Whether it’s out of casual curiosity or professional concern, many people have been wondering why the box office numbers have been so low—particularly in the past few years. While DVD revenue has gone up considerably, the turnouts in theaters have dwindled. There are a couple of reasons that are cited most often as being the primary causes for poor turnouts, but they are faulty at best; at worst they intentionally misdirect responsibility away from Hollywood and towards the consumer. I believe there are three main factors that have contributed to the decline of cinematic popularity, and all of them originate with the folks bringing films to the masses.
Before I delve into those factors, I want to dispel the current hypotheses circulating in pertinence to low box office numbers. The three main reasons I hear are: tedious advertising before the movie, higher ticket prices, and the fact that more and more people are buying home theater systems.
When I walk out of the theater after a truly fantastic movie, I’m usually too floored to say much, but when I do, I’m talking about what made that movie great. I’m discussing the acting, the cinematography, the plot twists, and the unique moments the movie presented. Most of the folks I go see it with react in a similar—if not as eccentric—manner. At the very least, no one says, “I can’t believe it cost nine bucks to see that!” No one mentions the commercials or ads that took up twenty minutes of our time prior to the feature presentation.
The opposite is true after a bad film. Most of the time I’m just bitterly peeved that I had to endure the last sixty minutes of a failure simply because of my monetary and temporal investment in it. Other than a few laughs at the blaring shortcomings and the chance of an easy segue with a difficult date, the movie has been a complete waste. It is at the end of said bad movie that the complaints about admission costs abound. At that point we start complaining about the commute to the theater, the gas prices, and even the time it took to get ready! Most everyone is a little more disenchanted with movies in general, and many are reluctant to endure the same torment the following weekend.
Simply put, the rising cost of admission and the twenty minutes of shameless advertising are quickly forgotten (and maybe forgiven) when they lend to a pleasurable entertainment experience. But when you endure the hardships only to be greeted with a silver screen debauchery, you have no choice but to feel pillaged.
The other excuse given for poor turnouts is that folks are buying home theater systems and watching the films at home. I find this to be a weak argument for two reasons. First, people don’t wait for good things in general—movies are no exception. If there’s a great film out, people aren’t going to wait eight months for the DVD release so they can watch it at home. Second, I’ve worked retail in the electronics world before, and while the cost of a home theater has become much more affordable in the past few years, it is by no means cheap. The average family has a very difficult time managing to buy a quality, five-point-surround-sound-system, let alone a large television and a room that will effectively maximize the sound and picture. Suffice to say, even those who can afford the best a Circuit City or Best Buy has to offer will not begin to approach the atmosphere or scale of a commercial stadium-seated movie theater.
The cinema gives you an experience that only a few very wealthy folks can afford to put in their living rooms. More people might be buying surround sound and bigger TV’s, but in no way can those systems hold a candle to what a true theater is capable of.
Now that I’ve said what isn’t the cause for the Hollywood slump, let me offer three reasons that are large contributors: failing star power, poor content, and money.
Once upon a time, stars in Hollywood were wondrous enigmas. They were recognizable faces portraying our favorite heroes or villains, and they embodied the characteristics of the characters they played. Their lives off-screen were a glamorous mix of rumors, gossip, and dashing public appearances. There were biographies and news articles about them, but there wasn’t a steady flow of coverage about their lives. Apart from a few incidents of controversy or illegal acts, they seemed to be almost another class of human. Their celebrity status set them apart from the audience, which allowed them to be truly believed in their roles while also being separated from them.
In past years, however, star perception has taken a turn for the worse. Because of the internet, the paparazzi, and an insatiable news media, audiences know more about their stars than they ever wanted to. While the celebrity status still exists, it’s not automatically granted, as much as it is hyped by publicity and willingly offered by fans. Stars are no longer mysterious and aloof—they are people just like everyone else with similar problems—albeit generally with more money. The ability of a star to be distanced from his/her off-screen persona is dying out. Tom Cruise is a good example.
An A-List actor for over a decade, Tom was blasted because of his off-screen antics and zealous support for scientology. I’m not sure how wide-spread the boycott was, but I knew a number of people who refused to see War of the Worlds simply because he was in it! They didn’t like him as a person, and they couldn’t separate him from his character.
The biggest example I saw was when Doug Liman, director of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, said he was hesitant to put some of the more racy scenes in the movie because of the news and rumors about Brad, Angelina, and Jennifer. Accusations of adultery were flying through the air, and he feared it might look bad if Brad and Angelina shared some believably intimate scenes. It was absurd! Why should a director have to worry about his actors’ personal lives when making a creative decision? If it works in the film, use it! If it makes the film better, or adds to the depth of the characters, put it in! A film should not be dictated by the lives of its participants, and Liman shouldn’t have questioned his content because of factors that had no bearing on the story.
Fortunately, he kept the scenes in, but it’s still sad that he had to think about it. There is a disenchantment taking place in how the public views Hollywood. Stars aren’t commanding the audiences they used to (and in some cases they are actually driving audiences away), but the producers don’t notice that. They still fork out $15 for an A-List actor, toss them into a faulty plot with some CGI effects and expect to make money. But that actor isn’t drawing $15 million in ticket sales anymore, and that will continue to be the case. Audiences are getting smarter, and with so many films to choose from, they are going to pick the ones made from quality as opposed those fabricated by celebrity and eye candy.
I’ve briefly touched on the second point already; that Hollywood has a serious content problem. The foundation of a good film is a good story, so why is it that so many films lack a decent plot—if they even have one at all? Just look at some of the more recent movies that found some success at the box office: King Kong, Ray, Walk the Line, The Passion, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lord of the Rings, The Bourne Identity. What do they have in common? The stories were written for them already! They were either biographies or novels that were written and adapted for the screen. Comic book films have become popular lately as well, and while those required some plot construction, the premises, characters, and basic angles of the stories were created by someone else decades ago. I know there’s supposedly nothing new under the sun, but come on! Why do we see the same regurgitated material with different actors?
The misuse of technology is one of the biggest reasons for this. From talking pictures to Technicolor to CGI, every time there is a true technological advance in cinema every film company jumps on board and tries to get their finger in the pie. When Star Wars hit theaters in ’77, it introduced the next stage of special effects and lead to the creation of Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic (ILM). Many movies that came after that were essentially showcases for the new brand of special effects with only the faintest of storylines to hold them together. The same thing happened after The Matrix came out. It took the computer effects that films like Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park pioneered and brought them to the next level. So what happened? We immediately saw a rash of Matrix clones and a subsequent outbreak of films that took advantage of the new frontier without forging a coherent through-line to get them to the end of it. It’s almost as if producers find an effect they want to use and then look for a story to build around it. …And it shows.
Tradition is the other big factor that contributes to stagnant material. There is a set standard for how to write a script. According to Hollywood, every script needs to have certain plot points (exposition, rising action, crisis, climax, falling action, resolution, etc..,) and be a certain length depending on the genre. It’s a formula—a formula that guarantees repetition, predictability and limitation. In order to compensate for this, the writers need plot devices and twists to make it interesting. Some of these appeal to immediate gratification, (cheap laughs, nudity, big explosions, pointless car chases, shock-value-graphic violence) while others are simply far-fetched and disjointed solutions and scenarios that result in an empty feeling after the film is done. In addition, scripts must be a held to a certain length because apparently we as an audience don’t have the intelligence or attention-span to follow a more involved story. Now there are exceptions to these limitations (Braveheart, Titanic, The Empire Strikes Back, Lord of the Rings) and for the most part they have been successful.
Scripts that don’t have plot points in the right places or venture off the well-worn path of predictability rarely see the light of day; many of the ones that do are independent or “artistic” films that find limited exposure. This creates a polarized effect. Instead of having a solid, relatable film with a fresh perspective, you have your choice of either tasteless mediocrity, or incomprehensible art.
The reason that studios look to comfortable formulas is also the third reason why Hollywood is failing in general: money. Movies are a part of show business; you can’t have the “show” without the “business”. I understand this. The problem is that Hollywood has allowed itself to become so inefficient and greedy that it needs a lot more money to stay in business. Not only that, but money has become the focus. Films are nothing more than sources of income; it doesn’t matter what’s inside as long as it sells. Sequels are a good example of this. Why are sequels rarely as good as the original? Because the original was the telling of a good story that happened to resonate with a lot of people. The sequel was simply taking recognizable elements from the original and trying to concoct a plot around them. It’s the same principle as star-power. The people who see movies are no longer considered an “audience”…they are a “market”. And if there is a market for an actor or a character, Hollywood packages the product and ships it out as soon as possible.
The market has to be big enough to cover the costs of the movie, so the film has to appeal to the largest denominator. This means that, as a market, we won’t see but so much deviation from the basic formulas. The product can’t be too specialized because not as many people will buy it. The problem is that oftentimes the specialized products are the better ones. Instead of having an average film that gets moderate reception from one million people, Hollywood could make an exceptional film that has a tremendous impact on 500,000 people and alienates 500,000 people.
Look at The Passion. That was a very specialized work that was guaranteed to be accepted and appreciated by a certain group of people and discarded and criticized by another group of people. Fortunately for Mel Gibson, the group of people impacted by the film was large enough to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in ticket sales. But Gibson had to invest his own money to get the project done; Hollywood wasn’t about to take that chance.
Hollywood’s need to find mass appeal is the main reason we see so many humdrum presentations, and the reason Hollywood needs to make so much money is to cover its astronomical expenses. Many of the films out there cost well over $100 million to make, which means that the studios need to make $100 million-plus to be successful. Why are films so expensive? It’s Hollywood!
As I already mentioned, a good A-list actor will cost $15 million right off the bat. Anyone with name-recognition is going to command well over a million dollars as well, and the basic rate for even an extra is hundreds of dollars a day—plus expenses. Unions ruin the system as well. Just as in every other market, they jack up the base rates for everyone from the director to the grips (the guys that run around duct taping things and fetching coffee). In addition to ridiculous rates, the unions also create an artificially selective market. There are hundreds of thousands of actors and laborers who would gladly work on a film for next to nothing, but they can’t get in the door because of the Catch-22 of labor unions; you have to be involved in two big productions to be eligible for the union, but to work on two big productions you have to already be a part of the union. There are some ways to get around this, but, as usual, it’s mostly about who you know. –And if you think about it, “Who you know” doesn’t exactly guarantee quality or competence…which explains even more why the system is generating so much garbage.
Another huge expense is simply the vast number of people involved in a film. Have you watched the credits? There are countless names and titles involved in something that lasted only two hours! I’ve worked on sets before and I know that there is a need for a lot of those people. To get a great finished product, you need every detail to be great as well, and that means specialized talent. But why do you need to pay a grip thirty dollars an hour to hold a filter when there’s a perfectly good actor loafing in his trailer? He’s got two arms doesn’t he? You’re telling me he doesn’t have the skills needed to hold a filter in a specific place during a take? Or is it simply that Hollywood has constructed an artificial hierarchy and status ladder that separates the people working on a film from the people merely appearing in a film?
Now, it may seem like having more people on the set would decrease the time and difficulty of shooting a scene, but it’s actually just the opposite. More people means more schedules to coordinate, more time to communicate ideas, more provisions, more space, more time to set-up and tear-down, and far more confusion in general.
There are plenty more extraneous costs that go into making a film that I won’t go into. Normally it wouldn’t matter to me at all what a studio pays to get a film produced, but when all the unnecessary costs mean that the movie has to make a fortune for the studio to just break even, and that in turn means that I’m going to be subjected to a lackluster product that is trying to cater to everyone in the country so the studio can get their money, then yes, it matters to me.
Hollywood has become like the folks who predict the weather: they get it right about 10% of the time and the rest is just a waste.
Movies will continue to endure, if for no other reason than increasing DVD sales. Casually watching a mediocre movie in the comfort of your own home isn’t half as bad as going to a theater with the expectation of a great experience. People buy movies for a collection or as gifts, and with companies like Netflix it only costs a buck to see what (if anything) you’ve been missing. Hollywood needs to stop pointing at audiences and start looking to their products for the reasons behind the decline in ticket sales. Where are the good, original stories of our time? Hollywood has none, so they decide to turn to controversial issues, politics, and regurgitated comedies to put people in theaters.
There needs to be a change, and there will be. If the studio executives don’t recognize the shift, they will be replaced by visionaries who understand and relate to the audiences they are trying to reach. But make no mistake. The cause of Hollywood’s fall is not home theaters or higher ticket prices. The cause is the combination of saturated politics, artists who got where they are because of who they know, and a misplaced emphasis on “stars” who are quickly falling to earth and taking movie sales with them.
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