What a shitty, shitty few years Hollywood has been having. Billions of dollars in revenue from movies that appeal to 15-year-old boys high on energy drinks and lacrosse rapes have effectively drained all of the blood from intelligent storytelling by rendering it impotent, with very few exceptions notwithstanding. Don't believe me? Here's a list of things I just pulled off the top of my head.
- Johnny Depp has played the same character six times now (Jack Sparrow x4, Tonto, Mad Hatter).
- Arnold Schwarzenegger looks like my grandfather and the world hates him now.
- The Expendables is a profitable franchise.
- Twilight and Hunger Games are blatantly redundant.
- Sequels and remakes that beat their own concepts to death consistently still dominate at the box office, despite their quality.
Movies
Don't get me wrong on what I'm saying here. I love movies. I wish that I could act or direct or wash Tom Cruise's feet on the set of Mission Impossible 9: Xenu Contingency. But I'm not pretty or able to take a goddamn Polaroid, and Tom Cruise will likely drop me into an erupting volcano for having mentioned his name here before I'll ever be allowed on a movie set somewhere.
I love all kinds of movies, though predominantly psychological mind-benders, action, and horror (even though horror is a dead genre). But cinematic innovators are rarely rewarded for their efforts if the fruits of their labor aren't in 3D or involve a man in a cape.
Most people had no idea who Christopher Nolan was until he revived the Batman franchise (and fuck you, Joel Schumacher, for trying to kill it by turning the Dark Knight into a gay joke). Yet Nolan had already made several truly masterful movies (in my opinion) such as Following, Memento, and The Prestige. Once he had this Hollywood credibility, he could go on to make movies like Inception and whatever the fuck else he wants to.
My somewhat point is that movies are supposed to be a unique experience: I love the Batman franchise because it reminds me of my childhood, for better or worse. I like action and horror movies because they are usually simple fun escapism. More than anything, I like movies that I consider thoughtful, as in thought-provoking and spark a conversation afterward. But your experience may be different entirely, which is fine so long as you experience something. But we are rarely afforded such experiences anymore for a lack of Hollywood creativity.
Stephen Spielberg, George Lucas, Ron Howard, and many more well-respected Hollywood insiders are predicting the inevitable death of traditional filmmaking. This is because of what we consume: remakes, superheroes, reality TV, and celebrity gossip.
Remakes can be brilliant but rarely are. Extending classic franchises to modern audiences (Star Wars) usually doesn't impress, either. I like superhero movies, but the fascination with them is preventing movie studios from really investing in anything else. I lament the fact that most of the movies coming from the Marvel comic universe are all the same: a huge budget, heroes with obvious weaknesses doing hero shit against some bad guy with obvious weaknesses doing bad guy shit.
Worse still, many of these movies are rarely getting a script worth draping over a public toilet seat to shit through the center of, yet continually make box office records simply off of character popularity, the actors involved, and/or the amount of shit blowing up between the opening and closing credits.
I liken this to the music industry; boy bands and Justin Bieber are not widely considered musical innovators and are certainly not pushing any boundaries, but their popularity cannot be denied.
In either media, the attention given to the popular trends dictates where the collective focus (see also: money) is shifted, which is capitalism, and can be a good thing. But now this trend is choking out other forms of the given art before it ever has a chance to sparkle and gain traction.
This is leading to the homogenization of every facet of our consumable entertainment.
Reading
We've all but given up on reading, as much as it pains me to write that. I love reading and am willing to accept that many people only do it on an e-reader. But reading used to be a recreational activity. Now people only do it when they don't have access to the Internet or a TV, like on a train or plane or while driving.
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| I wouldn't read and drive. That's just stupid. |
Reading forces you to use your mind and be creative, as in to create the passages in the book in your mind. Reading may even lead to writing, another skill that the human race is abandoning. Understand that I am biased due to the fact that I am a grammar Nazi. That aside, there is no excuse for how poorly people tend to write nowadays, even in professional environments.
I won't even begin to start talking about how people text. Suffice it to say, texting (in collusion with Twitter) has castrated our language and eliminated punctuation outright. But I digress; that's an entirely separate blog that I've yet to write.
The downward trend of reading when not forced by a teacher to do so definitely relates to our movie-borne retardation. Producers seemingly cannot read a book without saying to themselves: "Hey! This would make a great fucking movie! And I haven't ejaculated in the face of embraced a novelist's vision for a while now, so let me buy the rights to their hopes and dreams."
They buy the concept from the author (who incorrectly assumes that his or her vision will be treated with care), curb-stomp it's purpose and meaning into a cookie-cutter so that it is as homogenous as possible for a target demographic and barely recognizable to its creator, then hand it off to a director and some actors for a collective gang-raping until it is pregnant with publicity, hype, and money.
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Oh my God! That's how movies are made?!
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Look, all I'm asking is to please just read a book from time to time. See if you learn some new words. Read the original text from which a movie you love comes from to see whether or not the book was better (I'll answer that for you: the book is always better).
Start small if you don't really read before you take on Kurt Vonnegut or Gravity's Rainbow. Allow your mind to create and be creative rather than allowing popular culture to constantly dry hump your imagination into submission like ol' Uncle Jimmy used to do to you.
Reading gives you the script; the rest is up to the movie studio of your mind.
Television
Abandon all hope if you regularly consume popular television programming. I'm talking primarily about so-called "reality TV." First, we all know by now that it is not, in fact, reality. There are producers, directors, scriptwriters, etc. for all of these shows. My favorite target is the Kardashian clan, which has done more in its existence to undermine humanity from jump.
Kim, the most "famous" of the lot became famous after befriending cultural vacuum Paris Hilton and banging Brandy's brother, better known as Ray J, on a homemade sex tape. Mind you, this sex tape was likely leaked in a purposeful manner by her own mother, Kris Jenner. Blah, blah, blah, then she marries some NBA nobody in a completely-staged wedding that attracted Super Bowl-like viewership numbers. This means that we as people knew that we were being fed bullshit and we ate it up bare-fisted.
Blah, blah, blah, pregnant, Kanye, Lamar Odom, Bruce Jenner's transformation into Joan Rivers, failed clothing lines (No shit? You mean you didn't go to school for this? Oh, yeah. You didn't go to school for anything.), that one asshole who married the only hot one and gets by simply on the fact that he's rich (I want to be rich so fucking badly so that I too can shatter my brandy snifter on my partner's head), and so on.
'Jersey Shore,' 'The Real World,' and everything else that MTV does is shit (not to mention completely devoid of music). The only people who watch 'The Voice' are people who want to see if Cee-Lo's T-Rex arms are long enough to reach the end of his armrests or if Christina Aguilera has finally eaten Adam Levine. No one really watches 'American Idol' anymore besides 20-year-old overweight flag corps girls who dream of breaking free from the daily grind of being a cashier at the Piggly Wiggly.
(Speaking of Adam Levine: is Maroon 5 a real band with other human members? I still can't hear any real instruments in their songs, just synthesizers and drum machines behind Levine's voice. What the hell do the other guys do? I think that this is a Nine Inch Nails scenario.)
I digress. I stress this most hallowed of realizations: this is what our children are watching. These are their heroes. This is what they see as acceptable behavior. Let's be honest; the majority of productive members of society are not watching any of this shit with any regularity. Keyword: productive. The adults who do watch this shit have likely also appeared on 'Cops.' These shows are marketed towards our kids. '16 and Pregnant?' 'Teen Moms?' We really don't mind showing our kids this shit, much less watching ourselves?
Honey Boo Boo?
Dance Moms?
Duck Dynasty?
Swamp People?
Ax Men?
The Real Housewives of (insert festering dumpster here)? (and most of these fuckers aren't even married. So what are they the housewives of?)
Are our lives this fucking boring?
If we don't change this soon, our kids will believe that Kanye West represents what it takes to be a man and how to treat others. They will believe that money and fame will come from banging a D-list black guy and handing the DVD over to their mothers. They will believe that they need not learn how to play an instrument because "there's an app for that." They have already lost the ability to spell and adhere to traditional grammar. Almost none will ever write a sentence by hand past high school. They will believe that the only movies that exist are half-billion-dollar bastardizations of toys that pre-date their existences or irrelevant superheroes. (No one gives two fucks about Iron Man or Thor. Even the nerds know that these superheroes collectively suck a bouquet of dicks.)
In a nutshell, the angels have sounded their trumpets. The entertainment Armageddon is upon us, and Bruce Willis can't save us from it any longer.
