Film Fund-amentals: A Guide to the End Days

 First published November 23, 2011

George Lucas thinks that the world will end in 2012. So he must be doing pre-production work on the next Indiana Jones movie and the Star Wars TV project as a bit of insurance, just in case the ancient Mayans prove to be as off the mark as Harold Camping.

Somehow, the thought of Lucas obsessing about the apocalypse may be the best metaphor for the current state of the mainstream film industry. The contradictions of the current system are many, and the stress points are beginning to burble from the strain of too many half-baked ideas and wrong-headed directions. If the film industry were a branch of geology, scientists would be right now hitting the panic button as they bolt from the fault line.

Take for example the deep and abiding faith Hollywood has in the young male demographic model. This audience model has dominated big-budget film making for the past several decades despite overwhelming evidence that it is only a small portion of the potential audience. That’s why some folks insist on viewing the $32.2 million opening weekend of Immortals as a promising sign that the young male viewer is still able to get out of his parents’ basement long enough to watch muscular men in loincloths. OK, the amount it took in wasn’t that fantastic, but its been a slow year and cracking the $30 million mark suddenly looks good.

Until the next weekend when those darn teenage girls (and some of their mothers) blew the scale with the $139.5 million opening of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1. The conventional Hollywood wisdom says that the important audience is boys. The box office has strongly suggested that the girls are a lot more dependable. Despite this evidence to the contrary, conventional Hollywood has dug in its heels and the boys’ club is slated to stay in session no matter what. Obviously, it’s those chicks who are being stubborn.

By and large, the attempt to score a hit movie out of an old TV series has produced grim results at the box office. This is especially true with the rebooting of old TV shows. Since the attention span of many viewers barely lasts through one season, the Bronze Age in television starts around 2005. And if the show was made before color, you might as well be talking about the Neolithic Period.

So why are they doing a film version of Mr. Ed? The simple answer is: Because they are completely out of ideas. It will be a family film but it will be a contemporary family film. I am sure it will be a modern, darker, edgier Mr. Ed. Maybe they can get Quentin Tarantino to direct the film. There could even be a scene where some sleazy Hollywood producer wakes up with Wilbur‘s head in his bed.

Hey, if you want new ideas just go to the movies. Old movies. See something you like, redo it. The remake issue has become a major topic in some circles with critics splitting between the pro and the con. But the critics don’t matter, and the wholesale looting of the archive will continue for the simple reason that nobody in Hollywood wants to take a gamble on anything that might seem “new.” Lots of folks feel safer with remakes. They are sort of like chicken soup for the screen, something you need when you’re sick and miserable and completely incapable of getting together the energy to do anything else.

OK, sometimes the redo works (for example the Coen Brothers take on True Grit) and a lot of times it doesn’t click (take your pick of a long list). And sometimes you end up with such inexplicable efforts such as The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. David Fincher appears determined to do a Swedish film in English and you can’t help but wonder why they simply didn’t dub the original movie and release it wide over here (especially after its huge success in a subtitled version).

The mad drive toward ultra-expensive comic book adaptions continues despite the extremely mixed financial returns. The budgets for these movies keep going up (with a current average of roughly $200 to $250 million per flick). The box office has actually been slipping with a rough global return of $300 to $400 million. A few of these films might break the billion dollar mark. The overwhelming majority will not. The cost is high and the rewards are roughly at the break even mark. So why bother?

Because these movies are big with the young male demographic audience. Oh wait, isn’t this the contradiction we started with? Yep, it is indeed starting to feel like the End Times with the world hopelessly trapped in an endless loop of the same old playing with the monotonous regularity of reruns of M*A*S*H.

Time to go back to “serious” movies. At least on the increasingly rare occasion when Hollywood makes one. And even in that zone of studious self-importance it seems kind of odd. Maybe I just haven’t recovered from seeing some critics refer to the movie J. Edgar as a touching and sensitive treatment on the subject of forbidden love. I never thought that I would live to see that name and those words smashed together in a single sentence. Maybe I’m just having trouble understanding why anyone would even want to devote several hours of heightened sensitivity to the old fart.

Truly, Hollywood is in the final days. So in 2012, I am joining George Lucas in the bunker. I just hope he will let me in. I promise to bring my own canned goods.