WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO MOVIES?

Last night, Marvel unveiled its Phase Four lineup in front of a packed house of fans, all cheering for their new menu of corporate entertainment. At the same time, The Lion King(essentially a shot for shot remake of the 1994 classic) opened with a 185 million dollar profit. Are audiences that easy? Are people really that willing to regurgitate the same thing over and over again?

“Hollywood is out of ideas”. “There’s no originality anymore”. “Hollywood just remakes the same thing over and over again”. I hear this all the time. ALL THE TIME. I’m the movie guy. I manage a theater. I make movies. People talk to me about movies and they all say the same thing and have the same complaints, which boil down to Hollywood lacking originality and remaking the same thing over and over again. I always roll my eyes, not because I disagree with them, I very much agree with the sentiment, but because I know that there’s a 99% chance this person is a part of the problem. So naturally, the first thing I ask someone who complains about originality is this: “What movies did you see this year?”….Their answer is always something like this “Star Wars, Avengers, and Spiderman”…Guys…GUYS! If you’re going to complain about originality, maybe go see an original movie! Support original ideas. This is the equivalent of complaining about the president and not voting. You have a voice in this matter. Your vote for original ideas and new movies is the $10 you spend on a ticket for an original movie. I’m so sick of hearing people complain about originality in movies and then lining up to see a remake of Aladdin. You are the problem. Every time you buy a ticket to a sequel/remake, the business reads that as a demand for a sequel/remake, so that’s the product you’ll continue to be sold…until you quit buying it…or you starting buying more of a new product.

And make no mistake, for better or worse, these are products and Disney, who holds a stronghold on the industry, understands that better than anyone. Take the Marvel Cinematic Universe, for example. It’s essentially run like McDonalds. It’s a minor miracle that I can order a Big Mac in Marietta, Georgia and a Big Mac in Hong Kong and it tastes the same. That shouldn’t be possible and McDonalds deserves props for that.

However, with that kind of strict quality control comes limitations, a plateau of potential. You can’t go for the home run, out of fear you’ll fly out, hurting the reputation in Hong Kong, which in turn hurts the reputation in Marietta, so instead, you have to safely hit a single every time. That’s fine. The guy on first made it further than the guy who flew out. But the guy on first will never hit a home run.

The same can be said for these corporate movies. Marvel tells its directors what camera to use, how they are going to light the scenes and have their stunt coordinators direct the action sequences. It’s all the same and all very bland. All the director does is come in and work with actors. The director doesn’t light or even direct action sequences. Marvel does. As Corey Atad put so eloquently:

“Marvel films are not the creations of artists, they are the product of corporate managers hiring artists to colour inside the lines”.

There’s no better way to put it. Can you imagine some head of a studio telling Steven Spielberg what camera to use and how to light on Raiders of The Lost Ark?! And look, I’m not comparing the MCU to some artsy auteur like Scorsese or Lynch. I’m comparing it to one of the greatest audience pleasing blockbusters of all time, the kind of movie the MCU wants to make. The art and craft of filmmaking has been taken away from the artists in these big movies all while these smaller movies go extinct, essentially meaning the art and craft of filmmaking is essentially going extinct…which can be seen in most of these movies.

Film is the art of storytelling through images. Throughout the history of cinema, we have seen iconic shots that have lasted as long or longer than the films themselves. Think E.T. flying over the moon, Darth Vader holding his hand out pleading Luke to join the Dark Side and Indy being chased by a giant boulder. Again, I’m specifically focusing on popular blockbusters to make my point. Our current batch of blockbusters, specifically Disney’s MCU, don’t have iconic imagery. Here’s two shots that are already seeped into pop culture:

The Dark Knight came out the same year as Iron Man. We may remember Iron Man as a fun movie and that’s all well and good, but does one specific image jump out at you? Most likely the answer is no. Probably because Disney’s “we light it and our Stunt Guys Direct!” lead to mundane visual results. They aren’t even movies. They are expensive TV shows with boring coverage that have no beginning, middle or end. Tune in next year to find out what happens next!

And yet, audiences eat it up. However, there are hints that audiences know somethings up. You see, unlike literature, visual literacy is not taught in school unless you go out of your way to take a specific film class, so many general audiences know something is off, but don’t know exactly what. The common point people jump to is “too much CGI that feels lazy”. I hear and read this a lot and, it is on the right track, but not quite right. They are right that it feels lazy because blandly lighting everything the same and having your stuntmen direct action scenes is lazy. The lack of iconic shots due to our big blockbusters being shot like TV shows is lazy. One reason why Jurassic Park’s CGI still looks good 25 years later is because Steven Spielberg shot it and lit it like a feature film. It’s cinematic. In truth, yes there are some shoddy CGI and effects at times, but they only stick out when the filmmaking around it is bland.

So no, I don’t think audiences are dumb. They clearly know something is up and they claim they’d like more original material. So what the hell happened? How did it get this bad? How did we go from making fun of Gus Van Sant for remaking Psycho shot for shot to Disney making 185 million dollars for remaking another classic shot for shot? Why do audiences ultimately still accept an average product that is exactly what they claim they don’t want?

I believe the main culprit is corporate cheerleading. People worship Disney. Audiences will call Fox or Sony lazy, but not Disney. The most obvious example of this is the new film Spider-Man: Far From Home. It has been criticized for its “bad CGI” by Marvel fanboys even though it looks exactly the same as every other MCU film. Why? Because it’s technically a Sony movie. Don’t badmouth The Mouse.

Everyone has been drinking the kool-aid to the point that when Disney bought Fox, a move that could easily be considered monopolistic, a generation that claims to hate big corporations cheered gleefully because Wolverine could be in a movie with Spider-Man. Nevermind the consequences that come with a near monopoly running Hollywood. It’s OK. It’s our team. Alabama fans don’t care if Alabama’s dominance is bad for college football. Apparently most of the movie-going population are Disney fans, so they don’t care about the overall well-being of the industry.

But this corporate cheerleading has always had its place in nerd culture. Microsoft vs Apple. Marvel vs DC. Hollywood embraced nerd culture and now, it too has become a haven for corporate cheerleading. Fans are cheering that Avengers Endgame has beaten Avatar as the most successful movie ever…why? I have no idea. This corporate cheerleading is even trickling down in the industry. We now have an army of A24 corporate cheerleaders in the indie film circle. This is not healthy. As John Carpenter once said, it’s always been the film business. The companies backing the artists deserve to make their money back, but fans used to be fans of film, not business.