| A post writers’ strike drought? | |||
March 15th, 2008 by
jamesd |
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Is it even possible? A movie drought? In the games industry it’s quite common. Development cycles of 2 years are normal. So during the holidays there’s a flush of good games and in the new year there can be a drought for a couple of months.
One thing is for certain. A total movie drought is impossible. Even if in some mysterious way the medium would become commercially unviable, people will still be making movies. Also, a movie doesn’t take 2 years to make. There are thousands of stories about scripts which took years, sometimes tens of years, to be made into film. But if the money is there, it can be done in months. It may not be an example of particular greatness, but look at Saw. I think they’ll do like 10 of those in just five years.
I just saw ‘The Spiderwick Chronicles’ and it seemed a bit rushed. The last couple of years, 100-120 minute movies became a standard. And if you take the prices, you should at least get 2 hours of entertainment in my opinion. Are the studios pressuring moviemakers to get the movies out? Yes, even more so than they did before? Are they rushing product out there to just have product out there? Lets have a look at what’s coming. Last year’s summer blockbusters – it was quite a year:
This year’s summer blockbusters:
See the difference? I might have forgotten a couple. But I probably forgot a couple in 2007 too. Last year we saw director Roman Polanski pulling out of a project that had to be done before the strike, saying “I put a lot of work and energy into the development of Pompeii, so it is not without regret that I have to decline my further involvement.” And there may be hundreds of stories like it. Movies got canned, maybe forever, because of the writers’ strike.
But if we look at where the money is, I think the producers knew what they were doing. They are businesses and they probably rode the line of marginal revenue = marginal costs – sorry, that’s the economics book talking. Also, do we really think all those writes weren’t writing anything all the time, at all? Of course not. So in summary, are we having a movie drought? No. Are we seeing less movies. Probably, yes. But gladly the writers are back in. And the producers are lining up with the cases of money they’ve been sitting on for the last couple of months. So lots of good is probably to come. Unless of course, we are heading for… an actors’ strike. | |
Man you forgot two major releases for this year! Wall-E and Batman: The Dark Knight! Anyways, I agree with all of your sentiments. We pay more each year for less overall quality. If a movie comes in at 90 minutes (or less even), then I am almost 100% against seeing it. How in the hell can you develop characters that quickly?
Wow, how did I miss those? We even did an impression on both of them. I somehow thought Wall-e was released in September and I just forgot about Batman. Pretty stupid.
I agree though Scott, sometimes the character comes in like: hey, here I am, killing the bad guys. And I’m off again! And the movie is over..
How are we supposed to care about people in movies like that? Take a look at the movies with long run times (2.5 to 3+ hours) and how much better they tend to be. Lord of the Rings, The Departed, Godfather, Shawshank Redemption, etc.
Same thing applies for why the first movie in a trilogy is no longer the best. It’s all character setup when the good stuff doesn’t happen until 2 or 3.
I agree, although the character development in Lord of the Rings 1 was done pretty brilliant in my opinion.
I’m fine with movies being about two hours. 3 hours is a long sit. It has to be really great to pull of that amount of time. But the movies you mention certainly did..