Is Hollywood Even Trying Anymore?

Its interesting that ever since the announcement that video games gross more than movies, the quality of Hollywood movies, particularly their terrible mistakes made popular in youtube videos for pure comedy outrage, seem to be lending to ever decreasing ticket sales. And its not just the stupid. The blatant racism isn't helping much either. The preachiness because their vision for America can't just naturally shift there suggests not only that their vision is inherently wrong, but wasting everyone's time. The fact that Hollywood is deeply politicized and disturbingly biased in several ways... well, I'm sorry my state lost the income to Vancouver's film industry, but Vancouver makes good enough movies and TV and spends less time cheerleading bad ideas.

The most baffling thing to me is comedies that don't have jokes and aren't funny. I guess they made sense to New Yorkers, but I'm solidly of the opinion that New Yorkers aren't exactly part of the American culture. They're more of a splinter faction that thinks the rest of us care what they have to say, what weird clothes they wear, and how they live, which to most Americans is highly unnatural with all that crowding and those tall buildings. Small wonder New York is full of crime and weirdoes. If New York news weren't broadcast on TVs in California, would anyone notice? After a while, California, which gets nothing substantive from New York, would quickly forget it exists. New York is about as relevant to California as Melbourne or Sydney. Maybe less, actually. Melbourne and Sydney are sunny places focused on coastal living like California. So why is New York news on California TVs? It's baffling.

The last 10 years of scifi movies have been filled with beautiful CGI graphics and ever worse direction and continuity errors which suggests rushed post-production. And that's really weird since they often spend a year in Post, yet nobody making the film, like the director, notices? Or are they just so arrogant and contemptuous that they insist nobody who matters will notice. Did these directors never visit a scifi convention? Nerds are really hard core about rulesets and details. They are ALL ABOUT that kind of failing. It drives them to incredible levels of outrage. And eventually some of those nerds become directors and make better movies than the lazy drunks screwing up everywhere. And when Hollywood won't play ball, those directors go somewhere else, like video games. And since video games are an average of 10 hours of game play, they are often a more important experience than the movie. And being interactive are also more memorable than some passive crap from some snooty director who seems to be sniffing too much cocaine to notice all the mistakes.

To be fair, Ridley Scott has made some great films, and even a romantic comedy I like. But what was he thinking when he made Prometheus? Why are so many scifi movies little more than ironic slasher films? Don't directors know that Smart People like scifi? More importantly, smart KIDS who are tomorrows engineers, like Scifi.

Enders Game was a great book, ruined by both politics and some really jackass directorial decisions to cut really important characters out of the movie and completely wrecks half the main character's back story. Remove the context and you destroy the drama. The truly terrible thing is the movie will need to be remade one day because this film? It's not Ender's Game. The real Andrew Wiggin was a sociopath, and a murderer living in a world about as vicious as the fascists in Starship Troopers. And the outrage by the pro-gay factions whining that 30 years after the book, the author got cranky about their lifestyle choices on his blog? That is really childish. The movie isn't about gay issues, neither was the book. Also, that's not how movie options work. He got paid for that 30 years ago, and every 10 years later, a small fee to re-option it. Mostly between his agent and the Hollywood sleaze in charge of denying movie production, mostly so Vancouver can't take it, and prevent Hollywood preaching about how they're the best human beings ever because they look good on camera and can repeat lines. Fail upward, indeed.

Video not safe for work because Kevin Smith likes the F word. Still, a good story about the madness of Hollywood. Like New York and its bridges, the best thing about Hollywood is the loonies mostly stay in their mansions, which have gates and fences to keep them in, leaving the rest of the country for me. Smug prisons, ironic! Someday they'll have to desalinate their own drinking water from the filthy oceans and they'll be alone in their little oases of smugness. I'm looking forward to it. LA is a series of weird places in a smoggy basin between mountains and the sea, and Hollywood is the worst of it. Whatever.

I mean, did you pay to see this movie? I didn't. Who do they think they're fooling anymore? Retire, Hollywood!