How the Film Industry Can Still have some Respectability in the Future

Well, since it is pretty late, and I have other things I REALLY need to be working on, I thought I procrastinate a little and tell you all what I think the film industry needs to do to maintain the little amount of crediblity that it has.  2010 was a great year for film.  It had some of the best movies that I have seen in a VERY long time.  But 2011, well, sucked.  And since it is coming up for time with the awards and all that, I am going to give Hollywood a few suggestions that I know NONE of them will ever read.

• Stop making Superhero movies!

Now, I am not saying all of them have sucked.  Adding Robert Down Jr. and his likeable attitude was just the spice that the Iron Man films needed.  It also helped that in those movies, the special effects were a catalyst of the story, rather than just for looks (like everything Michael Bay has ever done.  Don’t worry, he’ll be up soon enough).  But the superhero story has been done well.  Films like the Chris Nolan and Tim Burton Batman films, The Crow, The Punisher (the one with Thomas Jane and John Travolta), the first and second X-Men movies.  Those were all good films.  I also am not totally losing hope for the new Spiderman film.  They look to have gotten the basics right, with a smarmy smartass hero, who isn’t Tobey Macguire, and a villain who looks the part.

But every time there is another film like Thor, The Fantastic Four, or Green Lantern, part of me dies a little inside, and feels bad for the filmmakers who had to direct that crap.  These films are made to sell tickets.  Hollywood needs higher standards than that.

• Michael Bay…STOP!!

Please stop.  Would you, kindly?  Would you please take the hands that couldn’t be stroking America’s dick more away from our film industry?  I don’t hate the first Transformers movie, but all the rest…they can die.  They can just die.  And now, we’ve got films like Battleship, which should never have been green-lighted by a studio, ever.  I haven’t gone to see it, and I know that it’s stupid.  This man is the worst thing to happen to the film industry in a long time.  The irony is that this guy’s films are so bad, but bring in hundreds of millions of dollars.  That says something about our audiences more than it does about him, but still.  Stop polluting our zeitgeist with uninventive trash.  If you would.  Oh, and that also leads us to…

• Don’t think that putting something in 3-D and giving it awesome effects will save it

The film Avatar was a game-changer.  It brought special effects into the 21st century in a way that nobody thought was possible.  However, upon closer examination, you’ll see that this film really isn’t as great as everybody seems to think it is.  The film beats you over the head with allegory.  The characters aren’t that great.  The script is mechanical.  It is very unlikely that this film is going to withstand the test of time, once other films have taken the idea and run with it in a much better way.  It began a new genre, but like Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, it just won’t withstand the test of time.

But now it seems that every movie that is really shit seems to think that if it has awesome effects, the audience won’t realize how crappy it is.  But this isn’t true.  These high-effects low-brains films are getting huge audiences, but that’s because the American audience is more or less stupid.  My point is to stop polluting our zeitgeist with more of this crap.  It’s boring, it’s tiring, and it leaves our generation looking stupider and stupider.  So far, I haven’t seen any film that really makes working with the new effects that has made my brain work.  It needs to go.

• Be willing to have characters die

Something you don’t see a lot of these days is a film where there is a really tragic death of a main character.  Some of the best films ever made have very tragic deaths.  Star Wars has the death of Luke’s father.  LA Confidential has the death of Kevin Spacey’s character.  The Sky Crawlers has the death of many of the main characters.  The death of a main character can be a catharsis for the audience because we bond with it.  I suppose the bigger problem in this industry is that we hardly ever care enough about the characters to really care what happens to them.  It is something that film desperately needs.  We need to care what happens to these characters and the world they are in.  Also, while we are talking about characters…

• Stop having Sci-Fi films where humanity is always the underdog victor

Say what you want about District 9, but one thing that I loved was that it made humanity the enemy.  We were doing horrible things to these aliens, and it really cast an ugly view of our species.  If it weren’t for the film’s message getting a little heavy-handed, this would have been one great film.  Science fiction needs to be a lot more critical about the flaws of the human race.  I would LOVE to see an alien film where the humans end up dying, a total annihilation.  I am kind of hoping that is what the sequel of District 9 will be.  Where the aliens come back and clean house with the human race.  And this leads me to my next point –

•  Where are the tragedies?

I can’t remember the last time that I saw a movie and it was very tragic.  It seems like every film these days has to have a silver lining.  For as bat-shit crazy as he became in the 90’s, Don Bluth stumbled onto a very good method of story-telling in his other films – tragedy up until the end.  It was a very powerful way of doing things.  Sure, he also strove for the happy ending, but there was catharsis in that because we actually cared about the characters.  We cared a lot.  His films are among the most tragic ever made.

But now, we don’t have any tragedy.  We always have happiness.  We always have cheer.  The great shakespearean style of tragedy is totally gone from film.  And it’s a bummer.  The tragic ending of Lawrence of Arabia is what made it a great film.  The bittersweetness of Casablanca and Batman Returns made us feel pretty heavy for the films.  Having a tragic ending isn’t a bad thing.  They make audiences feel, and they make audiences think.  But more than anything else, here is my piece of advice for filmmakers –

• Actually CARE about the films you are making

Did you know they are planning to make another Transformers movie?  They have absolutely nowhere that they can go with the plot.  I have a feeling that this next film will abandon plot entirely.  They will just have explosion and noise and the sound of Michael Bay cumming on all the dollar bills that people give him to entertain their weak minds.  It is a pattern I am seeing all over the place.  The superhero movies don’t care about the stories they are telling.  The Twilight films don’t care about the story they are telling.  M. Night Shyamalan doesn’t care about the stories that he is telling.  Not one of them gives a rat’s ass if they make a good film.  They just care that it does well in theatres.

It is a tragedy, and it needs to change.  Because I don’t want future generations looking back and shaking their heads in shame because all we cared about were big-tits and big explosions instead of big ideas and big thoughts.

So, before the Oscar’s and the Golden Globe awards, those are my thoughts.

Until next time, a quote,

“A film is – or should be – more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what’s behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.”  -Stanley Kubrick

Peace out,

Maverick