I recently went to go see The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which I and a few friends had been looking forward to despite the fact we knew it would be bad, and I discovered something remarkable about the movies. After sitting through some of the worst previews I've ever seen, I was treated to a movie that was so unremarkable that I felt like breaking shit. Needless to say, I used to be something of a movie fan, but I have found that there just isn't any point any more. Why? Because movies are dying.
I recently read a few reviews of the new Star Wars movie and the excellent reviews -- remember, these are the reviews that said the movie was excellent -- all said the same thing:
Everything about the movie is awesome. It is beyond awesome. It so awesome, it is the awesomest awesomeness that was ever awesomed. The special effects were awesome. The way they tied everything together was awesome. Everything was just awesome man... awesome.
Except for bits of the plot, the lightsaber duels, the acting and the dialogue. They all suck.
Now unless I've missed something, these final elements are an important part of a movie. Shouldn't a movie that gets an 'A' or a five star rating should actually be good overall. If there are giant problems with a movie, they should not allow a movie to receive a fantastic rating. After all, a movie where the dialogue is abysmal and the actors could easily be replaced by animitronic figures from Disneylnd is a bad movie. And what's-his-face, the guy who plays Anakin, is like watching a block of wood.
The problem is not isolated to the new Star Wars movies or Hitchhiker's -- which was pretty bad and also got pretty good reviews -- but it is, rather, endemic.
There are two big problems with movies and, unfortunately, they are so big that they are adding up to a major decline in movie making.
One of the biggest problems with movies is the big studio. They tend to interfere so much with movies that they have made them utterly unwatchable. They are so good at giving the public what they want that the public is avoiding them in droves.
The movie industry is in a serious slump and there does not appear to be a solution. After the last few years, when there were surprise hits to salvage the industry, there have not been any surprises lately, which surprised the movie industry. When the surprise is that there are no surprises, there is something seriously wrong.
The formulas say that certain things need to happen in movies, such as love stories. Love stories are nice and good, but in Hitchhiker's the love story was so obviously contrived, it made no sense. On top of that, the moviemakers screwed themselves by mucking with the book so badly that they cannot use the rest of the books to make any sequels, which might actually help the movie industry keep pulling in the dough.
Incidentally, the screenplay sucked compared to mine. Yes, I know that all I did was put all the dialogue into a script, but it still rules.
Anyway, I digress. The problem is that the studios are looking to spoon out the usual crap all the time and now they are paying the price. And this means that studios will wonder what is wrong and they will try to fix it. Unfortunately, they will more than likely try to solve the problem by taking more control of the movies they make, which is exactly the reason that is causing the problem.
A friend of mine told me that the studio demanded that Groundhog Day explain why Phil keeps reliving the same day over and over. When I heard that, I realized that that would have actually ruined the whole movie. Explaining things would actually put the onus on the reasons why he was reliving the same day over and over rather than on the actual story. The difference between a great movie and a bad one is pretty slim, which was made painfully obvious by the redone Star Wars movies (my God, did they suck).
Thus, one major problem for modern movies is the studios. However, there is another problem with modern movies and it is a growing one.
While there is nothing particularly wrong with independent films, they are actually working to kill movies. Technically, they should be saving them, but that is not the case.
It is nice to know that there are a lot of people out there who loves movies so much that they are willing to put their own money toward making them so that they can chase their dreams. Unfortunately, the facts are not quite as good as the ideal.
Instead of paying their dues and working their way up, independent filmmakers are jumping right in and trying to make everything happen all at once. Of course, I shouldn't really complain about this, since I am pretty impatient too, but it does create a lack of good people coming in at the bottom of the movie studios. There are still plenty, but the people with initiative and imagination are generally making their own movies rather than entering the bottom rungs of a stiflingly stodgy studio that will not let them do their own thing.
Unfortunately, this wealth of independent movies also means that there is not enough talent to go around. A few good people working with several bad people does not make a good movie. It is hard to find the good actors, the good screenplay, the good director, the good cinematographer, and somehow connect them with the equipment they need. This only leads to movies like Open Water which, except for the bit with the naked chick, was excrutiating. Well, except for the happy ending where the sharks finally win.
Furthermore, most of these independent movies will not make money, so investors will not come running. In fact, investors may not come at all after one bad experience with losing money.
Unfortunately, independent movies are barely independent these days, as the best of the so-called independent films have fairly large budgets and often feature at least somewhat famous actors. They are not so much independent as they are merely lower budget than the movies turned out by the major studios. I would not be surprised if, in the future, there is a company actually dedicates itself to making so-called independent films. No wait, Lions Gate Films has already done it.
The movies are dying, but that is not to say that there will, someday, no longer be movies. There will be movies for a long, long time. In fact, the movies will merely be unimportant. People still write novels and create paintings, but the fact is that they are no longer that important. They have lost their primacy of place and they are no longer vital in the same way that they once were. Movies are sliding into the same category and will probably be as unimportant as live theater by the end of this century.
Television is still fairly healthy, though it is about to marginalize itself. As network television moves over to HD, many people will not have much reason to turn on the television. A very large segment of the television market is made up of poor folks who cannot afford thousand-dollar high def televisions. Thus, television is soon to kill itself. However, it was never really all that respected anyway, so its demise will be almost unnoticeable. Only the advertisers will notice.
The fact is, people will need entertainment for a long time to come, even if it does not come from movies or television. And what will this entertainment be? It will be the new art form known as computer games.
Movies have been trying to make computers do their bidding for years now, with computer graphics taking over from drawing and models for animation. As well, some idiots are trying to create movies that are interactive, allowing people to choose their own adventure. Why would people want something like that when they can have a fully interactive experience with a computer game.
Computers are not going to stay within these boundaries forever. They are rapidly moving beyond the control of others and they are going to continue to do so. They are quickly supplanting television as the entertainment of choice in the living room and computer games are pushing technology forward faster than anything else. People need powerful processors, plenty of memory, large hard drives, and fast networking to play games these days and as computer games continue to move forward, people will need better and better computers in order to keep up with the new games.
As well, the ever-improving technology in consoles is helping people to play better games at home. People will want to play the latest and greatest games and consoles will have to move forward in order to give them a better gaming experience.
Additionally, When television moves over to HD, consoles will take over the entertainment in the living room. While regular televisions will not be able to see the new shows, they will be able to show console games at their best. This is simply because computer graphics are not yet beyond the level of definition of a standard TV. HD would not do anything for them, since a console game will not show graphics that are any better in HD than standard televisions. Thus, all those people who cannot afford a very expensive new television will turn to a relatively inexpensive console to keep them amused.
No, console and PC games aren't cheap, but a decent action game will provide at least 40 hours of gameplay, if not 80 or more, so the price per unit of entertainment is not that daunting. And if you compare the entertainment dollar of a $50 game with 80 hours of gameplay to $8 or more for a one-and-a-half to two hour movie, and you will see that the numbers are way better for a decent computer game.
Additionally, the limits of the television and the computer monitor will allow computer games to become much more powerful and allow them to have much more depth. Thus, the stories and capabilities of these games will be much better. Eventually, games will even react with themselves, building games that will change every time they are played, or even play themselves while the user waits. Also, massive multiplayer games will be given much more depth and breadth, giving people the opportunity to play games that will be much more fascinating. For instance, World War II Online gives players the opportunity to relive World War II and, eventually, I would not be surprised to see almost every war put into a game in some manner. Sure, World War II's primacy will remain for quite a while, but who wouldn't want to relive the Thirty Years War? You know, it was the one where... um... something happened. It was pretty cool, I'm sure. Unfortunately, it didn't have men jockeying for position in the skies in order to shoot each other down with nothing but piloting skill and marksmanship as tanks and men made mad dashes across one continent while ships slugged it out in an ocean on the opposite side of the world. That's just too much good material.
Of course, as computer games become an acknowledged art form rather than simply entertainment (you know, like the way that movies were considered mere entertainment when they turned out Casablanca and Citizen Kane), there will inevitably be a decline and they will be replaced. Do you want to know what will replace them? Yeah well, so would I, but I don't have a crystal ball. After all, there were no computers, much less computer games in the early 1940's, so who would have guessed that they would replace the reigning entertainment of the day?