I’m sure you’ve experienced it. Whether watching television or sitting in a theater, you can’t avoid being bombarded with advertisements of the year’s supposed event pic, the one everyone will be talking about Monday morning. But the big actioner or action rom-com often turns out to be little more than insipid, trivialized, drivel. Simple duds that wind up at Best Buy in three weeks after they open and on HBO in 9 months. So let’s get to the root of this thing. And why the only thing I have to look forward to for the rest of the summer is Inception.
The term high concept describes a film’s plot where usually the plot is succinct and easily digestible. Think for a minute. What’s the draw for Transformers? Go see robots that transform into cars, or other awesome things. How about Snakes on a Plane? It’s right in the title. Hollywood loves films like this. Why? They are easy to market, easy to explain. The more time you spend explaining what a movies is, the less time you have for telling me why to go see it. That doesn’t quite make sense. Let me explain. Time is money; it’s a pretty universal concept. If I can get you to recognize things that you already like and smush ‘em together into a mediocre hour and a half film, I don’t need to explain to you what it is and why you’re watching it. Movies like these are a boon for Hollywood agents and production companies looking for surefire hits. It’s a Burger King philosophy. Have it your way. Fry up a clichéd story beats, localize it to a specific protagonist, and plopping it down with a side of fries. So how did we to the unenviable position of such movies like Dance Flick? Two men are responsible: Steven Spielberg and George Lucas.
You can’t talk about high concept summer blockbusters without two of the Granddaddies: Star Wars and Jaws. Jaws (1975) is recognized as the first perennial blockbuster. Universal Studios unleashed, what was in those days, a mammoth campaign and the first wide-release to fill the theatres to see the movie. Although early pictures like Gone With the Wind created a similar atmosphere, the summer event picture in its current iteration began with Jaws. Grossing 7 million dollars in its first weekend, it would eventually be the first movie to reach 100 million dollars (Boxofficemojo.com). And if Jaws wasn’t enough to convince Hollywood Star Wars cemented the legacy of the blockbuster, which grossed a staggering 122 million dollars in less than three months of its release (boxofficemojo.com).
It’s important to take a look at the consequences of the films’ glorious box office success and how today’s current climate of popcorn entertainment has hit a fever trough. The fact that the May-August months have regressed to a wasteland of oversimplified premises is a symptom of what can happen when the film industry gets a hold of a good idea. Yes, I think these films succeeded in creating a culture that I very much enjoy. These movies emphasized the importance and rightful place of escapist films that overwhelm you visually with action and excitement, giving the viewer enough to chew on thematically, but not taking itself too seriously. There is as much a need for bombastic mindless fun as high brow arty films. Jaws certainly captured a nice medium of the two.
But this method of moviemaking and distribution has evolved, or devolved, into the demographically specific content that we see today. Piranhas 3-D and Cats and Dogs: the Revenge of Kitty Galore owe their very specific audience targeting and simple premises to more than 30 years of movie marketing, explosive box office weekends, and market testing. Producers get lax thinking of the next big sensation. So they turn to tried and true ideas or research into features. It’s like reading the Cliff’s Notes before a big test or researching a paper on Wikipedia. So the quality of the big tentpole diminishes over the summers and we wind up with uninspired drawl that composes the summer of 2010. B movies earn the coveted spots of Memorial Day Weekend and July 4th. And don’t get me started on comic book adaptations.
Now there are some examples of solid concepts like 2009’s The Hangover. The Hangover was a movie itching to be made. The audience for a film like that is probably college-age to just out of college. You can’t get more of a dunk shot than making a movie about a hangover than that! Today, it’s a modern classic. I’ll even mention Talladega Nights. Of course, that came out in 2006 back when Will Ferrell was funny. But it was born out of an idea that was a slam dunk. In last week’s Entertainment Weekly in Summer Must Issue, he talks about how he leveraged a bidding war out of the idea of him driving a NASCAR. Cool,right?
So let’s not damn the whole idea of these movies because there is potential for some fun ideas. The issue is the sparseness of the movies. Simplicity isn’t the problem; it’s creativity and effort. The only course of action I suppose to vote with your dollars. Please people. Don’t cuddle up to movies during the night that you’ll just hate yourself for watching in the morning. Vote with your dollars people. And go see Inception; it’s going to be awesome, and we need more films like this during the summer.
No comments:
Post a Comment