Last night I was watching the Dark Knight as a primer for the final of the Batman movie series coming out some date some time soon. I couldn’t help thinking about how many incredibly moral lines there are in the script. We all know the basic Vigilante story line. It covers everything from the hope of a people
“What good does Gotham have when the good people do nothing” to the fragility of the fight between those who do for good and those who do to corrupt
“he wanted to prove that even someone as good as you could fall”.
Words that have meaning are quite valuable, just as the movies these words find themselves in. It’s the stories of people that inspire and reach us to the core, which is why I can’t for the life of me understand the future of film. So many in the industry are struggling to grasp a market that has many likes and dislikes, many interests that are always changing, and many influential factors for all of these. What solidly sells are the stories in which people learn about people, moral issues, daily decisions and their lifetime effects. Sure, they may involve a dash of magical rings, the handing down of curses or fighting crime downtown; but stripped away it’s all about the choices we make and the roles we play at the odds of some hypothetical fate.
A friend and I went into the closing Blockbuster’s down the road, only to find a lack of recently released movies that were worthy of our five dollar bill. Between the box office flops and poorly structured plots of many films over the past year or so, we went home and watched some oldies.
Something inside of me is afraid that once the Batman series, Sherlock Holmes and Harry Potter leave the theatres and movie stores, so too will high quality entertainment and the creative vision behind the development of a film.
I’m afraid that talented actors and crews will begin to hit Broadway ne’er to return to a film role out of a lack of something meaningful to work at constructing or portraying. There’s already quite a few key actors that have been standing on the stage rather than left of screen as of lately.
We’re slowly —maybe rapidly actually— running out of recycled and original ideas to generate to the public for entertainment, culture value and dollar value. “Let’s get a huge budget, blow up some cars and post-produce the thing for 3D. Yeah, that would work.”
Yet there’s no value, no story being told or character to connect with. What happens when the last movie of a book series is filmed and sold? Will Harry Potter have a “Hobbit” equivalent? What happens when Michael Bay isn’t granted another Transformers gig because of budget?
It’s not like making an incredible series is easy or predictable to create and promote. I’m slightly amused that Captain America was forced to sign a 6 movie contract. How far it goes should be interesting. Unfortunately crappy movies tend to have huge budgets, just like incredible movies do. At the end of the day you’ve got to rely on all the pieces involved in the production to get you to the theatre. Casting, score, script, Directing; it’s all got to be good. It’s also got to be solid entertainment value, showing us something we actually want to see.
Just a few thoughts I found worth sharing today. Nothing too enlightening I don’t think, but something to reflect on the next time we see a Pirate’s of the Caribbean 14 trailer and consider the quality that comes from a sucksville reproduction rather than an incredibly skilled recreation or new story.
Nicole's Notepad 