"Movies that suck are hurting the industry!" Topic

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Well, fancy that!

For a number of years now we have been lucky if we get one or two good movies in a year. I have been to a movie theater less than a dozen times since 1992. On the other hand, some of the recent TV series -- fore example, House of Cards, Game of Thrones, Walking Dead, Downton Abbey, and the Norwegian series Occupied -- have been better than anything that has appeared in the movie theaters in recent years.

Kevin

The MHZ TV Network is worth its weight in GOLD!

I find myself watching "old" movies more and more.

In these last 5-10 years it seem like most of what has been produced has had such an overpowering social propaganda message that simply drowns out whatever redeeming qualities the film may have had with the original story concept, acting or visuals.

A few had a lot of potential too, and I was really excited when I first saw the previews, but they only left me feeling as if I was standing a few inches from a gorgeous girl who had poured an entire bottle of cheap perfume all over herself. Nausea is almost inevitable after the first couple of minutes.

Dan
PS. To be fair, there have been a couple of decent ones. One was "Lion". It contained tolerable levels of undertones which still allowed the rest of the film to shine through. It really gripped me.

I can't read past a paragraph with out subscribing.

It seems to me that we just shipped overbudgeted, bombastic crap films overseas, where SOMEBODY was willing to pay to see it.

Case in point: the fourth (needless) installment in the Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise, On Stranger Tides , (the title and sort-of story ripped from a much, much better book) cost around $400 USD million- far and away the most expensive to date.

I watched it for the fist time last month. It's kind of like the Star Wars Holiday Special version of the previous three. It really felt like an old, made-for-TV version of a big-screen movie. Aggressively "meh". It looked like they paid Depp $300 USD mil, and blew most of the rest on hookers and blow.

It did very well domestically (but not up to it's price tag), but after international showing, broke a billion. So apparently, "movies that suck" is a pretty subjective thing. China is still grooving with Michael Bay's tiresome camera-spinny explodey-vision. Maybe we should cut back on their allowance, so they quit wasting good money on crap.

Beast: "It looked like they paid Depp $300 USD mil, and blew most of the rest on hookers and blow."

Lol. Wow. That sure is a lot of hookers and drugs!

Dan
PS. I think he blew a lot of it when he forgot to have a prenup drawn up and signed with his last short-lived marriage (to Amber Heard). The moment my wife told me about their wedding I told her it was going to end exactly this way. Her plan was just so obvious.

"Dead Men Tell No Tales" looked they didn't even pay Depp, just hired a celebrity impersonator.

Case in point: the fourth (needless) installment in the Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise, On Stranger Tides , (the title and sort-of story ripped from a much, much better book) cost around $400 USD USD million- far and away the most expensive to date.

Tim Powers, the author, didn't see it that way. The studio paid him a nice sum of money, which check he was happy to cash. He was thrilled that they wanted to use his book. They kept Blackbeard and the title. He came to the premier with his wife, got pointed at as the "author" and had a great time.
I prefer authors who understand reality and don't bitch about how "My character would always use 'whom' correctly!"

But yes. The later PotC movies sucked, and I blame Depp who I've never liked.

This may explain why everyone is calling "Dunkirk" the greatest movie in cinematic history. Anything that is not a superhero movie and is just a good movie in most years, becomes the greatest movie since Casablanca.

Dunkirk was my first trip to the theater in years. I enjoy watching movies on my big flat screen with surround sound at home.

There is no talking, no cell phones, no wrappers being unwrap, no chomping candy and popcorn, nothing blocking my view. Watch when I want.

No sticky floors, snack and drink what I want. Don't have to drive half way across town. Don't have to sit through previews and commercials, which seem to go on forever. I can pause it when I need to.

The main reason I went to see Dunkirk in the theater is that I wanted to see it in IMAX 2D. That is the only thing the theater offers that I can't get at home.

Dear Cacique

Agree on all points. Dunkirk was the first film I have gone to in 15 years. When the films they have made come on tv, if I do watch them it's usually 3 minutes in I switch if off and put on Bones, Rizzoli and Isles, and Frasier. I find Peri Gilpin quite tasty.

Of course there is Turner, but again, I tend to watch the older movies. Ones where they had a plot and writing.

I am not alone. My 27 year old ersatz granddaughter at age 18 said "Modern movies SUCK!" and went on to wax poetic on "
the Palm Beach Story", and all the Ernst Lubitch screwall comedies.

And of course many of the 'modern' movies are just
remakes of GOOD OLD films…

This puts me in mind of the year that "Gladiator," won the best picture Academy Award just because it was the only movie that didn't totally suck. It was actually basically an inferior remake of the sixties flick "Fall of the Roman Empire," which was hardly outstanding itself, except in budget for sets. To be fair, there were plenty of awful movies in days of yore. It's just that they used to make so many more movies every year that there were usually many good ones and several great ones every year.

"Marriage" Dan? Well, maybe in a strict legal sense. Personally I refuse to consider anything taking place west of the Rocky Mountains as an actual marriage, or to discuss the sex lives of "celebrities" under any circumstances. Life is much, much too short.

Movies. William Goldman wrote some years back that in mogul-era Hollywood, and for a little while thereafter, studios tried to produce a few movies each year they could be proud of. Might not make money. Probably wouldn't lose much. But something you could be proud to have had a part in. They don't even try today. The ONLY measure of film quality is box office.
Other thing he pointed out was that as revenues came increasingly from overseas--and non-English-speaking overseas, at that--complexity of plot, theme and dialogue didn't translate well. Body humor, explosions and one-liners did.

I expect this to hit bottom and eventually get better--but not soon.

> For a number of years now we have been lucky if we get one or two good movies in a year.

It's been that way since the dawn of movies.

As for POTC – the original had a great idea for a single movie and they executed it brilliantly. The problem is they then tried to spread that butter over too much bread.

… his last short-lived marriage (to Amber Heard).

OK, that one slipped right by me- must have been short even by Hollyweird standards.

I'm just saying, when you're going to blow a half-billion on a freakin' movie, how much of that are you spending on decent writing? Probably substantially less than the cost to stock Depp's trailer with whatever weird, exotic, foods and beverages he required.

But then, it probably wasn't cheap. The worst ones get passed around like a dirty Santa gift, and the end result is what you'd expect.

Tim Powers, the author, didn't see it that way. The studio paid him a nice sum of money, which check he was happy to cash.

Well, the book alone would have made an awesome movie, but my real beef is that now the book alone will 95% likely NEVER be it's own movie. I have no clue why they even bothered to coopt it. It's not like Powers owns the rights to Blackbeard.

But yeah, though he's written some great stuff, I don't figure his bed looks like a scale model of Smaug's, so good for him. He can probably now retire to the private island Depp should have retired to five years ago.

But yes. The later PotC movies sucked, and I blame Depp who I've never liked.

I liked the first two a lot, the third not as much. Depp's character was fine by me, but three films was enough for it. It's stale, by any reckoning. Maybe now he can have sixty different quirky roles in the upcoming It's a Small World franchise.

Apparently, Amber Heard only received $7 USD million for her 15 months of "service". :)

Dan

Everything seems to be a remake or a "reboot" (e.g. Spiderman twice, really???) sometimes even both, and there are so many DC/Marvel/Transformer films that you can't keep track of them.
If I owned movie theaters, I'd seriously look into licensing running TV episodes on the big screen (that would bring in the binge watchers… ;-)

This puts me in mind of the year that "Gladiator," won the best picture Academy Award just because it was the only movie that didn't totally suck.

Like the Oscars actually mean anything. This is the group that thought "Greatest Show on Earth" was a better movie than either "High Noon" or "The Quiet Man".

I found Dunkirk to be a decent movie. I was not terribly impressed by its slice of the big picture approach.

I typically find one or two movies each year that truly excite or impress me….movies such as 13 Hours, Open Range, The Matrix….etc.

I still find myself appreciating the classics that young folks ignore these days. Movies such as Casablanca, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Twelve O'clock High, Ben Hur (Heston), Kelly's Heroes, Lawrence of Arabia….the list goes on.

I thought the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy was worth the price of admission. Less so for the subsequent "King Kong" remake or "The Hobbit" trilogy.

When I got out of my teens (prime movie going age) I began to notice that Hollywood was a crap factory. They shovel out loads of bad/mediocure movies. About a half dozen a year will be good. Masterpieces are made about once a decade.

I've gotten to a point where I'll rent the DVD and decide if I'll buy a copy.

Right now we're seeing how much Art can be designed by a committee in a boardroom. Businesses are cowardly by nature and the "reimaging" and comic book/fx explosion is proof of this. Disney is one of the worse. They can take a good property and destroy it by willfully altering it to "Just the Name is the Same. (John Carter, The Lone Ranger, ect.)

I agree with the above poster who said: "Movies are not being make for Americans, but for overseas markets." Once again the production of bland tripe.

So apparently, "movies that suck" is a pretty subjective thing.

So, who here runs a business where they measure their success based on gross profits?

Who here runs a business where production costs are the only costs?

Who here runs a business where distributors don't have overhead or want profits from sales?

The rhetorical question barrage is just to highlight that it isn't hard to understand how well a movie does financially (though there are many more factors). The reality is the movie industry doesn't want to tell us the reality of the business side. They work on hype and due to inflation, in general, gross receipts will keep going up and up and up, so that metric would tend to indicate that movies are getting better and better and better. This allows us to tout "record breaking sales" every year.

I have always preferred the "asses in the seats" measure to the gross receipts. The latter seems to think records are being set merely because the ticket prices keep going up.

For people to keep paying to see such utter crap means that there are "asses in the seats" in more ways than one.

Top movies by ticket sales, adjusted for inflation.
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In other words, putting asses in the seats.
Look at number 1. Gone with the Wind. Almost 80 years old.
And we have to go to number 11 to find anything from the last 5 years.
The next one us #24.

First Marvel superhero movie? #29

> I have always preferred the "asses in the seats"

That only works till TV comes along and even less so when VCRs came along. TV siphoned off a lot of those who wanted to see moving pictures and VCR (and later streaming and DVD/BluRay) took away those who wanted to pay more for seeing a movie in a theater.

I just see it as the rest of the movie watcher are catching up with me seeing that movies have become more propaganda and less entertainment for the last few years. Have the studios seen this as the error of their ways, no. They're doubling down on their stance and their views and only going to make this worse until they bankrupt themselves.

With the movie industry almost always in comes down to $$$$. Regardless if the subject is historically accurate, etc., or more likely it fits the narrative of the producer/director/etc., …

Hence in many cases like e.g. the History Channel or even the SyFy channel. They go some/many times for the lowest common denominator. As noted …It's about selling tickets/filling seats, tuning in, etc.

Until they start putting a better product on the big screen, Don't expect things to get any better. Some people will go to the theater to see anything though, so I don't know what the answer is.

Its a matter of scale inflation. The studios need 'blockbusters' and that means a big investment, so they need huge returns. In that scenario, the producers who are the big investors become highly risk averse. So the least risky approach is to stick with a franchise, or license a blockbuster novel. Real creativity needs a white night investor, or a very small scale production.

I've heard in the media that @ 60% of movies made by the big film makers lose $$$$. So they need some Big blockbusters to make up for their losses. If that is the case.

Only two movies I have gone to theaters in the last 7 or 8 years was Hacksaw Ridge and Dunkirk. I really liked both, do wish Dunkirk went for the bigger picture but did do a very good job to put you there.