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Hollywood's Love of Analytics Couldn't Prevent Six Massive Blockbuster Flops
Nerval's Lobster writes "In June, Steven Spielberg predicted that Hollywood was on the verge of an 'implosion' in which 'three or four or maybe even a half-dozen megabudget movies are going to go crashing to the ground.' The resulting destruction, he added, could change the film industry in radical and possibly unwelcome ways. And sooner than he may have thought, the implosion has arrived: in the past couple weeks, six wannabe blockbusters have cratered at the North American box office: 'R.I.P.D.,' 'After Earth,' 'White House Down,' 'Pacific Rim,' and 'The Lone Ranger.' These films featured big stars, bigger explosions, and top-notch special effects—exactly the sort of summer spectacle that ordinarily assures a solid run at the box office. Yet all of them failed to draw in the massive audiences needed to earn back their gargantuan budgets. Hollywood's more reliant than ever on analytics to predict how movies will do, and even Google has taken some baby-steps into that arena with a white paper describing how search-query patterns and paid clicks can estimate how well a movie will do on its opening weekend, but none of that data seems to be helping Hollywood avoid shooting itself in the foot with a 'Pacific Rim'-sized plasma cannon. In other words, analytics can help studios refine their rollout strategy for new films—but the bulk of box-office success ultimately comes down to the most elusive and unquantifiable of things: knowing what the audience wants before it does, and a whole lot of luck."
These films featured big stars, bigger explosions, and top-notch special effects
Maybe they'll start making... (gasp)... actual plots to accompany those stars/explosions/special effects?
Moar copyright laws! Bigger penalties! Longer terms!
It's fun to add to the Deeeee-M-C-A!
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
Don't do the following: 1) make shitty movies (overbroad but use the smell test) 2) Make sequels to shitty movies that might have barely made a profit 3) Make 18 superhero movies, reboot them, and complain when they flop 4) Don't let a fucking formula from a has-been screenwriter dictate the structure of every movie (http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/film/8947871/The-origin-of-the-latest-Hollywood-formula) You can pay me now or later. I just want a 1% cut of all new movies.
Or it could be, yknow, people just don't want to shell out for a night at the movies anymore.
These days there is so little to a story and much more to the effects. There will be good blockbusters sure, but the better ones are about the story (ie, Lord of the Rings/Hobbit/etc).
The problem with these movies is that they have overblown action sequences which are boring and add nothing to the plot. It's no surprise nobody wants to go see them. They might as well be trying to charge admission to go to the DMV.
Movies used to be a form of art, not a form of science. And the science is not there to make a good movie, but how to extract as much money as possible.
See subject.
the price of the movies as gone up way to much it's at the point where it's much better to ppv at home.
The same thing that is killing USA's Auto companies (save tesla), Boeing, and hollywood, is that MBA's now run things.
Hollywood USED to be about making the best ART. Now, with the MBA's, it is about making short-term profit.
Likewise, Boeing used to make the best aircrafts (in both military AND commercial). The 787 is all about making short-term profit (in the same way that GE does).
Then US car companies, GM and Ford, used to be about making the best car possible. Now, it is about making short-term profits.
If we really want to restore America, we need to roll back the changes that reagan did. In particular, we need to require that executives NOT own any of the publicly-traded stock in that industry.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
And sooner than he may have thought, the implosion has arrived: in the past couple weeks, six wannabe blockbusters have cratered at the North American box office: 'R.I.P.D.,' 'After Earth,' 'White House Down,' 'Pacific Rim,' and 'The Lone Ranger.'
That's only five movies, not six. Was that number a typo, or did you leave a movie out?
Visit the
Great special effects. Story was not engaging. Didn't care about the characters. It's about the story. But with the way movies are funded I assume producers stick their $.02 in and then the studios stick their $.02 and by the time the director is done satisfying everyone the movie is as bland as can be. Spielberg is right but he is also part of the problem.
'R.I.P.D.,' 'After Earth,' 'White House Down,' 'Pacific Rim,' and 'The Lone Ranger.'
Could someone briefly explain why *any* of those movies would be compelling, even if done well?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
In 1967, following the success of "Mary Poppins," Roy Disney said that the Disney studio ought to have "at least one 'Mary Poppins' every year."
There's nothing new about the money people wishing there was a simple formula that they could get rid of all the pesky issues of creativity, talent, and the public's taste.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Pacific Rim has been out for a little over a week and it's already made back it's production budget http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=pacificrim.htm . I'm curious to know what Nerval's Lobster's definition of a Hollywood bomb is.
Greed makes for shit art, shit entertainment and *gasp* shit profits.
Serves the dickheads right.
The problem is that creativity can't be quantified. Pretty much by definition.
You can copy someone else's creative idea and that can even work for a while, until all the creativity has been wrung out of it making it old and tired. But there is no formula to create something new.
Measuring the quality of a a creative work is like the story of the blind men and the elephant. You can look at all the parts but it won't tell you a damn thing about the work as a whole. And if you try to build another one just by sticking the same parts together you won't get an elephant, you'll just get a mess.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
but the bulk of box-office success ultimately comes down to the most elusive and unquantifiable of things: knowing what the audience wants before it does, and a whole lot of luck.
My personal pet theory is a lot simpler:
Not overfeeding them on the same stuff.
There are only so many times you can see the same movie and enjoy it. Hollywood blockbusters have largely turned into remixes of the same movie. If you know anything about storywriting, you've long realized that almost all Hollywood movies have the same script. Not just similarities the way most stories have, say, a beginning, a middle and an end, or a dramatic curve with a typical shape, but actually the same fucking script. Replace specifics like names, locations or technologies/species/etc. (giant robots/aliens/monsters/whatever) with placeholders and you'll see that they're pretty much all telling the same story.
And you can only hear the same story so often before it gets boring.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I saw and liked Lone Ranger based on the trailer, none of the others looked worth watching to me.
I haven't gone to see any of these movies not because I wasn't _mildly_ interested, but because it wasn't worth $14--$17 times three: the cost of bringing myself and my family. That is a lot of cash to see a "meh" movie. It wasn't long ago that movies used to cost $6 a head.
Perhaps the geniuses in Hollywood should use their analytics to actually pick per-movie MSRPs: something they can do with Google's analytics, after they've already bought the movie and are just trying to maximize their investment. Or if that would piss off customers, then just decide to roll out movies such that 3D is the same price as 2D as a special "bonus" or promotion, to effectively bring the price down on movies that you are afraid aren't going to do as well as you thought pre-production.
--"You are your own God"--
Analytics can help you tease out the low-hanging fruit of under-tapped numeric and statistical patterns. However, your competitors will eventually do the same such that there is no more low-hanging fruit, and then studios have to rely on (gulp) talent and creativity, and sometimes shear luck.
Table-ized A.I.
And there was a time in this country, a long time ago, when [...] movies that had stories so you cared whose ass it was and why it was farting, and I believe that time can come again!"
big stars, bigger explosions, and top-notch special effects
—exactly what keeps me away from cinemas.
I love Tarantino movies - lots of people love Tarantino movies - lots of people really really hate Tarantino movies.
I liked Watchmen. I thought it was excellent even if it did depart from the book a bit and yes, maybe grew a little dull at times, but was deep enough to get into. Fully half the theater walked out during the first half hour I was in there.
Rocky Horror sucks. The people who like Rocky Horror will tell you it sucks. It's the longest in-box office run of any movie every. It was made before I was born and it still shows every weekend at a theater a half mile from my apartment.
The problem with Hollywood movies today is they use the freaking formulas.
Star Wars - though a formula setter - didn't follow movie formulas of 1977. Yes, say all you want about it being stolen source material, I fully believe you, but it's not how movies were made back then. I know plenty of people who hate Star Wars, not a lot since I chose not to associate with those sorts, but there are many, many people out there who consider themselves too good for such low-brow action flicks.
Avatar - biggest hit of all time. Yes all the block-buster formulas applied, but it also had formula breaking blends of primitive people, aliens, advanced species, spiritual and technical aspects. Even while complying with every blockbuster formula out there it twisted in subject matter only really addressed properly in Japanese Anime and threw in every movie category possible and made it work. On the flip side - Suckerpunch tried exactly the same thing and failed because they focused too heavily on making it look cool and forcing the fact they did so on you. Avatar did it seamlessly.
With the exception of maybe Avatar most of the movies I mentioned, that succeeded or even better yet, did okay but got a cult following had tons of haters. They will endure because of it.
IMHO cult status trumps block buster opening any day. Yes, fine, huge payday on a blockbuster up front, this is what studios want. Cult movies are more of a long term investment. They keep on giving. Disney has learned this, they're milking movies that flopped forty years ago today and making a profit. Disney has learned that movies are long term investment, not just box office warriors. They build a brand and milk it.
You can milk a cult movie. No one cares about a box office hit they forget about and nobody talks about a few years later.
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Blu ray is $25 or so
Movie theater is $30 plus the junk food and other costs to see a movie once
If they want people to pay premium prices offer a premium experience
Roomier seats
Kick out people making noise
No kids in adult movies
No babies
Thats the priority, not so much getting big profit from it, some succeed, some don't. A lot of them focus in showing a few caucasians and/or americans defeating big adversaries, a lot of them not humans or that should not be considered humans, and no matter how much casualties or how much suffer the civilians on your side. Most of the blockbusters of the last decade have that message in a way or another, even changing badly the base material to fit in it (i.e. World War Z)
Here's a thought. Stop trying to throw 3D pies in my face and actually sell me a persuasive plot. If you don't want me to wait for Netflix, provide a compelling experience at a fair price.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Don't Hollywood blockbusters flop fairly regularly? If one could guarantee that a movie (or anything) was going to make a profit wouldn't people flock into the arena until things started failing? See: housing crash. Also, http://www.imdb.com/list/BzO0KZ24wyA/
-- "Oh. This guy again."
MAD magazine had a spoof some 20 years ago, about a movie without any plot or any story. Just a huge series of explosions saying, "all action no stupid boring talking parts". TV shows were moving in that direction with programs like Air Disaster, "Most thrilling moments of .." "Americas Most Watched videos..." etc etc. Even they provided too much of context and so finally came the corniest show of the genre, "Destroyed in Seconds!". Some presenter comes in and says something stupid like, "It only takes a minutes for things to get DESTROYED in SECONDS!". Then follows series of accidents, speed boat crashes, race track disasters, floods etc. They did not even have to invest in special effects, They just get video some guy shot and package it into half an hour. People have seen enough real disasters in video enough times. The disaster porn thirst has been fully quenched. Hollywood is not going to make much money off it.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Yes, almost all the movies these days suck. But failures?
So far this year, 7 movies have grossed more than $200 Million. Another 9 have grossed more than $100 Million. Most of the movies listed as having "cratered at the box office" have made $60 - 80 Million and some of them were just released this month. RIPD has only made $12 Million but it was only released 3 days ago.
And that's just box office in the U.S. Add in the rest of the world, DVD, etc. and they are making a metric shit-ton of money. Where exactly is the failure here?
It is said, in Hollywood, that the most creative people in Hollywood, are the accountants. How else does a film like Forrest Gump not turn a sizeable profit and pay Tom Hanks points on the gross?
Sure, they're shit films, and they didn't do as well as hoped, either. But take White House Down: this flop has still made $100m at the box office so far, out of a budget of $150m. Add in some residual sales over the next few weeks and Netflix and cable and whatnot and it'll probably either break even or come close. Now breaking even isn't the ideal outcome, but a massive flop requires doing considerably worse than that.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
They release all these movies with huge amounts of computer-generated special effects, high-dollar actors, etc., and after they flop, they just don't get it.
Most of these computer-generated special effects don't hold a candle to the special effects of the 1980's and early '90s. They're not going to recreate the awesomeness of Bladerunner when they've decided that lens flares are a stylistic decision rather than an obstable that a trained crew should avoid at all costs. They can't keep coating the world with brown sugar to make it look drearier than it is, or tinting it green to make it look surreal, without it becoming a bland gimmick.
And the actors - well, let's face it. Pretty much every high-dollar actor has been cast in films that just outright suck by now. Movie nuts may have some kind of attachment to their favorite stars, but I really think that most people prefer to see a good story being told rather than Nicholas Cage's blank "wut just happen" stare, etc. There're plenty of lower-dollar actors who do genuinely wish to entertain, and I think they get overlooked by the rabble.
Theaters get half the gross, right off the top. Marketing is usually roughly half the production budget (though this varies widely of course.) Movies with "big names" attached (either stars or directors) may take off even more of the gross.
You can expect some DVD revenue, but this varies as widely as the marketing budget.
Just like with the paeans to older computer games often printed here, you simply don't remember all the derivative crap that was produced before. While Hollywood may be blowing more money on individual bad movies these days, there is hardly much change in the number of good vs. bad movies being made. Most were crap before, most are crap now.
I minimized my browser with this thread as the active tab.
When I looked at my taskbar, the text showing was...
"Hollywood's love of Anal"
I suppose that says something about windows? Like, taskbar entries only support so many characters, or something? :)
I disagree. I'd say it's pretty clear that Hollywood is very successful at quite a lot of meth. :p
I'm not sure these sucked for the same reason.
RIPD -- Starred the awful actor who nobody liked as Green Lantern, a movie that kind of succeeded in spite of him, not because of him (and had their own other problems). Now maybe it was the awful writing for Hal Jordan (i was hoping the space smoke squid would eat him at the end) but that didn't leave me wanting more. As he's playing Deadpool upcoming I guess he gets jet another shoot. Good luck.
White House Down -- In typical Hollywood fashion, they put out two "White House under mitary assault" movies this summer (volcanoes or giant asteroids anyone?) and one, if lucky, would be original, the other a rushed copycat POS.
Pacific Rim -- While they are to be commended for technobabbling reasons they need giant robots to fight giant monsters, the combination of that and unlikely political-babble kind of gave it a silly feel discordant with the big booming bass they supplied for the action.
The only consistent thread are treating the audience like idiots to "it should work" freshman-level executive decisions.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
It's the entertainment industry in a nutshell - the second an act or movie becomes popular, EVERY studio/label/whatever clones it in an attempt to cash in on the success. Backstreet Boys takes off and sells millions? Enter N'Stync, 98 Degrees, etc. Dark Knight racks up a billion dollars worldwide? Now every superhero movie has to be "dark" and "gritty." Nirvana sells millions of records and overtakes Michael Jackson in the top 40? Enter the grunge era where every band that uses distortion and 4 power chords gets a record deal.
Very few people have "original" thoughts. Everyone else is about oversaturating the market to try to get their little piece of the pie.
In all fairness this is one you can't blame on our culture. Blockbuster movies need to be international. International means they can't have as much culture. Pure action translates well to large audiences worldwide, the more plot the more character the worse it translates.
This one you can blame the 3rd world.
I am not a proud American, I'm also the majority. Most of the box office sales don't come from America either.
The flop that was After Earth made 74.6% of its box office sales outside of America.
Maybe *that's* the problem, all of those movies are USA centric. Even Pacific Rim was a bunch of Americans saving the day in Hong Kong.
They are all probably mega-dose vitamin takers and believe what they want to believe.
It's way too early to mark Pacific Rim off as a flop.
As of today it's worldwide haul is $175 Million, which is close to it's actual budget of $180 million.
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=pacificrim.htm
It has not yet opened in China or Japan, where it is expected to do gangbusters business. It may or may not make back the marketing costs and become profitable, but there is a good chance that it will, which will put it into the esteemed category of "Movies people think were flops but which actually weren't".
The jury is still out.
It's way too early to mark Pacific Rim off as a flop.
As of today it's worldwide haul is $175 Million, which is close to it's actual budget of $180 million.
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=pacificrim.htm
It has not yet opened in China or Japan, where it is expected to do gangbusters business. It may or may not make back the marketing costs and become profitable, but there is a good chance that it will, which will put it into the esteemed category of "Movies people think were flops but which actually weren't".
The jury is still out.
Before I go to a movie, I read the reviews (user reviews, not the junket critics), and if they describe the movie as having "big stars, bigger explosions, and top-notch special effects", then I don't bother. That basically means they didn't put any time into the story.
Special effects haven't meant anything to me since CGI came into widespread use. Give me a halfway decent story, and I'll start going to the movies again.
I stopped going to the movie theater a few years ago, like many.....now if I like a movie, I wait for it to be released for the Kindle Fire and watch it there or download it from Amazon to the tivo connected to the plasma tv(only tv in the house which is seeing less and less use).
In any case, to get me to purchase, a movie should have most of the following traits:
Plot -- Actually exist, ideally I want to be surprised rather than guess the ending within the first 20 minutes
Relevance - Zero Dark Thirty wasn't an awesome movie, but it was very relevant and therefore got the cash.
Artistry/Time - Movies should take as much time as needed to tell their story and be comprehensive with multiple conflicts/concepts/etc, I'm not going to pay just because this years superhero movie is out..... Older classic movies were much longer than most movies today, and even the best movies of the last twenty years have been somewhat longer than the normal movie that is released which must be between 100-120 minutes regardless of how much has to be cut.
Politics -- Movies are produced to reflect the politics of whatever the college age generation is at the time (they are the ones who have the time and motivation to go to the theater)...In the 80's, we had some modestly conservative movies come out, but still most movies showed both sides of issues and tried not to be too patronizing....now, most movies lean substantially left....and talk down to anyone who disagrees... If one isn't an eco-fascist, Avatar loses a significant amount of its appeal.
Character -- Movies are so expensive these days that one will feel guilty buying it just for oneself, which means that movies that I feel comfortable sharing with my kids are more likely to get the cash..... A significant number of movies are failing here.
Lone Ranger, good movie with an interesting plot but tons of Historical Inaccuracies. Just what you'd expect. About the most exciting thing was Helen Bonham-Carters ivory leg.
Despicable Me II, good movie, good with the kids too much Minions.
Pacific Rim, Godzilla meets Transformers.. Pass, wait for cable.
After Earth? Really do we have to talk about how dumb it was? Hell No! Will Smith did his best glad handing every talk show with his kid, but it couldn't save it.
R.I.P.D looks promising but maybe too much CGI and too little plot. Maybe.
RED II, good movie saw it this weekend but Meh, Bruce Willis is making too many movies, Loopers, Die Hard 99. He must need money. Helen Mirren is great in as is John Malkovich is very funny. But why did they get Cathy Zits Jones? Also Brian Cox and Anthony Hopkins so the two Hannibal Lecters in the same film. Hopkins is getting old, you can tell. Cox in this Russian Spy Zar garb is ridiculous. Something about Helen Mirren with a .50 cal sniper rifle though...
White House Down? Really? do we need to even say how bad it was. You could tell that from the trailers.
Horror flicks do well, this weekends box was lead by a horror flick but those usually die out after a couple of weeks.
It also doesn't have to be a summer movie.
This year a Walken/Pacino flick was released? Did anybody see it? It's already on Red Box "STAND_UP_GUYS" It has Alan Arkin in it too, good movie but
it was out of theaters so fast I couldn't believe it.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
I wasn't aware that was still playing. I may want to double-check my numbers, and I'm having a little difficulty with my Google-Fu, I keep coming up with longest run times, and longest at #1.
The Rocky Horror Wikipedia entry seems to support my claim, but we all know Wikipedia is not an official keeper of anything, still I find it a good general source. Still in limited release nearly four decades after its premiere, it has the longest-running theatrical release in film history.
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Somebody makes a popular movie
Everybody else analyzes it to determine why it was popular
Soon, lots of clones appear, trying to capture the essence of the original
The audience yawns and says "I'm bored, that one was just like the last one"
Why don't the producers see that creativity and novelty are exciting?
Imagine using data analytics to predict what comedy bits might do better. Would it be comedy along the lines of which people have already seen? I don't think so - jokes don't get funnier the more you tell them. Perhaps the same goes for movies? We need more novel story lines.
Just reading say Wikipedia there is something interesting about who is producing and distributing Pacific Rim: It is a partnership between Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros., a very lucrative partnership with many major films to its credit that is scheduled to end in 2014 with Legendary Pictures switching to Universal to apparently play a similar role.
One also sees that the same Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros. are teaming up in 2014 for a revival of the Godzilla franchise. The question I have is who retains the rights to make movies from the Godzilla franchise after the partnership dissolves? If Legendary Pictures retains all the rights, then it would seem a smash-hit revival of the Godzilla franchise would be just what Legendary Pictures should wish to bring to its new partnership with Universal. One can now see Pacific Rim as possibly being an expensive ad campaign to show just how advanced special effects have become for monster movies.
In addition, Pacific Rim appears to have clearance to be shown in the Chinese market, a market that restricts the number of foreign films permitted to be released there. It might be of some value just to retain business relationships and the slot.
On the flip side - Suckerpunch tried exactly the same thing and failed because they focused too heavily on making it look cool and forcing the fact they did so on you.
No, Suckerpunch flopped because people want happy endings. Labotomizing your main character at the end of a movie won't attract a cult following, let alone bring in big money at the box office. The public hates tragic endings. If you want to make a movie with a tragic ending, don't expect big box office receipts.
The main problem with the movie is that a rerun of 24 usually had more dramatic tension. But the visuals were good and really, things blew up. What more do you want in a summer movie?
Funny thing, I have never heard of any of them! :-)
I must live under a rock, Last movie I remeber seeing, was "High School Musical" with my daughter
I figured the fact you never actually got to see her dance and the T&A never advanced beyond what was in the trailers played into it quite a bit as well....
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Why does this situation remind me of a quote from "Idiocracy"
"There was a time when reading wasn't just for fags. And neither was writing. People wrote books and movies. Movies with stories, that made you care about whose ass it was and why it was farting. And I believe that time can come again!"
Apologies in advance for the rant.
Avatar - biggest hit of all time.
I question whether people saw it for the story, or for the experience (IMAX+3D+modern-day CG). Dances with Wolves did well enough I guess, especially for a Costner flick. Actually, that's probably one template that won't get old, and it's often the B-plot of many action movies.
But I still wonder if people were going to see Avatar for the story, or if they were going to see it for the then-novel visual experience. I would guess the latter, seeing as how people still go see 3D movies and/or in an IMAX theater, but none have done nearly as well as Avatar. It was a gimmick, but done at the right place and time, with the right marketing, and contained sufficient substance. Of course, you can argue that the gimmick is part of the selling point, part of the movie itself, and you'd be right. It's just hard to be successful with the same gimmick more than once, and it gets less important with every use.
Disney has learned that movies are long term investment, not just box office warriors. They build a brand and milk it.
Several recent flops were by Disney. They're struggling along with everyone else.
As for building a brand, Disney's genius lies not in milking their hits with more movies (which have mostly been by Pixar recently, and which they've been doing irrespective), but in their merchandising strategy for their hits. They release a kid's movie, then they immerse the kids in it by making a ton of toys and apparel based on the movie, and slapping it on new theme park rides. The merchandising market is huge and lasts forever (like Star Wars merchandise). However, the key ingredient for this is a hit movie, which as I've said they're struggling to make these days.
They're going to eventually kill all of the Pixar movies with sequels. Pixar hated sequels when they were still independent. They liked doing new things, telling new stories, creating new characters and places and playing with them. Now that Disney runs the show, Pixar's not doing this anymore. Not that they need to. The current crop of Pixar movies isn't going to run out of steam for at least another two decades (Brave 2, anybody?), by the time which Disney can either buy yet another company and their movie library to milk, or they can ride the Pixar name itself still for another decade or two. Hell, they've done this already, with both the Marvel and Lucasfilm acquisitions. Even if those are old companies, they have a ton of "IP" Disney can milk. And Marvel is producing more each day!
Buying up other companies and running their ideas into the ground is also a part of their genius. But actually making good movies and creating a strong fanbase is not them any longer.
You can milk a cult movie.
Boondock Saints 2 anyone (does anyone even know this movie actually exists)? Episode I-III? Matrix 2 and 3? And I don't see anyone clamoring for Kill Bill 3 either, (but only because we know Bill's dead). You can't really milk cult movies. They're one-shots, one-time deals. They're cult classics because they're unique, interesting, special, maybe not very good or not generally appealing, but speaks intimately to a certain subculture or group of people. First, a sequel done the same way would destroy the uniqueness and probably wouldn't work a second time anyway because the uniqueness is something like a gimmick but without the whizz, flash, and bang. Second, a sequel done the normal, tried-and-true Hollywood way wouldn't be interesting. Third, a sequel done a different way is probably going to flop, because most interesting, unique, different movies flop anyway. Becoming popular even among a small amount of people is lightning striking, and everyone involved knows it. It won't strike twice in the same spot.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
What made Star Wars so great? (I'm talking about the original, 1976 version that was simply named Star Wars..) The explosions, lightsabers, costumes and effects? Sure, they added to the magic, but all the polish in the world would have meant nothing if there hadn't been a story. Why is Game of Thrones or Walking Dead so popular? Zombies? No, again it is having a good story. All the number crunching in the world can't replace a skilled storyteller. Hollywood should push the bean counters to the back office and out of the creative process, otherwise people will stop buying tickets and overpriced popcorn. (Besides, Netflix is cheaper and you can smoke a 'j' while enjoying House of Cards.)
When you mentioned avatar you failed. Visual spooge, 3yo written plot. I've seen porn with better stories
The problem with Hollywood films right now can be summed up by they're killing the cat in an attempt to save it. What do I mean?
There's a popular screenwriting book called Save The Cat - The Last Screenwriting Book You'll Ever Need that sets a page by page forumla for events within a typical movie. Things like, an opening image, setting the theme, introducing the hero, start of a B plot at the beginning of Act II, cross points for A and B plots, the great False Defeat, leading up to a Crisis of Self Confidence, and then the Big Payoff.
Blah blah blah blah.
Slate has a good article on how this book as turned movies into showdown of formulaic familiarity.
It's not like the forumla is bad, per se. But if every film had been made this way we'd never have classics like Bridge Over The River Kwai, Laurence of Arabia, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, yada yada yada. Because the formula is limited. At its heart, it harkens back to Campbell's Hero With a Thousand Faces thesis (which every /. nerd into Star Wars should have heard about). A fine way to tell the Great Hero story, but terrible for deep character studies. And that's what's missing in Hollywood film and why good television like The Sopranos, The Wire, Game of Thrones and Mad Men have become so popular (and let's not forget the first few seasons of Battlestar Galactica, which were fantastic).
In fact, George R. R. Martin's entire Song of Ice and Fire series eschews the whole Great Hero narrative and offers flawed characters with conflicting motivations told from multiple points of view, and - sorry to bring this word in on a tech site but... - that's why it's art. Which is also why Transformers isn't.
A lot of people have been discussing issues with the blockbuster cycle and financing, and that's all part of it too. But there is a serious dearth of experimental writing involved too. The whole Hollywood system is screwed up. But let's at least Thank God for HBO and other cable network financing of long form multi-episodic storytelling.
Offer me something of fucking value!
Here's the product I'm being offered by Hollywood: I'm asked to pay $12 to sit in a crowded theater to watch a movie with the volume set to "deafen". If I want anything to eat or drink I'm expected to pay another $12 for the shittiest example of "food" someone is legally allowed to sell. Multiply this by two since I'm usually seeing a movie with my significant other. Paying upwards of $50 to experience all of this inconvenience is not something to which I attribute value. The value is lessened when someone brings a screaming baby into the theater or decides they want to talk on the phone or text in the middle of the movie.
With that in mind I'm not about to run out and watch the latest tripe release by Hollywood. They're not geting any money out of me, not because I'm pirating the material, but because I'm not bothering to participate. I'm happy to spend money on things I value but seeing movies in theaters are not those things. Here's my helpful suggestions for Hollywood that would actually get my ass to happily pay to get into a theater.
First and foremost please concern yourselves with the writing a little bit more. I know complaining about Hollywood plots is cliche at this point but I am not interested in paying to see a plot written using Madlibs. If I do want to watch a silly popcorn flick don't think you can charge me through the nose to do so.
Stop with the insane movie budgets. More money does not equal better movie. Really just cut back.
Let me avoid the theater entirely by letting me rent a movie on the dya of release. You're more likely to get money out of me for a shitty movie if I can watch it at home. Don't complain about "box office" returns. The option is you let me rent it for non-zero dollars or I avoid it and you get zero dollars.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
We're sorry. Though we would like to make intelligent films with discernible plots and dialogue that approaches that of conversation between two reasonably sentient beings, but our in depth research via focus groups and the latest in neural sciences indicates that most of the movie public have forebrains about the size of your average planarian's. Meaningful plots and good dialogue really don't register with these people, but lots of bright flashing lights and glittering objects do manage to pierce the veil of dullness and we find that people tend to flock to such films, much as mindless leeches sniff out warm blood. What we didn't consider is that such small, crude amphibious-level brains get easily desensitized by such films, and too many of them in a short period oversaturate their limited neurons.
Further market research indicates that a possible cure to this is more RomComs, particularly ones with Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey. This invokes the basic reproductive instincts in women with planarian-sized cerebrums, and while it does little to stimulate males of this type, generally speaking the instinctual understanding that taking your dull-witted girlfriend to a Hudson-McConaughey film will greatly increase the likelihood of getting laid should reverse the trend of poor box office showings.
Signed,
The Management
Hollywood, CA
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
That explains, at least in part, why you're so clueless about Star Wars. (Not that you're not as clueless about everything else in your post, just this part stood out.) You're a fanboy, and anything that diminishes the stature of your fandom is banished from your world.
Here's a free clue for you - it's a rare movie that doesn't do well at the box office that makes the big bucks later on as a cult favorite. The movies Disney is making bank on are their hits - their flops, you very, very rarely hear of. They aren't stupid.
make believe cannot so easily compete with.... re: leaks, and such.
Apologies in advance for the rant.
Avatar - biggest hit of all time.
I question whether people saw it for the story, or for the experience (IMAX+3D+modern-day CG). Dances with Wolves did well enough I guess, especially for a Costner flick. Actually, that's probably one template that won't get old, and it's often the B-plot of many action movies.
But I still wonder if people were going to see Avatar for the story, or if they were going to see it for the then-novel visual experience. I would guess the latter, seeing as how people still go see 3D movies and/or in an IMAX theater, but none have done nearly as well as Avatar. It was a gimmick, but done at the right place and time, with the right marketing, and contained sufficient substance. Of course, you can argue that the gimmick is part of the selling point, part of the movie itself, and you'd be right. It's just hard to be successful with the same gimmick more than once, and it gets less important with every use.
I had considered the novelty of Avatar making it tons of cash, no denying it was a beautiful movie to watch. The gimmick was beautifully done, and I think it may help the sequels even if people hate 3D otherwise, but I really do think people are curious enough about what happened on the planet after the earth ships left and what will happen when return. I think Avatar can stand on its own for at least one more movie, probably the two they want to make.
Disney has learned that movies are long term investment, not just box office warriors. They build a brand and milk it.
Several recent flops were by Disney. They're struggling along with everyone else.
As for building a brand, Disney's genius lies not in milking their hits with more movies (which have mostly been by Pixar recently, and which they've been doing irrespective), but in their merchandising strategy for their hits. They release a kid's movie, then they immerse the kids in it by making a ton of toys and apparel based on the movie, and slapping it on new theme park rides. The merchandising market is huge and lasts forever (like Star Wars merchandise). However, the key ingredient for this is a hit movie, which as I've said they're struggling to make these days.
They're going to eventually kill all of the Pixar movies with sequels. Pixar hated sequels when they were still independent. They liked doing new things, telling new stories, creating new characters and places and playing with them. Now that Disney runs the show, Pixar's not doing this anymore. Not that they need to. The current crop of Pixar movies isn't going to run out of steam for at least another two decades (Brave 2, anybody?), by the time which Disney can either buy yet another company and their movie library to milk, or they can ride the Pixar name itself still for another decade or two. Hell, they've done this already, with both the Marvel and Lucasfilm acquisitions. Even if those are old companies, they have a ton of "IP" Disney can milk. And Marvel is producing more each day!
Buying up other companies and running their ideas into the ground is also a part of their genius. But actually making good movies and creating a strong fanbase is not them any longer.
I particularly had The Black Hole in mind. It didn't really do well by Disney standards, but they eventually made money on it. Tron to a lesser degree, Disney can make something obscure and old into something new or notable when they can pull it off.
You can milk a cult movie.
Boondock Saints 2 anyone (does anyone even know this movie actually exists)? Episode I-III? Matrix 2 and 3? And I don't see anyone clamoring for Kill Bill 3 either, (but only because we know Bill's dead). You can't really milk cult movies. They're one-shots, one-time deals. They're cult classics because they're unique, interesting, special, maybe not very good or not generally a
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I don't get it.
William Gibson saw Pacific Rim twice, I just saw it with my son this weekend, haven't even had a chance to see R.I.P.D., and everyone I know has seen the Lone Ranger and loved it.
And they haven't even started overseas sales.
Don't count the chickens before they've hatched.
Not everything is the first weekend.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Well, maybe, somebody is finally going broke underestimating the taste of the American public?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
It truly is An Empire of Their Own.
Seastead this.
Wouldn't it be neat if there was a plateau for story telling where at some point people don't want it to be more real or more intense or more trumped up. That people like their symbolism and story telling like their food, place in front of them not fast balled at their mouth. (rambling should have anon'd it)
Imagine that! People get bored with "Ow! My Balls!" by the third episode.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Analytics is what brings us targeted ads trying to sell us the same thing that we just bought.
Analytics would seem to be a mortal enemy of creativity as well. And that is what seems to be happening. We're getting deadly, uncreative movies, that appear to be made for 5th graders.
I'm waiting for screenplays to be written by smartphones soon. Not that it matters in my case - I watch maybe one movie a year any more. And usually disappointed.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Overpriced, overhyped flops are nothing new. Here's a list of FIFTY -- and that's only since 1995. That's almost 3 per year. (And those are just the biggest -- not even ALL the bombs.) So five or six* big flops this year does not mean DOOOOOOOOOOOOM! It didn't kill the industry in 1999, 2001, 2002, or 2005.
(Interestingly, I've only seen 6 films on that list. Shame that K-19 is there -- that was a pretty good flick.)
* Fun fact: 'R.I.P.D.,' 'After Earth,' 'White House Down,' 'Pacific Rim,' and 'The Lone Ranger' is FIVE films, not SIX. Unless "Ranger" sucked so bad you're counting it twice.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Most folks go see movies and watch TV as part of a shared an experience (either physically with other people, or virtually so they can talk about it at parties). Although many folks talk about only seeing "good" stuff on recommendations (either from friends, or trusted reviewers), the demographics that blockbusters target will often just as likely go see a "bad" movie, just because other folks want to go, or have indicated that they saw and was "okay". Have you noticed that in a group of friends, there are a few that exercise veto-power such that the least common denominator activity was chosen? This has little to do with plot-formulas or cult status of films which generally don't affect the box-office bottom line very much.
Simple things: like you put it out there and people will come, just don't work the way they used to. Although perhaps many of the /. audience perhaps research/hyperplan their lives, many ordinary folks used to just say, lets go to the movies this Saturday, and watch *whatever* was on the big screen. Or, they heard some movie was being advertized as part of a cross promotion and want to see it simply to be able to say they saw it. Or even, they'd go down to the rental store and get the just released Video. Nowdays, the demographic targetted by blockbusters have social networks that are more fragmented and the choice of entertainment options more varied (even movie theaters are ridiculously multiplexed). This reduces the ability of hollywood to leverage any effciencies of the shared experience to the box-office bottom lines.
Although you might argue that if they made better films that garner support via word-of-mouth instead of in-your-face blockbuster releases, that would improve things. It might make better movies, but it wouldn't make for the efficiencies the studios required. Right now the movie industry makes a bulk of the money up front (first few weeks of release), where they can concentrate the people into sold-out theaters on a limited number of reels supported by a short push of high cost advertising and marketing. They make the rest of the money spread out over a longer period of time over slower distribution (dvd, foreign release, etc) w/ limited advertising and marketing (basically mostly by inertia and signing big stars, etc).
The original investors and key players generally get the money up-front, and the residuals pay the bills for rest of the supporting cast (not just actors, but the other mouths as well). W/o the initial return, there's nobody to fund a big-budget movie and the economics of movies suddenly changes. It may be the case that the big-budget movie in a movie house is a dying breed. This means the rest of the industry that rides its coattails (e.g., the movie theaters, the indy pictures, the equipment manufactuers, etc), will need a new model to survive the change. The long tail model is kind of wishful thinking from a business efficiency point of view, so maybe Mr. Spielberg is right, a big change is coming to the studio biz near you...
Now, I love good special effects, but c'mon, you have to have a story line that is at least believable. After Earth? Just how is everything on the planet designed to kill and eat humans, but there are no humans on the planet? Why haven't all these things starved to death? And of course you have to suspect that all the way thru it, the whole thing's purpose is not to entertain, but to set up a foundation for yet another stupid video game. Video game movies always suck.
The Zombie movie just made no sense it all. None. There was no cure put forward, only a way to become invisible to them, which in itself made no sense at all. Its hard to enjoy these things when you can't follow along with the thinking. Forbidden Planet made sense in 1954, and is a much better movie even with its primitive effects.
Pacific Rim? Walls to keep out the monsters? Really? And giant robots to do hand to hand combat without benefit of at least edged weapons except near the very end? Since these things are obviously not magically invulnerable like Godzilla, a much cheaper and more effective solution than either robots or walls would have been some big shore batteries - maybe 20" guns, maybe bigger. Obviously you can penetrate these monsters, and explosives were shown to work, sooo... build guns.
And the Lone Ranger was just a disaster. All he white people in the movie were evil except the LR himself, who was simply a buffoon. I was hoping for a genuine hero movie, but should have known that since Johnny Depp was in it, it would be his movie and no one else's.
RIPD? OK I guess, but do we really need grotesque body growths to make this work?
Superman was totally unsatisfying. What part of "invulnerable" do not these people understand? Fights between Krypton natives on earth are pointless, and no neck snapping is really possible even if they did show that. The whole Superman history was ignored, esp. the death of Johnathan Kent, who COULD have been saved by any Superman up to this point - Superman has ALWAYS been able to slip away long enough to change into his costume and save someone like Dad Kent. A superman that is not really super is not really worth watching.
And, BTW, this goes for every action movie for the last 20 - 30 years, could we please, please, please have an automotive chase scene where the streets are NOT wet, which seems to occur in the middle of Death Valley in July when there's not so much as a cotton ball in the sky. Boom! Wet streets! Where the H did they come from? And howcum they are suddenly dry with the bad guy finally leaves the road and goes over the cliff and is killed on the rocks below (or whatever?) Not a sign of moisture then.
Suspension of disbelief can go only so far. If you have to use magic, just say its magic. Don't conjur up a machine that can't possibly work, or would be such an obvious bad idea that we can't get into it. We need to believe that action x caused result y, and it was really clever, and the hero is a genius, etc. If x would obviously cause y only 0.001% of the time, and probably blow up everything in a 10 block radius the other 99.999% of the time, don't try to convince us that the hero planned it that way. Etc. etc. etc.
Lol. Well-said.
Perhaps hollywood have just abandoned plot and are exploring the relationship between marketing budget and take?
Good luck to them.
Requiem for the American Dream
No, people want satisfying endings. This may or may not mean a happy ending - it may mean an ending that is neither (might even be leaning more towards the unhappy side), but might still have ended with some sort of twist revelation that makes you thing "woah, funny that!".
The Usual Suspects is a good example ***SPOILERS*** - it's definitely not a happy ending because the bad guy gets away. Doesn't even need to escape - just walks out of the police station before the lead detective puts the pieces together. But it's just so damn satisfying to watch that it's a satisfying ending, and finishes off the film so damn well.
... is the day Analytics get to rule the world.
Human beings are famous for being irrational.
True, we are predictable, but, as irrational beings, our so-called "predictability" is not actually that "predictable", after all.
Blockbuster movies become blockbuster movies because they somehow sync with the audiences. Be it King Kong or Casablanca or Star Wars or Gone With The Wind, they sell because the fulfill something that the audiences need - either to be entertained, or to be informed, or to be enlightened.
Lately, actually not lately, but has been for the past several decades, Hollywood has lost its touch.
Instead of producing movies that can fulfill the needs of the audiences, Hollywood has been relying on formulas, sequels, and remakes of old classics.
The "Analytics", sad to say, is just a new name for their formula Hollywood has been relying upon since the 1980's.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Fuck you. You earned it.
Rather than produce interesting movies, with good characters and great dialog, you relied on effects. Sure, a lot of people love that stuff; see Fast & Furious 27 or whatever it was. The rest of us aren't interested.
You attack your fans. You make me sit through a barrage of crap to watch a DVD if I purchase it (so I don't). You use the federal government to be your cop. You won't let me see movies how I want. You penalize Netflix when they try and give me what I want. The prices at the theater keep going up (I paid $12 to see Star Trek in 3D?) You rely on gimmicks, rather than content (see 3D).
Fuck you. You earned it.
Maybe if Hollywood eliminated the delay between a films US opening date and its opening date in other countries like Australia, less people would download a copy from the internet instead of waiting for the local opening date.
6 blockbusters came out in 6 weeks and nobody can figure out why not any single one of the 6 made a lot of money? Go back over the history of summer blockbusters - start at Jaws or whenever - and you know what you'll find,1, maybe 2 blockbuster movies PER YEAR. Not 1 every week. Add up the total box office of every summer and I bet the TOTAL for this summer is comparable to the TOTAL of every other summer since Jaws. Hollywood wants a successful blockbuster, then make ONE, not 6.
and after my last $50 outing to the movie theater with my son I said fuck it and haven't been to a theather since before iron Man 2. I think The Road was the last movie. I now wait till I see it at a pawn shop or at a discount somewhere or better yet dont buy it at all. No fucking way a movie theather wlll get my money ever again.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
It's a Western, translated from American to Japanese and back, in space. So yeah, it followed movie formulas of some years back. What's old is new again and all that.
It used to be that even a badly made film could do well in the box office if Hollywood put a real effort behind promotion. If there were big enough explosions to make the trailers look good, and enough advertisement to swamp out the bad press, a film could still do well even if it had absolutely noting going for it except some name stars and spectacular explosions. I think one of the things that has changed is how well connected movie goers have become. When a film sucks you tweet it or facebook it and there's a couple hundred people who are now less likely to see it. And they tweet it to their friends, and in surprisingly few steps even Kevin Bacon gives it a miss.
In short, the phenomenon Hollywood is fighting against (perhaps unknowingly) is social networking. They continue to play to their strengths -- trailers attached to other blockbusters that might also have bombed, and TV spots that fewer and fewer people see, because who in the prime demographic watches network tv anymore? So they spend like they always have, and it isn't working anymore because people are migrating to a different model for choosing a movie, and the effect is starting to be seen.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
can watch and learn a lot from their Hollywood brethren since they seem to be on the same path.
Games with a story ? Bah. Story takes a back seat to effects and eye candy these days. Give me a good story and I can forgo crazy visuals. Give me a good story AND crazy visuals and you've got a rare gem on your hands.
So after an almost exhaustive list (which I mostly agree with btw) you left out the "improvement" to Faramir's character and the hobbits little side trip to Osgiliath?
Annoyingly, it's even lampshaded: "We shouldn't even be here!". Indeed.
Plan My Week for iPhone
I mean, not just in the normal Hollywood sense, but like this year has been one post-apocolyptic film after another.
Other years it's a dozen Vampire films.
Or cheeky comedies.
I think even the occasional good movie gets lost in the mass of sameness. Wish they'd schedule the releases to provide more variety over the course of the year...
but the bulk of box-office success ultimately comes down to the most elusive and unquantifiable of things: knowing what the audience wants before it does, and a whole lot of luck.
In particular in our economic times when people think twice before paying a ticket and $8 for a cup of soda, the audience wants quality. Quality, engaging plots (horror, drama, sci/fi, action, commedy, whatever) that keep you at the edge of your seat, or comm. Special effects is just spice. You can put spice on a turd, but that won't turn it into a cut of filet mignon.
I knew that Pacific Rim was going to flop (even though I wanted it to succeed.) I mean, giant robots vs monsters? What the fuck is the main population made off? 4-th graders? I know that in /. (and in the interweebz in general) we like to paint the population as dumb (where population == everyone but us), but that's just bullshit...
I suppose its a time/money/advertising thing, but this craptacular economy seems like it should be freeing up some time to explore for some folks.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
It was amazing. Easily the best movie I've seen in a few years, at least. I think almost everybody in the theater cried at some point.
And it only got one showing at one theater in my city, and the room was maybe 2/3 full, if that.
But I guess it didn't have any explosions, it wasn't about a sappy romance, and it didn't feature big-name actors saying witty one-liners, so it's relatively unknown.
Hollywood could definitely use a shakeup.
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
about another Hollywood story.
Movies that don't suck would be great.
And I don't just mean "indie obscurity." I can watch Apocalypse Now or The Last Emperor over and over again and appreciate each in a new way every time. There are dozens of others that I feel the same way about. The first Star Wars trilogy. The first Indiana Jones films. Doctor Zhivago. Lawrence of Arabia. Even The Ten fucking Commandments—and I say that as an atheist that hates Charlton Heston (just to prove that it's not about subject matter, or star power).
But (to recall another recent /. story), every time I go to a film lately, I feel as though I've already seen the film two dozen times, with characters carrying slightly different guns, wearing a slightly different-colored superhero suit, etc. Informal film discussion with my wife after the screening has turned from in-depth discussion and debate into "slightly better than Spiderman, slightly worse than Iron Man," followed by "yup, agree."
We shouldn't be able to make easy linear comparisons like that that seem to offer no further opening for discussion.
It's not even that Hollywood won't "take risks" any longer—they've just fallen prey to the same investor-centric disease that the rest of the economy has. A modest film for a modest profit is not good enough. It's "total earth-shaking blockbuster worldwide $1bn potential or bust."
But when every film that gets made is shooting for the "top grossing ever" formula right out of the gate, there's precious little variation or nuance involved. You've got 5 or 10 films to emulate, or even half that number that are the "surest bets."
Nobody goes to a film because they want a "sure bet." If that's what we wanted, we'd just stay home and watch Apocalypse Now one more time (which is precisely what people are doing, I'd bet).
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
I think it's worth pointing out that there will always people who will watch unexceptional movies just for the stunts and special effects. It's usually people who say about a film "it was a fun roller coaster ride" or "it was a great summer popcorn flick". but it seems like there aren't enough people like that anymore to overcome a $200M budget. Maybe there is hope for humanity. (Or maybe we're all just broke.)
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Actually, the Lone Ranger might not have been a block buster hit, but it was pretty darn enjoyable. Could used a little editing to cut the length, but over all, a fun experience. Sometimes I don't understand what the reviewers are looking for in a movie. Maybe Disney just didn't pay the right people enough for the right reviews.
Spielberg, Lucas, and Soderberg are all just aging hacks yelling "Get off my lawn". They're complaining how hard it is for THEM to get a movie funded, as if they're the best there is, when in fact they're all really washed-up fossils, not the titans they might once have been. When is the last time any of them released a blockbuster? Jurassic Park in 91? They're just useless old men telling a bunch of war stories and blaming it on someone... ANYONE else, that they've lost their privlidged places in hollywood.
Hollywood has gone way down hill... No question about it. But there Have been worthwhile movies speckled throughout, and there are signs that things are finally improving. Part of that improvement is probably that studios are not stupid enough to give these washed-up big names a blank check whenever they want to squeeze out a stinker.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
It's not just a Western, it's a new version of the old chapter-a-week serials that used to be shown on the weekends, as are the Indiana Jones movies. Only instead of having anywhere from twelve to fifteen chapters with runtimes of about twenty minutes or so, each chapter is a full-length film. In fact, even the bit of back story given in the opening crawl comes straight from the serials; the only thing really missing is having each episode end with a cliffhanger and begin with the resolution of the previous chapter's ending.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
I went to go see Man Of Steel in the theater. The ticket price was 10.50 or something rather then taxes.
That price was actually really decent, figured, not bad for a movie experience.
Then I saw the concession stand. If I wanted two large popcorns, two pops, and a candy bar, it was 26$.
Yes, it was as expensive as dinner for two at a restaurant. Then you take on the movie, plus taxes.
So if a couple goes to the movies, tickets, pop corn, a drink and a candy bar, you're looking at 50$.
That, my friends, is what's killing the movies in my opinion, at least where I live around.
I'd much rather go to a nice restaurant at that price for a good meal and conversation.
If a large pop wasn't 7$, then I might consider enjoying the movie theater experience, at a reasonable cost.
Needless to say I saw the movie, enjoyed that, but didn't buy anything from the concession.
Or I'd go to the drive in, it's about a 40 minute drive, but their food is cheaper, and I get 2-3 movies
for the same price (10.50 or so), plus it's a real treat to have one still around.
Location - Canada, British Columbia, Cineplex/Silvercity
My favourite movies of the last year or so have been those that are different. Some of them didn't get such good reviews, but they had differences that set them apart from the rest.
For example: Cabin in the Woods (everyone dies! Yay!), Cloud Atlas (intricate plot lines), and Gran Torino (I had expected the ending to be typical hollywood and was pleasantly surprised).
Those are older film, but this is exactly an example of great foreign film. "The seventh Seal" is my top movie of all time. And then there are the monthy pythons ;).
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Movie local to foreign country have deeper plot. Watch some ingmar bergman as I mentionned in another thread for example. No, it is not because of the internation audience. In fact, using Marvel/DC comic superhero like capitain america will leave out most of the international audience out (for example). The reason is simple : they found a formula and abuse it because it is cheaper than make something creative. International audience probably enter their consideration only in the form of "are we going to piss off our international audience with some politically incorrect stuff, or are we fine" and even that is doubtful seing on how on regular basis holywood seems to put prejudice against other countries in their film.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
There wasn't that much conccurence back 25 years ago. Console and gaming wasn't that widespread. So that led to a much lower footprint marketing, and a much lower attention grabbing trailer with explosion. That's part of the reason the budget are rising much quicker than inflation. Look at the amount of explosion and CGI in all recent films, and compare to 25 years ago. They made a much lower usage 25 years ago, because it was expansive, so you used a low dosage to make it effective when it happened. Or avoided it altogether if it did not fit. And the marketing is way overbroad nowadays.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
But very few people like to be careful and rigorous with their analytics, to ensure they only use their analytics to say things the analytics actually say ---- and not things that are a result of taking statistical shortcuts, or allowing their personal biases to influence the message..... one of the strongest biases of all being the idea that the analytics observed actually say anything useful [or reliable] at all
.
There are a lot of reasons why films are bombing today; Poor scripts, tired old 'actors' with no real acting skill, and an excessive focus on big budget effects instead of giving the movie a soul. One reason not really getting a lot of coverage is the Twitter Effect.
Films used to rely heavily on opening weekend box office takings. The only information you had about a film and how decent it might be came from the previews shown at other films, advertising in papers, and promo spots on television. Film critics generally gave positive reviews of films mainly due to their columns appearing in newspapers carrying the advertising for the studios that made it.
Now we have completely independent reviewers able to tell us exactly what they thought of the film, and they can do it using their phones straight to Facebook and Twitter. Savy people will know even before the friday night premiere is over what their friends all thought of it and if it's worth seeing or they should just DL it.
People are also able to grab a screener copy more easily, then post reviews to sites like IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, etc - all well before the film opens in the cinemas. Thanks to those sites I can make a much more informed choice about how I spend my cash. Most times these days the decision is simply to not spend it.
Thirty years ago I would have just gone and seen the film if it looked remotely decent in the promo. Now, I need to know it's going to be worth the $22 my local cinema charges me before I walk in that door. Let's not even talk about popcorn and soda!
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Sit back and watch this little Youtube gem. It shows the first Indiana Jones film side by side with shots from those serials and films that Spielberg watched when younger.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ns8bG9AbfwM
The opening scenes are pretty generic so I figured they'd have a much harder time with the iconic rolling boulder scene in the temple. That is...until I watched it.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
I don't need to watch that to know about the serials. I've been a fan of them for almost thirty years.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Please tell me you were trying to be sarcastic.
six wannabe blockbusters have cratered at the North American box office: 'R.I.P.D.,' 'After Earth,' 'White House Down,' 'Pacific Rim,' and 'The Lone Ranger.'
Let's try that again:
six wannabe blockbusters have cratered at the North American box office:
1. 'R.I.P.D.'
2. 'After Earth'
3. 'White House Down'
4. 'Pacific Rim'
5. 'The Lone Ranger.'
Sorry, how many?
six
*sigh* Now the editors can't even do counting.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
..that a good script beats CGI
All generalizations are false
...is for brokers to convince clients that they deserve a cut.
Any time someone tells you that they've devised a performance metric, spend five minutes thinking about what they've over-simplified. You wil, almost without exception, reject the metric, unless you have an agenda.
You can't ask a family of 4 to spend over $60 to go to the movies when so many are unemployed or making next to nothing. I hate to wire it buy when I was a kid movies cost less than minimum wage. Now they are close to double.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Movie making used to have the movie goers as the audience, now its audience is the investor backing the film. Analytics before art. Stunts over stories. About sums it up really.
I just can't be bothered.
"I hate spending $14 to watch Nicolas Cage solve things." -Leela
Nope. Actual plots don't always translate overseas; 'splosions do. I think we're seeing them make 'blockbusters' for the international market, letting the local market fend for itself.
Silver Lining (perhaps): less lucre in Hollywood pockets means their filthy purchasing power of politicians will be diminished, perhaps resulting in fewer illegal paramilitary style raids on houses half the world away.
Ah, here it is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_MacNamara
I have a family of 7. A matinee showing of a 2D movie costs me about $50 before concessions. I cannot afford to go see multiple summer blockbusters because I'm lucky if I even go see one. So movies I wouldn't mind seeing, but don't feel like I have to, get put on my 'rent this later' list.
That movie was a Saturday morning cartoon and was all about beating the shit out of monsters and it delivered
I suspect the sheer number of flops hasn't changed much over time. What has changed is the ginormous investment in some of them. As the long-term tendency of the rate of profit continues to decline, in film as in auto making or steel, the studios have to bet more and more on each throw of the dice in order to make enough *mass* of profit to cover for the declining *rate* of profit. I don't think the flops have anything to do with content and everything to do with statistics.
It amazes me that people in Hollywood don't understand they created a dud.
I mean to a certain extent they know. For instance ANY movie released in January to March is crap, and they holly execs know it, so they dump it during the time of the year where people do not go to the movies (paying off their Christmas debt). You might get the occasional hit during the first part of they year, but usually movies released in Jan and Feb are released and forgotten about.
But it amazes me that Hollywood seems incredulous when some big $100+ million summer blockbuster doesn't do well.
I mean for R.I.P.D. anybody watching the trailer knows this movie is garbage. It's MIB except with "ghosts". I don't know how M. Night. Shyamalan is allowed to touch a script these days after repeated fails, he should just be banned from Hollywood, period.
Maybe Hollywood should stop looking at analytics and start actually watching the crap they are producing.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
suckerpunch was insulting to the viewer. the final joke was that the title was what they were doing to the audience. it was compeltely missold, misrepresented in trailers, and when the final product was viewed, it was unsatisfying, boring, and finally, insulting.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Avatar was the ultimate labor of love for Cameron, and people knew Cameron made good entertaining films. his background as a cinematographer gives him a keen sense of how to compose a shot, and that a huge part of Avatars success, both as a movie, and as a 3D movie. He wanted to tell a fairly simple, yet engrossing story (and the DWW story is a classic trope), and do it with 3D and show that 3D could be done right. A large part of all those years he spent on it was researching exactly how to compose each and every scene in order to exploit the scene in 3D, but not create teh typical "bad, bimmicky 3D". all in all, he succeeded. he blended both the technique and the story quite well, and the box office receipts and rise of "3D" bear that out, though ultimately the suits failed to appreciate the concept of "3D done well", and simply started slapping it on everything, and further eroding the concept.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
It cost a family of four close to $100 to sit in a theater with discourteous morons on their cell phones and over priced snacks. I'd rather just go out to dinner with the family where we can, you know, actually talk to one another and people watch rather than be pissed off and uncomfortable.
Theaters need to fix the problem and more people will go, especially since people now have 100" 3D TV's in their living room. Fix the experience, stop gauging your customers and you might actually fill the seats.
But they didn't. What's new is that if it happened today, they actually WOULD have made one every year.
Meanwhile, a dirt cheap rubber-suit monster movie probably would have out performed Pacific Rim in the box office. People like that shit.
Try Japanese monster movies from the 1960s / 70s. They are fun in a trashy way, but I doubt you could get great box office revenue out of them today. OTOH, they are so cheap that a modest revenue might be enough to make a profit.
Come to think of it, machinima are gradually getting there, even with small budgets. I guess some small studio might eventually surprise us with an original and successful CGI movie - and launch a flood of uninspired "me too"s.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Who doesn't want to see mecha vs kaiju big battels?
Note: this source may be biased...
http://www.kaiju.com/home.htm
Yeah and they almost literally tried that, next one out was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedknobs_and_Broomsticks
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
On the flip side - Suckerpunch tried exactly the same thing and failed because they focused too heavily on making it look cool and forcing the fact they did so on you.
I really liked SuckerPunch, but then all I was expecting was killer visuals and ridiculous over-the-top action sequences. I understand that the trailer promised some kind of transcendental meta-reality experience but I wrote that off as stupid Hollywood tripe (and I was right) and instead wanted to see gatlin-gun wielding zombie samurai warriors inexplicably being cut down by a 5ft tall blonde chick with a sword. And I was not disappointed. Everything that wasn't a 5ft. tall chick inexplicably destroying anime monsters was a borefest, but the movie was a lot of fun all the same.
Second is the home entertainment experience.
What has evaporated is the incentive to actually see it in the theater. The experience.
I personally enjoyed it, for the same reasons as you, and the directors cut version makes it better, and I understand why they changed some things in the theatrical version. It was however a flop.
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Around here, it's probably close to that if you count previous etc. At least 15-20 minutes.
Ads for car
Ads for beverage (coke/pepsi/etc)
Ads for local bank which owns the theatre chain
Thing telling people to turn off their damn phones, which somebody inevitably doesn't
Preview
Preview
if [[ $3d_movie == true ]]
Put on your 3d glasses
Another preview or two, now in 3D
endif
movie.
I don't mind the previews, but the preceding ads are bullshit. If they want to put up ads, use the time before start when most people are already there finding their seats anyhow.
1. The Big Lebowski
2. Office Space
3. Ground Hog Day
4. Brassed Off
5. Empire Strikes Back
6. The Princess Bride
7. Borat
8. Dumb & Dumber
9. Braveheart
10. The Unforgiven
What do these movies have in common? Great plots, great concepts, and great execution. Some of them are big budget, but most of them did not have to be (besides Braveheart and ESB obviously). Hollywood makes almost nothing but crap now. It's not really about the budget or the star factor. IDIOTS!
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Hmm. Sucker Punch was just awful is so many dimensions; does the Director's Cut actually redeem it at all?
I do like watching it though. I'm still not convinced that it isn't actually a great film that's only pretending to be a loud brashy overstylised teen wank film.
Dune is another example. There was a good article recently about why Dune never reached the mainstream heights achieved by say Star Wars. Dune is widely called one of the best science fiction stories of all time. However they made a bad movie, and an even worse TV series.
I am interested to see how Ender's Game comes out. However even before it is done there are people wanting to boycott it because of the authors controversial views. However I would bet on more meaningless blockbuster loosely based on the book, versus a serious movie that tries to portray some of the serious and meaningful themes of the books.
I would also love to see Joe Haldeman's "The Forever War" in film, though some parts I wonder how they might be done, and perhaps better left to imagination.
Honestly a lot of Heinlein stuff, or at least those featuring Lazerous Long (or whatever his name was) might be hard to pull off. He is a bit over the top to play realistically, unless you are going for camp or parody. I always though some of his work was ridiculous the the same vein as some Ben Bova stuff or even (this isn't going to make me any friends) Ann Rynd. They all have main protagonists that are basically political minded Ironman minus the super robot suit (Except they didn't start with anything like a silver spoon in their mouth and lifted themselves out of poverty using nothing but their bootstraps, ingenuity, and contempt for wasteful government).
Though there is at least enough sex in there to spark a good HBO series perhaps.... :)
"six wannabe blockbusters have cratered at the North American box office: 'R.I.P.D.,' 'After Earth,' 'White House Down,' 'Pacific Rim,' and 'The Lone Ranger.'Â" So... I only count five.
in the book "Reel Power". Commenting on the futility of surveys, focus groups, and similar market research, he said it's pointless to ask people what they'd like to see in a movie, because, of course, what they'd like to see is something that they haven't seen before. I've been wondering for years when audiences would finally get tired of all the explosions and car chases, but had resigned myself to "never", simply because there's always a new crop of teenage boys growing. Maybe there's hope.
The trouble with trying to make movies that appeal to everyone is that you have to cater to the LCD. That means lots of explosions, car chases, and low brow plots that everyone can follow without having to think very much. It also means that the themes are generally trendy and politically correct. So the women tend to be good looking, strong, confident and smart. The guys tend to be dumb, weak, and doughy (Kevin James comes to mind). This has been the formula for success for many years now in Hollywood.
The trouble with this approach is that you quickly run out of ideas. Every movie seems like the one you saw last week. Every car chase seems just a little bit less exciting than the last one. So they try to come up with these gimmicks like 3D to spice it up. The first time you see it, it's pretty cool. But that fades as well.
I think George Clooney was the first person I heard express the "one for them, one for me" idea. In other words, make one low ball fluff movie for the studios and make a smaller independent high brow film for himself. Fortunately for him, he's in a position that he can pick and choose the movies he wants to make.
Saw it. Was expecting fun monster movie, and that's what I got. Actually, it was Big Budget, live action and CGI straight anime (giant robots bashing fists? Suddenly appearing swords? absolutely anime).
Downside: due to timing, we saw 3-D. Don't. It was gratuitous, and during a number of the Big Fight Scenes, they'd layered it so densly that we couldn't tell what was happening.
Hollywood: lose the 3-D. Get plots, or when you see your revenues, you'll plotz.
One last comment (the reference is for extra points) on Pacific Rim: why didn't they bring out the obvious, best weapon against the critters... the Yamato?
mark
At least "the high roller" and the last item is explained better. I wouldn't call it "redeemed" if you thought it was awful, but if you were on edge about it, it could take you to either side of the edge. I would consider the final step controversial to say the least, especially in today's mindset.
There was another dance number as well, just little plot holes filled in, but not on the magnitude of change that Dune had between theatrical and directors cuts.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
IMDB page. Brought to you by the same oddball Finns who gave us that wonderful series of Star Trek parodies called Star Wreck (although this time they had some German and Australian help). A wonderful send up of Nazis as "Invaders From the Moooon." Well worth your time if you love silly sci-fi movies. :-)
Or not...
Just the other day, some friends and I went to a local "classic movies" theater and saw "Adam's Rib". It was fun in a way that very, very few movies are these days, in spite of zero explosions (Heresy!) and zero car chases. (Though Katherine Hepburn's driving was plenty scary...)
Plot... Character... acting... craftmanship... rarely seen these days outside of Pixar. (The new Monsters movie is definitely on my list...)
Slate magazine just ran a story about how most, if not all, Hollywood blockbusters are starting to follow a single format/structure:
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2013/07/hollywood_and_blake_snyder_s_screenwriting_book_save_the_cat.single.html/
note - if you click the link at the end of the article you'll also see how the article is written in the same format! - how consistent!
The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before. - Thorstein
God help you if you try to buy it for home. When you find one movie out of the lot, where the experience was good, or you liked the plot... You bring it home, and every time you want to watch, you're forced to sit through 15 minutes of unskippable ads. W.T.F.?
Is it a wonder everyone pirates?
Isn't this the same effect as the trouble the financial markets and investment banks, are still in, that caused the Great recession of 2008? Too much trust in "quants"; too much trust in mysterious mathematical formulas no one looked at critically, to didn't have the knowledge to. Just as you can lie with Statistics you can lie with math and for the same reason. Math can fail on faulty assumptions and faulty reasoning. Just as ignoring rare outcomes doesn't make them go away, which was why the banks almost crashed because of mortgage risk, and are still vulnerable to the same errors, others can fail if they use analytics unwisely as well.
It is about time that Hollywood realized that quality drama is about fine acting, great stories, tragedy, comedy, pathos, etc. It is not, and never was, about car chases, gun fights, violence, bizarre sex, and explosions. I can get all that at home! When I go out I want to be entertained by something different. We are not all poorly educated ghetto kids with puerile hero fantasy tastes in movies.
Heavy is the head that wears the tinfoil hat.
Pacific Rim has practically made it's production costs back, as of today.
That is not quite true, because "production budget" is a bit misleading. First, you have the domestic gross, about 50% which goes back to the studios to pay for the production budget, which means solely considering domestic, a $180m budget needs to make at least $360m to "break even." That's an average also, films that make less has a smaller percentage of the take go to studios. But fortunately there's the foreign haul, right? Yet that 50% number is lower in foreign markets. Their theaters keep more money, you'll often have tariffs that take a % of the profit.. so the amount of $$$ coming back to studios is certainly less. But each movie is different, some can get sweetheart deals with foreign countries, some can't. So whenever you ask any of these questions, the answer is always a confusing "it depends."
The general rule of thumb I hear, even from people in the industry, is that a movie breaks even if it makes twice its production budget worldwide.
So if Pacific Rim cost $180m and it's made $170m so far (and hey, it's still going and there are a lot of foreign markets still to open), it's still in a much deeper hole than $10m.
Of course, that depends on whether that $180m is accurate. Studios do not like to release numbers, so most of these budget numbers are guesses anyway.
Adult movies with actual stories (and no grotesque killinga, no explosions, no cynicism) might actually start doing well again. Even the kids get tired of the cotton-candy.
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
I do not get chance to get to go to the cinema very often except when I visit HK, but I have to say i really enjoyed the effects in Pacific Rim even if the story was written by a three year old. Even so, I am bored of endless violence and pessimistic future scenarios. When can we have some movies that take a more optimistic approach to the future. Let's see some Bucky Fuller, Bill Mollison type scenarios. The other thing, is please stop wasting money an celebrity salaries. The world is full of aspiring young actors with far more talent than Nic Cage or Russell Crowe. Save the money and spend it on interesting plots instead please.
Seriously, animated films are getting better and better. Sure, they are mostly child stories or fairy-tales, but most non-animated films are no better these days. And at least with animated films studios don't have to fork over millions to get barely-capable-of-acting "superstars".
Shutter Island had a similar ending....
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
Not heard of any of these. And, to be honest, only two of them sound in the slightest bit interesting. Oh, hang on, if one is about Rhode Island Police Department, then it's only going to retain interest if it stars Peter Griffin. ... Googles ... well that one goes into the shit can.
Perhaps Bollywood has something worth watching?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Actually what I would love to see (and think would make good movies) would be to see the "Old Man's War" series by John Scalzi made into movies. There is no shortage of aging stars for the beginning part of the movie! :) I think I am casting Bruce Willis in my head right now for good or ill... Maybe some old buggers with good voices for the animation like Morgan Freeman and Donald Sutherland. Can't remember if they line up with a particular person or not, just throwing things out there.
They are much newer, so they might already have a base, and this is one where the special effects would be very nice! Though I could see a bit of Avatar in it if not careful. However it does not have the issue of trying to portray the Human race advanced beyond comprehension...
The real reason why lots of us have stopped going to the theater is simple, cost of a ticket. It wasn't to long ago when the theaters were always full everyday of the week. You could even afford to sit through 2 movies with a friend or partner. Now most can't even afford to think of a movie when a IMAX 3d movie is 19.75 and up. That's four hours of work for the average person. 8 hours for two people. Bring down the price of a your most expensive ticket by half. And everyone will start watching even the lame movies. This is how the conversation will go. Hey let's watch that movie, it looks lame yeah but it's only 10 bucks lets see it anyway maybe we will be surprised. Pacific rim is one of those that surprised me :)
... and you shall see more profits again.
Experiments and other stuff