BringtheNoise in response to yesterday’s Punisher post:
So, what brought this on?
For starters, here’s a list of the top 30 movies of 2009 thus far:
Star Trek
Monsters Vs. Aliens
Up
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Fast and Furious
Paul Blart: Mall Cop
Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
Taken
Angels & Demons
The Hangover
Terminator Salvation
Watchmen
He’s Just Not That Into You
Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail
Knowing
Hannah Montana: The Movie
Coraline
Hotel for Dogs
I Love You, Man
Obsessed
Race to Witch Mountain
Friday the 13th (2009)
17 Again
Bride Wars
The Haunting in Connecticut
Ghosts of Girlfriends Past
My Bloody Valentine 3-D
Underworld: Rise of the Lycans
Confessions of a Shopaholic
The Unborn
Look at that list. What do you see? A whole lot of adaptations, remakes, reboots and sequels. (Fast and Furious is a sequel to a remake.) Amazingly, the top ten is actually half original films (even if one of them is Paul Blart, Mall Cop), but expect those numbers to jiggle around a bit yet: we still have Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, G.I. Joe, Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs, The Time Traveler’s Wife, I Love You Beth Cooper, H2, Inglourious Basterds, The Road, Whiteout, Astro Boy, The Wolf Man, Twilight: New Moon, A Christmas Carol, The Lovely Bones, Sherlock Holmes, and Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakwel. And that top 30 list will eventually include The Taking of Pelham 123 and maybe even Land of the Lost.
Now, maybe it’s understandable that Hollywood has gotten fiscally conservative and doesn’t want to throw money at unproven properties; hell, even intellectual property that seems solid combined with hot talent can end up biting you in the ass (e.g. Speed Racer). But it’s disappointing to consider the fact that, after Friday the 13th basically tanked after opening weekend (because it was dogshit), the studio went ahead and immediately greenlit yet another fucking Jason movie. In this time, he will be in the snow. (Read the comments, incidentally. A great example of the “Robocop Game.”) Because “we haven’t seen that before.” This is their way of reinventing Jason: by putting him in the snow.
It’s not that I’m pissed that they’re reinventing Jason by putting him in the snow. It’s not even that I’m pissed that they’re bothering to try yet another fucking Jason movie when the last god knows how many Jason movies have A) sucked and B) flopped. What pisses me off is that Hollywood is now a place where Star Wars could never get made. No, not another Star Wars sequel – I mean the original Star Wars, or something equivalent to it. “It’s a ginormous fantasy/sci-fi epic with no big names and it will cost a shitload of money!” Yeah, execs will rush to bankroll that, right?
And that’s depressing. And it’s why there’s a fourth Punisher movie in development somewhere; for no reason other than that there have already been three of them.
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I was in Manhattan a couple of weeks ago with a friend, and we happened to catch Ferris Bueller’s Day Off playing on cable at the hotel. Perfect late-night movie. We were suitably buzzed and it was nostalgic and we’re both writers who studied fiction and screenplays at SC.
And we both commented that movie could never get made nowadays, at least not the way that one was. The museum sequence alone; a solid couple of minutes of the three leads not doing much besides staring at art, with strong identification from one character with a particular painting?
Then again: Hollywood might never make it, but it’s now the kind of movie a couple of people could make together without a whole lot of effort. No special effects besides the Ferrari, after all.
Actually, STAR WARS was kinda mid-budget- $13 million, less than what CLOSE ENCOUNTERS or EXORCIST II cost.
Hollywood’s almost always hedged its bets when it comes to the big A-budget movies and put in some kind of link to an established property.
It could be bad ass, though. Jason all in moon boots and a snowmobile suit and mittens-on-a-string so’s he doesn’t lose one whilst frolicking in his snow fort.
Whats “The robocop game”?
I just want to make a small comment about your list of movies to come. While I Love You Beth Cooper is technically an adaptation, Larry Doyle only shopped it around as a novel when he couldn’t get anyone to bite on his screenplay. In effect, he gamed the system just so he could get his movie made.
A) How the fuck does Tyler Perry’s ANYTHING make money? Those movies are dogshit awful
B) I thought the new Fast/Furious was just a sequel to the original – what’s the remake here?
C) The order of that list is all sorts of retarded. What the fuck is wrong with people
I seem to remember an episode of Siskel and Ebert where they looked at the best movies of the 70s. They talked about what a mini Renaissance it was, with Copolla, Scorcese, Spielberg, and Lucas coming up. They concluded the show by saying that under the current studio system none of the movies they’d discussed would be be made. And that was probably fifteen years ago, never mind today.
The studio method of film-making has become tired, self-consuming, marketed around ‘name’ actors and brand products that could guarantee big opening weekends… which aren’t guaranteed anymore if the lousy performances by Friday 13th remake and Land of the Lost/Will Ferrell travesty are any sign. And yet that’s all that can get distributed big-time across the major theater chains.
We need a newer distribution system. The technology of film-making – digital cameras, editing that could be done on one iMac, CGI software that doesn’t run on warehouse-sized Creys – has gotten more compact, and hopefully more affordable (as long as you know someone who thinks a $100k digital camera is ‘affordable’). The only thing preventing 10,000 Ed Wood wannabes from filming out of their garage is the lack of access to a viable distribution system, the one thing on which the studios have a death-grip.
Who complained about Tyler Perry’s movies being crap? Deal is, he’s able to get those films distributed, through Lionsgate, and he makes money off of those movies without dealing with any ‘major studio’. Just have to find out how he made that deal, and maybe, just maybe, we can make our own movies. Anyone got a decent script (no more zombies on a plane! That’s been done to death)?
One day you will meet a black person (I know a few) and explain this to them. Said black person will look at you sadly, explain that you just don’t get black humor, and walk away thinking you’re a little racist.
Why do I think they still make money? Imagine living in a world were your options were Japanese Kung-Fu epic, Japanese situation comedy, Japanese love story, Japanese low budget buddy flick, or something staring Seth Rogan.
I mean, let’s face it, well over half the shit that makes it to theaters is crap anyway. At least you get to see crap with a leading character you actually identify with. :-p
See, also: BET
Here’s the thing though… back in 1977, George Lucas had some clout. He was one of the three writers on American Graffiti, which was nominated for a bunch of oscars and won several other awards. He had done THX 1138 before as well, and was a fairly well-established writer.
The first Star Wars had a fairly middling budget (as pointed out earlier by Evan Waters), and they gave him the green light. It was wildly popular, and the sequels were rapidly greenlit, reminding me much of the Matrix (budget: $63M, 1999) which came out the same year as Toy Story 2 ($90M budget), Star Wars: The Phantom Menace ($115M budget) and Disney’s Tarzan ($130M budget).
Would those “great” movies of yesteryear get made today? Maybe, but it all depends on what studio, who’s writing, who’s directing, and any myriad factors in between.
Aw heck, that Friday the 13th film wasn’t dogshit in comparison to the other Friday the 13th films. I’d go so far as to say it was at least (at least!) the 2nd or 3rd best out of the whole series…? I’m barely serious, but still.
Also, these sorts of production trends are bound to be cyclical, surely? The original Star Wars probably wouldn’t be greenlit today, but it probably wouldn’t have been greenlit ten or twenty years BEFORE 1977, either. Expensive new sf/fantasy epics with no big names have never been an easy sell. (And that’s probably fair enough – how many original sf/fantasy epic scripts aren’t derivative crap?)
When franchise & remake revenues start to slide (which they have to, eventually – what comes after generation Y?) the studios & producers will take more chances on original ideas.
@Davinder:
Yeah, and the films of the 70s wouldn’t have been made under the studio systems of the 60s, 50s, 30s etc, either. The 70s renaissance happened because the big producers kept on pumping out too much same old crap, and they stopped making money. It’ll happen again.
As pointed out, Star Wars was by George “American Graffiti” Lucas. Ferris Buller mentioned above was from John “16 Candles/Breakfast Club” Hughes.
Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakwel.
Oh, GOD.
There’s a bigwig and three executives write-up for this one in the wings, isn’t there?
Soory, but “The Squeakwel” still cracks me up, I don’t care if it IS all part of a Scientological plan to brainwash the youth we didn’t really want around much anyway.
Woohoo! I got my own response post!
Err, anyway, you have a point, but I think thos suggesting this is a cyclical trend could be right.
So, what, Jason’s got a cocaine habit now?
Simon: The Robocop Game is where you take a film’s title and replace a word in it with Robocop.
@ Thoapsl:
Actually, the 70s renaissance happened for a number of reasons. The old studio heads all retired and sold their companies to major corporations, who appointed people who weren’t experienced with moviemaking. They didn’t quite know what would sell, but the director-as-auteur movement was popular, so they tended to give leeway to directors with a hit or two under their belt. On top of that, the MPAA rating system had been introduced recently, and filmmakers were able to explore the new freedom that gave them.
It’s also worth mentioning that movies like “Star Wars” were hard to make back then, too. It’s easy to look back thirty years, see all the memorable and classic movies, and assume that it was some sort of Golden Age of cinema where they only made great, innovative work, but 1977 also was the year that gave us “The Exorcist II”, a remake of “The Island of Doctor Moreau”, “The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training”, and “Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo”.
Getting good movies made has always been hard. Getting crowd-pleasing dreck made has always been easy. Anyone who says otherwise is looking back at things through a pleasant haze of nostalgia.
Is “Inglourious Basterds” really a remake? I was under the impression that Tarantino just swiped the name. And, um, spelled it wrong.
And yeah, I was under the impression Star Wars was middling-to-cheap for its day. That’s why it’s frustrating we don’t see movies like that more often. I mean, Lucas created an epic comic-book universe for the modern equivalent of, what, $50 million? Less? I’m sure someone could replicate the feat nowadays. They could probably get it done even cheaper, actually, if they’d be willing to think outside the box when it came to FX. I’d personally love to see a movie with stop-motion and forced-perspective models used to replicate this stuff instead of expensive CGI. To me these way-out SF and fantasy movies never look thoroughly “real” anyway, so why not just go hog wild and give it a stylized look? I think movies like “Sky Captain” were a step in this direction, except, well, Sky Captain kinda sucked.
I always thought it was the Anus Game. It’s much more amusing that way.
I think it’s just because Hollywood is like any business. As long as someone pays them, a person will do almost anything. So if nutbag producers with too much money want to fork out millions to a director, crews and actor to make another Punisher film then they’ll make it. The companies don’t care because all they do is distribute them and unless they’re absolute flops they’ll generally at least make their money back
I don’t think adaptations are the problem. As long as there have been movies there has been adaptations, it’s just the quality of the film making that stops any movie from being great. And it’s probably easy to see why people just churn out mindless crap when a movie about Transformers makes bajillions when in reality the only defining quality of the movie was it’s SFX
I was with you until you lumped adaptations in there. A bad adaptation wastes as much celluloid as a bad remake or a bad sequel (remember Bonfire of the Vanities, starring Tom Hanks and Bruce Willis?).
But the history of global cinema stands on the shoulders of adaptations that transcended their source material. Off the top of my head: The Godfather, Schindler’s List, On the Waterfront, Saturday Night Fever, Jurassic Park, Gone with the Wind, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, From Here to Eternity, etc, etc.
My Bloody Valentine 3-D? Gag me. That movie was shiite.
Well, just about every point I was going to make has already been made, especially about “Star Wars,” so I guess the only thing I can do is verify that “Inglourious Basterds” is NOT a remake. I’ve read the script and about the only thing it has in common with the ’70s movie is a World War II setting and Nazis.
Incidentally, I’m still kind of surprised to find that that’s the intended spelling of its title. The script is so full of misspellings just like it, I thought it was just another mistake. They’re very consistent misspellings, too — like “weather” for “whether,” for instance — so they’re not typos. Kind of makes you wonder if Tarantino is mildly dyslexic — or if his brain just operates on such an accelerated plane of existence from the rest of us mere humans that the English language simply can’t keep up.
Mike: I’m going with dyslexic.
The original The Fast and the Furious was not a remake but based on a magazine article.
So, technically, it’s merely an incredible rip-off of Point Break.
Inglourious Basterds= The Devil’s Brigade with less people.
Never saw it myself, but there was a Roger Corman The Fast and the Furious. The title, at least, has been done before.