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Are We Suffering Origin Story Fatigue?
brumgrunt writes "As more and more franchise movies look to cover the origin story of a character again and again, Den Of Geek wonders why film studios aren't looking a little harder for interesting stories to tell..."
I like to fill in the blanks with my imagination. I hate overzealous exposition. I am not saying that I dislike story development or lore, but I do not need or want everything spoonfed to me.
All I know is if I have to sit through Peter Parker getting bit by a radioactive spider one more time, well, I'm just not going to do it. My understanding is that the next Spiderman movie is a reboot; here's hoping they "cut to the chase".
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
The reason Hollywood produces stuff is because they think it will make money. Period. Any artistic value in film is purely coincidental. They've discovered that re-hashing the same old material is much cheaper and easier than doing something really new and innovative, and still sells well. Ergo they will do so whenever possible.
I am officially gone from
I would amend that slightly. People like being told what to do, but they like thinking that they are unique, creative individuals, responsible for themselves, and not needing or wanting to be told what to do. In other words, yes, most people want to be sheep, but they also want to see themselves as sheepdogs.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
Darth Vader was far more frightening until they showed us Anakin hitting on a girl twice his age and shouting, "Now this is Pod Racing" while attacking the Trade Federation control ship. Anakin became even more pathetic after we watched him turning into a creepy stalker teenager who used the Jedi mind trick to get Padme to like him. And the final insult - Anakin becomes a Dark Lord of the Sith so he won't get in trouble for cutting Mace Windu's hand off? Lame. Really, if Lucas had avoided giving us Vader backstory entirely, our own imaginations would have been more than sufficient at keeping Vader a truly frightening Dark Lord of the Sith, even after the helmet removal in Return of the Jedi.
Remember, a movie's sole purpose is to put asses in seats. Sure there's some kinds of asses they'd prefer over others, but in general, a movie that makes people feel smart (spoon feeding them until they can draw their own conclusion) will appeal to the masses, as are the ones that provide relief from the world for a couple of hours, hence the summer blockbuster.
The origin story attempts to put nostalgic asses in seats, by appealing to people's childhood days when they read the comics or other such things. And for recent franchises (e.g., video games), it's meant to appeal to those who want a deeper backstory.
It's all about putting asses in seats. And those asses are getting extremely tight these days, so filmmakers are trying to appeal to different groups of asses to get them to spend money. Broadening the market, really.
>The story wasn't all that impressive, but it's the best 'shakey cam' movie I've seen.
That's sort of like saying: "There was lots of pain and bleeding, but it's the best jailhouse anal rape I've received."
I assume you mean besides the obvious bright spot of Charlize Theron running around in a black catsuit.
It would have been much brighter if the live-action movie had kept the same outfit from the anime.