Quote:
Originally Posted by Damien
Films have only gotten better, as has TV, in my view.
Most of the artistic skills/forms in making a film or a television show are rather new and they are continuing to grow and evolve. Obviously the telling of a story isn't new but how to write a screenplay, how to shoot it, how to act and direct it, and how to accompany it with a musical score are all less than a 100 years old at most. I have seen a number of 'classic' Hollywood films and they don't strike me as much better than some more modern films. They are good and no doubt hugely influential but their legacies were then further built on by more modern day film makers.
The main change seems to be an increasing amount of sequels and franchises as a result of films become more commercially driven but this isn't new nor bad. The studios need the income and they do help finance the risk studios take in more niche films. Franchises aren't new either and exist in other mediums. How many times has Shakespeare, Jane Austin or Sherlock Holmes been 'rebooted'. There never seems to be a year in which a theatre company isn't doing another version of a Shakespeare play or when ITV/BBC has get another poxy adaptation of Sense and Sensibility. We're never to far from a Dicken's TV movie either...
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In fairness, Shakespeare never wrote Romeo and Juliet II, or Hamlet II, or an entire trilogy of King Lear.
You are right. Hollywod does actually use the money from the blockbusters and other more mainstream films to finance smaller, more risky films. This is the way that (AFAIK) Hollywood has always operated, and, IMO, the way our film industry should be operating. Without the big Disney cartons, we would not have had (for instance) any Quentin Tarentino film.
I think the problem is with Multiplexes. While they can be amazing places to watch films, there have been times when I have had to wait for a smaller, indie film that I've wanted to see to come to DVD or Blu Ray because all my local multiplexes have dedicated half their screens to 24 hour showings of the latest Harry Potter or Twilight film and my local indie cinema is devoting increasing amounts of time to showing mainstream films.
Not that I have any objection to mainstream cinema. Far from it. I love the big blockbusters, but I'd like a little more freedom to go and see something that doesn't have a budget in the tens or hundreds of millions.
Talking of films that have budgets in the hundreds of millions.. It will certainly be interesting to see the new SW movies. I might even bother to go and see the remaining 3d conversions now (never got round to Phantom Menace 3D).