Beast that ate Hollywood

[Adaptoid]

Story in today's SF Chronicle -- great job explaining what I've been harping on here for a while... where is the story in all these "blockbuster" movies?

Special Effects are the new movie monsters (http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/08/08/DDGD2E3QFS1.DTL)

[Magneto_X]

Excuses, excuses and more excuses.

I'm sure the growing budgets have nothing to do with it or paying actors millions of dollars for one movie or badly scripted/produces who wnat creative control* or the "Pay or Play" deals have nothing to do with it.

*anybody who gets an idea put on film is paid handsomely for it. This has created a goldrush of execs who know *nothing* about good concepts into putting silly stuff in projects just for some $$$$$$$.

[The Batman]

i don't think that special effects in and of themselves are the problem so much as Hollywood's mistaken notion that ground-breaking special effects in and of themselves will make for an entertaining if not necessarily good film. more care is given to crafting a breath-taking effects sequence to entertain an audience that has become increasingly jaded and ever harder to impress and things like story or character development are left ignored. i see this as a symptom of movies becoming less of a craft and more of a cash grab in some circles; who cares about story when a hyper-realistic CGI creature will fill the seats. this isn't the only way that the dramatic increase in what special effects can do has changed movies. by making anything possible, and relatively easy at that, they've made film makers lazy in a way. no need to be creative or artful in your approach when you can show something i almost pornographic detail. the dependence on special effects is hardly the biggest problem facing movies, an abundance of ego and greed as well as a want for new ideas count as bigger problems; as does the notion of movies as vanity projects designed to create or perpetuate the celebrity industry.

[vertigo_phreeze]

absence makes the heart grow fonder?

while there is no shortage of crap and throw away movies, which are still nice for certain occasions, i think it makes us actually appreciate the movies that actually worth seeing that much more.

plus, by the sheer law of averages, if the amount of movies being made increases, the number of "good" movies being made automaticaly increases too. even if they are harder to find among the crowd.