The 10 Biggest Problems With Modern Day Cinema - Page 2

Don't forget about excessive, gratuitous swearing and cheap bathroom humor.

Guess you're not "hip" if you're not especially into that, either.

Cinema had too many remakes and sequels in 1976 (bonus vintage Siskel\\Ebert footage):

http://www.slashfilm.com/cinema-sequels-remakes-1976/

In 1976, that’s 35 years ago, a year before George Lucas released Star Wars and only one year after Steven Spielberg created the “summer blockbuster” with Jaws, legendary film critic Gene Siskel felt the same way we all do now. Hollywood was making too many sequels and remakes. Really? In 1976?

Apparently a comically large Bandito mustache was AOK

I felt like the cut backs in the manned space program after Apollo were terrible back then too, until I compare that to what we have now.

Art

Robots....robots...

Great article with an interesting, relevant insight from Francis Ford Coppolla:

http://www.totalfilm.com/features/39...pola-1#content


People ask how The Godfather made so much money and I give them one word: risk.

When you set out to make a film that may not be a success, that may not even be a good film, you are also, possibly, about to find something new that connects with the audience.

In the old days, the people who owned movie companies were tough, vulgar moneymen, but they were also showmen who loved movies.

The idea of taking a risk could titillate them; LB Mayer would take a chance to get a bigger hit than Sam Goodwyn.

The Godfather was a risk?

The book was released in March 1969. . .

"Within two years of its first printing, The Godfather sold more than 1,000,000 copies in hardcover and 8,000,000 copies in paperback."

"The novel was the No. 1 best seller in the United States and was on the New York Times best-seller list for 67 weeks. It was also the most popular novel in England, France, Germany and other countries, and sold more than 21 million copies."

Today's studio execs are bean counters, MBA's who don't love film just money. Running a studio (or distribution outfit) should be more like running an art gallery: bring in good art and let it sell itself. The problem with movies is they have been labeled a "pop" artform and like comics books as compared to literature. Foreign films I watch are often funded by government programs and the filmmakers not compromised by bean counters on the set. Those are far more worth my time than most Hollywood studio films.

Aren't all major Hollywood studios part of public corporations? And what is the goal of a public corporation? To make money for it's stockholders.

LOL - Hey - thanks for agreeing with me . . . that the goal is . . . to make money.

And how do you make money for the stockholders? You make GOOD films not BAD films. You let the filmmakers do their job not interfere with it. And finally you understand the product you are selling (I've known CEOs who didn't have a clue about that).

Read William Goldman's "Adventures in the Screen Trade" to get a clue about how clueless studio executives are. Or if you have Netflix watch "Tales from the Script" packed with interviews from screenwriters about clueless film execs.

It's come to the point about the only Hollywood films I watch these days are the indies that some of the real filmmakers create between their "day jobs."

Good is a subjective term which will have as many definitions as people defining them.

You make money by making films lots of people want to see.

Films are a highly subjective issue.

Fixed it!

You make money by making films lots of people want to pay to see

Yeah, but what are GOOD films? By the box office tallies of the last few years, it'd be films about giant transforming robots, sparkly vampires, Thundersmurfs, and boy wizards. Because those films made money for the stockholders. The indie films you like, well, some made a little money, and some didn't do so well.

Studios can't be trying to please the Brian Conrads of the world. There aren't enough of you. And that's not a slam, I consider myself in your company. But expecting the studios to make nothing but indie films (or films of that calibre) misses the big picture.

The List is interesting and agree with most of it.

For me, one problem stands above (or below?) them all: POOR WRITING.
Most of my complaints about today's movies can be traced to this.
WTF moments are too plentiful, illogical explanations too frequent for me to completely enjoy most recent movies.

It is unacceptable in the 21st century, after 100 years of movie-making, Hollywood can't find enough good writers for their films.

No problem. We'll just leave it. I'm not opposed to a new thread, I just didn't want to start one. In fact, I'll just delete my post, edit yours, and make you look like a crazy man who's seeing things.

larry

I consistently see foreign films that are of good quality. There is a difference between how other countries make films and how Hollywood goes about it. Yesterday reading a web site about play writing and screen writing and it mentioned that European audiences are more into character studies whereas Hollywood execs take a dim view of their audiences intelligence so Hollywood movies tend to be event oriented.

As for making films for the stockholders working in the software industry I coined a term "stockholderware" because many publicly held software companies were rushing their products out the door to meet the deadlines they had promised the analysts. They lost customers doing that because "stockholderware" was usually buggy and required updates.

I been in the arts all my life and having an arts education makes one a snob and take a dim view of entertainment done for the "great unwashed." A friend, who was a university professor of communications, once told me he taught that one should aim above the audience and lift them up to that level. So many films and TV shows made here tend to aim below the intelligence of the audience. Hence we get a dumbed down America.

Thing is as pointed out earlier by Coppola it didn't use to be this way.

That doesn't necessarily mean the films over there are the only things Europeans watch. Hollywood films do quite well everywhere in the world.


Yeah, but the studios haven't lost customers due to "buggy" films (they've lost customers to the Internet, etc., but those on the net are still watching those "buggy" films by the boatload.)

If it were true that audiences don't want the "inferior" Hollywood films, then the indie films should be making a killing with "superior" product. They're not. People are going to see the giant robot/thundersmurf/boy wizard/sparkly vampire film.

Could indieish/foreignish films do well with the masses? Maybe, but the tentpole properties are a much more sure thing (as much as they can be in film business, anyway.) If your only goal is to make money for the stockholders, and the films that come closest to guaranteeing it are the dumbed down ones, I don't see Hollywood ever deviating from that. If suddenly all the comic book/teen vampire novel/remake films start losing money, that's when the change will happen. Not before.

I like indie films as much as anybody, but to think they'd replace Hollywood films as a pure moneymaker in my opinion is shortsighted.

Whats stopping an indiefilm to be about medium sized robots, nice smurfs, wizards or vampires that dont sparkle. Indiefilms biggest problem is often that they dont take on stories that people like to see, not that the movie itself is bad.

I love monstermovies. I just hate monstermovies that has a funny sidekick, a dumb female with big breasts, and a lead actor that looks good but acts horrible. So give me an indie monster movie that has a good script and a talanted director.

True.
Audiences don't care how big or small a studio is, only that their movies entertains.



Unfortunately, those are rare these days....

Nothing, really, except that the films I mentioned are what are called "tentpole" properties. They had built in audiences with source material that was already popular (Transformers, Harry Potter, Twilight), and for an indie filmmaker to acquire the rights takes a ton of money they mostly don't have (but a studio does.) Those built in audiences are already money in the bank, and are helpful in drawing in more. "Hey, ten million people went and saw the new robowizardvampire film! It must be good!"

Avatar wasn't a tentpole property, but did have 3D effects and CGI that were in excess of most indie filmmaker resources. James Cameron being behind it didn't hurt, either.



Very true, but again, quality (or what we here would define quality) isn't what gets audiences into the theater. It's the popularity of the subject matter. It used to be the stars, but I think that's started to decline, too.

But the Renaissance only happened after a thousand year Dark Age when the power brokers of the day - the Catholic priesthood and various despotic kings & emperors - maintained their stranglehold on power by depriving the masses of education. The peasants weren't allowed to even read the Bible lest they form independent opinions about what it said. So they were prevented from learning to read.

Just think about where mankind would be now if the momentum of scientific knowledge begun by the Greeks and Romans had been allowed to continue unabated, if there had been no thousand year hiatus on the pursuit of knowledge, and so many generations of human capital had not been wasted. Hell, we'd probably have the run of the galaxy by now, and our energy and environmental challenges here on earth long solved.

Yes, but that generelly just assure the big blockbuster budget for the movie. An indiefilm could create more with less. You often dont need 30 minutes of cgi monsters, 20 minutes of explosions and 15 minutes of city mayhem.

Even in a big budget movie like Jaws, its often the low cost scenes that are most effective.