Comment by 0xbadcafebee | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 0xbadcafebee | Hacker News Reader

Good films are hard to make, that's why. The article sort of skips over this, but there aren't a lot of Spielbergs out there. Most big-budget movies are lame, and intentionally so. Hollywood is about making money, not good films.

Most of the highest-rated films of the last 20 years are action films. Not because they had good characters, writing and acting. But because they were exciting. Sometimes they accidentally have good, nuanced characters, good acting, good cinematography, but those are happy accidents. The main thing you need for a successful film is a good car chase, guns blazing, people hanging off a ledge, monsters constantly giving chase (and yet somehow never killing the main characters as easily as the NPCs), an attractive woman in distress, a handsome male hero saving the day, maybe an orphan thrown in the mix. Get those hormones flowing and people will feel good afterward and give the movie a high rating.

Note that this is a completely different thing than "critics' favorite list of movies". Studios couldn't give a shit what critics think, they care how much revenue they made. If they want to win awards they'll churn out something emotional about a person with a handicap, a period drama or a war film.

Action blockbusters are a product of marketing structure, financial investment strategy, and limited venue space; There is room to see one movie with the family during the holiday weekend, and a studio would find it absolutely wasteful to produce something that isn't Die Hard, if it's already marketing Die Hard for that weekend. An independent theater with the space (which is most everything in the US from 1948-2020 per SCOTUS) might promote a competitor's action blockbuster for that weekend as well, but is probably better holding off until the next holiday weekend depending on how many hundreds of millions of dollars have been pushed into the marketing pipeline. Better to be the Rom Com alternative. The market favors complementarity if it isn't competing on quality. There are only so many tickets that are going to be sold for that weekend, and the overall market size for that weekend isn't as elastic with regards to quality as some other industries. It is elastic with regards to overall marketing budget.

Casting is absolutely a part of marketing & investment strategy here, even as it doesn't necessarily lend anything to the story itself.

In a less psychologically manipulative, less monopolistic arena like streaming, or anime distribution, there is room for a much greater variety of narratives than the two categories you highlight.

The article does go into this.

> But what sets Spielberg apart from Hammond, what sets Jurassic Park apart from it’s imitators—and why the film industry now paradoxically needs Spielberg after he helped to weaken it—is that Spielberg had the discipline.

I would say that's the crux of the argument: the reason there are no good dinosaur films is that there are no people with Spielberg's discipline to make them.

One can try to blame studio interference, investors, streaming, the latest political trend, etc, or even Spielberg himself for why there are no disciplined producers left in Hollywood, but that's not what the article was about.

I've got experience with getting films made, and IMO, the biggest problem is people who have control of the purse strings fucking with the creative.

So many good movies start out with a good premise, a good script, a good writing team, and by the time it gets through the meat grinder it's just fried dog shit.

"Such-and-such said you need to add this character. The studio wants you to add AI. Jimbo wants an exec producer credit and he needs his son to play that new character you added. Of course he hasn't acted before -- this is his debut!"

And of course, a lot of good movies never get made. Back to the Future got rejected 80 times before getting funded. Some of those rejections did help refine the script, but how many people with amazing ideas give up at the 79th rejection?

Thank god for indie films.

Yeah, I'm not in the movie industry or anything, but it seems to me like if one was so inclined, they could put together a list of all of the things that have to be done well in order to make a fantastic movie.

If we ignored all of the things that aren't obvious in the end product, like market research and staff salaries, etc, I think it would probably look something like:

  * Plot
      * Well written
      * Inherent meaning
      * Intelligent
  * Acting / Directing
    * Name brand actors
    * Size of cast
  * Cinematography
  * Music
  * CGI / Special Effects / Locations
  * Props / Clothes / Styles / etc
  * Action budget (choreography, explosions, etc)
  * Marketing / Marketability
  * Release logistics

Its rare that someone, usually a director, becomes a large enough force in Hollywood that they can actually get the funding and political pull to invest in every category. Most films sacrifice a few of them to put out a lower quality but hopefully still acceptable product.

What's interesting to me about a list like this, is that they are by no means equal in terms of cost and profit.

Marketing and Releasing internationally have major ROI, so every film leans as heavily into both as they can afford.

After that, Cinematography, music, CGI, props, and action budget are all far, far cheaper than the other items on this list. Which is how you wind up with so many beautiful looking movies that you leave wondering "really, did no one spend 5 minutes thinking about X in the plot? How do you spend this much money on a movie and not consider X?"

Similarly, Plot is probably the one thing on this list where creators can exchange time for capital. If you are low on capital, you might be priced out of better actors, and you won't be able to buy them on layaway, but you might be able to survive off of ramen for a few years while really building out a fantastic script. Hence why we see so many interesting indie films invest heavily into this aspect of their movies.

And that's before you start factoring in things like trying to make a plot that is accessible to world-wide release in every culture, or factoring the plot requirements particularly restrictive governments and cultures (China) will have about your movie in order to access their markets.

So yeah, most of the time when I see a movie now, I've noticed I'm more or less giving a score into how much I think the movie producers invested into each of these categories, to bucket the overall film. You invested 3/10 in every category, but tried for 10/10 plot? Okay, indie film, we'll judge you accordingly. Or, oh, this is another all-cgi-all-cinematography-all-big-actor-no-plot movie? Okay, judge it against the other AAA marketed B movies.

The script is the cheapest part, but also where the most damage is dealt. The higher-ups always want to meddle with the script to feel some control for the money they are spending. Changing some character or plot point. And the damage just runs downhill from the script like a cartoon snowball building up size.

(Even the cheapest "indies" these days are running to hundreds of thousands of dollars and someone is paying that, and that someone wants to change something)

Yeah, writing a script can be the cheapest part. Developing a full script, and getting that plot vision expressed on screen, blocking the meddling along the way... THAT's expensive.

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