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Why Blockbusters Aren’t as Good as They Used to Be
Every year I go to the movie theater less, only leaving the comforts of my La-Z-Boy for the latest “must-see” blockbuster. And each time I return home, I wonder why I bothered leaving my beloved La-Z-Boy in the first place. All I remember about the latest Avengers flick was fire, noise, and 72 actors zooming in and out of CGI backgrounds wearing shiny outfits. Add in the $362 I spent on popcorn, drinks and Red Vines for the kids, and it’s no wonder the industry is lagging.
I blamed my lukewarm reactions on Hollywood’s unoriginal storylines and the fact that I’m getting older. My kids are seeing this stuff for the first time, while I’m on my fourth Spiderman. (I hear the next Spiderman movie will reboot the franchise in the middle of the second act.) However, according to the movie addicts at StoryBrain, over-reliance on CGI might be to blame. And it isn’t just the computer-generated characters, but the too-perfect backgrounds.
Here’s their theory: Back in the ’90s, a CGI character would be placed onto a real backdrop — say, an actual city street — which added to the realism. Our brains saw something we recognized from personal experience, so we were willing to suspend our disbelief for the single CGI element strolling through the middle of it.
Once the technology advanced enough, Peter Jackson’s Weta Digital sought to better integrate the foreground and the background by making everything CGI. Today a digital Hulk walks on digital streets with digital buildings dappled with digital sunlight. Now that everything is fake, our brain no longer has a frame of reference to latch onto. Despite the pretty compositions and non-stop action, everything blends into a bland, generic falseness.
What do you think: Do the folks at StoryBrain have a point?
Published in Entertainment
Ob. Jack Ryan movie note: after The Sum of All Fears, I’d always hoped to see more of Liev Schreiber as “John Clark.” I thought Schreiber captured “Clark’s” mild-mannered dad-next-door CIA “problem solver” wonderfully.
Exercise:
Pick your 5 favorite blockbusters from each decade since the 1980s (and five from the first half of the 2010s). I’m not sure that the very best are that much worse today than in times past. Other than “The Empire Strikes Back”, “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “E.T.” skewing things a little heavy for the 1980s.
But my 5 favorites from the 1990s aren’t any better than my 5 favorites today. If I start including Pixar films, the 1990s gets left in the dust.
It’s kind of fascinating to remember that Lucas and Spielberg had trouble getting Raiders financed (until Star Wars and Close Encounters turned out to be monster hits). They told Paramount they could do it for $18M, and did. Interestingly, Spielberg said: let’s do it old-skool, like the old Saturday morning action-adventure serials, and keep it cheap. Lucas loved the idea and agreed. And that’s how they did it.
Lately I think it’s become fashionable to blame George Lucas for changes to the Star Wars franchise that some fans don’t like (as opposed to bad writing and bad casting). It’s nice to revisit the Raider trilogy documentaries, or the Dark Crystal or Labyrinth documentaries, and be reminded that George Lucas is a guy who wanted to make movies and entertain us. And has, in collaboration with some of the best talent the industry has ever seen. Repeatedly.
Only a couple of movies I can think of that were better than the original books. My two offerings:
-Blade Runner, adapted from Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
-The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which I have always found unreadable.
It’s pretty well universally agreed that the book is always better than the movie, but the comparison here is between 2 movies. Would you rather watch JR:SR or Patriot Games? Anyone who chooses the first has either never seen Patriot Games or is a philistin
As to “book always better than the movie”, yeah, that’s understood. What’s egregious about your example is the “see how it’s done” part, since the film version wad so badly botched. (Admittedly not as bad as Sum of all Fears, where the filmmakers found it necessary to change to villains from Islamist terrorists to Russian neo-Nazis AFTER 9/11!).
But otherwise I guess I take your point.
The book is not always better than the movie. By all accounts (I haven’t read it) Jaws was a pretty mediocre novel, but the movie was a classic. I also thought the film adaptation of Silence of the Lambs was at least as good as, if not better than, the book.
A more recent example is the Hunger Games film series. I enjoyed the books, but I think (so far) the films have done a better job of depicting the evil and cruelty of the regime. And I found the last book in the series something of a disappointment; without going into spoiler territory, I’m hoping that the final film will improve on some elements of the ending.
Having said all of that, as a general rule I resist comparing books to movies. They’re different media with different limitations and different objectives, so comparing them is rarely fair. To make a good movie from a good book, it’s almost always necessary to make significant changes, which annoys purists. On the other hand, if you’re too faithful to the source material, you often end up with a weaker movie.
But the Red Vines industry is booming! I hear they sent you a personal thank you note!
I’ve been blaming CGI for years. It’s hard to feel that your characters are really in peril when the perils are all just pixels. You can have amazing computer-generated stunts, and a lesser, physically-filmed stunt will still have a greater impact.
I find myself more interested in watching older movies these days than the newer all-computerized-effects movies. Yesterday I was watching the politically-incorrect Gunga Din (1939), and near the end of the film, there are so many men and horses filling the screen, I found myself marveling at the logistics of pulling off the scenes.
Whereas a similar scene in a modern movie will only have me wondering how they did it with computers.
While “Planes” was set in the world of “Cars”, it wasn’t made by Pixar.