Quote:
Originally Posted by pscates2.0
I don't buy that necessarily. Sure, we'd definitely have a nine-page thread about a standalone, original movie...as long as it was good.
I'm betting something like "Pulp Fiction" probably would've had this place hopping had 'Nova been around in 1994. I saw that opening night in Orange County at the Tustin Marketplace Edwards...it was definitely the freshest, most fun I'd had at the movies in ages! The joint was packed (all that buzz going on) and everyone ate it up...I'd never heard so much laughing and "ohmigosh" in a movie audience before.
The thing is, most of these big spectacle things are, in the end, outright turds. They live or die by their opening weekend. Some ("Iron Man" and "The Dark Knight") build on themselves and actually stick around and pull in good numbers and crowds. But some - "Superman Returns" and this recent "Indiana Jones" - suck as much as you'd imagine, and kinda limp along and all but kill the franchise. Nobody wants to see a sequel to either of those turds, I believe.
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I seem to recall a positive review of IJ from a certain forum member here.
I know I sort of gave Hollywood's version of why there's so many sequels, but I mostly agree with it - would they really keep making them if it
didn't make financial sense for them to? If box office receipts showed that everyone was clamoring for more original content, why would they continue to make sequels? They're a profit-driven industry.
Even if
Pulp Fiction would have had a nine-page thread here in '94, it wouldn't have had a Burger King promotion or a special limited-edition Slurpee flavor with collectible cup or a tie-in toy line or a shitty video game or kid's light-up sneakers. And that's where the money is, these days.
Some companies (Pixar!) specialize in original storytelling, but they're only able to because of their uncommonly good box office record (highest in the industry, actually
) and even then they're blessed with family-friendly, merchandise-friendly subject matter, which
Pulp Fiction simply isn't. And even
they are moving towards an increased reliance on sequels and adaptations. For a lesser studio, there's just no hope. That's why DreamWorks is a
Shrek-making machine and why Blue Sky is an
Ice-Age-making machine. (And I have a hunch that Pixar is only able to greenlight stuff like
newt and
John Carter of Mars because they have the 900-pound gorilla of the Disney marketing machine behind them.
WALL-E's massive budget was subsidized by the sales of millions of
Hannah Montana t-shirts.
)
If you're given the choice between producing two films, one that's based on an established franchise with millions of fans and one that has potential but is currently unknown, which would you produce? Or if you can line up a multi-million dollar Happy Meal promotion with one franchise, but not with the other?
As the "little guy" I'm as frustrated at that as anyone but I don't
fault Hollywood studios for wanting to make money. They're businesses, not charities or arts organizations. Their reason for being isn't to provide us with great entertainment, it's to make gobs of money. Ideally, the two go hand-in-hand, because makers of great entertainment are rewarded with higher ticket sales. But if one potential film has a less profitable outlook than another, because it lacks a built-in audience or whatever, you can't really fault the studios for choosing to make the more profitable film instead.