What's the Matter with the Moviegoers?

Originally posted on July 15, 2006

Moviegoers today aren't what they used to be. They are perfectly willing to spend their hard-earned dough on a ticket to a lousy movie like 'Saw'. Or even 'Hostel', which I haven't bothered to watch. I'm sick of movies that try to push the envelope on how far they can go without making the audience puke.

Today's people are far too desensitized to acts of violence; we are being constantly exposed to many horrific images. Yet these people don't care. Something's seriously wrong if people aren't bothered by such acts of violence, even if it's in a movie.

They do it for shock value, and if the tread keep up, these movies will be tame in comparison to what they bring us in the future. I've read about some horror movies from Japan being so extreme that the DVD distributors are reluctant to even consider bringing them.

What really baffles me is; why aren’t the moviegoers going to the movies that are worth seeing? For instance, ‘V for Vendetta’, I was quite surprised to find myself enjoying it quite a lot. When I saw the preview for it, I thought to myself, must be another one of these anti-Bush movies. Even though I’m not a fan of Bush, but I do get sick of how some filmmakers go overboard on their conspiracy theories. Michael Moore is a good example. As a moderate Liberal, I do find myself embarrassed to see how some of the people who claim to be liberal-minded act out their opinions of their opponents in the public. In my opinion, it’s all about having class, but too many people simply resort to mud-slinging these days from both sides. Back to the movie, I wasn’t too familiar with the background of ‘V for Vendetta’. I dug a bit deeper into it and discovered that it’s based on some graphic novels from the 80s’.

The movie was lucky to be made on a moderate budget of $54 million and grossed $70.5 million in North America. It could have been much better, but I believe it was due to bad marketing strategies. Several movies has gotten some awful marketing, it seems like some people just don’t know how to market a certain type of movie. ‘United 93’ was also made on a low budget of $15 million, but it grossed only $31.4 million domestically. Some people said that we weren’t “ready” and that it was too “soon”. What a bunch of baloney. These are the very same people who went to see far more disgusting duds like ‘Saw’ and ‘Hostel’ which made far more than ‘United 93’ did. A portion of the gross from the movie was given to a charity, but I’m betting that not a lot was given away because people these days are so full of themselves. ‘United 93’ was tastefully done with a large sum of respect to the victims. That movie portrayed these real-life characters in a very powerful and heroic way, while the fictional characters in ‘Saw’ was full of nasty secrets that nobody knew about and some wacko was out to “test” them in such a disgusting manner.

Yes, I am fed up with the moviegoers sending a portion of their weekly paycheck to the untalented filmmakers. What’s wrong with these people? I don’t want to see more of these movies making more money than they deserve. It seems like the moviegoers aren’t able to think for themselves and buy into the Pop Culture as if it’s a requirement. To be honest, most of what the Pop Culture has to offer are crap. They know they can sell any sort of dud because they know how to market it. Just because it may be popular doesn’t mean it must be good. Yes, some of what they have to offer are good, but quite a lot aren’t.

By the way, ‘The Da Vinci Code’ was and is still a disappointment as a standalone movie. The book wasn’t that great either; it was only popular because of the subject surrounding Mary and Jesus. In 10 years, people will be saying, “The Da Vinci what?” when they are being asked about the movie. Many were and are doomed to this type of fate. I reckon it’ll happen to this novel and the movie. Dan Brown, the author has written far superior novels than his last one. ‘Deception Point’ is a good read and would make a good movie. ‘Da Vinci Code’ is a whole different story, and could have been adapted better. The only reason why it made $725,000,000 worldwide is because the book sold 40 million copies. The next adaptation, ‘Angels & Demons’ should be better, as long they don’t screw up the screenplay like they did with ‘The Da Vinci Code’. If they’re going to let the dollar bill be the judge of a movie, then we have a problem.

‘The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe’ grossed around $745 million worldwide, but it was not a great movie, just decent and geared toward the children more than the whole family together. The reason why this movie was a big success was because of its large base of fans from the last 50 years. ‘Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith’ made a good amount, $850 million from around the globe. That’s no small figure, but is the movie any good? Sorry, but I still like the original trilogy better. George Lucas shouldn’t have written the screenplay all by himself. Sure, it had nice special effects and the battles were cool, but the overall experience was disappointing. I imagine it wouldn’t have been too difficult to write some good screenplays for some of these movies, but I guess some people just don’t know how to write.

Maybe they should consider making some movies with deaf characters and have the story revolve around them and with subtitles. Hey, ‘The Passion of the Christ’ made $611 million worldwide and it wasn’t even in English. So why not give it a shot?

Maybe they’ll be actually worth seeing.