Bear Ribs
Well-known member
I think there's little doubt Hollywood is currently on the decline. Subscription-based services are on the decline, with Netflix having to make unpopular "antisharing" moves along with removing their lowest tiers and adding advertising. But this is only a band-aid as advertising is also on the decline as a successful model. The current crop of movies are uninspiring, bland, often go counter to their roots, and we've had a bewildering period of sequels, prequels, remakes, retoolings, reboots, and generally little to no originality. Writers are on strike, actors are on strike, and the general attitude of the public seems to be "meh."
I intend to produce a theory on why. In contrast to my usual research, I'm heavily theorizing about the mind-states of Hollywood, thus this is not anything provable but rather speculation.
I feel that three forces have come together to produce the current situation:
1. Rise of Nerd Culture
2. Nepotism
3. Risk aversion
Taking them in reverse order, Hollywood has become deeply risk-averse. Movies based on a reliable franchise are "in" while high-risk high-reward original works are "out." Movie executives avoid risk, by going for franchises, but this has its own opportunity cost. Rights for franchises are largely already sewn up into existing corporate giants. Rare purchases like Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilms changing positions, but the board is largely already set in stone. This means the opportunity to work with a given genre may be highly dependent on which company you're working for. Further, because an established franchise requires payments such as residuals to the original author ('s estate), residuals use of likeness of actors who are now established and wealthy, and payments to the artists who created the original look, these movies have to have either higher budgets than new works, or cut corners.
In practice, executives are doing both. Movie budgets for franchise films have skyrocketed. The Sound of Freedom was made on a budget of only fourteen million dollars, less than a tenth of what Barbie spent on advertising alone, a twentieth of Barbie's entire budget. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny had a budget of $295 million. The costs of franchise films have become outrageous compared with indie non-franchise films. At the same time, executives wanting to avoid risk take actions like catering to the Chinese market in often strange ways, but this "sure-fire" strategy is beginning to backfire as well.
At the same time, corner-cutting is getting ridiculous. CGI often looks worse than it did in the 90s. Jurassic Park is often regarded as the Zenith for dinosaurs, with Jurassic World being a significant downgrade. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantamania has been widely panned for it's awful CGI, and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny looks cheap and creepy. Why has it gotten significantly worse even as technology has advanced? Well, a major reason is Executives cutting corners. Cheaping out on CGI, and also using it to avoid having to shoot on-scene or take the movie to film on-scene instead of in a green room leads to too much CGI for too little spent on it.
www.theguardian.com
www.flickeringmyth.com
They also skimp on writers. Rings of Power is pretty notorious, but did you know the two lead writers have zero other writing credits to their name? Nothing, nada, this was their first rodeo. This is... really common these days in Hollywood. Established and known writers cost money so Executives skimp on them and hire newbs who are cheap and easy to use. This has its own quality control issues though.
I theorize that this is the "Game Graphics" effect. For years, games have sold themselves primarily on how good the graphics are. Not how fun it is, not great gameplay, but graphics. Why? Because you can show a picture of the graphics in an ad and it will look great, while you can't easily show how your innovative dysentery mechanic makes playing a survivor in a zombie apocalypse more fun until they're already playing. Similarly, Star Power belongs to lead actors and producers, the writer's credits are going to be well below and rarely draw much attention so skimping on them doesn't affect what the Executives see as the "main draw."
This ties nicely into the second issue, Nepotism. Since the writers don't matter in the first place, it's easier to hire "word of mouth" connected people, the children of elites, rather than put in the work to find actual skilled, veteran writers who have the chops to build a proper story and work with the CGI team, with the actor's strong points, and cover weaknesses. It also means they're working with people who haven't had their ego stomped into the dirt by real life yet. It also means fewer rewrites, fewer corrections, and less work on making the film well-paced and tight, both because there's no money for it and because the egos involved don't allow for their vision to be corrupted by things like "pacing," "story arc," and "logical sequence of events."
This ties into the third point, the rise of Nerd Culture. The current hot things in Hollywood are sci-fi epics, superheroes, fantasy worlds, pulp adventures. Stuff for nerds. The current crop of writers are the children of elites, the jocks and privileged class of the world. They are being forced to write films aimed at the kids they gave swirlies and wedgies to in high school. They, the elite, the artistes, are being forced to now service those same nerds. I perceive in a lot of Hollywood films, they actually hate what they're making. Rian Johnson is on record as saying how much he hated having to make a "franchise film" before starting The Last Jedi, and his despise for the movie he was both writing and producing showed. Across the board, we see remakes that clearly despise the original work and seek to stomp on it's legacy, spit on what it stood for, and burn it to the ground.
This combined yields, I think, the current issues. The makers of films feel compelled to take the easy route and go for more expensive franchise films. However, they have to cut too many corners to do it. They rely on expensive franchises, expensive actors, and expensive producers but that means a huge budget so they cheap out on everything that doesn't have Star Power, specifically special effects and especially writers. In turn the writers despise the films they're forced to remake, so they rebel by going against the film's original message, and inserting their own spin because they are the artistes, not mere imitators and they deserve better than having to just redo some older work and produce some lowbrow sci-fi garbage for nerds. They have vision, they are the important people here. So they race-bend the main character, change the entire theme to be Girl Power instead of Romance, remove things they regard as "problematic" to insert "The Message" instead, and because they are too self-entitled and inexperienced, they aren't able to make the story work anymore. They've cut out the foundation without having any way to build a foundation of their own.
I intend to produce a theory on why. In contrast to my usual research, I'm heavily theorizing about the mind-states of Hollywood, thus this is not anything provable but rather speculation.
I feel that three forces have come together to produce the current situation:
1. Rise of Nerd Culture
2. Nepotism
3. Risk aversion
Taking them in reverse order, Hollywood has become deeply risk-averse. Movies based on a reliable franchise are "in" while high-risk high-reward original works are "out." Movie executives avoid risk, by going for franchises, but this has its own opportunity cost. Rights for franchises are largely already sewn up into existing corporate giants. Rare purchases like Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilms changing positions, but the board is largely already set in stone. This means the opportunity to work with a given genre may be highly dependent on which company you're working for. Further, because an established franchise requires payments such as residuals to the original author ('s estate), residuals use of likeness of actors who are now established and wealthy, and payments to the artists who created the original look, these movies have to have either higher budgets than new works, or cut corners.
In practice, executives are doing both. Movie budgets for franchise films have skyrocketed. The Sound of Freedom was made on a budget of only fourteen million dollars, less than a tenth of what Barbie spent on advertising alone, a twentieth of Barbie's entire budget. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny had a budget of $295 million. The costs of franchise films have become outrageous compared with indie non-franchise films. At the same time, executives wanting to avoid risk take actions like catering to the Chinese market in often strange ways, but this "sure-fire" strategy is beginning to backfire as well.
At the same time, corner-cutting is getting ridiculous. CGI often looks worse than it did in the 90s. Jurassic Park is often regarded as the Zenith for dinosaurs, with Jurassic World being a significant downgrade. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantamania has been widely panned for it's awful CGI, and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny looks cheap and creepy. Why has it gotten significantly worse even as technology has advanced? Well, a major reason is Executives cutting corners. Cheaping out on CGI, and also using it to avoid having to shoot on-scene or take the movie to film on-scene instead of in a green room leads to too much CGI for too little spent on it.
The Guide #94: Why is CGI somehow looking worse? Blame overworked animators and demanding execs
In this week’s newsletter: From Indiana Jones’s shonky deageing to The Flash’s ropey visuals, the VFX industry is in worse shape than ever – here are five reasons why
www.theguardian.com
Why is CGI Getting Worse?
We look at the strange case of CGI, which for an array of reasons, appears to be getting worse. Why is shoddy CGI deemed acceptable in massive-budget movies? It’s been 30 years since Jurassic Park really kickstarted a major fascination with computer-generated imagery. We’d seen some...
www.flickeringmyth.com
They also skimp on writers. Rings of Power is pretty notorious, but did you know the two lead writers have zero other writing credits to their name? Nothing, nada, this was their first rodeo. This is... really common these days in Hollywood. Established and known writers cost money so Executives skimp on them and hire newbs who are cheap and easy to use. This has its own quality control issues though.
I theorize that this is the "Game Graphics" effect. For years, games have sold themselves primarily on how good the graphics are. Not how fun it is, not great gameplay, but graphics. Why? Because you can show a picture of the graphics in an ad and it will look great, while you can't easily show how your innovative dysentery mechanic makes playing a survivor in a zombie apocalypse more fun until they're already playing. Similarly, Star Power belongs to lead actors and producers, the writer's credits are going to be well below and rarely draw much attention so skimping on them doesn't affect what the Executives see as the "main draw."
This ties nicely into the second issue, Nepotism. Since the writers don't matter in the first place, it's easier to hire "word of mouth" connected people, the children of elites, rather than put in the work to find actual skilled, veteran writers who have the chops to build a proper story and work with the CGI team, with the actor's strong points, and cover weaknesses. It also means they're working with people who haven't had their ego stomped into the dirt by real life yet. It also means fewer rewrites, fewer corrections, and less work on making the film well-paced and tight, both because there's no money for it and because the egos involved don't allow for their vision to be corrupted by things like "pacing," "story arc," and "logical sequence of events."
This ties into the third point, the rise of Nerd Culture. The current hot things in Hollywood are sci-fi epics, superheroes, fantasy worlds, pulp adventures. Stuff for nerds. The current crop of writers are the children of elites, the jocks and privileged class of the world. They are being forced to write films aimed at the kids they gave swirlies and wedgies to in high school. They, the elite, the artistes, are being forced to now service those same nerds. I perceive in a lot of Hollywood films, they actually hate what they're making. Rian Johnson is on record as saying how much he hated having to make a "franchise film" before starting The Last Jedi, and his despise for the movie he was both writing and producing showed. Across the board, we see remakes that clearly despise the original work and seek to stomp on it's legacy, spit on what it stood for, and burn it to the ground.
This combined yields, I think, the current issues. The makers of films feel compelled to take the easy route and go for more expensive franchise films. However, they have to cut too many corners to do it. They rely on expensive franchises, expensive actors, and expensive producers but that means a huge budget so they cheap out on everything that doesn't have Star Power, specifically special effects and especially writers. In turn the writers despise the films they're forced to remake, so they rebel by going against the film's original message, and inserting their own spin because they are the artistes, not mere imitators and they deserve better than having to just redo some older work and produce some lowbrow sci-fi garbage for nerds. They have vision, they are the important people here. So they race-bend the main character, change the entire theme to be Girl Power instead of Romance, remove things they regard as "problematic" to insert "The Message" instead, and because they are too self-entitled and inexperienced, they aren't able to make the story work anymore. They've cut out the foundation without having any way to build a foundation of their own.
