I went to see King Kong last night (Short review: Good, but not as good as the buzz) and sitting there in the theater, I began to get a sense of why movie receipts are down so much, and where Hollywood is going wrong. I'll give you a hint. Here are the previews I saw, either trailers or coming attraction posters:
Notice a trend? Like Xerox, Hollywood can't come up with anything original.
Hollywood has become the ultimate recycling bin, and many of us are not interested in dumpster diving, and the rest are willing to wait for it to come out on video. Hell, one of the best things about Million Dollar Baby was that we hadn't seen it before as a TV show or movie of the week.
The Producers, for example is a film adaptation of a Broadway musical based on an earlier film by Mel Brooks! That takes graverobbing to entirely new levels. Of course, Poseidon is almost as bad, remaking the original movie less than 2 months after a TV version aired. And earlier this year, The Longest Yard was virtually a scene by scene remake of the original, adding nothing new, other than the actors. Almost every time I go to the movies, I have the feeling that I've seen this before. Why would I want to pay to see it again?
But it's not all Hollywood's fault. There's a reason they keep recycling the same old garbage; it makes them money. Here's the top ten grossing movies of 2005:
Hollywood is in a terrible bind. Movies are too expensive to make these days to take chances on something really new and different, which means that movie goers who want something more than yesterday's TV shows with added boobs are going to continue to stay away from the theaters. In order to hold on to the remaining audience, studios will cater to the remainder, accelerating the trend towards mediocrity.
Which brings me to King Kong. It's a servicable movie, certainly better than the Jeff Bridges/Jessica Lange disaster of the 70's, but the question I kept asking myself throughout the movie was "Why" Why spend $207 million dollars to make what is essentially the same movie as the original, despite the sledge hammer pretensions of writer/director/producer Peter Jackson? A deck boy reading "Heart of Darkness? Come on!
The movie is entertaining, and Naomi Watts is simply beautiful as Ann Darrow. Jack Black is good as Carl Denham, but Adrien Brody is weak as playwrite Jack Driscoll. We're told that he is a very demanding exceedingly picky person about his plays and scripts, but we see nothing of that in his actual performance. He just kind of sits there the entire movie.
The problem is there's nothing new here. If you've seen the original, or even the remake, you've seen this movie.
Now, for the second part of this essay. Why is this a good thing? Right now, our choices are limited. We can watch recycled crap from Hollywood or pretentious art house crap from, well, wherever art house crap comes from. Some film school probably. But our choices are growing. Small studios making independent movies are popping up everywhere. In a way, it parallels the rise of blogging. Technological advances are lowering the entry costs for film makers. Shooting with digital cameras means processing and editing costs are nearly eliminated. Distribution over the internet removes another massive expense. Working outside of the Hollywood unions and guilds means movies can be made for a realistic budget. George Romero and Kevin Smith have shown the way; there's no doubt in my mind that there are many budding DeMilles ready to follow in their footsteps. So while we can expect Spiderman 24; Peter Parker gets a Truss and Who's the Boss; The Movie from the major studios, we can also hope for more movies like Chasing Amy, Slingblade, or Knightriders from the independents.
Posted by Rich at December 17, 2005 10:43 PM | TrackBackInteresting essay. My personal feeling is that Hollywood has been overrun by pencil-pushing bean counters. High level executives—pretty much glorified accountants—are deciding what gets made and what gets passed on. These people are thinking only in terms of what will make money and what chance said project has of not only making its money back but making an actual profit. Remakes and sequels have a ready-made audience.
Don’t get me wrong; nothing wrong with making money, I encourage it. But I think it would pay to look beyond the next quarterly report.
Also, these execs look at “who’s attached to the deal”. They want to see a film with Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. They want to have name recognition attached.
In all of this the single most important factor of a film is lost; the story and how it’s told. It used to be that a killer script was floated around and based on its merit as a story it would attract attention. That still happens but very rarely (Unforgiven floated around for years). More common is a “package” being formed, either in a name actor and a director or a couple of name actors, and then the script is written for them. In other words the story comes last.
Hollywood is consuming itself. It is no longer willing to take chances on new writers and new talent. In other words; something fresh.
Story telling and its appreciation is as old as humanity. The story has always been the foundation and the delivery the icing on the cake. Hollywood, in my opinion, has it all bass-ackwards.