Monday, December 1, 2014

This is What is Wrong With Hollywood: The Final Book Split Conspiracy and Market Flooding

As I return from my holiday weekend high, I think of all the stupid shit happening lately in the entertainment industry with YA culture and the fantasy genre. This is, "What is wrong with Hollywood," a new rant addition for your reading pleasure:

You want to know what is wrong with Hollywood?

These movies:

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1/2
Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1/2
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1/2
The Hobbit 3: Battle of the Five Armies
Divergent - Soon to be Part 1/2 of Nobody Cares
Avengers: Infinity Wars Part 1 and Part 2 

Future humans everywhere will question our intelligence.
We all know Hollywood is one greedy squirrel humping the money tree, but what blows my mind is the complete BS of these money guzzling movies that they keep making. Do we really need two parts of the last book? Did we need 3 Hobbit movies? Don't get me wrong, I love the Hobbit. Its the only book in the Tolkien series that I didn't want to take a chainsaw to. But Hollywood is just wiping their ass on my childhood favorites. Next thing I know, they are going to make a four part mini series on Akimba and the Magic Cow. You don't know what that is? Look it up, don't be lazy. It was my favorite childhood book, but that's because I had a dope father that had great voice acting skills.

So while Hollywood is pumping out extra content of every female teenager's fantasies [to screw a much older man, to have hot elf/dwarf action, and for hot guys to go out with plain, uninteresting female heroines], I am here waiting for this shit to explode and Hollywood's dick to shrivel up and run for the hills until the next big thing.

Right now they are salivating over comic book movies which is great for me, but also shitty. As a loving fan of all things fantasy and pseudo-science, I think this is only going to put a lot of pressure on film makers and make them churn out craptastic movies at a astounding rate. By the end of 2018, the comic book genre will also be beaten bloody thanks to the mighty hands of Sir Fux it Up and the Hollywood hillbillies that keep gunning for our money.

So what can we do now? We sort of created this monster by nerdgasming every time they did a big reveal and cheered as our favorite Hollywood hunk and beauty picks up a role. Well, our opinions don't matter as long as we keep going to these things. What we can do is encourage a better generation of film directors that won't take shit from the likes of execs who have no idea how to make a proper Spiderman movie or who think all animated movies do well no matter what. 

Putting that shit back into the hands of the wise artist that understands the business side of the house is the best thing we can hope for. Because giving it to a pure artist is just as stupid as giving it to a sell out. No offense to artists. I love you all, but your ideas are only good in your world and don't always translate to the masses. This is why movies like The Fountain don't work out. Its great artistically and metaphorically, but a good chunk of your paying audience are probably not the sharpest crayons in the box and quite a few of them like lots of explosions.You know, they are the same people that post on youtube defending vomit inducing movies like Battlefield Earth or The Last Airbender.

And the heavens opened and her vagina exploded. Gigity.
This is why Michael Bay keeps selling [although the dum dum explosions crowd is certainly catching onto his wiley games, the last movie did the worst in America out of the 4 shitcons that came before it. And damn it they totally lied about the Dinobots! SCREW YOU MICHAEL BAY!! Screw you to hell!] and this is why romance movies keep selling.

Has anyone dissected these movies? They are horrible. Every cliche you could think of exists and they set up terrible expectations for the poor chumps that take their beautiful goddess out to the theaters. By the end of that cry fest she's looking at you thinking, "Oh my God...why aren't you like Brad DeppButlerbloom? I totally sold my perky boob years for you!" I know not all of them are like that, but they are structured the same way and have the same theme. The guy is an adorable idiot that screws it up, realizes what he did wrong, and is lucky to be forgiven by her. And nerdy girls with glasses totally turn bonetastic when they take the frames off [makes me wonder if the heavens sing when I take my glasses off?].

But I digress. Will I go see the new Hobbit movie? *Sigh* I guess so. It's the completionist in me that gets me in trouble. I'll also see Infinity Wars because it probably deserves a split considering that comic book stories are not short [maybe the only split worth watching, we will have to see]. Like all good reviewers, we got to just suck it up and do it. Even if we know we are going to be washing the taste out of our mouths from all the regret we just had to swallow. But at least the Hobbit will be decent, even if Peter Jackson is totally pissing me off.

As for the other movies? Not so much. Mockingjay Part 1 has done poorly compared to its predecessors and we have no idea if its because the 3rd book kind of blew any way or there was absolutely no reason to split the third book into two parts in the first place. Wake up Hollywood! You don't always need to keep making copious amounts of money by splitting movies up. If you just do it right you will make money regardless. Stop flooding the market and thinning out the meatiness of the story by turning it into a pile of slush and drawn out hum drum.

You know what happens when you flood the market? People just turn away. People stop coming and then you panic because you thought with your little head instead of your bigger one. The fact that they have a second Divergent movie coming out is kind of insulting. Divergent was crushed by the reviewing consensus, yet the gang bang train still wants to squeeze another one out because it still made about 15O mil at the box office. But keep in mind their budget was 85 mil. Did they really make that much money? One would beg to differ.

So as you decide which movies you want to spend on this season, go to the film festivals instead and find an artist that worked his ass off to get placed into that festival. You insult the actors in these poor films less that way because you are still appreciating the art of cinematography. And maybe once, it will be less about the money and more about the magic of story through motion picture.

I'll be awaiting your phone call, Hollywood, to ask me how to clean up your mess.

2 comments:

  1. Like you, I plan on seeing the new Hobbit movie, because I enjoyed the previous two. And, I don't know if it's just me, but I remember watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy when it first came out, and it kind of bored me (with the exception of Gollum, for he is awesome). Also, I now know what Akimba and the Magic Cow is. Lol.
    Yeah, Hollywood needs to stop with this split-movie fad that has existed since Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows. It's like, "Don't worry: if you make a good movie 3 or 4 hours long, people will still throw money at it."
    To answer your other question: yes, the heavens sing when you take your glasses off. ;)

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    1. lol Why thank you Mr. Oakley...or should I say, Hollywood Oak? I read the first book of the Lord of the Rings and after trudging through it I thought "Screw this story" and vowed never to read the other two books. Because the first book was SO long and SO boring and SO OMG, WTF Boromir I seriously hope you get shot by an arrow, drowned in the river and eaten by a spider only for your boney carcass to be shat on by some ravens, that I just didn't have the enthusiasm to read any other part of that series. Yeah...screw the Lord of the Rings. It wasn't for me. Classic High Fantasy sure...but we have way better authors now. The only cool thing about it was that man was a shot hot world builder. I admire that.

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