I love movies. I've always loved movies.
Ever looked behind you in the movie theater and seen all the mechanical gizmos and equipment that project a movie on to the screen? That's where I grew up.
From the other side of the projection booth window, when I was barely old enough to spell my own name, I discovered the magic of the movies. While my father loaded the massive reels in the projectors, I became mesmerized with the larger than life stories on the silver screen.
I was born in 1972. I'm told that the first movie I ever sat through, albeit screaming and crying, was a revival screening of FANTASIA. My parents should have known better than to take a baby to a movie. Parents world wide should know better than to take babies to movies and risk disturbing the enjoyment of other paying patrons. But, I digress.
My earliest memories of movies include moments from THE BAD NEWS BEARS, SLEEPING BEAUTY, REVENGE OF THE PINK PANTHER, and FREAKY FRIDAY. I was five years old when STAR WARS came out and I still remember that first viewing vividly. I remember that I didn't quite understand the movie, but it had me hypnotized. The following year, as George Lucas rolled out the merchandising, I begged my parents for everything STAR WARS. From trading cards, to iron-on decals to action figures, my parents, like everyone else's, did their part to help make Lucas a multi-bajillionaire.
What a lot of people don't know is that George Lucas got lucky. Really lucky. In his agreements with 20th Century Fox to make STAR WARS, he was able to retain three things, creative control of his characters, sequel rights, and merchandising rights. No one in the industry, especially Lucas, knew how much of a chord his space movie would strike with movie goers around the world. When STAR WARS mania hit, the public's thirst for merchandise was insatiable.
Hollywood, always keen to make a buck, learned some valuable lessons from the success of STAR WARS. First, there was an untapped fortune in merchandising rights and since then, the studios have retained as much control of these rights as possible. They spend an average of $40 million per movie in marketing to get people into the theater, then spend millions more to advertise the tie in merchandise, while partnering with everyone from cellphone service providers to fast food chains to sell said merchandise. Every year, they make fortune after fortune, just like Mr. Lucas did a long time ago.
The second thing that Hollywood discovered was a brand new demographic in viewership: the teenage demographic. Teenagers love to go to movies and they're the most likely to go to see the same movie again and again, by themselves, with friends, on dates, whatever. If a movie struck a chord with kids, they'd likely see it two or three times, increasing the box office sales of the movie. The studios have known since the drive in theater B-movies of the 1950s that kids love monster movies and special effects films, so the new agenda from Hollywood was obvious, make the big budget movies bigger and bigger, while marketing them to the kids. Of the top forty box office successes of all time, only 3 films, TITANIC, THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST, and FORREST GUMP had no (arguable) science fiction or fantasy overtones. All the rest fall into the fantsy or sci-fi genres.
As the movies got bigger and bigger, so did the special effects used in their construction. With the advent of computer imaging in motion pictures, the tools made available to filmmakers to create new worlds and scenarios has been unprecedented. In today's movies its not uncommon for actors to be filmed months and miles apart from each other and then blended seamlessly together to in the final film. Entire worlds and characters are generated by computer animators in movies whose budgets are now more than twice what CNN says it would cost to travel from the Earth to the moon.
As I'd mentioned earlier, I love movies. Love them with all of my heart. But, somewhere along the way, my love for these big budget spectacles has come to, just short of, a dead stop. Why? While the trend has been for effects movies to be "bigger and bigger" in order to garner more ticket sales, the movie going experience, for me, has become more and more lacking.
You know how a menu board in a fast food restaurant, in one part of town, is exactly the same as a menu board in the same restaurant in another part of town? And you know how the burger never looks like the picture on the menu board? And you know how while you eat it, it's yummy, but after the fact you know that you've just consumed more empty calories, sodium, and saturated fat than anyone ever should at one sitting? (Never mind the fries and soft drink!) Well, that's how I feel about most Hollywood blockbusters. I get enticed by the marketing (ie:the trailers that show all the good scenes of the movie), I see the cool looking poster (the picture on the menu board), sit down to enjoy my visual feast (yummy!), and ultimately I walk away disappointed, considering regurgitation, and wishing I had the last two hours of my life back.
Why? Because these mass produced movies are no better than fast food burgers. While I won't claim that they aren't crafted by skilled technicians and artists, and I'm sure that many chefs got their start in fast food, what I do know is that they are so perfectly formed to achieve the highest possible ratings from focus groups, that they no longer resemble art.
Art, by its very nature is imperfect. A perfect cube isn't artistic. But an imperfect cube, painted red and placed in a field of yellow daisies may present a message to someone or cause them to consider something about themselves or the world around them that they've never noticed before.
The purpose of this blog is to consider the "must see" movies that Hollywood has and continues to market at us, find their short comings, and suggest alternate movies of a similar genre in hopes of providing the viewer with a visual experience that helps him or her to discover something new about the world, their neighbors, or themselves.
A movie doesn't have to be good to be enjoyable. In fact, it can be bad. Very bad. But, if it's got no heart... If it's got no soul... If it looks like it was made by robots and it's just plain boring... It's a zombie movie!
Get ready to survive the Zombie Movie Apocalypse!
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