random thoughts about random things

//cue middle-aged angry Gerard Butler-ish guy with a frothing mouth kicking the snot out of an ancient man before lumping him into a dark and bottomless pit//

I had a good laugh this morning when I read Eldholm’s latest entry, not because he wrote it to be funny or anything, but because I wrote pretty much the same thing right after I’d seen The Dark is Rising (not the book, the movie). Of course, I forgot about it until I saw his entry and inspiration hit me like a football in the face, so I decided to pick up the keyboard again and whip it into shape. I’ve changed it quite a bit though since we apparently think alike on this topic and if I didn’t it’d look like a rewrite of his version and as much as we love recycling I’m enough of a psychic to see that it’s a waste of bits.

So this seems to be the year they [the movie companies] decided to milk (read: butcher) the fantasy-genre for movies. The genre that everyone was thinking so highly about that was ushering in a new era of quality movies that would redefine how we thought of Hollywood. I think they’ve just gotten started at the butchering. After the successes of LotR, Stardust and Harry Potter, the upcoming Prince Caspian and, well, a crap-ton of others; a pitiful few has apparently decided that pain is welcome as long as you make at the least some profit off of it.

Perhaps some of them has even decided to bury the genre quietly, or pompously, only to say a bit later that “… it [the market] was saturated on fantasy…” or something equally decisive. You know why I think that’s going to happen? Because I saw two movies in two days that’d been touted as “The next awesome thing” - fantasy-movies based off of fantasy-books that’s going to do what LotR did for LotR and fails so completely it’s confusing. As Eldholm eloquently put it:

Fantasy movies are made to cater to a specific audience, namely the fans of the books. And at times the fact that there already is a fan base seems to green-light cherry-picking the best bits of the story (the scenic, majestic bits, the grand battle and he fight with the dragon). The rest the fans can fill in - they have read the book after all.

Then why do they base the movies on effects and grandeur instead of the things that made the books so brilliant and loved among their fans? To be honest I don’t know what’s specifically running through their heads, because I would easily accept a 3 hour long version of the Golden Compass where they’ve made some sacrifices in the name of editing and mass-marketing. On the flipside I will never accept a 1.5 hour long version where they’ve sacrificed almost everything in the name of mass-marketing money-saving gambles, like failed gambles The Dark is Rising and The Golden Compass were.

I know I’m not alone in this; wanting quality, quantity, and credibility in the movies that they churn out. I bet the majority of the movie-goers out there in this world would rather have that than the sad shit we got to see this year.

After alot of thinking I think I’ve come up with a theory about movies and why they release sucky shit (I bet it already exists somewhere); among all the producers, writers and directors out there there’s a majority that’re puppets and idiots, victims of an unofficial law in Hollywood: For every gem there has to be atleast three turds that pay milk-money (to make the audience hunger all that more for the next gem).

But my biggest complaint is that why, for fuck’s sake, why can’t they even be moderately entertaining in their attempts, instead of wildly embarassing?

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