As I mull over turning this blog from straight Horror movie reviews to more of all entertainment, something odd happened, Steven Spielber's BFG flopped miserably at the Box Office.
With a production budget of $140 million dollars plus advertising costs, BFG had everything to make a huge box office splash. It had a name like Steven Spielberg, a beloved children's book story and a gimmick! The first ever Spielberg/Disney production, on top of that Tarzan fizzled so it was the PERFECT time for a movie to come in an sweep it out, but it didn't happen.
The public quite literally stayed at home that weekend and Finding Dory took the Box office reigns for a 3rd week in a row.
That made me start thinking. AS a child born in the late 70's and growing up in the 1980's, Spielberg was God. The man had critical AND financial success in a way that we haven't seen since. Hell, in the list of all time domestic grosses (adjusted), Spielberg has 2 of the 10 top spots with E.T and Jaws. Indiana Jones, The Purple, Empire of the Sun, Schindler's List, Jurassic Park, the man's IMDB reads like your dream list of best movies you ever seen. THAT was the time of the directors, when they were given creative control and reign to do what a director is supposed to do. Put their vision on screen, and we all loved it.
Fast Forward to 2016, we have a new beast in Comic Book/Fantasy films. Huge colossal budget films that need to make 2 or 3 times the amount of their budget to be considered successful, and this is the same era that will always be remembered as the death of the Hollywood visionaries.
Directors these days are picked by the brand in question to be a soldier. His task is to yell "action" then "cut", collect his paycheck and go home. You will never see a household named director in a Marvel movie for example. As enjoyable as they are, Marvel is serving the equivalent to fast food movies and their directors are pretty much as interchangeable as if they were made out of Lego Bricks. You are there to make THEIR movie, your vision is of no interest to them, and for that purpose, Marvel will keep a heavy hand.
I did a small personal test. In a gathering, with about 20 friends I asked who watched Ant man, Captain America and Thor 2. They all raised their hands, when I asked who directed those movies, I got blank stares, then someone said the Watchoswky brothers for Captain America. Edgar Writght had a vision for Ant Man, he wrote and worked on the movie for years, but refused to follow the cookie cutter "fast food" mold Marvel is putting out ,as a result he was fired and in his place came (I literally had to go to IMDB to look it up) Peyton Reed.
No disrespect to Mr Reed, his career highlights are Bring it On, Yes Man and The Breakup. Marvel has taken the reigns of their movie universe and can basically make a movie without a director. All of them with the exception of Kenneth Brannagh had very small experience with tent-pole movies and havent done anything since. We all love Joss Whedon, but before Avengers he had a failed TV series in Firefly (bring it back already dammit), another failed venture in Serenity, yet another cancelled series in Dollhouse. For me at least, he was "the guy from Buffy".
Everyone else on Marve's hit list either has very limited experience or haven't done anything in a long time. Marvel does that for a reason, so they can control and basically tell the directors" You are making my movie, this is how I want it"
And they of course do it (who wouldn't) , James Gunn IMDB as a director was a ghost town before Guardians of the Universe and all of a sudden, he is a household name. But that only further illustrates my point. We are not watching director and vision driven films anymore, we are watching what a corporation or Brand decides.
I'm a huge part of the problem. Marvel can package "The Stingray" movie at this point and I'll gladly buy my ticket weeks and advanced then go wait 2 hours in line to watch it, they sucessfully created a brand that is trusted and generates revenue. But if you try to inject your vision you're out the door.
DC tried a somewhat different approach. By hiring Nolan, they tapped someone with a very old school approach to film-making and tried to redefine their universe. Unfortunately Zach Snyder was their choice to pick up after that and the general public didn't like it. As a result, DC now reincorporated, giving the Warner's movie reigns to Geoff Johns and will start using Marvel's formula, where we'll end up with the "Coke and Pepsi" of the movie industry.
If you stop right now, the average movie goer and think of a director, under 50 years old, that is as revolutionary and visionary as Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, or even a young George Lucas?
You cant think it. The time of the rock star movie directors is all gone, now we will get to watch what big corporations and brands want us to watch. We watch Disney movies, Marvel Films, Warners and Sony, we dont watch the Spielberg Movie, that new Clint Eastwood film or Alfred Hitchcock even.. Those were days were you went to the theater and wanted to watch what the director's vision was, what he wanted us to see. Now we go to be visually entertained, big budget and effects took over for character development and vision.
You noticed I keep using the word "vision" and "visionary" because that is it, that's what Hollywood has lost, and Im afraid we will never get that back.
You hear stories from people like Edgar Wright, Jose Padilha and others, where they will tell you, its the Studio's movie, you have NO control over what you want to show. Josh Trank was also steamrolled and never allowed to make whatever Fantastic 4 film he wanted, the studios want to control every aspect of the movie making experience, but THEY are not filmmakers, they are pencil pushers and are there to sell meat, not to make art. The studios are the McDonalds, wanting to keep serving us with one Big Mac after the other, not worrying about quality as much as quantity. The more explosions in Civil War the less you will notice, its just a video game you can't control.
So what can we do?? We can look towards independent film, with today's technology there are folks out there working themselves to the bone to make movies, to bring THEIR vision to you, but a good majority of them will never get to. There are full movies on Youtube with less then 200 views, GOOD movies with SOLID story but we, the public are so used to Mcdonalds, we no longer want anything else, so when the jewel comes along, like BFG is utterly ignored and passed by.
As always, I'll keep reviewing Hollywood, one piece the time
Jack
