A clue to part of the problem with Hollywood today...

Responding to a thread about MTV's current problems reminded me of this, so I thought I'd go ahead and share it to hear your comments on it...

...well, I guess I really don't need to say anything about it myself, as it's pretty self-explanatory. The following is taken from Roger Ebert's review of the movie Cast Away, which ends up not really becoming as much of a review as it is Ebert's satement on the outrage regarding its trailer. And what Ebert has to point out here says a lot about the problem with Hollywood and its movies today.

A quick note: if you haven't seen the movie yet and are lucky not to not have been exposed to its trailers, you might want to skip this.

I've edited the stuff that's not relevant to the subject of this thread out:


"...Noland hitches a ride on a FedEx flight across the Pacific, which is blown off course before crashing after an onboard explosion. That seems like two catastrophes when one would have done, but director Bob Zemeckis uses the storm for scenes of in-flight fear, wisely following Alfred Hitchcock's observation that from a suspense point of view, an explosion is over before you get your money's worth.

Spoiler alert: If you have not seen ads for the movie, read no further.

Noland survives the crash, and floats in a life raft to a deserted island. And . . . am I telling too much of the story? I doubt it, since the trailers and commercials for this movie single-mindedly reveal as much of the plot as they can, spoiling any possible suspense. Not only do they tell you he gets off the island, they tell you what happens then. What am I to do? Pretend you haven't seen the ad, or discuss what we all know happens? The early scenes are essentially busy work. Exotic locales like Moscow add a little interest to details about Noland's job. An airport farewell to the fiancee is obligatory, including the inevitable reassurances about how Chuck will be right back and they'll have a wonderful New Year's Eve. Then the crash.

...A shot of the giant bow of an ocean tanker, looming over his [escape] raft, could have been the setup for the movie to end. But no. As the trailers incredibly reveal, he returns home, where. . . .

Well, I can't bring myself to say, just on the chance you're still reading and don't know. Let's say that the resolution of an earlier story strand is meant to be poignant and touching, but comes across flat and anticlimactic. And that the smile at the end of the film seems a little forced.

I would have preferred knowing much less about 'Cast Away' on my way into the theater. Noland's survival should be an open question as far as the audience is concerned. You might assume that the 20th Century Fox marketing department gave away the secrets over the dead body of director Zemeckis, but no: Zemeckis apparently prefers to reveal his surprises in the trailers. He got a lot of flak earlier this year when the ads for his previous film, 'What Lies Beneath,' let you know Harrison Ford was the bad guy, there was a ghost, etc. At that time he was quoted in David Poland's Web column: 'We know from studying the marketing of movies, people really want to know exactly every thing that they are going to see before they go see the movie. It's just one of those things. To me, being a movie lover and film student and a film scholar and a director, I don't. What I relate it to is McDonald's. The reason McDonald's is a tremendous success is that you don't have any surprises. You know exactly what it is going to taste like. Everybody knows the menu.'

A strange statement, implying as it does that Zemeckis is a movie lover, student and scholar but that he doesn't market his movies for people like himself. This is all the more depressing since he usually makes good ones."


Where to begin?

"Market testing", overcalculation, and focus groups have already been causing severe problems for at least a couple of decades now, but Zemeckis's quote and action speaks volumes about the attitude of modern-day Hollywood.

What are you guys' thoughts and comments?

 

The attitude of the major studios is just to make money. All of the big studios are owned by major corporations. Universal Studios is owned by General Electric, MGM and Columbia are owned by Sony, Paramount is owned by Viacom, etc, etc. In the past, these studios used to be privately owned companies and could do whatever they wanted, to an extent. Now, being corporations, they are legally responsible to their shareholders to make profits. They are like every other kind of corporation (rather then something creative or artistic), like you said doing market research, test audiences, etc, to spew out some crappy sterile product, geared toward the lowest common denominator.