I still somewhat consider myself an entertainment geek and an artist of sorts. Since I first saw Jurassic Park at the big screen back at 1994 I've been dreaming of lots of things, one of them being the career of a film-making effect artist. As I've stated before a lot of that dreaming owes it's existence to creative geniuses like Stan Winston and Michael Crichton as well as the creatures that weren't some fictional aliens, dragons or unicorns but real living beings as tangible as a tiger or an elephant. I still write scripts occasionally and make drawings of my ideas because I enjoy the process. But lately my passion towards cinema as a format has taken a severe plummet. Explaining the reason behind that is far from simple because it would have to be directed towards groups of mixed moviegoers and fanatics who have their own personal reasons to love and hate movies. Yet it is worth addressing.
Let us start with a word that I believe anyone with a decent IQ understands well enough; storytelling. As a term it's meaning nowadays frustrates the heck out of me as a film fan. Stories have been around as long as humanity itself has existed, ranging from cave paintings and stone carvings to all sorts of writing. Humans are social creatures and their drive to communicate has travelled with them right to the modern day. There are many formats aside text that we utilize to express messages such as dance, comic books and moving images, the last one having evolved from being a mere recording of a living space to something that is way more technical.
I can't help but wonder where exactly our kind has gone so wrong as to nearly forgetting the actual art behind story in movies? Just what exactly do I mean with the claim? To try to demonstrate it I'm going to use some examples that apparently belong to the same genre as our beloved franchise.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC6UW-I5nXc#wshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcc2hzHdL7o#wshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZeWtfDsxXc#wshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05nZFA2bf4g#http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmqSbpaVYZc#http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGSaL8Zw9rc#wshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxUwL4-qvtg#What am I trying to prove by showing these trailers? Why do I even bother saying anything? Well, from a personal standpoint the meaning behind them is disrespectful.......for all the wrong reasons. You see, there is a reason for why this kind of entertainment exists and a lot of the people who made it know it just as well as I do. A moronic demand leads to a moronic supply. It wouldn't surprise me if many of these film-makers actually originate from the audience that keeps paying money to watch this garbage, the biggest reason for why it remains garbage. You pay on garbage, you get garbage. Yeah, I just called it garbage, shame on me. I know that there are always people who are passionate in disagreeing with points that oppose their personal form of entertainment. But the thing is, not everyone can appreciate something that is essentially stupid the same way. Why? Not everyone has to enjoy stupidity to enjoy something. I must be a crazy troll for rejecting what is essentially a popular trend.
When it comes to potential, which one of the two do you prefer;
- Fascinating forms of prehistoric wildlife that do what the gene pool has made them do since their conceiving being encountered by flawed but competent human beings.
- Convenient, personality void killing machines encountered by convenient cannon fodder morons, red shirts and blow-up models that use them as target practice.
Does a good story really detract from the entertaining aspects of a movie? If something is boring or dumb to a target audience there is always a reason that should be learned. Let's assume that I was a guy who had an idea for a dinosaur movie, a really good idea too, and wanted to make it a reality. All of the bureaucratic effort aside, I would succeed in making the production happen. It wraps up and my beloved homage to what I grew up with has been filmed and given it's necessary special effects to make it sell. Right? As good as the idea and execution appears I suddenly find it all thrashed to bits by bored critics and childish people alike. Despite it raking in a decent amount of money in relation to it's budget I can't help but feel a tad let down by the whole ordeal as a passionate artist. What exactly went wrong, it all made sense on paper. It's not a terrible movie because I seriously put my heart behind the story and tried to be original. Eventually the question surfaces.
Just who exactly was I trying to please with my product? There are so many different preferences for the same subject as society itself comprises of divided groups, in this case in a geekdom that you didn't expect to be as divided. So it appears that I merely forced my own view of a perfect dinosaur movie to the market and ended up colliding with the other perceptions of one.
Undeterred, I go back to the drawing board and spawn a sequel after doing research about those other group preferences to make sure that the execution fits them. The production wraps up and the new movie is released. Guess what? The same thrashing happens yet again and I quit as a film-maker. What went wrong this time? In trying to please those other tastes I completely forgot the importance of storytelling and ended up delivering something that only works as a forced gimmick to please a low denominator. This time a different question arose. Just
what exactly was I trying to please?
Lowest common denominators and gimmicks make storytelling a forced excuse in meaning, a disease that threatens to turn film to a disappointing shadow of what it can be. That kind of aim isn't exactly coherent. Yet that's what modern audiences pay for and the current young generations may have even grown up learning to treat the story of film as an excuse to justify such a gimmick. That fate lacks standard and we should all do our homework instead of running away from it.
My personal frustration thereby originates from something not wanting to translate to a person with different preferences. I love old school puppet effects, novels and visual artistry because even in their simpler form they still translate better to someone who grew up with them to appreciate them for what they are, nothing more and nothing less. I know that some will identically state their love of computer animation(I know not all of it is bad) and entertainment made by the likes of The Asylum which doesn't prove nor disprove the point that I'm trying to bring across.
Production quality alone doesn't make storytelling educated, only a good story. Past or present form, it's still the same problem. Audiences can and do lack standards. And those(now larger) audiences are what Hollywood and smaller companies alike deliver to. Why? Easy money from easy gimmicks. All too easy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYOYZLmK1sw#wsWhat do you expect from movies? How do you want to be entertained? And at what cost?
