The decline of Hollywood

[BigJake]

The Wolf of Wall Street just came out yesterday. Hardly fair to list it.

Indeed that's a pretty impressive opening-day take if that's correct.

These movies are out there.

Several of those were produced outside Hollywood, at least two are recent releases, a couple of your totals are off. Nevertheless, for those that are actually applicable:

Some people go to see them. Just not a whole lot of people, compared to the special effects fests.

Guess which ones are most heavily promoted? The special effects fests. Which includes Gravity. I guarantee you the number of people who heard about it far exceeds the number who heard about Inside Llewyn Davis. That again has nothing to do with possible box office draw, it's a function of the existing priorities of the studios.

Box office is largely a function of hype: the productions that will draw the most hype are those that cost the most to make (because those costs must be recovered), in turn they will draw the biggest houses and seem to "confirm" the assumption that it's necessary to spend a hundred million dollars making a movie that anyone wants to see, and on and on the cycle goes.

Of course that's not to say that effects don't play into mass appeal. To at least some extent they do. But the assumption that the tentpole blockbuster model is a necessary confirmation of "what audiences want" is lazy. And it's that lazy assumption that will win out even in Gravity's case -- which was both critically acclaimed and more profitable than the normal run of films precisely because it was well-written and well-directed and had something more than schlock as its premise. Therefore (if the pattern continues) we will see Hollywood avoid learning from that profitable, successful model just as it avoided learning from Inception, or tried to convince itself that Inception was a freak outlier.

Its appeal is all the complicated dream mechanics and the cool special effects.

Cool special effects are hardly "specific" appeal either. The dream mechanics were basically just an SF twist on the heist theme. There are a dozen other SF premises that could be adapted for similar appeal.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

My totals came from imdb.com, could be off or out of date.

Yeah, some of those films were produced outside Hollywood. So? At least half of them showed in mainstream theaters. 12 Years A Slave was promoted everywhere that its predicted audience is likely to look. People know serious dramas are around, they have the option to go see them. Great Gatsby had Leonardo Dicaprio and very candy visuals, it made $146 million. More than the usual drama, less than a superhero movie. What brought in that $146 million, was it because it's based on a famous novel? No, it was Leonardo Dicpario and the candy visuals. And not every city in the country has an arthouse cinema but most of the very big ones do, and people are aware they exist, and have every opportunity to see what's playing there. Most of them still choose to go see the superhero movie.

This is not an issue of one kind of film being under-marketed. It's a matter of people knowing dramas exist, and most of them choosing to see superhero films and star-studded visual-fests instead.

People did not go see Inception then talk about "What a cool heist movie!" They talked about the dream levels. If you went to see a heist movie that followed the same story structure but it wasn't about going into somebody's dream and giving them an idea that they think they came up with themselves, you would not then say "Man, that was a total INCEPTION clone!"

If Hollywood could make billions of dollars making dark dramas about free men kidnapped into slavery, that's exactly what they'd do. People would not make the decision to go see them, unless of course, that slave then murdered all the slavers in grand spectacles of fire and gunslinging. (Django Unchained: $425 million worldwide)

 

[BillJ]

Box office is largely a function of hype: the productions that will draw the most hype are those that cost the most to make (because those costs must be recovered), in turn they will draw the biggest houses and seem to "confirm" the assumption that it's necessary to spend a hundred million dollars making a movie that anyone wants to see, and on and on the cycle goes.

American Hustle, The Wolf of Wall Street and Gravity have all been very heavily promoted. Gravity will likely be the only one to do big dollars at the theaters.

People enjoy the spectacle when going to theaters, big special and sound effects, an experience that hard to duplicate at home. Stuff like American Hustle and The Wolf of Wall Street play the same way on small or big screens, so people don't have as much desire to rush out and see them at theaters.

Where Hollywood will struggle with big-dollar films is the game of one-upsmanship they keep playing.

 

[BigJake]

Yeah, some of those films were produced outside Hollywood. So?

So they're kind of off-topic for the thread? Which is about Hollywood? (In point of fact they're an illustration of the way feature film-making has begun to migrate elsewhere. It's not just low- to mid-market, either; The Hobbit trilogy, however gaudy and over-padded I might find it personally, is a clear example of the kind of big-budget, craft-dependent feature film that's starting to leave Hollywood.)

Now look, like I just said, I'm not saying that visuals and star power have no effect on draw. Obviously they do. I'm saying that what appears to distinguish present-day Hollywood is that aside from now completely (or largely) ignoring anything but massive tentpole productions -- which didn't used to be the case, because you don't need small dramas to rake in a half-billion dollars, you spread money around to mid-market properties in order to avoid betting most of your year on a handful of massive blockbusters -- is that even in the star-studded visual-extravaganza bracket, today's Hollywood will avoid learning from any success that requires execution.

I'd be perfectly happy if the blockbuster industry were building itself around smart, well-constructed and spectacular movies like Gravity, which use effects to enhance the story instead of to deafen and distract the audience. But that wouldn't be the current blockbuster model, and that's not the kind of special effects extravaganza that the present-day Hollywood willingly bets on or is willing to learn from. The far more common model is John Carter: remake a property, slap an obscene amount of effects money on the screen along with a few names and wait for the combined effects of nostalgia and hype to do your work for you. Sometimes it works -- like the massive nostalgia push that gave Abramstrek such a soft landing -- sometimes it doesn't. But it clearly isn't a healthy trend for Hollywood in the long term.

 

[JarodRussell]

I don't see Gravity as smart or well constructed. It is as silly and as painted by numbers as every Open Water type of film. Even the sacrifice scene one of the characters has to make is as pointless and unnecessary as always. The only difference is the space environment and that they decided to simulate is as realistic as possible.

 

[BigJake]

I don't see Gravity as smart or well constructed.

Heh, then we probably have different definitions of those terms. EDIT: *looks again* Uh, you thought Open Water was "silly" and "paint by numbers"? Yeah. We definitely have different definitions of those terms.

 

[M'rk son of Mogh]

I don't see Gravity as smart or well constructed.

Heh, then we probably have different definitions of those terms. EDIT: *looks again* Uh, you thought Open Water was "silly" and "paint by numbers"? Yeah. We definitely have different definitions of those terms.

Well, to be fair, I think what was being said is Gravity is a pretty standard disaster flick in terms of story, it just happens to look unbelievable and to have been shot extremely well (which sort of contradicts the point you're making, that the spectacle of the movie and the effects is what sold it more than anything, along with the star power).

It even included the stereotypically annoying out of her element female character that survives to the end "agains all odds"!

 

[BigJake]

(which sort of contradicts the point you're making, that the spectacle of the movie and the effects is what sold it more than anything, along with the star power).

No, that is not the point I'm making. The point I'm making is that Hollywood has defaulted to making movies that rely almost solely on effects and star power and will not learn from movies that, while having those elements, also have more. Like Gravity.

 

[Harvey]

What "more" did Gravity have than star power or spectacle?

Those seemed to me to be the principal selling points of the movie (beyond being exceptionally well-made, which certainly helped word-of-mouth).

Of course, beyond its craft, the one thing that set Gravity apart from most other blockbusters this year was that it wasn't a sequel or an attempt to launch a franchise (which is also, I suppose, another reason to like Inception, which has been brought up).

That's also, I suspect, the reason movies like Gravity and Inception aren't being emulated. The Hollywood studios don't want to spend $250 million on one big hit -- they want to launch franchises with sequels and merchandise that will be (relatively) guaranteed moneymakers for years to come.

What's most surprising to me is that a movie like Gravity was made at all -- which is saying something about how risk-averse Hollywood is, I suppose, considering how straight-forward the movie actually is.

 

[BigJake]

What "more" did Gravity have than star power or spectacle?

Aside from its originality -- you're correct that it is now unusual to see a movie that isn't a remake, which tells a tale of creative aridity in itself -- Gravity also delivers basic craft. A well-sold sense of character development, strong screenwriting that delivered a coherent story that played by the rules it set up, direction that understood pacing and breath and not trying to overwhelm your audience, a sense of how to make audiences see the effects through human eyes... basically a sense of film-as-storytelling.

None of which should be remarkable. But it is. Conventional Hollywood wisdom now sees craft and execution as superfluous, at best a frill, to arguably a far greater degree than it ever has: the quote "we don't tell stories anymore" in the GQ article in the OP is a quote from a studio exec.

 

[BillJ]

Conventional Hollywood wisdom now sees craft and execution as superfluous, at best a frill...

I think that's an insult to people who make movies. Society and technology have changed the film industry to a certain degree, but I'm still amazed at what many filmmakers can accomplish and the love they have for making movies. I found both of The Hobbit movies insanely dull, but I think from a technical standpoint they are incredibly well made. While I have quibbles about the scripts to both Abrams Trek films, I think they are also very well made.

 

[BigJake]

Conventional Hollywood wisdom now sees craft and execution as superfluous, at best a frill...

I think that's an insult to people who make movies.

I think it's what the industry itself says in no uncertain terms that it thinks about making movies. If you think that's an insult to people who make movies, who knows but maybe the people choosing to make films outside the Hollywood studio system agree with you.

 

[MacLeod]

Box office is largely a function of hype: the productions that will draw the most hype are those that cost the most to make (because those costs must be recovered), in turn they will draw the biggest houses and seem to "confirm" the assumption that it's necessary to spend a hundred million dollars making a movie that anyone wants to see, and on and on the cycle goes.

American Hustle, The Wolf of Wall Street and Gravity have all been very heavily promoted. Gravity will likely be the only one to do big dollars at the theaters.

People enjoy the spectacle when going to theaters, big special and sound effects, an experience that hard to duplicate at home. Stuff like American Hustle and The Wolf of Wall Street play the same way on small or big screens, so people don't have as much desire to rush out and see them at theaters.

Where Hollywood will struggle with big-dollar films is the game of one-upsmanship they keep playing.

Yes people do enjoy spectacle, but a film doesn't have to be having amazing effects to be a success at the Box Office.

The success or failure of a film is a combinaton of things, does it have a particular actor, does it have good word of mouth, how successful was the markerting campaign.

For example a film a few years ago, whilst it might not have come out of Hollywood, it was hugely successful. "The King's Speech" had a budget of around US$15m and made US$414m worldwide.

So something about strucka chord with the audiance. But was that the exception to the norm with low budget films not doing that well at the box office?

Or in the days of the big Hollywood blockbusters, would a cinema rather have an extra screen showing the latest Hollywood blockbuster or show a smaller film. I suspect most cinema chains would think we are likely to sell more seats to the latest Hollywood blockbuster than some smaller film that perhaps only a few pople have heard about.