should get this writer on the
payroll for tough crowd.
"A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the word you first thought of." - Burt Bacharach
obviously reviews and the fact that a new 200 million dollar movie opened each weekend had nothing to do with it?
Mike
So they are saying that communication is the reason for movie's failure? They should get rid of free speech.
http://threetechguys.info Come, discuss Technology. Got a technology question? Come ask!
So, earning $131,164,155 in the United States alone and breaking sales records is considered poor sales? Incredible. =)
Word of Mouth Ruled Illegal - Film at 11
Governments are not necessary.
Where's the foot icon?
Surely if the movie wasn't crap, people wouldn't send text messages saying it was.
The solution is to create good movies.
Hmm
.sigs are for losers
I could be like the MPAA, blame everyone but myself when something bad happens. I'll start by blaming communists, woman, minorities, foreigners, my parents, teachers, politicians... and everyone else, but me. It's a good thing I'm perfect!
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Coke retroactively blames the touch-tone phone for poor sales of the New Coke.
Who needs Gigli when you have the abortion that is Battlefield Earth? THE MAN CREATURE IS HUNGRY. GET THE HUNGERFOOD FROM THE CARRYPACK.
this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
Here, eat some of this shit. Don't tell anyone that it tastes like... well, shit. Our business model, you ask? As follows:
- Produce crap.
- Hope enough suckers buy it before it's categorized as crap.
- Profit!!!
Yes, I think we just figured out step #2. Impressive!This is just pathetic. I think it's even worse than the telephone marketers complaining about how they're livelyhood is gone because they can't piss people off whenever they want to.
Oh yeah, this "industry" is going down the drain faster than I thought. I hope it dies a fast, painful death, along with the music "industry".
So, text-messaging allows people to spread the word about a bad movie too fast?
As opposed to, oh, checking the Tomatometer at or before the day of release? Or reading reviews you trust? Or just making a _phone call_ to your friends instead of texting them?
Text messaging is an incremental improvement in our communications ability, not a revolution.
But those days are over, because the technology of hand-held text-message devices has drastically cut down the time it takes for movie-goers to tell their friends that a heavily promoted summer action movie is a waste of time and money.
.co.uk site so I assume they are talking about Europe?) I guess that instant messenger (a massive communication medium for most people under the age of 26) is having something to do with it (and I guess the ability of AOL's AIM to forward those messages straight to your cell phone (thank the lord for free inbound SMS)). So while mass communication is FASTER these days (24/7 Internet connections, AIM, etc), I doubt that it has any bearing on the movie industry. Would it account for GOOD MOVIES doing better as well? "HEY THIS movE ROX"
.02
I suppose this has SOME bearing on the spread of word of mouth, but I can certainly guarantee that here in the US that text messaging is not as prevelant is the cell phone companies would like (this article is from a
The movies this summer sucked, bad. Gigli, the Hulk (which wasn't terrible), Terminator 3 (again, not terrible), American Wedding, etc, are all going to be dwarfed by such fine examples such as My Boss's Daughter, the Medallion, etc.
I suppose that they have to blame it on something. Mass marketing full of smoke and mirrors can't save bullshit. Let's cut out the teen-heart-throb actors/actresses (My Boss's Daughter) and get back to plot, script, and real entertainment.
Just my worthless
The MPAA should skip over a ban on text messaging and simply ban the formation of negative opinions of their movies. Problem solved. Next time you go to the movies, just be sure you shave your head ahead of time so it's easier for the MPAA probe team to screen your thoughts.
I'd bet that they have the market research to back this up, (if there's one thing that Hollywood doesn't fool around with, it's market research on their targeted demographics) so I would tend to believe the industry on this one.
Of course, this has nothing to do with texting, it's more about instant communication, which they can't do anything about. I suppose they could pressure theaters to disallow cell phones on some other grounds (people can't learn to turn them off during shows. That's a legitimate complaint - they really can't).
This reminds me of the music industry though. What they say in the article is that companies are used to being able to "buy their gross" and avoid negative word of mouth. That, in a way, is a business model. And just as the music industry will have to change their business model to succeed in the face of music sharing (REGARDLESS of whether or not they are able to contain it) so too will the movie industry have to make some changes.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
Quick, someone setup a BitTorrent so we can download all the text message reviews since they will be illegal soon.
"By accepting the terms of this license to watch the following movie, you agree to not say anything bad about the movie. If you cannot accept the terms of this license, please leave the theater now and ask for (but don't expect to receive) a full refund of your ticket price."
First the music industry decides to sell us justin timberlake dogshit, the economy goes sour and their sales go down and they sue us. Then the movie industry decides lesbian jennifer lopez mafia hitwoman movies with ben affleck are what the people want, the economy goes sour and their sales go down... can we expect any less from jack valenti?
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
any members of the MPAA actually sat through Gigli.. I'm sure they'd retract their statements.. (or they'd text one another going.. 'eeps.. wtf were we thinking?')
Just when you make it idiotproof, some idiot builds a better idiot.
...set you free? Hardly!
With the guy who told the people that their privacy was in danger because of an unfixed bug in their email services, the "truth" did damage to the company and we can't have exposure for bugs, flaws and defects... oh no... that's just anti-american!
I wonder who will be the first person to be prosecuted for giving a movie a bad review? After all, they are responsible for the tremendous losses that the MPAA are suffering. It's not ONLY the digital piracy on the internet, but now people are spreading the truth (or opinions) around faster than can be controlled!!!
What ever happened to the idea of building a better mouse-trap?
Obviously, if they spent enough money on marketing, people should like it right? I mean, thats what marketing IS. If marketing doesnt work, they'd have to rely on *gasp* _content_?!! Burn those infernal networks of informed consumers.
"Sorry Im not more user-friendly."
If that doesn't say it all, I don't know what will. Pretty much, Sands is saying that enough people will buy his product before the general public realizes his product is useless to break even.
What a *great* business plan.
"Don't mind me cutting myself on Occam's Razor"
Hollywood studios don't make movies hoping that people will like them and tell all their friends and then their friends will see it and tell their friends and so on anymore. It used to be that a movie was successful when it stayed in theatres forever and built up a good box office take that way.
,the movie can fade into oblivion and the hollywood execs are too busy counting their money to care.
These days, Hollywood puts out pure garbage, and hypes the hell out of it, hoping everyone will be so hyped up about it they'll want to see it immediately after it's released. They count on the fact that people who go and see it won't be able to tell that many people it sucks until the opening weekend is already past, and they've raked in their millions, generated purely from marketing. After the multi-million dollar opening weekend
Here's an idea: maybe Hollywood could start making movies people actually want to see more than once, and make their movie that way.
However, I would imagine that hollywood is by and large safe because the majority of people do not have cell phones that support "text-messaging".
What we would really have to watch out for is if some technological renegade could come up with some way that "text messaging" messages could be encoded into normal speech, allowing people without even cell phones to "text mssage" each other warnings about bad movies simply by coming within a close physical radius. If that happens, Hollywood is doomed.
Although I am a bit perplexed. They suggest people did not go to see Gigli because these "text messages" warned them it was a bad movie. However, I do not have a "text message" capable cell-phone, yet I knew Gigli was a bad movie anyway, becuase all the media outlets I follow had been consistently running stories for two weeks before Gigli was released warning me that it was going to be a bad movie. Perhaps this "text messaging" of which they speak has somehow hijacked cnn.com and nyt.com, causing "text messages" warning of bad movies to masquerade as normal news? Wouldn't that be illegal? Hmm.
Clearly there is much to think about here.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I'm not going to go to watch a stupid movie when it costs $20 without food/drinks for me and my woman ($35 if you get 2 tickets, 2 drinks, and a box of popcorn in NYC)
I'm not going to buy a cd when it costs $15+ for a cd of 8 tracks, 6 of which suck
I'm not going to listen to the radio since all of the radio stations I get are the same 30 songs in rotation, some at the same time
You know what I'm going to do? Pick up a book and go to the park. At least the view is nice (still warm enough for women in skimpy clothes) and there are still decent books to be read
The studios are relying on the fact that they'll get at least good sales on opening night even for a bad movie, as long as the marketing campaign makes it look good. Instead, the first viewers are warning their friends on Thursday and Friday nights "naw, go see something else, Gigli stinks." The Thursday/Friday night opening night crowds used to be a captive market.
It seems never to have occurred to them that some people might be texting to say "you have to see this movie!" for movies that didn't get the full court marketing press? And that the whole thing just cancels out (well, it would if there were as many surprise good movies as there are expensive bad movies).
Grassroots word of mouth is without a doubt the best marketing tool any product can have. If the word of mouth is against you, it's because you don't have good product.
Word of mouth spreads a LOT faster than it used to. It means that the movie has to actually be good and/or at least properly entertaining to make it up to the $200-250 million range, which is how it *should* be.
Basically, if you properly market a good movie then it's not going to tank... and good riddence to the practice of pumping up mediocrity with a ton of marketing to get first weekend gross w/o legs.
Isn't there an Amendment to some document somewhere that guarantees our rights to this, before and over-and-above anything a Corporation or Government entity thinks?
Too damned bad for the MPAA. Maybe the public has finally found the "killer-app" that will stop the flood of garbage coming out of the industry.
("Freddy vs. Jason"? For fuck's sake...)
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
Make better movies. Your movies suck. Face it.
Get better actors, they all suck too.
You try to cover up the fact that the plot sucks ass and the actors are retard droolers by overloading the senses with loud ass music, shit blowing up and other gee-whiz special effects.
You are hoping that no one will notice the fact that the entire movie sucks.
I DARE you to make a movie without loud music and ANY special effects of any kind, CGI or old school. You won't because you can't.
You can't produce a movie that will stand on the fact that the plot is good and the actors are good because those days are gone.
Hollywood is washed up. Fold up and go home, we don't want your crappy movies any more.
Wow, if hand-held text-message devices are so incredibly powerful, just think what a hand-held voice-message device could be capable of! Quick - get me a patent application form!
...rapid communication in general that has been improved/enabled by our new fangled networks.
:P) They will have links to dozens of reviews before a movie is even released.
Like, an example is http://www.rottentomatoes.com. (No, not affiliated,
When 40 out of 40 reviewers all say 'Gigli' is an abhorrent, unoriginal, poorly written, disastrous mess, I'm sure not shelling out moolah for a theatre ticket.
In "the old days" you'd maybe read a single review in a newspaper, which wasn't nearly as disuading as a whole battalion of naysayers all lined up.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
... of how the Internet and the way that it connects people together is causing big changes in our culture both at a national level and globally.
I'm not saying that IM is solely responsible for the "lackluster" showing of movies, like the article insinuates.
When I think about it, the Internet really has changed my way of life. Of course I was always into the online scene (I frequented Quantum Link on my C64 back in the day, and enjoyed the online communities on BBS systems.) With the Internet I'm even more plugged-in. I can't remember the last time I send an actual paper letter via postal mail. I hardly watch TV news anymore; I get my news on the 'net.
The Internet really has been and will continue to be a driving force behind cultural changes. I think this is just the tip of the iceberg. You can either hop on and enjoy the ride, or fall behind the times.
If a tree fell on a florist, and nobody was around to hear it, would he make a noise?
So they admit that their product stinks, but through the use of "carefully crafted" marketing they can make people think junk = treasure. But that plan only worked as long as they could keep word of mouth from spreading too quickly. In other words, they don't like reality, but prefer their crafted message designed to fool people into seeing garbage.
And it would have worked too if it hand't been for you meddlin' kids!
Naw. Expect a counter attack. Hire spammers, to pimp movies via text messaging. If they can manage to make it appear as if it came from someone in your address book, so to speak, so much the better.
If I was evil, and wanted to sell crap that no one wanted to people, that's what I would do.
What they're really missing is, how this means they don't have to pay for advertising.
Look at successes like My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Whale Rider (by far the best acting in a movie ever). They can just make something good, do minimal promotion, and let the people advertise for them.
Although, the entire article itself seems to lend itself as a troll, would you not agree Slashdot?
Blair Witch project
1. Hype the piss out of a movie
2. Everyone goes to see it, due to hype
3. People hate it, but others see it BEFORE it can be categorized as crap by Word-Of-Mouth
4. ???
5. Profit!
I love the fact they know it's crap, but hype it and bank upon the fact people take a while to have the movie labeled as shit. "Oh no!" they say, "Now they can categorize it faster! What will we do?!"
"Make good movies?! No! We'll blame those damn texting teens!"
.....bad movie reviews
.....the New York Times
.....movie websites
What brings so much humour into my life is how these "industry groups" seem to be like little 5 year olds - willing to talk about everything but the truth and adamantly sticking to their POVs. Music sales aren't down because of Kazaa - it's cuz I wanna buy the Matrix DVD instead of spending 15$ on a CD with two good songs.
I love their business model, though. Make crappy stuff and then blame everything but it's crappiness for the fact that it doesn't sell. Then sue everyone because they won't buy a crappy product.
Who thinks these things up?!
Strike "Word of Mouth Ruled Illegal", I have another suggestion:
Slander/Libel law broadened to include "negative and harmful" speech towards economic activity.
I personally know a guy who was successfully sued for posting a negative opinion of one company's products in a forum devoted to discussion of products in a particular hobby area. (In his case, outdoor water gardens)
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
The article being linked to is simply a few bits from a LA Times story which has much more information. The LA Times article has a number of quotes from movie executives that show they realize that word of mouth is key and that they wish to make movies that get good reviews from the initial fans. It does not indicate that the movie companies want to gag anyone - just figure out how to appeal to the initial viewers. In any case bad movies always get a negative word of mouth and good movies hopefully get a good word of movie - improved communications merely helps speeds this up.
The MPAA and RIAA are reporting low sales. They say that people talk about how things suck and make them do poorly in sales. "We will actively be gagging people as they leave the theater" said the MPAA spokesperson.
One would expect a successfull high-payed movie producer would be able to make the link between "bad movies" and "no audience", yet they didn't. They made ever possible link between something random and "no audience".
My guess they're still in the "denial"-phase and one day they might see the link and change jobs.
After the advertising blitz before Spiderman helped send it to super blockbuster status, the movie execs thought they had a formula to make any movie into a super mega hit, at least for 1 weekend. After all, movie execs are investing a chunk of change into these movies, they want to be able to predict and control the behavior of the masses accurately, at least in the short term. What they didn't figure into their calculation was the Spiderman was, thanks to Sam Rami, a pretty good movie.
New communications technology is giving people greater power, and that is scaring the pants off those who use to be able to spoon feed us information and entertainment. I say, let's watch them squirm and laugh.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
Please mod the original article down -2 for trolling and flamebait. :-)
Jouni
Jouni Mannonen | Game Designer, Consultant
Of course, a simple non-disclosure agreement on the back of each ticket will thwart those who dare bad-mouth any movie. Just patent the plot and claim copyright over any description of the story.
Sadly for the movie industry word of mouth works both ways. The reason movies like The Hulk crash and burn in their second week is that people tell their friends its shit. So word of mouth works or doesn't work based on the whether a movie is any good or not.
The problem is that in the movie industry the question of the quality of a movie never arises (until Oscar time that is). I've heard all sorts of excuses out of Hollywood as to why movies don't do well. For example, for Pearl Harbor it was: "Too long", "Not big enough star power", and most humorously: "Bad reviews". The fact that a movie does poorly because it's crap doesn't even seem to enter the minds of these people (i.e. quoting not the movie was bad, but rather got "bad reviews", as if that somehow has nothing to do with the movie itself). "Texting" is just another excuse to give the big boss as to why your studio is losing money. Kudos to people like Ben Affleck who actually had the guts to say that Gigli failed because it sucked
Maybe schools should teach practicing safe text.
I can just imagine it. Buy your ticket for 9 bucks and then sign a non-disclosure agreement before viewing. Anybody found violating said agreement will be forced to work craft services for J-Lo's next movie.
It's not stupid. It's advanced.
It couldn't be the fact that it costs nearly $40 for two people to see a movie with popcorn and drinks, could it?
That wasn't a showstopper for me, but, after paying that and THEN being treated to a trailer with a gaffer who claims that "film piracy" take food off his table, well, that was the last straw for me. That was my last entry into a first run house, with one possible exception: There's a film coming out this winter that I've waited all my life to see. After that, I doubt I will ever subject myself to a first run cinema. And Hollywood have themselves, not me, to blame. I remained a customer through the DMCA, through the Valenti years, and until now. But that was the absolute last straw, to make me pay for the privilege of being lied to and called a theif.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
>>I'm sure it will be banned, any day now, yep, right around the corner...
I agree -- it's just a matter of time.
Look how far we've come. Twenty years ago, legalese was rare at the consumer level. Now, it seems like packaging and advertising for every conceivable consumer product includes micro-print disclaimers wordsmithed by a small army of attorneys. As a consumer, you have to question everything and jealously guard your privacy during every interaction with retailers. Our culture is being damaged from this insane structure.
I think that banning commentary is a natural extention of where we are right now. Think about it -- it's not unusual for companies to ban the publishing of benchmark testing results as part of their EULA. *cough*DOTNET*cough* This amounts to a banning of criticism, because it prohibits this dissemination of information, particularly those with objective measures.
How long before the MPAA prints something to the effect of "By purchasing and redeeming this movie ticket, you agree to the terms of usage as published at http://www.WeOwnYou.com which may change at any time, without further notice"? Of course, the "agreement" will prohibit the moviegoer from communicating any opinion to a third party regarding the content of the film with the advance written permission of the studio, lest it harm precious sales.
I didn't see T3, and I didn't even get a text message. I suspected by the information released before the opening day that it would suck. And on the first Monday at work, the hardcore Terminator fans confirmed it. The movie reviews also wrote that the movie failed in the areas that made me think that the other 2 was great.
Shame on you for missing the chance of telling a great story. I will also be careful to avoid movies in the future made by the same persons.
I'll be back!!
Uhmm,, no,,,, no I don't think so.
IMDB readers rated Gigli as the worst film of all time. Even Ed Wood movies don't suck nearly as bad. Word-of-mouth whether spoken, or through text messaging has always been the most influential form of review. If banning PDAs and cellphones from theatres is the MPAA's plan now, it won't work. The few who actually pay to see terrible movies will still warn us off as soon as they leave.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
I don't see a lot of controversy or conspiracy theory in this article. The industry expert quoted all but says that the slowness of word-of-mouth was factored into past releases so that even bombs could recover their costs in the first weekend if they were hyped enough.
All this article says to me is that the movie industry was slightly blindsided by how text messaging changed the speed of the "word of mouth" effect. Doesn't seem like there's much conspiracy about this.
I find this fascinating, however, in that it shows that social systems tend toward democracy. Just as physical systems tend toward chaos and energy must be supplied to impose order, so it goes with social systems. The movie industry has imposed order by inserting money, thus maintaining control. With the democratization of the marketing message, however, they will have to change and learn how to harness the chaos... or insert MORE money per film (perhaps by giving away movie-related merchandise to all viewers or by further engaging viewers during the filming) to impose order on this more democratic system.
Or they could just make good movies.
Nah. Stupid idea.
He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington."
You say that as a joke, but it is important to keep in mind that
Copyright was originally instituted as a means for the British Crown to censor the printing press, a new technology (at that time) which they felt threatened by.
The domain, authority, and severity of copyright have grown and grown repeatedly throughout our history, as the tiny minority of people it benefits and the cartels they have formed demand greater privileges and greater profits. It is the only provision in the constitution that trumps freedom of expression and the press. Each time it grows, your freedom of speech shrinks by a corresponding amount (at least). Now that communicating certain information that can be construed as circumventing copy protection (this could, BTW, include memorization of certain inf
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Am I the only one who parses "carefully crafted marketing image" as "brainwashing" ?
The unofficial
A more likely scenario is some sort of legalese at the beginning of the film, a license agreement for watching the film. You, the watcher, agree not to publicly disparage the film, and may not distribute any reviews of the film without the studio's approval...
Sort of along the lines of the Bose tactics w/r/t their audio equipment. Sue the audiophile magazines for informing their readers of the sub-optimal quality of the Bose products. Now that the RIAA is going after the individual consumers, it's time for other *IAs to go after them too!
You drank my drink, you drunk!
If you read between the lines, they're saying that they are lying about the movies ("carefully crafted marketing image") and that the customers are catching on faster than they used to ("You could buy your gross for the weekend and overcome bad word of mouth, because it took time to filter out into the general audience.").
The old trick of shoveling out crap but still making money isn't working anymore. And instead of trying to fix the problems (make better movies and stop lying about the product), they're blaming the faster communication methods.
Eventually, of course, it's going to result in better movies; the companies will have to adapt to the new reality or die. Unlike with our friends at the RIAA, they won't be able to buy legislation to prop up their failing business model.
The "Defense" Industry and the Energy Industry got together to get a massive government subsidy to make war on some poor schmuck Third World dictatorship and take over its energy resources, coincidentally among the largest in the world.
All the MPAA and RIAA have to do is think up a War on Irate Consumers or something, and have the government spend billions of dollars over a period of, say, 50 years in order ot bolster the MPAA's and RIAA's dim-witted business models.
Its the same creative accounting they use to make sure they dont have to pay taxes, or royalties on net income.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Yes, they are, and they're probably right.
They should get rid of free speech.
I know that the **AA is just below SCO and M$ on the list of most hated groups around here, but they never advocated anything of the time - it was simply a guy making an observation that their marketing schemes aren't as effective as they used to be. Nothing more. So perhaps we can wait to let loose with our anti-**AA tirades until they do something ro really deserve it. At their rate, that should require approximately three /. stories from now.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
So I've been doing a lot of thinking about this over the past few days,
not a lot but you know it's been in my mind. The MPAA is a large group of
movie studios - Walt Disney, Sony, MGM, Paramount, Universal, you get the
idea - basically, if there's been a movie released recently, and it's
gotten good press coverage, they're behind it.
This is why I don't like going to movies. Movie studios are only
interested in producing movies which will score gigantic First-Weekend
sales: this has been evident with nearly every movie produced since
Titanic, the last movie to make a dent in the number-of-weeks-on-top
category. Look at the movies we've had this summer that have been
moderately successful: X-Men 2, Matrix 2, Bruce Almighty, Finding Nemo,
The Hulk, Terminator 3, and Charlie's Angels 2. All of which offer
little-to-know value beyond flash; Matrix, according to a vast majority of
reviews not influenced by the neato-CGI effects, has lost much of its
philosophy in favor of lots more flashiness. X-Men 2 delivers nothing of
substance, along with the rest of the list. I haven't seen Finding Nemo
because I am currently not interested in seeing much Disney (due to their
involvement in the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act to protect
their works from going into public domain), however from what I hear it is
a good family movie, but it doesn't offer the emotion that Disney made so
well with the likes of Bambi, Lion King, and Snow White to name a few (a
side note here - if the Grimm Brothers had actively pursued an extension
of copyright to the point where it is now - 100 years - then Disney would
have been in copyright violation in their making of Snow White, and much
to all of the proceeds would go back to the Grimm Brothers, and Disney
would not have achieved their large following).
They're only interested in the first weekend ratings. All of the movies
this summer made a vast majority of their money during the first weekend.
This is due in two parts: 1. the tremendous hype machines surrounding the
movies did their job and created such a need to view (so they can talk to
the people who saw the movie, they don't want to be the only one at the
water cooler who didn't see it), and 2. After the group of people who saw
it came back to tell the story realized that the movie was nothing but
hype, word got back to regular people, and they no longer wanted to see
it.
It pisses me off. 20 years ago, MPAA were making movies that are still
being enjoyed. Star Wars, Indiana Jones. Jaws. The Exorcist. The
Godfather I & II. Das Boot. Raging Bull. Do you think that any of the
crap that Hollywood is pushing down our throats now stands a chance of
being cared about in 10 years? There may be a couple diamonds in the
rough: Lord of the Rings trilogy, the first Matrix, maybe Fight Club. But
they are few and far between, especially since the number of movies
created are increasing.
One thing I blame is a reliance on CGI - computer graphics in movies.
When Titanic came out 5 years ago or something, it was hailed as being
spectacular. It now looks ancient. Computer graphics age movies faster
that non-cgi graphics. I wish movie studios would pick up on this. I was
watching Das Boot a few nights ago, and it was amazing how much more
modern it looks than a computer aided one, say, Hunt for Red October
(granted, it had primitive computer systems, but still they had the
opportunity to not utilize current technology). Much better movie as
well, if you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it for a not-so-glorious
look at war.
I was one of the few people who was not awestruck by the Amazing
Spider-Man's not-so-amazing computer graphics. I thought some scenes,
especially near the beginning of the movie, were almost to the point where
they looked like cartoons. I just watched it again, and it's even more
archaic than I remember it from a y
You win this one. RTFA. They're finally admitting what you scream and holler about every time theres some statement made about internet piracy:
They realize that they're earning less because their product is not worth 15 bucks a head to see, and the public is on to them.
Noone had to tell me Gigli was a terrible movie. I'm already sick to death of "Bennifer", neither have any talent, and it was obvious to me that a vehicle for two pretty airheads was not something I'd be interested in.
Now speaking of movies, who else saw "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen"? Geezus christ.
If you ever imagined that Captain Nemo, Jeckle/Hyde, the invisble man, one of the chicks from dracula, the guy from King Solomon's Mines and Dorian Gray got together in some sort of 19th century version of the X-Men to fight Dr Moriarty for some reason? If so, have you ever imagined that this story would be written by someone who'd NEVER READ ANY OF THE ORIGINAL BOOKS AND HAS A SATURDAY MORNING CARTOON IDEA OF THE CHARACTERS? Shit, Jeckle/Hyde was portrayed as an incredible hulk kind of guy. And yeah - that Dorian Gray - the one from the Wilde book "I will destroy you with the power of Sodomy!"
Sad thing is everyone else liked it. When Dorian Gray came onscreen I said "Uh oh Connery, you better watch your butt!", there was a sole fit of laughter from someone way in the back who'd no doubt read the book - or seen a decent movie adaptation of it.
Anyways.
The MPAA is realizing the era of "throw some big names and a pile of FX into any old shlocky script" blockbuster era is over. We've seen all the explosions and stunts we're gonna see. They know they have to either do better - or perhaps do it cheaper. I would have seen the hulk for 5 bucks - IF that included a soda (which is only worth like a dime to them for fuck sakes). Ok, I know the theatres and the movie producers are two seperate entities, but they could work it out.
People want value for their entertainment dollar, and they know they aren't going to get it from Gigli. My 8 and 6 year old kids know that. For the cost to take them to a movie, we can stop by Babbages and pick out a console title and be more entertained.
Ok, end of story. Now relax. And turn your fucking phones off in the theater, text mode or not, it's still annoying. If you dont like the movie, leave, and text/talk/bleep/bloop in the damn parking lot.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
First we have the RIAA making shit music and blaming p2p file sharing for its poor sales. Now we have the MPAA making shit movies and blaming the public for its poor sales. Hmmm...maybe Disney will have to bribe Congress and get text messaging banned.. Because after all there's NO WAY the PRODUCT could suck! Right?
Gobble Gobble.
I saw it at full price (times two tickets). That's the price I pay to be able to mock it fully and openly.
This isn't very good, but all I could come up with at short notice.
.
The movie industry is dying It is official; Independent confirms: **AA is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered **AA community when Independent.co.uk confirmed that **AA blockbuster revenue has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all moviegoers. Coming on the heels of a recent Independent survey which plainly states that **AA has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. **AA is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent test of movies that don't suck.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict **AA's future. The hand writing is on the wall: **AA faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for **AA because **AA is dying. Things are looking very bad for **AA. As many of us are already aware, **AA continues to turn out some of the worst movies EVER created. Blood flows like a river from the eyeballs of moviegoers who watched "Gigli", "Tombraider 2", and "LXG".
MPAA is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its creativity. The sudden and unpleasant departures of movie quality and any attempt at doing something new only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Hollywood is dying.
. .
Due to insanely high prices, abysmal plots, and movies that are ALL sequels, spinoffs, remakes, or advertisements for Disney rides, MPAA will go out of business and be taken over by the RIAA who sell another load of dog crap to the increasingly unsatisfied masses. Soon the RIAA will also be dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that **AA has steadily declined in viewers. **AA is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If **AA is to survive at all it will be because of politicians who get bribed by people like Hilary Rosen and Jack Valenti. **AA continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, **AA is dead.
There's no sig like this sig anywhere near this sig, so this must be the sig.
Two teenagers were sending text messages back and forth in the theater while the movie was playing.
I guess it's better than whispering back and forth...
This user account is inactive account replaced by the PDA
Then again, what they are saying is basically "usually we managed to fool enough people to watch our crap, this doesn't work any more".
That's exactly what they're saying. Why is everyone getting all beligerent over this? There is nothing controversial about this statement.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
If you read the article (rather than just the blurb), nowhere do the movie people actually say that this is a bad thing, that they don't like this turn of events, or that they want to do anything to change it.
It could well be a good thing overall, such that they can release good movies with staying power rather than going for glitzy special effects that make good ads. The movie business, unlike the music business, actually likes to produce good stuff, but they haven't been able to do so successfully very often, because it was so much more effective to focus on advertizing than on good movies.
The old way was a case of a degenerate strategy which sucks for everyone but is successful; using a more pleasent strategy just isn't cost effective. If people ignore ads and hear whether movies are any good from their friends, there is a much better chance of good movies not flopping in the box office like they have before.
No its not. Beep Beep. Beep Beep.
Or then the assholes with the cutesy polyphonic alert tones, there was this one idiot in a restaurant who had Spongebob Squarepants laugh on the text feature. Wlalalalhahalalhal. (poke with single finger for 5 minutes). Wlahalhallahalala
BOOT TO THE HEAD
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I could see them adding a requirement to the purchase of the ticket that you agree to an EULA stating that you will not review the movie without written permission from them, kinda like the MS Eula on their windows update page that states that you won't post .net benchmarks without prior written permission from MS. It's not an insurmountable difference in format...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Isn't something that causes bad movies to loose money a good thing? From a market driven economy point of view. If bad expensive movies loss money then studios will stop making them. Instead of spending huge amounts of money for big names and effects they might start looking for better stories , new idea, and even new talent. Maybe the will drop the ticket prices a little and not charge so much for popcorn. I am convinced that gram for gram movie popcorn may be the most expensive substance on earth.
Naw. There must be a problem when good marketing can not sell a bad product!
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
why would teenagers message their friends that a movie stinks?
maybe, just maybe, it's because the movie stinks.
"Mister Potato-head --MISTER POTATO-HEAD! Backdoors are not secrets!" (War Games, 1983)
The fact that fast-communicating audiences are "scuppering carefully crafted marketing campaigns" doesn't register to the movie moguls as MAKE BETTER MOVIES. Talk about living in your own pocket universe.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
They've done this, sorta. They've been nailed for hiring people to set up half-ass web sites talking about a movie and made to look like amateur jobs. If I remember correctly, slashdot had an article about some guy who got $10,000 a pop for each such page a while back. To give the page credibility they would "leak" screenshots or other information to the website. I can't remember the term for it, but it's a well practiced form of marketing in marketingville.
LOL
Get real if movies do well because Joe average can't see past the hype, movie studios will just come up with improved hype.
The internet may have made word of mouth travel faster, but I think three bigger reasons for bad ticket sales are:
1) The price of movies and condiments are just ludicrous. Prices have triped and quadrupled in the last 15 years.
2) Second run movie houses have become more popular. Why spend $15.00 to see a movie when you can wait 6 weeks and see the same flick for $6.00?
3) Home theatre systems have improved to the point where picture quality and sound are really, really good.
Ruby on Rails Screencast
Headline should have been: Acknowledges Texting Effects Bad Box Office Turnout. The article was short sort and what was said was even handed. Slashdot clip is totally off base and seems to be talking about a different article. Nothing sinister here, just a Slashdot spin on an innocent (and insightful) comment by a Miramax guy.
Quack, quack.
The movie industry has know for YEARS that even if a movie is crap, they can still pull in $$ with a big hype campaign. This is one of the reasons they pay so much attention to week-2-week falloff of ticket sales. It is based off of just how fast word-of-mouth is.
They admit the idea of "buying your gross", and aren't talking about banning anything. They're going to have to rethink the entire idea of "buying success" with a crap movie.
I think we're going to see a lot more direct-to-video and movies that only stay a couple of weeks before hitting the DVD market.
About time, too.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
While I'm sitting there watching a movie at the theater I text all my friends vivid details of what's going on. It's almost like downloading the "cam" version off the internet anyhow... this just saves them all time...
*hangs his head and sticks out his arms ready for the cuffs*
Wait till they find out about mrcranky.com!
I just sent a txt to a few friends: " microsoft stinks!@# " I sit back and wait for microsoft to crumble under the wrath of txt messages! mwuhaha!
I think its called "astroturfing" - essentially a fake "grassroots" effort.
I have a hypothetical situation here. What if hollywood made a good movie, then word of how good it was would spread faster and by the same logic sales would go up.
So maybe, just maybe faster communication isn't causing sales to decrease. Poor movie quality is.
Whats next, a "walk thru EULA"?
.....Money not refundable in the event that you do not agree to these conditions.....""
"..... By walking through these cimema doors you agree to the following conditions....
Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know when your gonna get food poisoning.
I can turn my thumb down a lot faster than I can push 8 4-4 4-4-4 7-7-7-7 6 6-6-6 8-8-8 4-4-4 3-3 7-7-7-7 8-8 2-2-2 5-5 7-7-7-7
Promote civility: mod down any post starting with 'ummm'.
It seems never to have occurred to them that some people might be texting to say "you have to see this movie!" for movies that didn't get the full court marketing press?
The big houses might be more afraid of this, actually. It seems to me that the better, sleeper movies lately have been either foreign films or from art houses, neither of which are spending a lot on marketing campaigns.
It's a fact of life that as communication continues to advance, we need corporate media less and less to tell us what to think. And this pisses them off to no end.
The cure for cancer is coming: Reovirus
The article basically argues that communication channels are now so fast that bad word of mouth spreads much quicker than ever before. But this is the "half empty" scenario. What these pricks don't understand is that the reverse logic applies too. Good movies, even small independent movies get a nice shot in the arm as people recommend them. Remember the Blair Witch project? Bowling for Columbine? These were movies that got big through the Internet, or based off of Internet hype, not massive advertising budgets. All Miramax, hmm...
This has GOT to be the worst case of corperate whining that I have ever seen!
Technoli
But sometimes all they need is a huge opening weekend...after all, that's what their marketing campaigns are designed to produce. Take Independence Day, for example. Enormous hype, mega opening weekend, and a fizzle after that, but the opening weekend was so big that it's total box office take puts above the Empire Strikes Bakc, and just below Return of the Jedi.
Word of mouth generally takes time, even when spread via SMS. The stinkier the movie, the faster word spreads, even before the advent of cell phones much less texting.
What a pity. The industry can't hoodwink the public any more by slapping PR lipstick on a pig and getting enough early rubes through the door to make back some of their money. Recording sales have been dropping too, and I wonder if the RIAA has the same hyper-fast word-of-mouth problem with CDs, and it isn't the file sharing. That would be sweet, sweet justice ...
Maybe the average European teen is just dumber then their US counterparts. I was waiting in line at the movies the other day, and heard some teenagers asking for tickets to "2 Fast 2 Furious". Oh, goddamnit.
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
Facts:
- Movies now have approx 20 minutes of previews.
- Movie ticket prices have sky rocketed over the last couple years - 8$ where I am now. (you can buy some DVDs for this price...and OWN the movie)
- Movie theatres have not increased the quality in service that they provide - we still have projection based movies, in stadium (at best) style seating.
- Movie makers spend millions on marketing for many movies, including the ones mentioned in the article above - posters, TV spots, talk show host appearances, toys, food, and many more.
Conflict: Given these facts, it is safe to extrapolate that movie goers have a lot to put up with in order to see a movie. Final conclusion: spending X million dollars on marketing does NOT ensure a block buster hit, when you take into consideration other factors of the movie going experience. Recommendations: Lower the ticket price Remove ads from movies that received negative test screen results Create more consistently "better" movies (certainly a moving target here)Maybe the theater owners will install cell phone jammers to at least slow down the instant messagers. That would have the benefit (for me) of not having idiots take calls during a movie.
No electrons were harmed creating this post, though some may have been subjected to electrical and/or magnetic fields.
The problem with movies today is that they are all rated "Two Thumbs Up!". From now on, I only watch movies rated two and a half thumbs up or more.
S.
People in the US actually TEXT MESSAGE in the first place?
Color me suprised.
The rest of the world blames lame movies and high prices. SCO blames Linux.
http://www.tuxrocks.com/
The marketing for Charlies Angles 2 in the UK was hilarious. There were two distinct styles of ads, one which urged people to see it early "to be one of the first", and one which urged people to go see it with a large groups of friends because they'd enjoy it more. It was so transparent that they wanted people to see it early before someone warned them not to bother and see it in a large group so one person wouldn't warn all their friends. I loved the original film and I was looking forward to the sequel, but those ads pretty much told me (a) it sucked and (b) the studio KNEW it sucked.
Yikes, it makes me wonder what "carefully crafted marketing image" they were going for with Gigli. I knew it was bad without having to see it, and without having anyone tell me so. The commercials for it are nothing more than sequences of mediocre content-free scenes that show the major players. I can't remember if they alluded to a story or not. Usually in movie commercials they show some scenes that are at least interesting.
As far as I can tell, the "carefully crafted market image" was "See how charming Ben Affleck and J-Lo are, in these example scenes which clearly show them speaking miscellaneous words! You can see many more such scenes in the full movie!"
I wouldn't blame Gigli on texting. If they wanted to lure audiences into the theaters, they shouldn't have shown Affleck in the commercials.
Obviously, which I granted in my original post. But what we need to understand is 1) they could give two shits if the /. community is kind to them, and 2) the general geek lobby doesn't gain any credibility by turning any story about movies or music into a personal rights debate.
And that's what it comes down to. You have 20,000 flaming idiots on this site who don't read the actual article, reading instead the inflammatory titles posted by (invariably) michael. From this they garner that the industry is certainly attempting to steal their rights to text message someone, when this is preposterous and false.
The actual situation is that some poor exec is wishing for the good old days when they could make money of a shitty movie by promo'ing it. That's all. His job is to make money - his job is now harder. Allowing the poor bastard to be wistful for a moment without calling him a Nazi wouldn't kill us, would it?
Bottom line is I stand by my original point - save the flaming and foaming at the mouth for when something actually happens, stop crying "wolf"/"chicken little," and wait until something actually happens to bitch about the **AA. Or at least until the next SCO story.
And no, I don't need more **AA links. I read them when they come out. I'm no **AA fan (particularly Jack Valenti), but a little objectivity wouldn't kill us as a whole.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
People have opinions, people share opinions, and if they can do it quicker than before, they will. If new movies didn't blow then they wouldn't have this problem. The movie/entertainment industry needs to realize they are subject to the same rules as any other company that is selling something. If a product sucks then it won't sell.
I say that we blame TV/Radio/Internet for having to listed to the MPAA bitch. (Slashdot excluded of course)
I'd just walk through the doors and ignore the "agreement". I'd just add violating it to the list of everyday illegal things that I do. Everybody breaks the law in trivial ways.
then people wouldn't be texting each other to tell each other how bad Gigli blew.
Now only if we could get the MPAA and RIAA to realize what the rest of the planet understands.
Shitty product = no one buying it.
How hard is that to understand?
...that I don't have any friends.
______________________
Sigs are insigificant.
Now they're trying to blame texting/sms on poor Movie and CD sales. We'll the only solution there is to produce better products. And IMHO I think the press did more damage to GiGi than texting. It was all over the news on how bad it was, for days.
I suppose now the push for cell phone blockers in the theatres will be pushed to quiet the storm of "this movie sucks" to others in the hopes that those people are in line to see the next showing. Instead of quieting the barrage of ringers that have come about in recent months.
It's important to remember here that the studio execs are businessmen, not artists. Most of them wouldn't know a good movie if it bit them in the ass, repeatedly. If they can identify a target demographic, and then create a marketing hype around it, they have discovered that they can almost guarantee a profit, regardless of the movie's actual quality. Unfortunately (for them), they are discovering that their scheme relies on imperfect information, and as the Internet and other forms of communication freedom reduce their market to a perfect information system they are no longer going to be able to use tricks to compete. Without those tricks, there are only two ways to succeed -- laws and quality. The scary thing is that (as I already pointed out), they don't have the talent to compete on quality. So, expect to see them try to push through laws.
"If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for everyone else."
These viral marketing people have been around for a while. I give them a few months to catch up with this text messaging thing and find some way to use it to there advantage.Hopefully the people who pay attention will continue to see it for what it is.
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
So something finally beat out Manos: the Hands of Fate.
That blows my mind.
skye
MANOS!
The Hands... of Fate.
Imagine you could use SMS to tell ALL your friends that the film you've just seen is fatastic, it'll increase its sales, sure.
But, it's so dificult to say it lately!
I've never even heard of Gigli. But now that I have I'll be sure not to see it. Thanks, guys.
I remember when legal used to mean lawful, now it means some kind of loophole. - Leo Kessler
Technology today empowers every person that has access to it. There was a time when the movie and recording industry used to create decent products, and their first goal was to please those that actually forked over the cash the industries depend on. Now, its about pleasing the stockholders, and hoodwinking the general public, that same general public they rely on to keep their industries successful. While the article in question isn't really anything but an observation, it remains to be seen what these industries will do to keep their revenue streams up in the face of an ever increasingly empowered and educated public.
Ebert said that Star Trek X sucked, and well, he gave away the best part of the movie in his review. If the MPAA needs to gag anyone, it is him.
Charlies Angels by the way was a great fantastic movie. If you don't want to see Diaz riding a mechanical bull in a skirt, then you are watching for the wrong reasons.
Why slashdot? Why not?
Also, if you look at international gross, ID4 actually grossed more than all the Star Wars pictures except for Phantom Menace. How such a stupid movie gets the third highest gross of all time is beyond me. The only thing that bothers me more is that the #2 film is apparently Harry Potter. That's just annoying.
Give them credit, their analysis does try to hold suckiness of the movie constant** and analyze the differences in audience statistics over time. (Of course, the economy and thus disposable income are radically different than 5 years ago, but pay to attention to the man behind the curtain.)
;)
What really seems to be teeing them off though, is that their business model is no longer valid. Used to be, if they spent enough on advertising, people wouldn't figure out that a movie sucked until after they'd seen it. But the mob has gotten too smart for them. Economies operate efficiently when all participants have perfect information. Now that movie goers have better information, film distributors can no longer misappropriate utility from movie consumers by flooding the market with false info claiming that a sucky movie is good. Boo hoo.
Did all that utility that the marketers were misappropriating evaporate? No. The consumers still have it. They'll use it to rent a DVD of something that doesn't suck instead. So, like, don't sweat it.
**They'd do better to ensure that the suckiness of movies decreased, rather than holding it constant.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
Even Ed Wood movies don't suck nearly as bad.
Actually, I'd say that Ed Wood movies suck even worse. That's why they're so cool. Plan Nine from Outer Space is one of my favorite movies ever, just because it is so profoundly awful. It hits rock bottom so hard that it bounces right back into awesomeness, y'know what I'm saying?
I think that one of Hollywood's major failings lately is that they don't even put forth the effort needed to make something shitty enough to be amusing. Ed Wood's movies were exceptionally crappy, but at least he believed that he was making works of art. He didn't think he was just going through the motions so he could milk the public for another eight bucks each. It was a labor of love for good ol' Ed, and it shows in his films, in the dizzying heights of crappiness that they achieved.
Oh, wait, I just read the article. I guess I was wrong. Charging exorbitant fees for two hours of bland mediocrity isn't what's hurting the MPAA's profits. It's those damned kids with their text messages! They ought to ban them. That'll bring back all those lost profits a lot quicker than actually producing a movie that isn't a complete waste of film, I'm sure.
Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.
I just had the horrific vision of a theatre full of people all strapped down like Malcolm McDowell in a Clockwork Orange and being forced to watch Gigli.
Are you paranoid if you know that they just want to know everything you say and do?
"I hope you know that by reading a book, and going outside, you may lose your posting privileges."
Go easy on the guy. It is clear that he has never been on Slashdot before. Evidence: "me and my woman". I rest my case.
My Blog
Also, if you look at international gross, ID4 actually grossed more than all the Star Wars pictures except for Phantom Menace. How such a stupid movie gets the third highest gross of all time is beyond me.
Because it has "Star Wars" in the title. Lucas could release a movie called "Star Wars: This One Really Sucks Ass" or "Star Wars: The Jar Jar Saga" and hordes of Star Wars fan sheep (including plenty who read this site--you know who you are) would be lined up to watch it.
Wow Talking out your ass gets you modded to +5. Please tell me what article or what admendment in the constitution that even mentions copyrights. There is nothing.
For dumbfucks too lazy to google, lest others be misled by their inane spewage:
The US Constitution
clause 8:
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
And for mindless trolls too literal to comprehend the above as it relates to US copyright and patent law:
Findlaw's Tretise of US copyright law.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
"Propaganda is bad, right?"
;)
Propaganda is only bad when you disagree with it.
But seriously -- propaganda is any kind of advertising intended to convince you of the merits of a certain point of view. It is not necessarily misleading. "Zest gets you cleaner than soap because it doesn't leave a filmy residue" is a true fact, and not misleading at all; the question is, do you want to be so clean that even the natural oils on your skin have been removed?
Both Zest's ad and my response to it are propaganda. My question is a very leading question, and I've posted it here in a public place.
There is advertising which is propaganda, and propaganda which is misleading, which comes from a political entity, that may or may not have control over the media, deliberately done to spread manipulative misinformation for the benefit of the political entity. I've seen it myself. But it's not the only kind of speech out there. And it very much is speech.
I'm a big First Amendment type here. I believe the best way to defeat a lie is by telling the truth, and keeping on telling the truth. I believe -- no offense -- that what you and the former poster said is misinformation, so I'm responding to it for that very reason. At the same time, what we're talking about here is far less important than the real lies out there -- such as that hackers are all basically criminals, that file-sharing will kill off the RIAA/MPAA, that we have to re-interpret liberties in the post-9/11/2001 world, and that God wants us to kill infidels wherever they may be.
Here's a histogram of the top 100 and bottom 100 movies according to IMDB, shown by year of release. The data is probably biased towards more crap recently, but here it is, FWIV.
Raw Data here
A friend, who was a professional movie reviewer, told me to beware of any movie that doesn't offer advance screenings for movie reviewers. It's usually the sign of a expensive turkey when the marketing people try to keep the film away from the reviewers for as long as possible.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Coming to a theatre near you...
Jason vs Aliens vs Predator vs GODZILLA vs J-LO's gargantuan booty
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Oddly, this is pretty much the reason the (in)famous movie critic at the New Yorker, Pauline Kael, disparaged the original Star Wars: she thought it was far more driven by visuals than by story, and that it could set a bad precedent that could last generations, if studios took its success as a spur to focus ever more on topping one another in the effects department and let story go completely by the wayside.
I'll be honest--if I'd read Kael's review when I was growing up (I was 10 when Star Wars came out in 1977), I'd have been incensed. But when I saw the movie again for the 20th anniversary release, I was shocked at just how bad the script was. I know this is still blasphemy, but listen to the dialogue objectively sometime--concentrating on it just as a movie, not as an icon. I can all but guarantee it'll be depressing just how leaden the writing is. There's a famous quote from Harrison Ford on the set of that first movie, when he exclaimed, "You can write this shit, George, but you can't say it."
How can this be linked to texting? If it were huge dropoff between the first and second screening, sure, but with a whole week in between perhaps some other technologies are implicated. Some of the likely culprits include: newspapers
telephones, television, email, web reviews, and snail mail. Hell, with a whole week to do it, you can pretty much warn the entire country off of a crap movie by face-to-face word of mouth.
If a movie is so bad that people are going to be sending SMS messages during it, it's probably bad enough for them to leave the movie. This sounds like a really weak attempt by studio asshats to blame poor performance on an aspect of youth culture they don't understand.
is that the gig is up.
1970's,80's,90's...Used to be that you could market a sucky movie to death and garner decent profits from all the sheeple that rush to see it based on that marketing.
Fast forward to today...enter Screenit.com, IMDB, (insert one of tons of movie review sites here).com. A huge percent of folks are online now, and they are learning about and using these sites to make better choices. So what's the problem?? LMAO (from the article):
"In the old days, there used to be a term, 'buying your gross,' " Rick Sands, chief operating officer at Miramax, told the Los Angeles Times. "You could buy your gross for the weekend and overcome bad word of mouth, because it took time to filter out into the general audience."
Translation for the double-speak impaired: "We used to could lie faster than the truth could come out so it didn't matter whether the movie sucked or not, we could still make money."
Cry me a river you arrogant dork.
Is the juice worth the sqeeze?
======
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
The MPAA has just created a new "End User License Agreement" for all movies released to the general public.
The License Agreement states that all viewers will remain in confidence about said movies and will not mention, speak or talk about the movie in anyway to anyone until the DVD is released to the public until after it's third edition or "Special Release Edition" DVD release.
When asked about how they would uphold such a license agreement, MPAA spokesman, Rich Taylor stated that they will be encoding each movie with a technology that will allow each viewer only faint memories of the movie once they leave the theatre. Asked if the technology will help sales of the movie and ensure box office numbers that are in-line with their estimations for a movie, Taylor stated: "our goal is to ensure that each and every movie makes money. When people use technology to tell their friends the movie is not good, we'll combat negative reviews by using our technology that will make it difficult for them to remember a movie all together, thus this will limit the scope of bad reviews and bad vibes about a movie which will negativetly impact the numbers."
Asked if he believed this new technology could be seen as a way of controlling public opinion. Taylor stated, "if they can't remember a movie, that's not the point. The point is that they paid for a ticket, and were delivered a product. We are protecting our intellectual property and ensuring that others who have not seen the product will pay for it and we will not lose revenue."
Asked what the penalty will be for sharing memories of their product, Taylor remarked, "We take theft very seriouslly, if we find that someone is sharing our product and breaking the EULA which they agreed with when they purchased a ticket, we will pursue them through all legal channels and prosecute them.".
No, text messaging MUST be the reason why less people are seeing movies! I mean, before text messaging, humans really didn't have any kind of communication that they could use to warn their buddies about crappy movies.
Why people are texting each other bad-mouthing the movies?
I think we're back to "Because the movies suck."
The critics and the mass media itself lashed out against "Gigli," not teenagers text-messaging everyone. "Gigli" had worse word-of-mouth before it even hit the theatres than even "Batman & Robin" which Harry Knowles and Aint-It-Cool-News famously destroyed online. Name one other film besides "B&R" that Knowles has massacred effectively on his website? You can't name any. He lashed out against "Scooby Doo" and its stars, but had to admit later on that Matthew Lilliard was impressive as Shaggy (Knowles was spot-on about Freddy Prinz Jr. but that is all-too-easy to predict). For "Gigli" to be ruined by teens and text messaging, they would've had to have gone to the theatres opening week and then spread the virtual bad-word. But the film only grossed a little over $3 million to begin with, and I would wager money the studio itself "asked" its employees to go see the film that weekend, ala the famous *accusations* against Scientology requiring its members to frequently purchase L. Ron Hubbard books at the bookstores. Hollywood should fess up and admit that they made a lot of turkeys this year and stop trying to find a scapegoat. Next thing you know, they'll be blaming file-trading for their profit losses; oh wait, they already are in those commercials I skip through with my TiVo!
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
First, banning text messaging. Anti-text-messaging technology will be implemented.
At some point they'll realize people are using cell phones to tell their friends movies suck. Anti-cell-phone technology will be implemented.
And finally, they'll realize people aren't leaving bad movies to go to the bathroom, they're leaving to warn their friends that the movie sucks! Movie patrons will be prevented from getting up during a movie.
Wait. I'd get to see a movie without beeping, ringing, glowing devices going off every few minutes? And people wouldn't be moving all around and getting in the way?
Sounds like paradise, but we all know how it will really be:
People buy tickets, sit down in theater.
45 minutes of previews begin. The theater doors shut and lock. (KAWANG!)
Bad Preview.
Worse Preview.
Moviegoers begin to wonder how these things can possibly get worse.
They get worse.
Anti-cellphone grid engages. Every pager, phone, etc in the theater protests with an annoying beeping sound.
Movie begins.
Moviegoer #1 complains the entire movie that her cell phone doesn't work. She presses buttons on it every few minutes to check for a signal.
Moviegoer #2, an 8 year old child going to the most violent movie of the year with his parents, begins complaining he has to pee. Halfway through the movie, he begins pounding on the entrance door to the lobby. Parents ignore him.
Moviegoer #3 attempts ridiculing the movie. Which would have been entertaining, save for the fact he's an idiot.
Moviegoer #4 periodically yells at #3, telling him to shut up and occasionally threatening him.
All of which is more interesting than the movie itself, which is so horrible the rest of the moviegoers are trying to figure out ways to claw out their eyes.
The movie, Gigli 2, mercifully ends.
// harborpirate
// Slashbots off the starboard bow!
Actually, take Australia as a counter-example here. One of the requirements the US has set down in the updated Free Trade Agreement proposals is that Australia lifts its "stringent requirements" on media which actually requires Australian film/radio to show a certain percentage of "local" content.
Warning: The following is an angry rant. Sometimes it's good to vent.
From the artcle:
WHAT THE FUCK!? Yeah, you're right that used to happen! Maybe before the flippin' telephone was invented! Why does the article want to say that it's IM that's the problem? C'mon, like those people with cell phones can't just call their friends and say, "the movie sucked"? The article points to the fact that recent blockbusters have been losing 11% more viewers between their opening weekend and their second weekend than equivilently bad blockbusters did last year. The article then draws the (gratuitously asinine) conclusion that it must be because now people can instant message their friends. Oooookaaaay. Maybe they could just call their friends? Like, you know, on a phone? Oh wait, that wouldn't let us explain the 11% increase, gee I guess it must be the text messages! Stupid article. Maybe this year's blockbuster bombs suck 11% more than last year's. Maybe the public is 11% less tolerant of the same old crap as they were last year. Maybe (just maybe) ELEVEN GOD-DAMN PERCENT IS NOT STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT ENOUGH TO SUPPORT THE BRAIN DAMAGED THEORY THAT INSTANT MESSAGING RESULTS IN FEWER TICKET SALES!!!!
I know I'm on my way to Karma hell for this post, but I don't really care. It was fun. And that sort of sloppy thinking really does piss me off. Of course, I may be guilty of it myself on occasion, but at least I try to avoid it...
Furry cows moo and decompress.
The movies have been a huge growth industry. For the last 10 to 20 years they've been making more and more big budget films and they've been able to make money off of them. The growth is tapering off and now they are starting to lose money.
Loss of sales through: word of mouth; text messages; the web; DVD's; whatever; these are all symptoms of the problem. The real solution will be less investment in films. Or maybe just less accelerated investment in films.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
But perhaps hulk might have sold better if they had used the green_skin texture instead of the green_plastic texture that was in the adverts. Look at the specular highlights on the magazine covers. What's the point of seeing a CGI movie with crap CGI?
No problem. I just carry a piece of paper on the front that says "By letting me enter the cinema, you agree to.......". Alternatively one can have one saying "By selling me a ticket....". One can attached it on the chest or simply vaguely waiving it in the hand while buying the ticket or entering the cinema.
Studios will install a weight sensor, directional microphone and a filament in every theater seat. Afterwards, every time something "funny" happens in a movie, a Laughter sign will appear onscreen. If the weight sensor somesone sitting in the chair, and the microphone doesn't pick up a laugh at the appointed time, the filament administers a small shock. The shocks get progressively stronger the more "jokes" you miss, or if you miss a particularly "important" joke.