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A future of Box Office Bombs?


Freya Black

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I just don't know what the marketing people were on when they planned this $200-mil film's campaign...

 

What has anyone seen or heard about this film before its release? That it was from the team who brought us the Pirates films. Well guess what, people might want to see a new Pirates film (I do, I'm a sucker for these movies), but why would they give a damn about a pseudo western made by the same people?

 

Instead of putting the emphasis on, you know, the actual film and how it offered something different from the Pirates films, they went completely the other way and advertised it as a film which may have been Pirates 5 but instead was set in the Far West. I almost got the feeling they had started developing the next Pirates film and at the last minute decided to make it about cowboys and Indians instead.

 

Seriously, the only thing I heard about the actual film was from critics going on about how clichéd Depp's performance was and how his co-star was a nobody coming out of nowhere.

 

Way to go Disney. Now back to the drawing board and make Pirates 5 happen.

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Apparently confirmed by Kodak...

 

More here: http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?showtopic=60494&p=392495

Yes, I just saw that now. How did I miss it first time round :rolleyes:

 

But this is far from the first instance of people burned by" if-it-sounds-too-good-to-be-true-it-probably-is" video limping back to film acquisition.

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I don't think that's very true.

 

The modern options - Alexa, F65, even the Canon C series - are perfectly capable of producing pictures that are extremely satisfactory for narrative features. So is film, fine, but I don't consider that there's any automatic assumption that it's better anymore.

 

I would suspect if anything this is a political or promotional move. The Star Wars films that were not shot on film are famously unpopular. Because they were shot on early electronic cinematography equipment, they also look like they were shot on video. But it doesn't necessarily follow that any forthcoming Star Wars films will be bad, or that they'll look like that, regardless of what they're shot on.

 

It's a promotional move. They're trying to distance themselves from the video-originated instalments. It's nothing to do with the pictures and it's not logically valid, of course, but hey, welcome to advertising.

 

P

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Apparently Disney seem to agree with a lot of you

 

(Sorry if you've heard this before)

 

http://au.ign.com/articles/2013/08/07/star-wars-episode-vii-a-newer-hope

 

Somebody else said episodes VII VIII and IX are also going to be shot on film.

Can anybody confirm that?

 

I'm not sure what Star Wars has to do with this topic. As much as the fans disaprove of the more recent films, none of them were, to my knowledge, "bombs".

 

Not to get too sidetracked here, but I think a lot of people really missed the point of the Star Wars films; they were designed as a new "anti-war" mythology for preteens and older in the wake of the Vietnam War, such that when those children grew up to become parents themselves, then they could introduce their kids to a new set of films aimed at them with the same anti-war theme coursing through it; ergo the newer "prequels" were deliberately made to be what they are.

 

I think there's enough Star Wars culture to assure that franchises vitality in the hands of Disney.

 

I think the people who are going to have problems in the future is the American and European audience (not sure about Japan), and the comic book genre.

 

One or the other has to grow up, unless Hollywood and the media publishers want to keep the present domestic audience in the mindset of immature males (grade school to mid 30s), and I don't see that happening.

 

I think the bigger audience that used to be mainstream America, Europe and the Pacific, have given up on movies and TV altogether, and the audience that Hollywood relies on now is pretty fickle about what they'll go see.

 

And, to quote Yoda; "That, is why you fail."

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I'm not disputing your assertion here, George, but for the sake of the discussion, who exactly do you include in this demographic: "I think the bigger audience that used to be mainstream America, Europe and the Pacific, have given up on movies and TV altogether" ?

 

I'm just interested to hear your views about it, because I never had the impression that anyone had given up on movies. Unless maybe you meant "movies" as in "going to the cinema".

 

As far as personal experience goes, I live in Dublin (Ireland, not Ohio). The two main cinema chains (Cineworld and Odeon) here are busier than ever. One of them (the latter) even recently broke the all-time daily attendance record in UK / Ireland for that chain. That was around 5 or 6 months ago. And the main demographics in those cinemas are still families with two parents and one / two children.

 

Also, here's an interesting link : https://www.movieguide.org/news-articles/who-goes-to-the-movies.html which suggests that the movie-going population (US/Canada) has actually gotten older in recent years, despite the surge of comic-book movies.

 

Edit : I'm also going to throw that in there, just for the sake of doing it: http://www.mpaa.org/resources/5bec4ac9-a95e-443b-987b-bff6fb5455a9.pdf

Edited by Nicolas Courdouan
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Well, I could be dead wrong then, but here in the US, or at least where I grew up, the audience has become more fractured and youth oriented regardless of the movie I go to see. The exception are children/family films where parents of all ages bring their kids, and there's usually a couple of groups of teenagers group dating who also sit in that audience.

 

To me that's a far cry from the audiences I used to know who were part time workers, or singles or older empty nest couples that went and caught a film with name talent. Back then the audience, to my eyes at least, seemed to be the late 20s to mid 50s demographic.

 

Now it seems like the main audience over the last 20 years has been the preteen to 30 market.

 

Like I said on other threads, you don't see dramas, romances or mysteries anymore. You see comedy-action. There used to be a time when movies ran in theatres for a year. That's unrealistic today, even by my personal view, but the gist here is that the movies were good enough that people didn't mind taking their day off to go and splurge on a matinee of something that didn't have CGI robots and/or superheros delivering zingers left and right as they beat the s__t out of the bad guys.

 

You know, maybe those days are permanently gone, and maybe the population has just gotten big enough that comic book movies for immature men are here to stay because more of them are coming of age, and so forth.

 

However, I think there's a bigger, more thoughtful, audience that wants something a little more down to Earth, so to speak.

 

Hey look, I grew up with Star Wars, Star Trek, Chris Reeves Superman, and all the rest. I love a good, and I do mean GOOD film that has sci-fi and/or superheros in it. But I don't see good films hitting the theatres. I see garbage.

 

It's commercially successful garbage, but it's still garbage. Like I stated earlier in this thread, I have a hard time believing that a middle class couple is going to fire up the latest Spiderman reboot years from now for a quiet family moment in front of the TV.

 

But that's just me.

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You know, if somebody asked me, my first reaction would probably be to say the exact same thing as you just did. That we see more and more mindless films being put out, and that those movies strike a chord with the younger audiences, who therefore give more money to the studios so they can put even more mindless films out, etc etc.

 

However, looking at the numbers, I just think we all have a tendency to judge the situation a tad quicker than we should, and to rely on our personal fears rather than the cold hard facts. In other words, I'm afraid we are turning into old farts (no offense meant, I'm actually smiling as I type this).

 

Certainly there are more CGI movies out there than before, more 3D crap, more comedies that all look the same (it still amazes me that both "The World's End" and "This is the End", two apocalyptic comedies, could be released on the same damn week...).

 

But are films really less good than before? I don't know... If Jaws came out today with a CGI shark, would you classify it as a good film, or as a mindless CGI thrill? Blockbusters have always attracted the masses, since the 70s, and the more serious, thought-provoking films have always been the ones doing less well at the box office, and attracting "older" people (I'm referring to the late twenties - late sixties demographic here).

 

Not two weeks ago I went to see Breathe In, by Drake Doremus. The screen was packed (around 250 seats), the average attendee could have been around 45 or so, but there were still a good amount of younger couples enjoying a simple, romantic drama on their night out.

 

So, even though it is certainly easy to feel that audiences are younger and dumber than before, when I look at the numbers and actually take in my surroundings when going to the movies, I think I'm just plain wrong about the whole situation. We just need to have more faith in the people's ability to decide what movies are worth encouraging or not. There are also a lot of teenaged movie enthusiasts, and a lot of "old" action movies aficionados out there.

 

Let's not forget that piracy probably hurts Fast and Furious 6 a lot more than it does a movie like Breathe In. Movie enthusiasts are willing to spend their money on films they consider worth paying for. The average fan of F&F 6 would probably just download the film and watch it on their 60" flat TV instead.

 

Bottom line: I think cinema's doing alright and we just worry too much :) .

Edited by Nicolas Courdouan
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It could be, and I do think piracy has put a huge ding in the industry, but I'm not sure that that alone is a factor. When I was younger I used to see promos for all kinds of films. Now, just cruising the net, all the flash ads are aimed at some kind of action film with comedy, or vice versa. I've never heard of the film you're talking about it.

 

All I can tell you is that the last several times I tried going to the movies the selection was just poor as hell. Even the so called romantic comedies feel like they were written by a bunch of school girls.

 

More power to Ireland. I'm glad things are doing well there. But here, I don't know. Whether it's because Pixar, Apple and Lucasfilm are all within a 45 minute drive from my house or what, I have no idea, but there's CGI coming out of the theatres like there's no tomorrow.

 

And LA isn't any better with the aforementioned rom-coms I talked about. You don't see films like "9 to 5" or "Captain Blood" or "Foul Play" or "The Four Seasons" or "The Goodbye Girl" anymore.

 

Now it's all DC/Marvel/American-anime-CGI adaptations. Hey look, Thor wasn't a "bad" film as such, but it wasn't a "good" film, was aimed at an audience that needs to be educated in good film, and, in the end, had all the expected pyrotechnics. With a little elbow grease I could have written that script in my sleep. Compare "Thor" to the original "TRON", and I dare anyone to tell me that films have not regressed.

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I mostly agree with you. All the trailers and TV spots we see advertise the exact same kind of movies: Pacific Rim, GI Joe, etc. And that is because -and I'm not teaching you anything here - they are the movies with the biggest marketing budgets.

 

What I'm doubtful of however, is that those movies are the only ones enjoying any kind of success. The other films still attract audiences, even though they're not doing it with loud bangs and TV ads celebrating their first billion dollars at the BO.

 

I mean, of course I can't speak for the whole world, and don't misunderstand me : even the Irish multiplexes have 9 screens out of 10 crammed with 2D or 3D screenings of The Wolverine and Despicable Me 2 at the moment. I'm just saying I'm not sure that the lack of exposure - by comparison - of the smaller films is necessarily hurting those films, because maybe 90 - 95% (I just pulled that number out of my arse) of these smaller films' audiences are people who pay to watch movies on the silver screen, and because their smaller budgets often afford them to do well enough at the box office to keep the filmmakers' careers afloat.

 

I mean I'm pretty sure that in May 1977, the only movie you ever heard about on TV was Star Wars. And who was Star Wars aimed at ? Mostly teenagers and young adults. And who was frowning upon Star Wars as some form of mindless entertainment ? Most of the people outside that age group.

 

The situation is still exactly the same. Replace "Star Wars" with "Transformers" and "1977" with "2013", and you get today's situation. The only thing is that this time around, we're the guys outside the age group... I'm not saying that Transformers is better or worse than Star Wars, I'm saying that it is the big budget sensation for today's younger audiences. And by all means they have all rights to enjoy a mindless flick with giant robots milling at each other for 2.5 hours. And instead of a scantily-clad Leia they get an equally scantily-clad Megan Fox, just to get those hormones up to an acceptable level - for a 14-year-old kid.

 

Now the only thing is that, certainly, movies are not allowed enough screen time to make a lasting impression on their audience nowadays, and they are quickly replaced by another, bigger, louder remake/sequel/etc. This I completely agree with. But as far as "quality" is concerned, I think it's only a matter of lacking the ability to distance ourselves from our own pasts and experiences, and... maybe the nostalgia factor as well?

 

I'm sure that a lot of 45+ people thought Star Wars was the biggest turd ever released, that it was destroying the foundations and principles of our societies, and would see the rise of dozens of equally bad movies that would eventually be the downfall of the movie industry. While to a lot of us, it was the trigger that shaped our vision of what films were about, and for a lot of people, the birth of a genuine desire to start a filmmaking career.

Edited by Nicolas Courdouan
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Sorry, George, I'm not trying to clutter the thread with a pointless debate about the quality or relevance of today's films... I'm just saying that everything is really subjective here, and that it's easy to get carried away when seeing all those giant billboards displaying Megatron or whats-his-name brandishing a fiery building-sized sword, while forgetting that we also had our chance at enjoying kid-friendly celluloid entertainment when we were still the prime target of these big summer movies...

 

I agree with you on everything else (too much, too fast, etc.)

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Nicholas, I can see your perspective, and I agree that the business model has always been the same for grabbing teenage dollars. Whether we're talking 1977 Star Wars and/or Logan's Run, or the American International beach movies with Frankie and Anette, it's all kind of the same in terms whom you're targeting, and whose dollars you want to grab with what product.

 

I think the market emphasis used to be on the adult crowd with a nod towards the teenage market. But now I think that's been turned on its head, and now we still have the same business models as you cite, but I think the majors are purely relying on pre-teen to 30 market as their mainstay.

 

How that bodes for the industry and overall product, I don't know. What do you think?

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I'm not sure what Star Wars has to do with this topic. As much as the fans disaprove of the more recent films, none of them were, to my knowledge, "bombs".

 

 

What "Star Wars has to do with it" is that Disney have apparently acknowleged all the problems that the current tentpole movies are suffering from (over-reliance on CGI, poor scripts and characterization etc). They appear to be going to some trouble to ensure that that doesn't happen with their new Star Wars movies.

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I don't think that's very true.

 

The modern options - Alexa, F65, even the Canon C series - are perfectly capable of producing pictures that are extremely satisfactory for narrative features. So is film, fine, but I don't consider that there's any automatic assumption that it's better anymore.

 

I would suspect if anything this is a political or promotional move. The Star Wars films that were not shot on film are famously unpopular. Because they were shot on early electronic cinematography equipment, they also look like they were shot on video. But it doesn't necessarily follow that any forthcoming Star Wars films will be bad, or that they'll look like that, regardless of what they're shot on.

 

It's a promotional move. They're trying to distance themselves from the video-originated instalments. It's nothing to do with the pictures and it's not logically valid, of course, but hey, welcome to advertising.

 

P

Mr Rhodes! I cannot quite fathom this seeming aversion you have to silver. Were you perhaps raised in a Fundamentalist household where the story of the miscreant Judas was expressed with excessive zeal? One is tempted to surmise that you were an early and keen adopter of EFT and similar “cashless” technologies simply to spare yourself the awful sensation of silver against your fingertips!

Silver is, and always will be, the Gold standard for image acquisition!

Where’s my Hitler parody Kit?! … PEOPLE!

 

But in a less serious vein, the irony is that just as we are coming to the point where all the hype is coming within shouting distance of actually being true, people turn their backs on video (again!)

And, despite “The Man of Steel” being shot on film, I thought the imagery was pretty bloody ordinary, quite frankly.

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For some reason you're reminding me of that Rankin Bass Rudolf special, where Burl Ives sings "Silver and Gold". But nevermind :)

 

Disney's on the ball with their observations about films in general, but I've not known any of the Star Wars films, then and now, to be box office failures. The original SW film had the benefit of having Carroll Ballard shooting the thing who gave it a real professional gloss. It looked like and felt like a movie the same way Bonnie and Clyde, Marathon Man or The Godfather looked and felt like movies.

 

Just me.

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I'm not disputing your assertion here, George, but for the sake of the discussion, who exactly do you include in this demographic: "I think the bigger audience that used to be mainstream America, Europe and the Pacific, have given up on movies and TV altogether" ?

 

I'm just interested to hear your views about it, because I never had the impression that anyone had given up on movies. Unless maybe you meant "movies" as in "going to the cinema".

 

As far as personal experience goes, I live in Dublin (Ireland, not Ohio). The two main cinema chains (Cineworld and Odeon) here are busier than ever. One of them (the latter) even recently broke the all-time daily attendance record in UK / Ireland for that chain. That was around 5 or 6 months ago. And the main demographics in those cinemas are still families with two parents and one / two children.

 

Also, here's an interesting link : https://www.movieguide.org/news-articles/who-goes-to-the-movies.html which suggests that the movie-going population (US/Canada) has actually gotten older in recent years, despite the surge of comic-book movies.

 

Edit : I'm also going to throw that in there, just for the sake of doing it: http://www.mpaa.org/resources/5bec4ac9-a95e-443b-987b-bff6fb5455a9.pdf

 

I had a look at the numbers on the mpaa link you posted.

 

Here's a little something that I found interesting;

 

 

 

Rank Title Distributor
Box Office
(USD MM) Rating 3D
1 Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows, Part 2 Warner Bros. $381.0 PG-13 Y
2 Transformers: Dark of The Moon Paramount 352.4 PG-13 Y
3 Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1** Summit 274.8 PG-13
4 The Hangover 2 Warner Bros. 254.5 R
5 Pirates of the Caribbean On Stranger Tides Disney 241.1 PG-13 Y
6 Fast Five Universal 209.8 PG-13
7 Cars 2 Disney 191.5 G Y
8 Thor Paramount 181.0 PG-13 Y
9 Rise of the Planet of The Apes 20th Century Fox 176.8 PG-13
10 Captain America: The First Avenger Paramount 176.7 PG-13 Y
11 The Help Disney 169.5 PG-13
12 Bridesmaids Universal 169.1 R
13 Kung Fu Panda 2 Paramount 165.2 PG Y
14 X-Men: First Class 20th Century Fox 146.4 PG-13
15 Puss In Boots Paramount 145.3 PG Y
16 Rio 20th Century Fox 143.6 G Y
17 Smurfs, The Sony 142.6 PG Y
18 Super 8 Paramount 127.0 PG-13
19 Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows** Warner Bros. 124.1 PG-13
20 Rango Paramount 123.5 PG
21 Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol** Paramount 121.7 PG-13
22 The King's Speech* TWC 121.1 PG-13
23 Horrible Bosses Warner Bros. 117.5 R
24 Green Lantern Warner Bros. 116.6 PG-13 Y
25 HOP Universal 108.1 PG
Not a single one of those films is aimed at an adult audience. And I still think that an audience that is fed junk food cinema will eventually get on a health kick and want films that aren't small independents, but are a little more intelligent in terms of adult sensibilities.
I guess my contention here is that it isn't the small independent production that's artsy that's getting screwed over, but the reverse emphasis of catering to the adult teenager instead of the teenager who has become an adult.
Just looking at this list I see one semi-intelligent film; "The King's Speech" that doesn't reference a comicbook, fairy tale, TV show from the 60s or 70s, or a cartoon. I'll bet, if you had a time machine, and put those same films in front of an audience in 1974 or even 79 (post Star Wars), the supermajority of them would bomb.
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The DP on the first Star Wars film was Gilbert (Gil) Taylor. known for doing "Dr Strangelove", "A Hard Days Night" "The Omen".

 

That's right, I stand corrected. But Ballard I think did some really great second unit stuff for that film.

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I think the market emphasis used to be on the adult crowd with a nod towards the teenage market. But now I think that's been turned on its head, and now we still have the same business models as you cite, but I think the majors are purely relying on pre-teen to 30 market as their mainstay.

 

How that bodes for the industry and overall product, I don't know. What do you think?

 

Well... to be honest I think it's more complicated than the industry relying on the pre-teen to 30 market. I think they are relying on the exact same market as before (let's say the pre-teen to 50) to make the bulk of their money. But the big suits have done their homework and they know that our western civilization is childized : people no longer want to see their childhood go and they cling to it like flies on a honeyed toast.

 

Look at the amount of blockbusters from the last 10 years which are based on successful properties created in the late-70s / 80s : Toys (Battleship, GI Joe, Transformers), graphic novels (Watchmen, the soon-to-be-produced Batman vs Superman), remakes of movies from the 80s (Evil Dead and a lot of other horror films, Karate Kid...), and let's not forget all those films with a distinct late-70s / 80s feel that owe a great deal of their success to this fact (Drive, Super 8, the Expendables...).

 

I mean, people tend to say that all these things happen because Hollywood is running out of original ideas, but I think there's a lot more to it : if Hollywood really was running out of original ideas, why not remake more films from the 40s? I mean why this specifically late-70s / 80s trend? I think Hollywood is not run by fools, and they know exactly what they're doing. Their market studies have shown that yes, an increasing number of 35 to 40 year olds are still playing video games, watching cartoons and collect toys. So yeah, maybe that the ads and trailers for those movies are aimed at children with all their BOOMs and their ZAPs. But that's because the only people Hollywood needs to sell these movies too are the kids, who don't know jack about these properties and franchises. The older guys? They are sold on the concept alone of seeing a movie based on toys they used to play with and get a chance to share this former passion with their young kids.

 

I can almost imagine a parody of the old Mastercard "priceless" ad, you know?

 

"Night out in town with the family : $57... Drive-thru for four : $38... Two large popcorn combos and Coke : $15... Watching your kids enjoying the exact same thing that used to make you tick as a child : priceless"

 

Anyway, point is, I don't think Hollywood is targeting a younger audience, I think they are still going for the exact same age groups as before, but those age groups feel younger and crave for nostalgia (in my opinion, the most powerful emotion). Hollywood is smart. Why target a kid that gets $10 per week to spend on their movies when they can go for the wallet of Mr. Recently-turned-40, proud father of two, and his missus?

 

Now what that means for the future of movies, I don't know. But I want to keep a glass half-full perspective on this. I'm sure that at some point, everybody wants to see something new, something more, something that has more value (whatever that means). And the smaller films (which are still big films, but smaller when compared to the blockbusters) are there for this exact reason. Regardless of how much mindless sh#t you get to watch during your childhood / early adulthood, you always end up reaching that point where you've had enough and you don't just want to be entertained anymore. I know, because that's exactly what happened for me, and I am not that unique... At some point you always want to go back to the roots, revisit old classics to know what the fuss really is about, and you end up finding the movie that redefines your whole perspective on things and changes your life.

 

I could be wrong of course, but I think the industry is doing just fine. They know exactly what they're doing.

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I had a look at the numbers on the mpaa link you posted.

 

Here's a little something that I found interesting;

 

(...)

 

Just looking at this list I see one semi-intelligent film; "The King's Speech" that doesn't reference a comicbook, fairy tale, TV show from the 60s or 70s, or a cartoon. I'll bet, if you had a time machine, and put those same films in front of an audience in 1974 or even 79 (post Star Wars), the supermajority of them would bomb.

 

 

Spot on in your analysis of the market being aimed at adults who don't want to see their childhood go...

 

Although the numbers you quoted refer to 3D films only, and 3D is aimed at a younger audience only, because Hollywood wants to capture their imagination before their parents' 60" flat screen does.

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The majority theatrical audience tends to be in the 15 to 25 age range, they also eat more high profit popcorn, which is important for theatre owners. Films tend to be of their times, but if you look at the 1970's mainstream film you had "The Towering Inferno",. "Smokey and the Bandit", "Logans Run", "Airport" etc I suspect quite a few of the modern films would do well, while others would bomb, selecting which ones could be difficult, since, as the saying goes, no one knows anything.

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Nicholas, yeah, I think you're onto something there, and I think I heard that exact same analysis way back in 99 or within that time frame.

 

I hope I don't sound too high minded here, but it may be that there is no more future for better films if this cycle is as engineered as you say. I have to admit that when I was in middle school and high school I hoped that somebody would make "serious" movies about my favorite comic book heroes. Well, now that I'm middle aged, and I see the results, I'm kind of split on my feelings regarding the matter. I'm glad somebody did it, but I'm also sorry that they're now essentially the only thing you can see now.

 

If the majors (at least the studios here in the US) rely solely on nostalgia for adult-children who then share those feelings with their children, then I guess movies are dead.

 

It's funny. When I was a kid I saw Disney films, but I also things like "The Electric Horseman", "The Mirror Cracked", the Salkind Musketeer films, "China Town" and a bunch of movies that although they weren't meant for kids, if your child was reasonably mature, he could watch the thing and not get shocked and, even though some parts may be boring, he'd still feel entertained.

 

If that kind of film making has gone the way of the dinosaur, well, I don't know.

 

Suddenly I'm starting to get a little depressed here.

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