Modern blockbusters are cultural genocide

[jimmy olsen]

I disagree. 

http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a35716/jurassic-world-200-million-box-office/

The $200 Million-Devouring Jurassic World Hates Itself

As we learned this weekend, the long-dormant franchise is alive and well. But is it the Indominous Rex of entertainment?

By Matt Patches

"The first Jurassic Park was legit!"

That line arrives some 20 minutes into Jurassic World, courtesy of Jake Johnson's character, but it's made in reference to the failed "Disneyland for prehistoric beasts" theme park devised by John Hammond (Sir Richard Attenborough) in the 1993 Steven Spielberg blockbuster that launched the movie franchise, not the legit classic itself. Technically, there's no indication that Johnson's nostalgic analyst is even aware that a film called Jurassic Park exists; the JP t-shirt he's wearing, emblazoned with that recognizable fossil logo, isn't a callback to the original movie, but an eBay purchase that had been pilfered from Dr. Hammond's abandoned tourist attraction. And technically, the character harbors no nostalgia for Jurassic Park's revolutionary special effects, methodically staged action, wistful score, or rat-a-tat scientific explanations, courtesy of Jeff Goldblum's eccentric Ian Malcolm. Technically.

But Jurassic World writer-director Colin Trevorrow, the guy that put words in Johnson's mouth, does, so forget the technicalities. Jurassic World bows down to Spielberg's original, wishing it could scrap adrenaline rushes for awe-inspiring simplicity. Yet the film can't do that—it's 2015, and today's kids need something more. So Jurassic World throws in the towel. Trevorrow does this by concocting mutant dinosaur carnage that can contend with Marvel movies and Transformers sequels. If Jurassic Park was a science-laden cautionary tale, then Jurassic World is turn-your-brain-off fluff that goes down with a fight. No one seems thrilled, except for moviegoers.

During its first three days in theaters, Jurassic World made $204 million at the U.S. box office, amounting to the second-largest opening weekend of all time, just shy of Marvel's The Avengers. Planets aligned for the fourth Jurassic feature: the major May releases had cooled down by the time it arrived in theaters; star Chris Pratt had achieved maximum "nice guy" status just as the World press tour was kicking in; and the millennial generation was at the right age to embrace it in the same way Gen X did with the Star Wars prequels (and yes, to millennials, Jurassic Park is up there with Star Wars—a life-changing, cinematic experience). Trevorrow's reverence for the original pumped through his new installment's veins. Shots that mirrored Spielberg's original setups were strategically placed in trailers to catapult potential ticket buyers back to the days of popcorn-munching innocence. Jurassic World could have made an extra $50 million this weekend if hearing John Williams' hummable score hadn't melted so many thirty-something brains.

The success is bittersweet. That there's still spectacle capable of drawing jaded, Netflix-enabled Americans back to theaters is a blessing for moviemakers and consumers looking for fresh film experiences. But Jurassic World is an angry movie with a tragic moral: There's no room for story, character, or photographic wonder in the summer-movie gauntlet. A tentpole can either go boom or go home. World combats its own message in schizophrenic fashion. The intent is noble; Trevorrow is a Spielberg kid. He saw Jurassic Park when he was 17, and no doubt was as awestruck by the film as its paleontologist protagonist Alan Grant (played by Sam Neill) was upon seeing his first living brachiosaurus. The movie was a big deal. Jurassic World hopes to be that movie for a new generation. The problem: For all its meta-adoration and criticism, Jurassic World still ends with a genetically modified dinosaur fighting off waves of dinosaurs attacking from land and sea. To enjoy it is to ignore Trevorrow's opening remarks. That's this movie's ultimate message: Give up and submit to the ride.

This is not just an issue with Trevorrow or his blockbuster. Hollywood's cynicism is hitting peak levels and continues to trickle into our multiplexes. Movie studio executives would love to greenlight to discover the next Spielberg or nurture a moderately-sized thrill ride into a big-budget classic. But they also want to make money. There are movies that challenge the balancing act with whirlwind intensity; Christopher Nolan's Inception takes the frustration of imagining and executing action movies and turns it into an action movie. That subtlety is hard to come by. With change and reversion seemingly out of the question, creative types feel compelled to boo and hiss in their movies. Trevorrow employs Jake Johnson to spit his fire. Last month's Tomorrowland lectured audiences in the dangers of apocalyptic disaster movies. And on the Oscar campaign trail for last year's Hollywood satire, Birdman, Alejandro G. Iñárritu just came out and say what the film danced around: superhero movies are "cultural genocide." A few months later, when Birdman won the Academy Award for Best Picture, voters could pat themselves on the back for recognizing great filmmaking. They could make Birdman—isn't that real cinema? And then the next morning, most of the voters returned to their movie studio jobs and pushed sequels, reboots, and $150 million toy adaptions through the pipeline.

Excitement and art aren't mutually exclusive, despite commerce's insistence otherwise. But instead of proving that fact through filmmaking, Jurassic World settles. It's a "yes man" movie. With thinly veiled jokes about focus groups, foreign investors, and the Indominous Rex—a genetically modified monstrosity that stands in for the modern blockbuster—Trevorrow is saying "yes" to Jurassic Park millennials who yearn for the old school. The director also says "yes" to the chastised focus groups by indulging in bombast and bloodshed. An encounter between a stock female character, two pterodactyls, and the aquatic mosasaurus tests the PG-13 violence limitations—the opposite of Spielberg's chomp-and-done Park kills. And there's a third "yes": product. When Williams' iconic theme finally swells into tune, there are no dinosaur money shots in sight. We're soaring over a bustling theme park, complete with gift shops and Margaritaville restaurants. It's Jurassic Roller Coaster Tycoon, and watching Trevorrow play is defeating.

With $200 million and mixed positive reviews, Jurassic World is a hit. It'll become one of the biggest movies of the year and spawn sequels, with Pratt in tow. The franchise, once thought dead, has been reinvented, reimagined, and revived, just like Jurassic Park's dinosaurs. While future movies won't rip through paddocks and rip its audiences to bits, Jurassic World's introspective gripes, masked by mesmerizing blockbuster language, erodes its audiences' critical mind. Building a dinosaur theme park is an arrogant human vision that is destined to fail. The people in Jurassic World did it anyway—it's fun! Building sequels to Jurassic Park was a bad idea, but hell, we loved it the first time, so why not? In Trevorrow's case, cynicism is the frog DNA that fills in Spielberg's base genetics—and it's a lurking disaster whose effects we'll only see down the road. Dr. Ian Malcolm made a perfect case against sequels with two water droplets. Place a drop on the hand and it rolls towards success. Place another the exact same way and it travels backwards. Chaos intervenes. Jurassic World is the second drop. Not so legit.

[viper37]

I disagree. 

http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a35716/jurassic-world-200-million-box-office/

about what?  the title of the core of the article that modern blockbusters lack substance?

[jimmy olsen]

I disagree. 

http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a35716/jurassic-world-200-million-box-office/

about what?  the title of the core of the article that modern blockbusters lack substance?

Most blockbusters, and most movies in general, that have ever been made lack substance, that hasn't changed.  It's just that more blockbusters get made these days in exclusion to other films.  They're looking at the past through rose tinted glasses.

I disagree with this.

And on the Oscar campaign trail for last year's Hollywood satire, Birdman, Alejandro G. Iñárritu just came out and say what the film danced around: superhero movies are "cultural genocide." A few months later, when Birdman won the Academy Award for Best Picture, voters could pat themselves on the back for recognizing great filmmaking. They could make Birdman—isn't that real cinema? And then the next morning, most of the voters returned to their movie studio jobs and pushed sequels, reboots, and $150 million toy adaptions through the pipeline.

[Razgovory]

The author could have taken a page from Spielberg, because I got bored halfway through and quit reading.

[Eddie Teach]

Most blockbusters, and most movies in general, that have ever been made lack substance, that hasn't changed.

Stop hating on Andy Hardy.

[viper37]

I disagree. 

http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a35716/jurassic-world-200-million-box-office/

about what?  the title of the core of the article that modern blockbusters lack substance?

Most blockbusters, and most movies in general, that have ever been made lack substance, that hasn't changed.  It's just that more blockbusters get made these days in exclusion to other films.  They're looking at the past through rose tinted glasses.

I disagree with this.

And on the Oscar campaign trail for last year's Hollywood satire, Birdman, Alejandro G. Iñárritu just came out and say what the film danced around: superhero movies are "cultural genocide." A few months later, when Birdman won the Academy Award for Best Picture, voters could pat themselves on the back for recognizing great filmmaking. They could make Birdman—isn't that real cinema? And then the next morning, most of the voters returned to their movie studio jobs and pushed sequels, reboots, and $150 million toy adaptions through the pipeline.

Well, superhero movies are mostly ok.  They're probably the best of the bunch, and better than many non blockbuster movies.
Jurassic World, however, is simply a dumb movie.

[Siege]

Free market.

Let the people decide what they want to watch.

[Valmy]

Someday breathing oxygen will be called genocide.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Someday breathing oxygen will be called genocide.

It generates carbon dioxide which leads to global warming and the desertification of land inhabited by blameless tribal peoples 


Yeah, I don't like the word being downgraded by overuse either.

[celedhring]

Most blockbusters, and most movies in general, that have ever been made lack substance, that hasn't changed.  It's just that more blockbusters get made these days in exclusion to other films.  They're looking at the past through rose tinted glasses.

I disagree, in the 1970s you had films like The Godfather or One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest being in the top 20 most successful films of the decade. Heck, even the largest blockbusters of the era like Star Wars or Jaws are god damn classics.

There are, to me, several reasons why the average big movie of the 2010s is worse than its counterpart of decades prior.

- Digital effects: I think the era of digital effects has indeed dumbed down the average blockbuster. The reason is simple; when you can easily put on screen anything you can think, there's little incentive to really think much about what you're gonna put on screen. Take Jaws; their mechanical shark was so shit that they had to find ways to make it look scary without showing it. The end result was a classic. Compare the old Star Wars movies with the prequels. Sometimes, being able to do anything you can imagine actually stifles creativity.

- Competition: nowadays theatrical films compete with loads of entertainment: videogames, network TV, cable TV, online entertainment libraries... theatrical film carries a cost premium compared to those alternatives, so it has positioned itself as a "big spectacle" to justify it. 3D tickets, large screens, etc... this just favors a kind of film that leans on visual pizzazz over other considerations. Also, in order to compete with other entertainment, marketing budgets have soared and soared, and the reliance of FX have also increased the price tag of those films to silly levels. This discourages risk taking. Star Wars would not have been made in the 2010s, it was seen as a huge gamble at the time since it was nothing like any other action film that came before. But it carried a relatively modest price tag.

I'm not too bothered about theatrical film in general being of worse quality, though. The world isn't actually becoming a dumber place, there's a reason why we live in the golden age of television. Complex, daring stories that had a place in Hollywood in the past, are picked up by television or streaming companies nowadays. If Puzo had written The Godfather in the 2010s, it would have been produced by HBO.

[Syt]

- Competition: nowadays theatrical films compete with loads of entertainment: videogames, network TV, cable TV, online entertainment libraries... theatrical film carries a cost premium compared to those alternatives, so it has positioned itself as a "big spectacle" to justify it. 3D tickets, large screens, etc... this just favors a kind of film that leans on visual pizzazz over other considerations.

I think that's one of the biggest reasons, especially the rise of home entertainment (VCRs, then DVDs, blu rays and streaming).

Movies would have longer theater runs, because that would be the main way the movie would be available to the viewing public. If you wanted to watch a specific movie you had to find a theater playing it, or be lucky that it came on TV. I recall in the late 80s Star Wars ran on German TV for the first time and it was a huge thing. VCRs changed that balance a fair bit already, and today it's moved even further.

While I love the movie theater atmosphere, I often find that for non-special FX movies I'll rather wait till I can watch them at home. And it's therefore no surprise that much of the high praised drama narration now happens in the form of TV/online series instead of in the cinemas - they probably wouldn't make bank at the bo office, while the home video audience will binge watch through a series.

[Tonitrus]

It was the same here.  One of the big things I've noticed since childhood is that the time-from-theater-to-TV/VCR(now add Netflix/DVD/etc) delay is far shorter than it used to be.  It once could be several months to a year after leaving theaters that a film might make it onto broadcast television or VCR.  And showing the big, most recent blockbuster on network primetime was a big deal.

[Syt]

That's another big change: there would be weeks, months, up to a year till a major movie would come across the ocean. This has completely stopped for major movies, "thanks" to piracy, I presume. I think Star Wars Episode I was the turning point: it came out in the US in May, and was scheduled for an August release in Germany IIRC (which was considered a short delay back then). However, by that time a lot of people had watched the bootleg version. It's the first movie I remember where pretty much everyone even remotely interested had seen the pirated version before it hit the theaters.

[Duque de Bragança]

I think another problem with CGI-heavy movies at home is that they look even worse at home, thanks to the increased resolution of blu-ray or even streaming HD. Yet since digital effects are so much more practical for Hollywood hacks, no stuntsmen, no liabilities, no real script; they are bound to stay.
As for non-special FX movies better seen at home, that can be argued both ways. If I feel like rewatching a Sergio Leone movie, the big screen is much better since Leone knew how to fill his scope.
Same goes for John Woo's Hardboiled, I only loved the movie after watching on the big screen, unlike The Killer.

On the other hand, digital screenings make things easier for cinemas as well. Hell, I've seen a rare Russian (!) 3D version of the Robinson Crusoe in Frankfurt. B&W of course, and they pulled an Eisenstein quote about the importance of 3D.
Still, I'm happy to see some cinemas (not arthouses) can still screen 35 mm prints as well as DCP, in Paris for instance.

[viper37]

I think another problem with CGI-heavy movies at home is that they look even worse at home, thanks to the increased resolution of blu-ray or even streamng HD.

not really that worst.  Well, I haven't tried 4k yet, and don't plan to for another few years, but there's no particular problem for most movies in 1080p.

Yet since digital effects are so much more practical for Hollywood hacks, no stuntsmen, no liabilities, no real script; they are bound to stay.

It always depends on the movie, but just like everything, they can easily go overboard.  However, using CGI instead of traditional special effects has its advantages, in terms of cost reduction and what you can actually do.  Ninja Turtles and Transformers have too much of it.  The second Star Wars trilogy too.  But if you look at Marvel movies, most of them have just the right mix of CGI and live-action.
And it doesn't really reduce the role of stuntspeople, they just change.

As for non-special FX movies better seen at home, that can be argued both ways. If I feel like rewatching a Sergio Leone movie, the big screen is much better since Leone knew how to fill his scope.

I feel they are totally fine on my 55" tv.  I'm not sure what I would gain with a 105".