Your biggest cinema-related frustrations

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Gangster Rap is Shakespeare for the Future
In honor of Orson Welles' 100 birthday on Wednesday, Jonathan Rosenbaum did an interview with Kevin B Lee of Fandor. Many insights to be had, and many more to be had in Rosenbaum's book on Welles.
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Far too many people get to the point in their careers where there's no one around them telling them they are making bad decisions.

This leads to too many people like George Lucas and James Cameron who are doing either bad things or very self-centered work that leads to mediocre story telling or just bad films.

It also leads to too many people indulging in bad behavior. Child actors have a terrible time growing up because their parents would rather keep them happy and ignore bad behavior in favor of keeping their cash cow going (Drew Barrymore, Lindsey Lohan, Justin Bieber, Amanda Bynes). It also leads to lots of premature deaths like Heath Ledger, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and Michael Jackson. I know Hoffman and others have had people trying to help them, but the constant access to money and ability to withdraw from others has been a constant downfall in the lives of celebrities for generations. I'm not really able to propose a solution, but celeb lifestyles just suck in general. Even the ones who don't go crazy still go crazy. Look at Gwyneth Paltrow.
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We've gone on holiday by mistake
I'm tired of reboots.


Not just the fact that they are rebooting, the short time between reboots. Should be a generation between reboots like Star Trek 2009 taking over from The Undiscovered Country 1991, and not just a reboot but they account for it in the story and change things. The way it should be done.


Some bad examples,


Spiderman 2002-2007, a very successful trilogy gets rebooted all over again 5 years later in 2012, and now there may even be a whole new Spiderman appearing with The Avengers or something I'm sure I heard. Facepalm. Tobey Maguire could easily still be playing Spiderman.


Fantastic Four 2005-2007 not a very good pair of films, average critical acclaim and profits, getting rebooted now in 2015.


New version of Batman coming for B vs S coming 3-4 years after the greatest Superhero series of all time.


Man of Steel coming 6 years after the much better Superman Returns, the mistake here probably being not rebboting Superman back in 2007 with the clear generation gap between the Reeve movies. Also trying to make a Superman movie in the same style as the Dark Knight trilogy. Epic Fail.


Not just the reboots, they are scraping the barrel for comic book stories now, "Antman" coming soon, "Green Lantern" recently......who??


How low will Hollywood stoop with these Reboots? Switching actors? Silly comic books being brought to big screen?


We shall see.
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We've gone on holiday by mistake
Far too many people get to the point in their careers where there's no one around them telling them they are making bad decisions.

This leads to too many people like George Lucas and James Cameron who are doing either bad things or very self-centered work that leads to mediocre story telling or just bad films.

It also leads to too many people indulging in bad behavior. Child actors have a terrible time growing up because their parents would rather keep them happy and ignore bad behavior in favor of keeping their cash cow going (Drew Barrymore, Lindsey Lohan, Justin Bieber, Amanda Bynes). It also leads to lots of premature deaths like Heath Ledger, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and Michael Jackson. I know Hoffman and others have had people trying to help them, but the constant access to money and ability to withdraw from others has been a constant downfall in the lives of celebrities for generations. I'm not really able to propose a solution, but celeb lifestyles just suck in general. Even the ones who don't go crazy still go crazy. Look at Gwyneth Paltrow.
Yes was going to say something like this. George Lucas to the company yes men;


George:"I'm going to write these myself"


Company Yes Men: " That's a wonderful idea George".


George: "I have this fantastic idea for a character, called Jar Jar Binks"


CYM : "He sound's great and will really enrich the Star Wars Universe, fans will love him"


George: "And we'll film 95% of it with Green Screen CGI so I don't have to drag my fat ass to actual locations"


CYM: "It'll look fantastic, what a great idea George"


George: "While we're at it we'll go back and tinker with the original trilogy and OMG....what if we put Hayden Christensen in as Darth Vader's ghost"


CYM: (Rapturous applause) BRILLIANT! FANTASTIC!



The Academy's problem with Scorsese.
He is lucky, Kubrick, Lynch, Welles, Hitchcock, well, most the best ones never won the best movie oscar.

The Academy's problem with Sci Fi movies and Best Picture.
Or comedy or anything. The thing is that they vote for stuff that's accessible and science fiction movies do not go down the throats of many people.

Okay I got a beef with the Academy period.
I never cared. It never influenced my film watching to the least.



I got a few minor gripes, the biggest one I'd say is Hollywood's refusal to take chances anymore producing unique, original films to wider audiences. Nowadays it seems that the whole mindset is: "Can this movie make us a billion dollars?" Which means sequel after sequel, reboot after reboot...



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I got a few minor gripes, the biggest one I'd say is Hollywood's refusal to take chances anymore producing unique, original films to wider audiences. Nowadays it seems that the whole mindset is: "Can this movie make us a billion dollars?" Which means sequel after sequel, reboot after reboot...
Yes. Exactly.. Films have become like a formula.



Yes. Exactly.. Films have become like a formula.
I got a few minor gripes, the biggest one I'd say is Hollywood's refusal to take chances anymore producing unique, original films to wider audiences. Nowadays it seems that the whole mindset is: "Can this movie make us a billion dollars?" Which means sequel after sequel, reboot after reboot...
That's entirely our fault.

Look at the biggest money makers over the last decade or so. Most of them are based on established properties or sequels. Why would they take chances? For every original film Like Inception that makes it, there's a Cloud Atlas, an Interstellar, and a Hugo. The big budget original films or films based on niche or obscure properties tend to fail. If it's not based on one of the biggest toy franchises of the 80s or a series of books about the boy who lived, then we just don't go see it. You can't blame Hollywood for chasing what works. Almost every single time they take chances the films fail. What do you expect them to do? Lose money?

EDIT: Here's a link to a decent list about what I'm talking about. I don't think every film on their list is great, but it goes with what I'm talking about. We can trash talk Hollywood all day about it, but it's still our fault they play it safe.



That's entirely our fault.

Look at the biggest money makers over the last decade or so. Most of them are based on established properties or sequels. Why would they take chances? For every original film Like Inception that makes it, there's a Cloud Atlas, an Interstellar, and a Hugo. The big budget original films or films based on niche or obscure properties tend to fail. If it's not based on one of the biggest toy franchises of the 80s or a series of books about the boy who lived, then we just don't go see it. You can't blame Hollywood for chasing what works. Almost every single time they take chances the films fail. What do you expect them to do? Lose money?

EDIT: Here's a link to a decent list about what I'm talking about. I don't think every film on their list is great, but it goes with what I'm talking about. We can trash talk Hollywood all day about it, but it's still our fault they play it safe.
I understand where you're coming from. I believe it goes both ways though, there are films that were tailor-made to try to cater to casual audiences but flopped, like many of those post-Twilight teen novel adaptations. There are also a good number of films that Hollywood took huge chances on and they were hits. I remember reading about how if The Lord of the Rings trilogy wasn't successful, it would've pretty much destroyed New Line Cinema, of course we all know that it was a massive success.



Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.
Hollywood is going for the cash grab, but I don't feel responsible. They just remake the same movie every few years with bigger budgets and pitch it to the younger generations as something new or better or impossible to have been made before. It's as real as a video game! It's just that now the foreign market matters more than the domestic. It's nothing really new - it's just now the money involved is even more obscene.
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That's entirely our fault.

Look at the biggest money makers over the last decade or so. Most of them are based on established properties or sequels. Why would they take chances? For every original film Like Inception that makes it, there's a Cloud Atlas, an Interstellar, and a Hugo...
Not my fault. I don't watch or even like most of the big-money making-CG blockbuster-action thriller-comic book-video like movies. Blaah.



Gangster Rap is Shakespeare for the Future
does the world really need another thread where we just rehash the same old "Hollywood only cares about money" discussion?
Maybe we should have one that's like, "Old Hollywood only cares about money." I think people are too caught up in the sequel/remake idea meaning a lack of creativity and a push towards Hollywood as a business. When hasn't Hollywood been that way? We lost thousands of silent films not because people didn't know how to preserve them, but because studios saw no need to keep them. They didn't care about the artistic value of a film, a film was a commodity to be bought and sold, and once they stopped making money on it, it was thrown out. The preservation of film on a large scale only happened really because people realized they could make money on the film at a later time.

As Rosenbaum says in the video, the idea of being bankable is based on doing the same thing over again. The reason Orson Welles' career turned out the way it did was due to him not fitting in to the Hollywood business model



I understand where you're coming from. I believe it goes both ways though, there are films that were tailor-made to try to cater to casual audiences but flopped, like many of those post-Twilight teen novel adaptations.
This is irrelevant because, of course, not every big budget film will succeed. But they were still safer bets than something like Looper or any other original story.

There are also a good number of films that Hollywood took huge chances on and they were hits. I remember reading about how if The Lord of the Rings trilogy wasn't successful, it would've pretty much destroyed New Line Cinema, of course we all know that it was a massive success.
Every film is a gamble, it's just that some are much less so than others. The Lord of the Rings had the added bonus of actually being good. That always helps, but isn't needed (Transformers).

What you originally said:

"I got a few minor gripes, the biggest one I'd say is Hollywood's refusal to take chances anymore producing unique, original films to wider audiences."

The point is, every time anyone green lights a film they're taking a gamble, but there are tons of things they can count on to hedge their bets. One of them is sticking with what works. If we wanted "original films for wider audiences" we'd actually go see them. Unfortunately, hundreds of millions of people are going to see The Avengers this summer and, shocking to no one, they're going to make a dozen more of those films. Hell, even you went to see it and you didn't hate it. What are you griping about at all?



Good post Gideon, I agree, especially with the part about movies based on books.

My Number 1 Cinema Grievance:

The sad, sad state of older movie preservation. Something like half of all the silent films ever made are either lost or are disintegrated beyond saving. And 1000s of movies from 1930 to 1960 are in poor shape and in need of saving. Many aren't available on DVD, others are so badly transferred to DVD that there hard to watch.
This is another thing I love about you Citizen...you are one of the few regular posters on this board who is actually aware that there were movies made before 1980.



This is another thing I love about you Citizen...you are one of the few regular posters on this board who is actually aware that there were movies made before 1980.
Huh?

I don't see that trend at all. I'm always quite impressed with how knowledgeable MoFos are about older films, foreign films, and obscure titles.



I would have to say when the only seats available are the seats right in front of the theater.



Formulaic pathos and narrative devices. Inevitable side effect of popularization and loss of exclusivity. It has become a commodity for entertainment industries (well, it has always been a form of entertainment, so this criticism is arguably unwarranted). The art form is hard to find among the sea of redundant entertainment (maybe harder than in the past).

Too much of everything, except groundbreaking originality and creativity... which are, ultimately, context dependent, thus, rare by nature.

Everywhere, not just Hollywood.

So, yeah, this is kinda silly to complain about... just felt like I had to say something.
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