Strongly agree on both points. (which are negatives — what I don’t like — in my opinion)
EDIT — Yes — it would be five. Completely agree.
So, your level of consensus would be 5, right?
Here’s another: films don’t have to have happy endings. Downbeat endings can be preferrable depending on the film (e.g., Se7en).
If Mubians filled out comment cards, the movies might be different, but that does not mean that they would be better.
Though I agree that there’s too much emphasis on sequels, effects, and stars, we know that Hollywood studios are making money with their formula. I can’t begrudge that too much, especially when I have access to all sorts of films from around the world and throughout film history. No need for me to rely on Hollywood’s output.
films don’t have to have happy endings
5) Completely agree
BUT, I don’t agree that downbeat endings are preferrable. It’s all in how it’s done, and the genre of the film.
No need for me to rely on Hollywood’s output.
Agree with you, Nathan.
@Nathan
I agree that different doesn’t necessarily mean better—although I suspect in this case different would mean less bad. Btw, I’m not asking this out of bitterness or hatred towards Hollywood films. I just wondered if we could agree about what we would want or not want from Hollywood films. How these changes would affect profits, I’m not sure, but I wasn’t really interested in that question, fwiw.
Actually this is interesting, Jazz, if you can get enough Mubians outside of those of us who usually participate here to respond. The results will probably confirm what we already know, at least about those who choose to talk on Mubi’s forums vs. somewhere else.
Completely disagree.
They might be different but they’d be equally as bad.
EDIT – I wrote my comment before reading everyone’s responses. Seeing Nathan’s response and how it’s almost identical to what I said….seems like old times.
LOL
5 and 4.
Way too much emphasis on sequels, especially in films that give a lot of closure. But I think production value is important.
For happy endings, 3. Films should have the ending called for by the film. Minority Report called for an unhappy ending, but Toy Story called for a happy one. In Hollywood films they often force a gushy happy ending by making people randomly change their minds about everything for no reason. But, in art films they often rely on random tragedies or plot-unjustified suicides and killings (Like Godfather III) because they feel an unhappy ending will seem ‘deeper’ than a happy one.
Too much emphasis on sequels, especially those that seem to be made out of financial considerations, rather than the merit of the idea
Completely agree.Not just sequels but remakes, adaptations reboots, etc.
Too much emphasis on effects, stars and production values and not enough emphasis on good storys and characters.
Agree with major reservations. There are several films where the emphasis is put on the special effects and visuals that cannot be labeled as hollywood films (Avalon (2001), Enter The Void (2009)) so it’s not the emphasis on the visuals that I have a problem with, it’s the lack of originality in those visuals.
films don’t have to have happy endings
Completely agree.
I think all those points could be sumed up by this : I don’t like Hollywood’s commercialization of cinema.
@Odi
The results will probably confirm what we already know, at least about those who choose to talk on Mubi’s forums vs. somewhere else.
That’s what I would expect. And I still think that would actually improve the chances of better films from Hollywood—at least IF Hollywood took heed (which they probably wouldn’t).
@Santino
They might be different but they’d be equally as bad.
I’m guessing you’re confidence stems from the fact that Hollywood generally ignore most of the results—due to commercial considerations. If so, I would agree. However, the original issue—at least the way I conceived of it—was whether the films would differ—get better or at least less worse—IF Hollywood heeded the concerns of mubians. In that were the case, I think the chances for better films would be increased.
@Jirin
For happy endings, 3. Films should have the ending called for by the film.
Right. My original wording was films don’t have to have happy endings—which implies that they can have happy endings. My point is that Hollywood doesn’t have to feel compelled to make happy endings or feel-good movies.
@Balistik
Agree with major reservations. There are several films where the emphasis is put on the special effects and visuals that cannot be labeled as hollywood films (Avalon (2001), Enter The Void (2009)) so it’s not the emphasis on the visuals that I have a problem with, it’s the lack of originality in those visuals.
Wait. Emphasis on visuals is something entirely different. Also, my problem is too much emphasis on effects—i.e., at the expense of other elements that are often more important, imo. I agree that the use of the visuals and effects—and the appropriateness—are important.
And I still think that would actually improve the chances of better films from Hollywood—at least IF Hollywood took heed (which they probably wouldn’t).
To use an old man’s expression, Jazz, I don’t think Hollywood gives a rat’s ass about Mubians and their tastes, nor will they ever.
Now if they (Mubians) had billions of dollars to throw around, and a reputation for making twice the billions after throwing them around… well then we might be talking business.
It’s all about the profit, Jazz.
Which to my estimation, is not what being a Mubian is about.
@Jazz,
“I’m guessing you’re confidence stems from the fact that Hollywood generally ignore most of the results—due to commercial considerations”
No, my confidence stems from the fact that I don’t believe Mubians are any more knowledgeable into how to make a great film as anyone else is. :)
No, my confidence stems from the fact that I don’t believe Mubians are any more knowledgeable into how to make a great film as anyone else is.
Yes.
But at least, many can discern a good one from a bad one when they see it. ;)
Which is not to say that that translates to actually making a good film.
Different skills, different skills.
ha! well that’s debatable too!
Ha ha ha!
Well… let’s not generalize. Maybe there are some that make good calls a lot of the time.
Don’t be so negative, Santino — you sound like a Mubian!
:)
I’ve been around here tooooooo long.
@Santino
No, my confidence stems from the fact that I don’t believe Mubians are any more knowledgeable into how to make a great film as anyone else is. :)
I don’t think mubians have to be knowledgeable about making great films to be have a positive impact. If Hollywood actually took heed and put more emphasis on developing films with better stories and characters, while not worry as much about effects, production designs, etc.—which doesn’t mean ignore or neglect—I could see this by itself increasing the likelihood of better films.
I think maybe it’s possible to confuse “things I’m tired of seeing” with “things that are bad.” At some point, they started making “B” movies with “A” budgets. If what we now consider “art films” became mainstream entertainment at some point, movies content blow stuff up would eventually wind up as an in-demand alternative.
Look, you can’t mandate “good” so any suggestion that tries to impose what that might constitute based on the basic premise of a film is simply not going to work. I see little evidence that people on Mubi would be much more interested in films emphasizing character and story over production values and visuals unless one really stretches the idea of what character and story would mean. People here simply tend to have slightly different ideas over what constitutes good production values, stars, and “effects” basically, having slightly more preference for the pretty of Malick versus the wow of whatever action film. Judging from the conversations that gain the most contributors, people here still go see the action films more than the many films that come out of Hollywood laden with character and story, so even the alleged lack of interest in superhero movies or whatever doesn’t really cut it for me. People just want movies to be the way they like them, “good”, and since that needs to come from people of ability or talent and needs to be thought of interest enough to be seen in the first place, it is of little value in asserting as a preference given what it appears people are watching. The “good” character and story movies people go see are preselected as being good for the most part by having received good notice from critics or something of that sort. They aren’t movies people are seeking out for being character driven, instead they, like most people, seem to head for the spectacle regardless of the reviews first, then sort the rest out later. Sure, there are certainly people here that are exceptions to this and there is, in general, perhaps a slightly more sophisticated level of taste due to the obvious interest in films and therefore more experience with them that would come from being a member of a site dedicated to less celebrated fare, but let’s not go crazy and suggest that people here are of an entirely different order of viewer than the average since there isn’t too much evidence to support that view regarding the site in general. At best, one could say that people here tend to follow the taste of critics at large a little more closely than the general audience, so that’s something, but it definitely sin’t something worth holding a party to celebrate.
^ Ha ha ha, Greg…
I for one have only gone to see a superhero movie this year because it was something that my 7 year old son really wanted to see. Then I started a conversation about it, because it was the first movie I’d seen in the theater since I had my son. Then I got pounced on for even starting a conversation about it. And yes, being pounced on was not a fun experience.
Back in the day, before I had kids, I saw a LOT of movies and they were rarely out of Hollywood, and if they were, they were not the usual fare.
So that’s my deal, as a movie-viewer participant on these forums. ;)
@Greg
I agree that the tone of this thread got a little self-congratulatory, but I do think there’s a difference between a Mubi poster and a mainstream cinemagoer. Mubi posters prefer films that put more of the burden of interpretation on the viewer, whereas most people prefer films that interpret themselves for the viewer.
So you are right, there isn’t that big a difference in the sort of films we find entertaining, but mainstream films tell the viewer what the characters are feeling by having the characters give big speeches, whereas the films we prefer tell it by a look, a gesture, or an action.
Also Mubi posters have slightly more tolerance for lack of constant sensory stimulation.
@Jazz
To elaborate on the ending thing, my reservation is that I think the reverse can be true for art films. Art films often seem to feel compelled to have an unhappy ending the same way Hollywood films feel compelled to have a happy one, and sometimes (The Chaser, arguably the murder at the end of There Will Be Blood) that ending seems really manipulative and contrived.
And there are some cases where the plot has primed us so much to be rooting for something to happen, to not have a happy ending would represent too much philosophical baggage for the tone of the film.
Too much emphasis on sequels, especially those that seem to be made out of financial considerations, rather than the merit of the idea;
Too much emphasis on effects, stars and production values and not enough emphasis on good storys and characters.
Show me any cross-section or random draw of people ANYWHERE who disagree with the sentiment in those statements. Show me any strong group of people who does not think Hollywood could do better if they listened to “their” opinion. Show me anybody who thinks Hollywood is doing the best work it could do.
So despite the fact that it is pretty much universally acknowledged that their movies suck, why does Hollywood keep making them?
Because people keep seeing them.
You don’t need opinion polls or viewer feedback to change Hollywood—you need people to stop going to the movies and buying them on DVD. Mubians for their part tend to buy more boutique than mainstream, but I would actually imagine we pour more money into Hollywood in general because we go to see movies more often than the regular, casual viewer, though we probably pour much less money into Hollywood than the mainstream movie buff from a site like SlashFilm. I once went to a website (since taken down) called DVDSpot.com where they bought PLENTY of Hollywood DVDs weekly. Real aficionados, probably especially now that they were forced to move to DVDAficionado.com. But anyway, they all agreed with those statements, that Hollywood was in general making crap, even the general tendency to believe that Hollywood is making more crap than usual, even though they would buy many DVD releases week of distribution. Did they see hypocrisy or irony in that? Of course not, because as long as they were buying Hanna and Easy A over Bourne Supremacy and High School Musical, they considered themselves to be supporting the “good stuff.”
The one thing I have started doing is telling people when they say, “Ugh why did they make Transformers 3 , Transformers 1 and 2 were AWFUL!” is to say, “Because you went to see Transformers 2, even though you thought Transformers 1 was awful.” I wouldn’t know if it changes anybody’s habits but people have accepted it’s a good point; usually the only counterargument I get is the self-described movie blogger (and aren’t we all, these days?) who thinks he or she “needs” to report back on it, but then my argument to them is that their blog is stronger for establishing in a firm manner that there is no need to “report back” on something that everyone has decided well in advance to seeing it what their thoughts are.
People will not stop going to see Hollywood movies no matter how shared our collective distaste for sequels, remakes, revamps, off-shoots, adaptations, et al. Every person no matter their discipline thinks Hollywood needs to focus more on “the story” and lose “feel-good endings” and so on. Unless you vote with your dollars Hollywood doesn’t care what you think, and even if you vote with your dollars they set the candidates.
—PolarisDiB
I think the main problem with Hollywood films is that they follow a screenplay structure that has to be followed in order for the screenplay to sell. Read any number of books about the subject and you can fit nearly every Hollywood film into the structure. You can even fit most non-studio films into it.
Good point PolarisDib. Hollywood has not the obligation to make art but if it wants to make a commercial product better to be good and users should be rational as possible in their consumption decisions. In general, you don’t buy something to someone who cheats you in the first place when talking about goods such as shoes or food so it’s puzzling it happens in cinema except for the fact marketing is pretty agressive which in general has the capacity to bend rational decision rules. It would be interesting to know what percetage of general moviegoers actually like the stuff or are simply trapped in this irrational and perverse mode.
…
I don’t think mubians have to be knowledgeable about making great films to be have a positive impact. If Hollywood actually took heed and put more emphasis on developing films with better stories and characters, while not worry as much about effects, production designs, etc.—which doesn’t mean ignore or neglect—I could see this by itself increasing the likelihood of better films
Jazz, I understand the concern. However I’m more and more bored about the subject and now I think it’s not worthy to frustate over. At the end, as an audience, if hollywood produces crap according to my standards I’ll just spend my time looking for cinema in Argentina, Iran, France, whatever and people do whatever they want to.
Polaris is right. The film business is dictated by goods purchased and since crappy goods are being bought, crappy goods will continue to get made. Somebody on another thread said that it’s the studios that shove this stuff down our throats but in reality, the film industry is a conservative bunch that really follows the audience. The audience wants Transformers 3 so the studios give it to them. Believe me, if Blue Valentine made $500 million dollars opening weekend, the studios would happily churn out more films like this.
@PolarisDiB
Great point but a LOT of people have nothing but good things to say about hollywood films, they love sequels, adaptations and whatnot. They don’t care about stories, characters, they just wanna be entertained. You’re not gonna find those people in movie blogs and forums but they make up the majority of movie goers.
Balistik:
I call bullshit. I worked four years in a movie rental place and had to listen to customers, day after day, saying the exact same thing about “other people mindlessly consuming this junk” while looking at a movie they didn’t think looked good, until they reached the movie that they did expect was good. It’s always somebody else that is the problem and actually bothered to buy into that Transformers , and never us, we went to see Cowboys & Aliens instead.
You know the people I have met who have “nothing but good things to say” about Hollywood films? None of them are Americans. Once you get outside of the US, you get audiences who go to Hollywood movies because they are bigger than anything their own country can create, and that is why they go. My roommate Sakthidasan was sad to have missed Transformers 3. “Foreign sales” do not mean France and Japan and Italy. It means where I am, Dubai, and where Sakthi is from, India, especially Mumbai. Audiences that crowd theatres to capacity simply because it’s a Hollywood special effects event flick. Westerners as a general rule just think they’re too smart to be taken in, though the numbers state otherwise. And those numbers come from the fact that we watch “this instead of that” instead of not watching anything at all. Think about it: now that it is no longer conventional wisdom that everyone will go see the one movie, every week we’ve four or five. Look at Dennis Brian’s weekly release threads. “This instead of that”, and if none of them are attractive at all, “Next week instead of this week.”
It’s like those yearly “Let’s all protest the oil companies by not buying gas today, guyz!” memes. Those seem to have finally faded out from popularity, but for a while they were pretty common occurrences twice, three times a year. Everyone would try to “gouge a surplus” into gas companies to lower prices or protest a war or whatever by not buying petrol for their cars for one day, or sometimes up to a week. Nevertheless they would still just hold off buying gas until the next week, or buy gas in advance to prepare, and even if they consistently cut gas consumption for a more protracted length of time, they would still keep their electricity running at home (guess what THAT was generated from?). Especially in America, we all pride ourselves on being conscientious consumers and having a choice, and it’s always everyone else at the mall that are Romero’s zombies. We’re just there to hang out and “watch people,” right? Hey wanna go to the food court real quick though?
—PolarisDiB
Jazzaloha
In another thread I suggested that if mubians participated in test screenings for Hollywood films, these comments would not only differ from a more mainstream audience, but it would actually improve Hollywood films (or at least make them less bad). Do people agree with that or not?
More importantly, I wanted to identify areas of consensus—would we agree about what we like and don’t like about Hollywood films? To help with this discussion, I’d like to recommend using the five levels of a consensus: 1) strongly disagree; 2) disagree, but largely indifferent; 3) agree with major reservationss; 4) agree with minor reservations; 5) completely agree. When commenting on opinions of others, choose numbers 1-5 to indiciate the extent to which you agree or disagree.
To get things started, here are some things I like and don’t like about Hollywood films:
Too much emphasis on sequels, especially those that seem to be made out of financial considerations, rather than the merit of the idea;
Too much emphasis on effects, stars and production values and not enough emphasis on good storys and characters.