Rule Breakers – When a Game-Changing Movie Disrupts the Order of Hollywood

Hollywood doesn’t like surprises, unless they are the kind that benefits them exclusively.  External things like controversies, disasters, and all sorts of calamities can throw the industry in a state of turmoil, but even smaller factors tend to put the business in a state of worry.  The obvious thing that Hollywood deals with is being able to forecast the state of the industry, and this is often much harder to do than anyone thinks.  That’s why surprises are not always a great thing for Hollywood, because it disrupts the careful order that many in the industry desperately want to manage.  Every year, all the production companies and studios would like to believe that they will make more this year than in the year prior, and because movies take a long time to develop, sometimes over several years, their hope is that the industry doesn’t fall into a major upheaval that sabotages their best laid plans.  You can have any major catastrophe be a part of that disruption, like an industry wide financial collapse or worldwide events like wars and natural disasters causing a cut in revenue, and sometimes Hollywood would rather deal with those situations; they have insurance after all.  But, it’s the other situations that cause a disruption that Hollywood dreads every now and then, and this is usually the sudden emergence of a trend.  Predicting how trends develop is often impossible, and usually when one happens, it will benefit those closest to it, but also affect the ones left behind in a negative way.  Sometimes those are disruptions that need to happen in order to help the industry evolve, but make no mistake, revolutions never happen without mayhem in it’s wake.  And the most strongly identifiable kinds of disruptions that we find in Hollywood are the ones in the form of game-changing movies that suddenly become successful.

It’s hard to identify a game-changing movie without also looking at the context of the times of the release.  Often, we identify these movies long after the fact in retrospect; as sort of a ground zero for where the changes in the industry sprouted from.  For a movie to have been a game-changer, it first had to be made with the intent of not following the standard expectations of the industry, whether it’s in the story-telling or the technique of filming.  Then it has to be released at a time where it’s impact is felt immediately, finding it’s audience and gaining the attention of the industry.  Many films break the rules of Hollywood, but they often go unnoticed upon their initial release.  A game-changing film breaks the rules and overcomes the odds towards success regardless.  And their success suddenly creates a demand for more just like it, which causes the industry to rethink it’s strategies.  This is the disruption that Hollywood tends to dread, because with the pipeline of movies that takes many years to push through, the sudden shift suddenly throws the timing off of all these other projects.  What seemed like a sure thing only a year ago can suddenly feel old-fashioned or insignificant just as quickly.  For the game-changing film, it’s an experience that it likely never thought it would have.  Filmmakers know that they have something unique on their hands, but they can never know if their movie is about to blow up and change the world.  Their movie satisfies a craving on the part of the audience, as they are looking for something out of the ordinary but are quite sure what it is.  But once they find it, it all becomes a perfect storm that leaves ripples across the film-making landscape.

One of the most notable examples of this to have come out in the last 20 years was a little movie called The Matrix (1999).  No one would have guessed that this sci-fi vehicle for star Keanu Reeves would end up influencing almost all of cinema heading into the new millennium.  Almost none of the typical Hollywood rules applied to this movie.  It had a grungy, techno-punk atmosphere to it; it was philosophical;  it took place in an online world, which was still very much in it’s infancy at the time; and it had some really bizarre visual effects that no one had even seen nor attempted before.  Also, it came out in early April, normally a quiet point at the box office each year.  And yet, audiences ate the movie up and it was proclaimed an instant classic.  It even fared well against expected blockbusters that year like Star Wars: The Phantom Menace and completely wiped the floor with Will Smith’s Wild Wild West, despite him being the biggest movie star at the time.  But, even though it’s impact was felt immediately at the box office, we wouldn’t understand it’s true affect on the industry for many more years.  The real big change that The Matrix had was changing the way that movies looked.  Look at all the movies released in the 1990’s and the 2000’s; there was a dramatic shift between then, and you could easily point to The Matrix as the movie that made the industry turn.  The big difference is that movies in the 2000’s had a more decidedly digital look to them.  The Matrix, while not shot digitally, still managed to convey the slickness of a digital world, and that in turn caught the eye of Hollywood and led them towards investing more fully in digital technologies for their productions and in the cinemas, all to capitalize on that more Matrix look.  It could be said that The Matrix marks the beginning of the Digital Age in Hollywood.  Matrix’s groundbreaking techniques like bullet-time and 360 pans also permeated the industry, maybe not as extensive as the visual look of the movie, but nevertheless proved influential.  It’s one thing for a movie to become an instant hit at the box office, but when the actual structural look of movies in general begins to change, that’s when you know that a single movie has left a tremendous impact.

The best way to identify movies that leave an impact on the industry like The Matrix is to take an aspect of movie technology or storytelling and trace it all the way back to it’s roots.  We owe standard film editing to D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915) and sound to Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer (1927).  And while some techniques may have started in lesser known films, we owe blockbusters like The Wizard of Oz for popularizing color photography and Fox’s The Robe (1953) for widescreen and helping to make them standards for the industry as a whole.  Game-changing films can also jump start a media empire, like what Walt Disney did with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), the first ever feature length animated film.  Cultural movements can also find their focal point in a movie that hits a cord at just the right moment, like what Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider (1969) managed to do for the counter-culture of the 60’s and 70’s.  Essentially, these movies started turning points that continue to manifest in Hollywood today.  Sometimes it takes just that special film to help Hollywood see the necessity of a new technology or to embrace a new way of thinking.  But at the same time, you could never have said beforehand that these were going to be the movies that would do it either.  Often these movies were created in a bubble where the filmmakers decided to ignore Hollywood and their rules and venture forth because they were following their gut feelings.  Now, this is not always a guarantee of success, and most risk-taking movies do tend to fail and be forgotten.  But, when these movies do happen, then the risks suddenly become  worth it.

The reason Hollywood becomes weary of these types of movies is because they are often hard to sustain in the long run.  Not every movie has a legacy that lasts over 20 years.  Even The Matrix couldn’t repeat it’s own success, as their creators, the Wachowskis, would learn once they released their underwhelming sequels a mere four years later.   Perhaps the rarest exception would be the movie that launched the era of the blockbuster, Star Wars (1977).  The fist movie, which has since been re-dubbed A New Hope, was an undeniable game-changer when it first premiered, creating a whole industry wide flourish of big budget science fiction and fantasy in it’s wake and also revolutionized everything from visual effects to marketing within the industry in the years since.  But, even more remarkable is that the brand has remained impenetrable even 40 years later, remaining resilient to this day.  It’s even survived the backlash against the receptions to some of it’s chapters and continues to be a juggernaut at the box office.  With that itself, Star Wars has proven influential for other studio fixtures in terms with how they market their brands.  You could say that the entire nostalgia heavy mixture that we find in Hollywood today is because of the example of Star Wars and how well it has retained it’s relevancy for so many years.  With toy products, commercial tie-ins, and even theme park experiences, you can see the Star Wars example taking hold throughout the industry.  It’s primarily how brands like Jurassic ParkTransformers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Harry Potter have maintained their relevance for far longer than they were expected, or should have lasted.  But, with a long lasting resilience like Star Wars, the industry might mistakenly believe they have found a safe level ground to coast the flow of the industry on, and that is not really the case.  Star Wars is an exception to the rule, as most game-changers are, and believing that they are reliable is a mistake that could turn costly in the long run.

Hollywood is a high stakes industry where money flow matters greatly.  Because of this, Hollywood needs reassurances, and that becomes a problem when your project works outside of the accepted margin.  So, the best way to be prepared in Hollywood is to thoroughly examine the landscape of the industry often and see if there are any patterns emerging that can benefit the industry as a whole.  Perhaps the thing that is having the most significant effect on the industry right now is how the demographic shift in viewership is changing.  For most of it’s history, Hollywood has focused mainly on gaining viewership in suburban Middle America, where they were most likely to find the most reliable, weekly visitors to the local movie theaters.  Because of this, the movies that have come out for so many years have often reflected the make-up of that body of population; mainly white, working class suburbanites.  But, as audiences have grown more culturally savvy, and internet connectivity has made on demand viewership more possible, such as through Netflix, there is far less of a need to make movies that target specifically the average Middle American movie-goer.  Now, we are seeing a huge rise in global cinema and that has changed the look of movie audience demographic significantly.  We are now seeing the mainstreaming of stories about the struggles of oppressed minorities, and it is changing the attitudes of the industry significantly.  You look at just the last two years, with Wonder Woman (2017) and Black Panther (2018), two genre specific movies that transcended their pedigree to finally give a cinematic identity to groups that are often largely marginalized in both society and in the movies (namely women and black people).  This has opened the door for even more cultural diversity, as other groups like homosexuals have recently enjoyed more mainstream exposure through hits like Call Me by Your Name (2017) and Love, Simon (2018).  And right now, we are witnessing a revolution in Asian representation with Crazy Rich Asians (2018) becoming a hit with audiences of all kinds.  At this moment, the trend in Hollywood is to no longer ignore marginalized groups and recognize that their stories are just as capable of making lots of money as any other.

But, Hollywood must also understand that these movies must be freely allowed to either soar and fall on their own.  Movements don’t flourish when the system they are fighting against is also the ones pulling the strings.  A good case in point is the largely failed attempts by other studios to follow in Marvel Studio’s footprints with creating cinematic universes of their own.  The reason most of them have failed is because too many of them have put the cart before the horse and expected the trend to do most of the work for them.  One example is the laughably mismanaged Dark Universe that was supposed to take all of Universal Studios famous movie monsters and combine them all in a Marvel style shared universe.  The Dark Universe was ended barely out of the gate with the catastrophic performance of The Mummy (2017), which even Tom Cruise’s star power couldn’t save.  And the large reason for that was the fact that Universal played it’s hand too strong.  It was so obvious that this was a marketing ploy that it robbed the actual movie of any real impact.  And it didn’t help that The Mummy was a lazy mess as well; built solely to promote future installments and nothing else.  It shows the failure of Hollywood trying to have control over something that is best left to flourish on it’s own.  The same goes for trying to reach certain parts of the audience.  People today know when they are being pandered to and it’s often enough to make them react negatively to a film when it becomes so apparent.  That was the mistake the female led Ghostbusters (2016) made.  The studio, Sony, made such a big deal that their movie was going to be this feminist breakthrough film, but in the end all it did was stir up a backlash that only negatively impacted it’s female cast and ended up setting things back for a female voice in the industry with it’s also lackluster performancesomething that was thankfully remedied somewhat with Wonder Woman the following year.  For a trend to take hold, trust needs to be put in the hands of outsiders who know what they are doing.  You can’t manufacture a revolution; it just happens naturally thanks to circumstance and excellent timing.

Hollywood may not always be ready for these game-changing films, but they are essential for the survival of the industry.  We wouldn’t have had the progress in the art of film-making had some of these films had not come along and popularized changes necessary for the industry.  Though the movies themselves may no longer be culturally relevant (especially in the case of Birth of a Nation), we can’t deny their importance for what they brought to the medium.  Where would we be now had sound, color, widescreen, and digital technology had taken longer to reach the industry.  Each advancement builds on the other and the evolution of Hollywood is built on the foundation of these once thought to be outliers.  But, Hollywood likes to be in charge of it’s own destiny, and that often makes it hard to accept these changes at first.  Disruptions in the industry does cost a lot of capital for those left behind and you can see many companies throughout Hollywood’s history rise and fall depending on how well they respond to a new order, leading to some often major layoffs in the process.  It’s a painful process, but essential for the future.  And Hollywood might be in a better position to have a less hands on presence in the development stages of their productions.  Why do you think so many filmmakers are flocking to Netflix right now?  Because Netflix’s platform relies less heavily on focus grouping a film to make it play better in Middle America.  This has opened up the flood gates for more diverse voices, which we have recently seen are an untapped market that is ready to explode.  I’m excited by the fact that the game changers of today are people who have often been ignored in the past, and that because of movies like Black Panther and Crazy Rich Asians we are about to see a Hollywood that is going to be less homogenized and far more world savvy than ever before.  Changing the game in Hollywood also allows for more opportunities for to try new things in Hollywood, which has always left long lasting impacts on the industry.  We may not know which movies may make that difference, but when they arrive, it rekindles what we love best about film in general and renews confidence in the art of film-making once again.

Not What You Expected – When Expectations Affect the Responses to Movies

I think that a lot of people outside of the industry don’t quite realize the enormous risks that are undertaken when making a movie.  And I don’t just mean financial wise, even though that is a significant factor in most cases, but in storytelling as well.  When setting out to make a movie, one has to consider first and foremost, is this something people will want to watch?  Movies are not meant to indulge the artistic tastes of their creators, and those who think that they are will find themselves in a significant financial quagmire.  Movies are first and foremost entertainment, with the intention of finding an audience that will justify the costs of making it and hopefully generate a profit in order to move forward another project afterwards.  We are only lucky to have this very commercial enterprise also be capable of creating art in the process.  Now, when the stakes are lower when it comes to storytelling, then so is the financial risks.  Small movies have small costs so that they can make the most of a smaller audience.  But, with Hollywood, the stakes are significantly higher because of the industry they have built up over the years investing in epic scale productions.  There is big money to be made in big films, but the industry also has the greater risk of having to manage the greater risks that come along with that.  Thus, we get a heavier reliance on tent-pole films, because of the way that they can rely on a built in audience to help reduce the risk of not getting enough back in box office returns.  But, every so often, game-changing movies shake up the established order of Hollywood and those sure-things are not so reliable anymore.  This has been the case with movies like The Matrix (1999), The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and The Dark Knight (2008), which not only broke new ground in Hollywood, but also raised the bar for what the industry would have to follow in the years ahead.  And in this rapidly evolving business, the industry finds itself having to live up to expectations that are no longer within their control.

Audience expectations have become a very problematic thing in recent years for the film industry, as social media and online chatting have made it almost impossible to gain a consensus on anything in the pop culture.  Traditional film criticism from media sources has sadly lost most of it’s pull on the industry, as anyone with a Twitter account or a YouTube channel with enough followers can suddenly become a film critic.  In many ways, it’s nice to see something like film criticism become so democratized, but the sheer volume of voices out there has made conversations around movies in general a little bit chaotic and in some areas, hostile.  In response, Hollywood has tried to cherry-pick whatever fan response best makes them look the best, but when opinions become so diverse and divided, favoritism often breeds contempt.  And this has made the film industry more susceptible to backlashes from general audiences.  As voices online have grown louder, so have their demands on the industry.  Now, making some demands on Hollywood from the online world has been a good thing, as most of the #MeToo movement has demonstrated, but that’s in the case where vocal outrage is justified.  Other cases, like when a film studio decides to move in a different direction with one of their intellectual properties, or when a movie makes a bold cinematic choice that contradicts what it’s set out to do before, tend to fall more in the inconsequential to petty reasons to show outrage online.  And yet, Hollywood is increasingly finding themselves walking more and more into a minefield of online criticism that often comes their way regardless of what their movies ended up doing.  And this is leaving a very problematic effect on how movies are made now and what kind of movies get made.

One of the most recent examples of Hollywood facing such a backlash from it’s audience is with the reactions that resulted after the release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017).  When one takes a look at the movie by itself, it has all the hallmarks of a typical entry from the franchise.  But, the movie also took risks as well, particularly when it came to the plot.  It didn’t extend the lore of the Star Wars cinematic universe, it completely dropped plot elements that were teased in the previous film, and it fundamentally changed the status of the world it’s created going forward.  Now the movie still did very well at the box office, and many people (including myself) were satisfied by what we saw.  But, a significant portion of the audience were not happy with the results, and they made their dissatisfaction known.  One critic went as far as to create a petition to strike The Last Jedi from the official Star Wars canon, deeming it unworthy to even exist.  And that was not the most severe reaction either, as some people even tried to scapegoat their frustration on certain players involved in the movie, as the horrible racist comments made towards actress Kelly Marie Tran (who played Rose in the movie) showed in a very extreme way.  But what is interesting is the fact that most of these complaints were made by people who proclaim themselves as fans.  The reason for The Last Jedi to be singled out for such a reaction is peculiar because it is by no means the worst thing we’ve seen from the Star Wars franchise (these guys must have clearly forgotten about the prequels).  What’s changed is the fact that our world today is so wrapped up in responding both positively and negatively to pop culture, and as a result, things like Star Wars are now held up to a higher and some would say an unrealistic standard that it must apply to.

The fandom around such things like Star Wars has become more and more ingrained in the pop culture and much of it now actually shapes the lives of the people who makes up it’s audience.  Star Wars, throughout it’s 40 year history, has grown beyond just a cinematic experience.  People devote their lives to the fandom of Star Wars in some pretty extreme ways.  For the longest time, the original trilogy was all that fans had to base their love of the movies on, and then creator George Lucas expanded upon the lore with his prequel trilogy, and then eventually the sale to Disney really opened the floodgates for this cinematic universe.  Now, George Lucas’ previous attempts to tell the story his way ended up causing fans to react negatively to his movies, because they felt that it tampered with the thing that they fell in love with in the first place.  Though it was a severe backlash, it was still not something that fans just had to learn to deal with.  Lucas was the creator of this world, and despite fan’s dissatisfaction with the movies, they knew there was nothing to be done because it wasn’t their story.  This is why The Force Awakens (2015) was given so much leeway, because fans overlooked any flaws it may have has as long as it felt like the Star Wars of old again.  Force Awakens also renewed fan interest in the lore of the universe, which would end up backfiring in time once Last Jedi premiered.  J.J. Abrams established new mysteries to get fans interested, like who Rey’s parents were and who this Snoke guy really is, which were immediately dropped once Rian Johnson took over in the director’s chair.  The result feels far more of a personal betrayal than before for Star Wars fans, because of how extra invested they’ve become in the years since the prequels.  Just go on YouTube and see all the many fan theory videos that started after The Force Awakens, and how so many of these same fans are now The Last Jedi’s most vocal critics.  Many of them mistakenly look at the movie as wasting their devotion and dismissing their opinions, when in reality, The Last Jedi is actually trying to challenge their perceptions and think about the lore of this universe in a different, more unexpected way.

That has become the biggest challenge for all filmmakers that are trying to great mass appeal entertainment in Hollywood today.  All audiences are more culturally aware than they were decades ago, and most of them are going to carry their own pre-conceived notions of what to expect going in to the movie.  For some of these high stakes properties, it’s come to the point where you have to make a movie that’s better than the one that the audience member has thought of for themselves.  And this falls into two forms; people who are familiar with the source material on which the movie is based on, or people who are well versed in the universe that has been created thus far.  Any cinematic adaptation based on a literary source often has to be subject to this.  You’ve all heard the common phrase, “The Book Was Better,” which indicates that the movie did not live up to what they imagined in their minds as they read the original book.  Film plays by a whole different set of rules than the written word, and what plays well on the page may not work as well on the screen.  Time is condensed, characters are excised, and whole plot threads are ignored because a movie needs to contain a story in a short, two hour amount of time.  Some movies have exceptionally managed to do this, sometimes by changing so much that it becomes it’s own unique thing, like Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980).  But, you’ll find even the most dedicated critic who holds it against a movie because it didn’t fit their own imagination.  That’s something that affects franchises that are still writing their own lore as they go along, like Star Wars, more dramatically, because people with such a strong feeling towards this universe are imaginative themselves and will come up with their own takes on how they would tell the story.  And when fandom becomes so intense as that surrounding Star Wars, people become more defensive about their own vision for the universe and more upset when the rules change so much regarding the direction the story is headed.

One interesting phenomenon that has occurred in this era of heightened pop culture is the rise of fan fiction and fan made films.  In many ways, this is a far more positive outlet for the disgruntled fan than shouting outrage online.  For some people, it’s a way to show their devotion as a fan while at the same time “fixing” their perceived problems with what Hollywood did wrong.  Fan fiction can be self indulgent, but interesting new ways to look at the fictional worlds that they are revisiting can spark more interesting story-lines that deepen the worlds as well.  Fan films are also a great way to express something about a franchise that some people believe has lost it’s way.  Some can be amateurish, but others are done with such love and care that they even gain the notice of Hollywood.  One online demo reel made showing an actress in a Wonder Woman costume fighting in a World War II setting helped convince Warner Brothers to use that as a basis for the time period of their well-received big screen adaptation of the famed super heroine.  Fans even go as far to re-cut films to their own liking, using their own editing tools at home.  One story came out recently that actor Topher Grace dealt with the frustration of playing notorious Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard, David Duke, for Spike Lee’s BlackkKlansman (2018) by taking the 9 hours of Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy and editing it into a tighter 2 hour run time, all on his own.  That’s certainly one way to occupy yourself, but it’s indicative of a lot of people who can create the version of a story they want now that the tools are more easily available to them.  No one can profit from such things, obviously, but it is interesting to hear how different ways of watching a movie can change your reaction to it.  Even things like alternative cuts or canons are interesting to look at.  Star Wars has one called the Machete Order, which goes in the order of Episodes 4, 5, 2, 3, and 6 (Phantom Menace is wiped from existence in this canon) which does change up the story quite a bit).  Even in frustration, some creativity can still flourish, and is not altogether worth dismissing.

The question remains, however, if Hollywood should listen to all this and take it seriously.  The one thing that should be noted is that the internet magnifies everything, so taking into consideration all the grievances made online by fans should be taken with a degree of caution.  Still, fan input is integral, and it matters to have a pulse on how the world is responding to the work you put out.  The only thing that matters is that it be constructive criticism.  Lashing out in a hateful way towards a member in the cast for example is the wrong way to express frustration, and honestly anyone who does that should honestly take more of a look at themselves than what they thought about a simple movie.  The last thing that I would want to see Hollywood do, though, is take fewer risks.  I think that’s what I appreciated about The Last Jedi; it broke new ground and unshackled itself from traditions of the past.  I guess the reason this caused such a backlash in the Star Wars fandom is because the series doesn’t have the footing yet to deviate from it’s established lore.  Even as it begins to open up to exciting and endless possibilities, Star Wars is still a brand with it’s own singular identity and because of that, fans expect more out of it that feels true to what they’ve always seen it as.  One place where I feel the company has managed to perfectly balance delivering on expectations and then subverting them is at Marvel Studios.  The comic book giant has decades worth of lore to draw from, and yet the movies take chances that you wouldn’t expect.  Sometimes with specific story-lines from the comics, like Civil War (2016), they use just the basic premise and little else.  I think that it’s because they’ve remained true to the spirit of the characters, and turned them into the focus of their Cinematic Universe, allowing for fans to be more forgiving of the plot lines that are dismissed.  By stating up front that this is their mission with the movies, they’ve found that gentle balance, and it allows them to take liberties that make sense in the long run, like Thanos’ motivations in Infinity War (2018) or the dissolution of S.H.I.E.L.D. in Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014).  The Last Jedi seemed to be pushing for a similar dramatic change for Star Wars, but the fan base just wasn’t ready to make that jump again.

With the coming years ahead, as social media continues to drive up anticipation and disappointment to fever pitch levels, Hollywood is going to find it a little more difficult to manage.  I would say the most positive thing to come out of The Last Jedi’s contentious reaction is that it made us more aware of the positives and negatives of thinking about these movies too much.  I do think healthy speculation about what we’ll see in an upcoming movie is something worthwhile; I honestly have done it myself many times here on this blog.  But, we all must understand the fact that not all of us get to make these movies, and the ones who hold the responsibility are often put into a very hard position.  There are times when I had wished that a movie had been done much better, and I sometimes hold some things to an impossibly high standard.  It’s probably why I’m extra critical of some of the Disney remakes that have been made recently, because I hold the originals in such esteem.  But, I try to keep my reactions civil and not try to lash out at the people involved in an unreasonable way.  The only times where I show real disdain is if a movie was made for cynical reasons, like either to make money and nothing else or if it’s purely there to push a problematic agenda that cares little for the entertainment value.  The Last Jedi found itself in the precarious position of having to fulfill the promise of more adventures in this cinematic universe while also laying out new paths for the future, and part of the Star Wars community was not happy with it.  At times, I think that the people who made the film were expecting this backlash and tried their best to prepare for it.  Snoke actor Andy Serkis, for instance, was seen in the publicity circuit one time wearing a sticker that said, “Your Snoke Theory Sucks.”  It is hard to please everyone, and we’ll probably see more divisive movies in the future that face a similar high profile backlash, warranted or not.  It’s the price of having more voices heard in the discussion around movies.  Everyone brings their own baggage with them into a film, and one hopes that any movie inspires more creative thinking and criticism, instead of just vile anger.  After all, the message of the movie is that our strength is best used not to destroy the things we hate, but to protect the things that we love.

The Predator – Review

To be fairly honest, the Predator series has never really been my thing.  I don’t hate the movies, nor really dislike them at all.  I just don’t have the overwhelming admiration that some people have for these films.  I guess as action movies they are alright.  I’ve even found myself quoting the original 1987 film out of context many times, including the usuals like, “Get to the Choppa!!” or “Ain’t got time to bleed.”  But if you were to ask me now to complete a retrospective of all the movies in this series, it would be a short one, because this is a franchise that has largely flown under my radar.  And strangely, unlike most other franchises born out of it’s era, this has been a largely dormant series for long periods of time.  There was a sequel starring Danny Glover that premiered in 1990, shortly after the original, but after that it wasn’t until 2010 that we saw another entry into this franchise; the Adrian Brody-headlined Predators.  Sure there were the cross-over Alien vs. Predator series that launched in the early to mid 2000’s, but that’s a whole different franchise to itself.  Predator, 30 years after it’s beginning, only had 3 films total as a part of it’s own canon, which is pretty small compared to all the Star WarsDie Hards, and Jurassic Parks that we’ve seen in the same time frame.  Hell, we are up to our 9th Fast and the Furious, and that series has only been around half the time that Predator has.  One the one hand, it’s helped keep the mystique of the character fresh, because he hasn’t been diluted by dumbed down sequels for many years.  But, on the other hand, his long absences from the big screen may be due to the limitations of the character.  There’s only so much that you can get out of an alien hunter with no name or backstory.  But, like most other things with nostalgia value, the Predator has caught the eye of Hollywood once again, and the call for a reboot has brought him back to the big screen.

First thought about doing another Predator movie now is that this is just a studio grabbing after some easy cash.  And when a studio makes that choice, it usually leads to a sub-par effort that doesn’t rightly value the thing that it’s trying to exploit.  This was the worry that a lot of fans of the series were worried about going into this new reboot.  And then it was announced that the duties of bringing Predator back to the big screen would be going to writer/director Shane Black, and that suddenly made people interested once again.  The choice of hiring Black is an interesting one.  He of course is a rock star among screenwriters, having penned some of the most highly regarded action films of the last 30 years, from Lethal Weapon (1987), to The Last Boy Scout (1991), to The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996), and in more recent years he has distinguished himself as a director with equally beloved films like Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (2004) and The Nice Guys (2016).  But, the other interesting aspect is that Shane Black already has an established history with the franchise, as he was a part of the original 1987 film’s supporting cast.  During his fledgling early days in Hollywood as a wannabe actor, Shane managed to land the role of Hawkins in the now classic film, working opposite heavy hitters like Schwarzenegger, Jesse Ventura, and Carl Weathers.  But once his screenplay for Lethal Weapon sold and went into production at the same time, Shane said goodbye to acting and never looked back.  So, it’s interesting that he would make a return to a franchise that represented a very different chapter of his career.  Clearly, he doesn’t need The Predator; his career is already on solid ground.  I think he took this opportunity mostly because he saw something that he could add to it, and possibly make it his own.  Regardless, it got a lot of people excited to know that this franchise was in the hands of someone with a unique voice like Shane Black.  But, does that promise result in a worthwhile entry into this famed franchise.

The movie begins with a Predator ship crash landing in the jungles of Southern Mexico.  There, a black ops unit of American soldiers are about to eliminate a drug kingpin, and have their mission disrupted by the crash.  One of the soldiers, Quinn McKenna (Boyd Holbrook) finds the Predator’s gear, including a helmet and armband, and uses them to survive the creature’s deadly attacks.  After subduing the alien, he sends the contraband back home by mail, so that he can have evidence of his encounter that will prevent the army from declaring him insane as a way of silencing him in order to keep the incident under wraps.  The package makes it’s way to McKenna’s home, where his Autistic son Rory (Jacob Tremblay) begins to play around with it, unknowingly unlocking and decoding it’s computer systems.  Once captured and interrogated, Quinn is taken to a transport which will take him to another place for further examination (meaning the loony bin).  On the bus, he meets fellow soldiers who themselves are dealing with a variety of mental disorders; self-destructive Nebraska Williams (Trevante Rhodes), joke-telling Coyle (Keegan-Michael Key), pyromaniac Lynch (Alfie Allen), Tourettes plagued Baxley (Thomas Jane), and Christ complexed Nettles (Augusto Aguilera).  Meanwhile, on the same base that this crew is being held, the same Predator specimen is being examined by a team of scientists, including the chief commander of the investigation, Treager (Sterling K. Brown) and biologist Casey Bracket (Olivia Munn), who has found the shocking discovery that the Predator species is using different DNA from multiple species to evolve into more deadly beings.  This becomes evident once a much larger and scarier Predator arrives and kills the smaller one found earlier.  Discovering all this, Bracket enlists the help of McKenna and his outcast soldiers as they try to reach the Predator before he finds the source that brought him to their home; Quinn’s son Rory who’s been using the Predator gear as a Halloween costume.

There’s a strange dynamic to this movie that might make or break one’s viewing experience.  For one thing, it feels like both a Predator movie and a Shane Black movie.  Neither deters from the other, and in some cases it actually helps the other out and makes it work better than it otherwise would have.  But, at the same time, this movie does feel like two movies mashed into one, and that is why it suffers from some rather drastic tonal shifts.  You do have some neat looking action sequences that feel right at home in the Predator franchise, including some rather grisly and often hilariously over the top slaughters.  And the movie also maintains the Shane Black trademarks that we’ve all come to love over the years; the quippy dialogue, the ridiculed masculinity, the strangely empowered young child, and of course the holiday setting (only this time he has swapped out Christmas for Halloween).  Black’s affinity for comedic situations stemming from testosterone fueled showboating also feels strangely in character with the Predator series, and the movie is definitely at it’s best when it exploits this aspect.  But, when Shane Black does indulge his own tastes, it does undermine any attempt on the movie’s part to build any tension.  There isn’t a whole lot of plot here, and what there is of it comes across as fairly convoluted.  In many ways, I liked this movie better when it was working as a Black comedy (excuse the pun), and less so as another entry in this franchise.  In many ways, it seems that Shane is just piggy-backing on an already established franchise to deliver some of his ideas for situations that he otherwise couldn’t fit into any other film.  At the same time, he still isn’t undermining the lore of this series; why would he since he was there right at it’s inception.  A more hack job could have been done with this movie and Shane Black is a better filmmaker than that, but even still it’s a movie that feels more disjointed than his usual efforts.

I almost wonder if he is much better at delivering his own original ideas to fruition than being handed over already established material.  That seems to be the case, because his only other disappointment as a filmmaker was the lackluster Iron Man 3 (2013), which neither showcased his trademark style very well and disrupted the very solid foundation of the Marvel Cinematic Universe with a bunch of unnecessary plot twists.  The Predator is a better movie than Iron Man 3, but it does share many of the same issues.  One is the lack of a cohesive tone, and two is because Shane Black’s ideas tend to run contrary to what the movies actually need.  One area where I found this to be problematic is in how the movie deals with some of it’s more serious issues.  In particular, it’s with how the movie deals with mental health problems.  Each of the soldiers that make up the supporting cast have a condition that should be discussed with seriously, and for the most part are, but there are points where Shane Black does play their conditions off for laughs.  This could prove problematic for the movie in the long run, because there are many veterans out there whose mental problems are no laughing matter, and though this movie doesn’t ridicule them, it nevertheless makes light of something that is very serious.  The movie does treat the Autism of Jacob Tremblay’s Rory with a bit more seriousness, and it’s to the still very young actor’s credit that he portrays his character’s affliction in a realistic way.  But seeing how his character’s issues are worked into the plot of the story also creates some head-scratching after a while.  Also, Shane Black is a master of great many things, but none of them are excellence in world-building.  If you’re looking for a movie that builds upon the lore of the Predator universe, you’ll probably be disappointed, as this movie is kept pretty earthbound for the most part.  Not a huge problem for this movie in particular, but it’s pretty clear that Shane Black is just making his own kind of movie where the Predator just happens to be a part of it.

The movie’s greatest asset in the long run are the characters.  This has always been Shane Black’s greatest strength as a writer and director, because he specializes in quirky, memorable characterizations that often transcend the stories of the movies themselves.  I particularly like the interactions between the collection of misfits that help out our hero.  Despite the problematic uses of each soldiers ailments, the actors still manage to make them endearing throughout the movie; something you wouldn’t expect in a Predator movie.  I think it’s because Black likes to find the humanity in even the biggest of outsiders, and he quickly finds ways to break through the rough exterior of each to find the decent person underneath.  I especially liked the performance of Trevante Rhodes, who we last saw in a breakout performance in the Oscar-winning Moonlight (2016).  He takes what could have turned into a shallow, stereotypical character and makes him deeply layered, with a great deal of quiet subtlety.  Boyd Holbrook also does decently in a role that typically comes off as wooden in most other action films; the straight man protagonist.  His interactions with the aforementioned Jacob Tremblay are extremely effecting, and you see a genuine bond between the two actors that makes the father/son relationship feel real.  Olivia Munn also does the best she can with probably the trickiest role in the film.  Credit to Shane Black for not pushing the female presence to the side in this otherwise testosterone filled movie.  Also, I really enjoyed Sterling K. Brown’s more antagonistic role, as his often lackadaisical attitude to the situation runs contrary to what you’d expect from this type of character.  All in all, the one character that gets the short end here is the Predator itself, which has been typical of the series thus far anyway.  At least with every other character being rich in personality, it makes up for there being little interest in the Predator.

The film is also a mixed bag when it comes to the action scenes.  The thing with Shane Black as a director is that his strengths have always been in the dialogue and characters.  When a movie emphasizes those things, like The Nice Guys, you don’t need the action set pieces to be spectacular.  But, when working with a bigger budget like Iron Man or The Predator, Shane’s limited vision becomes more apparent.  The visual effects are not particularly ground-breaking, especially when it comes to the Predator himself.  No new territory is explored, particularly when it comes to the Predator himself.  The CGI in fact robs the movie of some of the effectiveness of the character, as we’ve moved away from a man in a suit to a digitally rendered model that is larger and has an biotechnological exo-skeleton.  The effect just isn’t the same because we as an audience can tell that he’s a special effect.  There is still a traditional Predator present early on, but he’s dealt with early and the last, weaker half of the movie contains the digital character through the remainder of the film.  Like everything else, the titular Predator is the weakest part of the movie.  Shane Black does make up for it with some of the over-the-top violence however.  There are some hilariously unexpected kills committed in this movie.  One character, who I won’t spoil, even manages to blow up a drunk frat boy on the balcony of his house through a freak accident, which got quite the laugh from the audience I saw.  And that’s mainly where the movie’s action works best; when it’s intended to get a laugh.  This can be a very funny movie at times, and I liked how creative it would be at times with the violence.  Even still, for a Predator movie, this may not exactly be what you were hoping for.

The movie as a whole isn’t an insult to what has come before, but it’s not exactly the series in it’s prime either.  Shane Black was dealt with the unenviable task of bringing new life into this long dormant franchise, and while it may not be among his best work, he still managed to make it entertaining.  In many ways, this works much better as a Shane Black movie than as a Predator movie.  It’s got all the filmmaker’s trademarks, and it’s interesting to see them utilized in a film like this.  I really liked the way he wrote the human characters in this movie, but it might have worked better if they were in a story that wasn’t already tied to a pre-existing franchise.  Still, it’s interesting that Fox gave this franchise over to him, given how it represents a part of his own early career.  I think that Shane wanted more than anything to see what he himself could do with this franchise, and it’s clear that he does have an affection for the original movie and the series as a whole.  It’s just sad that none of what he brought to the table made the Predator himself any more interesting.  The Predator is just the same old monster, which was quite a breakthrough creation back in the 80’s, but now seems quaint compared to all the monsters we’ve seen on the big screen since in things like Star WarsThe Lord of the Rings, and all the MCU films to date.  Perhaps that was the purpose of bringing in Shane Black to breathe some personality into a series that has long outlived the originality of it’s fairly flimsy premise.  Whether or not this leads to a future of more Predator films is hard to say, but Shane gave it his best shot.  The Predator is neither a great action thriller, nor is it a waste of time.  You may end up enjoying yourself watching this movie, but more because of the comedy rather than the action set pieces.  As a character, I think the Predator is played out and should probably be put to rest.  But, it is good to see Shane Black still delivering something worthwhile with his characters and comedy in what is otherwise a very underwhelming reboot.

Rating: 7/10

Tinseltown Throwdown – Dante’s Peak vs. Volcano

The disaster film has had many ups and downs throughout the history of cinema; mostly downs.  Sure, you have your Oscar-winner Titanic (1997), but most of the time the genre is marked by many sub-par efforts that either end up laughably bad (1996’s Twister) or just plain bad (2004’s The Day After Tomorrow).   And the common fault with most disaster films isn’t whether or not they can make the disaster appear real or not; in fact, most of the time, these types of movies are wonderful showcases for the best advances in visual effects.  No, the thing that most of these types of movies struggle with the most is how they tell their stories.  In reality, disasters as a moment in time are quite brief.  Usually when a movie tackles something like an earthquake or a tornado as a part of their story, they have to film the run-time with a lot of extra filler, because those natural occurrences last minutes at the most.  There are ways around such problems.  Movies like Twister and San Andreas (2015) manage to keep the story momentum going by making their films not just about one disastrous event, but a whole string of them.  And movies like Titanic and The Poseidon Adventure (1972) get their dramatic tension not from the incident itself, but from the aftermath, and all the desperation that comes about from the characters trying to survive.  It’s easy to forget that the human drama is the essential part of any disaster movie, and oftentimes these movies fall apart because the filmmakers seem so disinterested in their stories.  The worst kinds of disaster movies are usually the ones where human beings are treated purely like lambs to a slaughter, except whichever character the bankable movie star is playing, as they somehow miraculously survive without a scratch.  This is a genre that has many different types too, with no natural or man-made disaster seemingly unexplored, and there was a period of time when the genre was so prolific that it often resulted in direct competition with like-minded films.

This was the case in the late 90’s, as digital effects were starting to become a more useful tool in Hollywood.  Though the genre saw a renewed interest in this decade, it’s roots go back further.  Disaster movies were always brought out the best in big screen entertainment, and even the early days of the talkies saw it’s fair share; like San Fransisco (1936) where Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy survive through the 1906 earthquake, or In Old Chicago (1937) where Tyrone Power and Alice Faye try to endure the Great Fire of 1871 that consumed the city.  But the genre didn’t hit it’s peak until a producer named Irwin Allen stepped into Hollywood during the 1970’s.  Not only did Allen develop films that utilized the best visual effects available at the time, but he also invented the idea that these disaster films should also include all star casts as well.  With movies like The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno (1974), Allen made the disaster film not only the most visually stunning productions of their time, but also the most star studded, making them must see entertainment and huge box office successes for their time.  Though the blockbuster era would overtake the box office reign years later, Allen’s disaster flicks are still gold standards for the genre, and their influence no doubt was still felt once the genre saw it’s revival later on.  Already mentioned films like Titanic and Twister were breakthroughs in terms of using CGI to bring the epic scale of these events to life, and Hollywood saw this genre as the perfect showcase for this new technology.  And with a huge swell within a particular genre, you are bound to see movies that bear very many similarities.  I already wrote about two such films, Deep Impact (1998) and Armageddon (1998) here, but a very competition happened a year prior with a more earthbound type of disaster; the eruptive duel between Volcano (1997) and Dante’s Peak (1997).

“Isn’t it beautiful, nestled all nice and cozy right up against the mountain?

“Yeah, just like Pompeii.”

Before examining the ways that these movies distinquish themselves apart from one another, and what makes one better than the other, one thing needs to be made clear.  Neither of these movies are good.  A large part of why the disaster film disipated as a genre before the 90’s were over is largely because of movies like these, both of which flopped hard.  And the major problem that affects both of them is the same as with most other bad movies in this genre; they’re boring.  Both movies unfortunately cannot fill their run-times with anything interesting apart from the disasters themselves, and this ends up making the movies feel very hollow.  This also means that the movies also resort to having the main characters do stupid things in order to move the plot forward, instead of doing what a normal, rational person would do, which is to flee an erupting volcano immediately.  The movies’ attempts at humanizing the characters are also fairly lame, and often resort to generic stereotypes or worse.  They are essentially movies where the visuals matter more than the story, and the screenplays are just your 101 basics.  For some reason, these movies also like to fit in a lot of side characters, which makes character development even more impossible; my guess is that this is a holdover idea from the Irwin Allen days, but just without the star power to make us identify with the characters quicker.  That being said, the movies do feature some large scale visuals; though time has not been kind to the early CGI used.    Still, you can see the money spent on the screen, and in some cases, points where the movie went above and beyond what was to be expected.  But, there are fundamental differences that make one less bad than the other, and it primarily involves the actual source of the disasters themselves; the volcanoes.

volcano 2

“We’re going to put as many people in front of it as it takes”

The big difference that separates the two movie is the plausibility of their concepts.  Dante’s Peak has a relatively more earthbound story, setting the movie in the gentle and serene location of a rugged mountain town named after the titular peak.   The volcano in question is also what you would imagine; a cyndrical, snow-capped peak not unlike the many mountains of the Pacific Northwest, which themselves were formed through volcanism.  The movie clearly takes inspiration particularly from the Mount St. Helens eruption of 1980, so even though the movie takes a lot of liberties with the sciences and realities of volcanic activity, it at least counts on the audience’s familiarity with an event like St. Helens to draw a parallel.  Volcano on the other hand doesn’t seem to care about the science of volcanic activity and just seems more content to set their movie anywhere just so it would look cool.  This is especially true by the fact that they set the movie in Los Angeles, a place rarely affected by the impact of volcanism, and that they place the source of the volcano in the world famous La Brea Tar Pits.  Here’s the most jarring problem with that; tar pits are not a bi-product of volcanic activity.  They are the result of trapped methane gas and porous rock, and are great places to find fossilized remains because of the way it traps and preserves, not destroy and reshape like volcanos do.  The fact that the filmmakers of Volcano think that Tar Pits naturally lead to lava shows that they clearly were not doing their homework.  Yes, Dante’s Peak is ludicrous at moments too, but it grounds itself with at least some basic knowledge of how volcanoes work.  There is an interesting moment in the movie where the Geological Society official, played by actor Charles Hallahan, states real life instances of volcanic warnings that proved to be false alarms but still resulted in communities losing valuable tourism income.  Though a minor point, it does show that the movie at least tried to underline itself with something based in reality.  At the very least, the movie treats the science with a little more respect.  There aren’t instances of characters diverting lava with a barrier to make it change direction, as if it were flowing water and not a viscous material that can layer upon itself and climb over obstructions.

The movie Volcano is the far more ridiculous of the two because of this, but some of that does work to it’s advantage.  The movie at the very least devotes a better amount of it’s run-time to the disaster itself.  It thankfully spares us any more character development, and it almost becomes endearing just how much the movie doesn’t care about the people in it.  The problem with Dante’s Peak is that it takes far too long to get the to meat of the film, which is the eruption.  Far too much of the first half involves Geologist Harry Dalton (played by a very oddly cast Pierce Brosnan) seeing the warning signs and no one taking him seriously.  Of course the movie resorts to this cliche, which has been seen in countless movies before like Jaws (1975), Jurassic Park (1993), and also all the way back with The Towering Inferno.  We get a lot of this too, as clear signs are dismissed in a very irrational way, clearly intended on the filmmakers part to stall the inevitable in order to pad the movie.  In addition to this, the movie also gives us a very labored courting relationship between Dalton and the town’s mayor, Rachel Wando, played by Linda Hamilton.  All these set ups end up getting dropped once the mountain erupts, so devoting so much time to it seems pointless.  At least with Volcano there are no warning signs.  The volcano just manifests suddenly without too much build-up, and all the drama is drawn from the results, rather than the lead-up.  I do appreciate that Dante’s Peak at least attempted to make more out of itself than just the disaster, but when the characters are this dull and the pacing is so flat, it does test your patience.  The eruption is almost like a welcome release in the end, and I’ll say this, the second half of the movie is much better in general, and delivers it’s spectacle well without overdoing it.

dantes peak 2

“A man who looks at a rock must have a lot on his mind.”

The movie’s also differ greatly when it comes to their casts.  Both drift heavily away from the all-star days of Irwin Allen, and instead just spotlight their headliners, with the remainder of the cast filled by capable character actors.  In this regard, the cast of Dante’s Peak fares a tad bit better.  Pierce Brosnan filmed this movie in between Bond films, so he looks a tad bit disinterested with his mind obviously elsewhere.  Still, that 007 charm does carry over, and even though the character is fairly limited in development, he still manages to maintain screen presence throughout.  Linda Hamilton also does a capable job of playing her role.  No stranger to action films, she holds her own in the movie’s more climatic moments, and thankfully she does so without invoking any similarities with Sarah Connor from the Terminator series, her most famous role.  And surprisingly, the two have chemistry, even if their relationship in the movie feels contrived.  That’s a fair bit better than what the cast of Volcano gives us.  Tommy Lee Jones is in such a “doing it for the paycheck” mode with his performance in this movie.  Considering that in the same year he delivered an endearing performance in the very fun Men in Black (1997) shows just how bad his work is here, because we know he’s capable of better.  Surprisingly, it’s Anne Heche who comes out of this looking better, and her performance is almost as bad.  There’s little I can tell you about either character, because the movie does little to make either one memorable.  But, the bar was lower for Heche in comparison, so she  had less of a case to make.  Shockingly, she was given the brunt of blame for Volcano’s box office failure, because the movie came out around the same time she did from the closet.  Her public declaration of her sexuality and then relationship with comedian Ellen Degenres was pointed unfairly as the reason why audiences stayed away, which shows just how much times have changed.  It’s a good thing now that homosexuality is no longer a blight on one’s career, but sadly Anne Heche was unfairly scapegoated for something that was the studio’s fault, not hers.

The one other aspect that sets the film’s apart is the way they capture the spectacle of their events.  The CGI of the mid to late 90’s doesn’t quite hold up to scrutiny compared with today’s standards, despite some rare exceptions (Juuassic Park).  The movie Dante’s Peak does benefit from a minimal reliance on the film-making tool, and only uses it for the more impossible moments, like the pyroclastic flows swallowing the town, or a torrential river clogged with debris.  What I do appreciate best about Dante’s Peak is that it mixes in the CGI with a lot of detailed models, which has sadly fallen into a lost art in recent years as computers have replaced the technique.  Looking at making of materials for the film, you can see how the movie managed to create a believable mountain and it’s destruction through very intricate models, which helps to maintain a realistic quality to the movie in general.  They even built false hillsides for certain scenes on film studio lots in Vancouver, BC, just so they could demolish this environment in a controlled fashion and make it look authentic.  That sense of detail was expensive (over $100 million before inflation), but every dollar is there on screen.  Volcano doesn’t have that air of authenticity, as they obviously couldn’t destroy large swaths of the streets of LA.  But that movie’s way around this is no less impressive.  For the production, 20th Century Fox built a lifesize replica of the intersection of Wilshie Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue in midtown LA, out in the Mojave Desert.  This included false facades of landmarks like the Tar Pits, the Petersen Automotive Museum, and the LACMA Museum Complex.  From this set, they could demolish all they wanted, and still have it look like Miracle Mile in Los Angeles.  The movie still relies more heavily on the CGI portions, and because of that over reliance, it’s effects don’t hold up as well as Dante’s Peak.  But, both movies do have a lot of ambition behind them, which makes you wish it was focused on better stories.

volcano 1

“I’m not paper; I’m lava. What beats lava?”

So, overall, I would say that Dante’s Peak works much better as a film than Volcano.  It’s far more grounded, it has a better cast and it doesn’t rely too heavily on film-making short cuts like CGI.  Even still, it is a very flawed movie, and at times quite boring.  Volcano in some ways benefits from being so laughably ludicrous that it becomes entertaining, but that doesn’t make it any better.  Dante’s Peak is in general a much better made movie.  Regardless, both movies were responsible for the quick burnout that the disaster film faced.  Despite the successes that came after them, these two movie were pin pointed to as examples of wasteful spending by Hollywood, and many future disaster films were shelved or canceled as a result.  It didn’t help much that the failure of Kevin Costner’s Waterworld (1995) was still on the industry’s mind at the time, and studios became more weary of creating elaborate sets such as the ones used for these two films.  At the same time, no one suffered much from these failures.  Brosnan continued to play James Bond for several more years, unscathed.  Tommy Lee Jones had Men in Black  to quickly help people forget that Volcano even existed.  And Hollywood has learned that supporting someone’s LGBTQ identity is actually a net gain rather than a detriment, and Anne Heche has thankfully been let off the hook for the movie’s failure that she was unfairly singled out for.  I doubt that these movies will ever be looked at as anything but examples of how fleeting trends can be in Hollywood, even within the robust disaster film genre.  And even today, the genre is still in need of some fresh ideas.  I would gladly watch either Dante’s Peak or Volcano over any of Roland Emmerich’s awful disaster movies.  What interests me is how both films seemed to fail at the same time, and over the exact same subject.  Maybe it was just that audiences didn’t find volcanoes all that interesting, or because the moment of reckoning for this volatile genre just happened to fall at this time, bringing both films into it’s own path of destruction at the worst possible time.

dantes peak 3

“I’ve always been better at feeling out volcanoes than people and politics.”

Cinematic Dragons – The Growing Influence of China in Hollywood

For the longest time, the entire cinematic world made it’s way through Hollywood.  That dream factory in the American southland was where all the money came from as well as being the focal point from which all pop culture stemmed from.  And the main reason why Hollywood grew to have this special place in our cultural development is because for the longest time, America was the undisputed leading market for all things in the world.  Because of America’s unique connection to the birth and development as film as an art-form, it’s no surprise that Hollywood’s output was specifically geared to appeal to a broad but specific American demographic.  Sure, there were budding film markets that grew up internationally during this same time, some with influential filmmakers of their own who would leave their own valuable mark on the industry as well, but to be a big deal of the world of film, you still had to play by Hollywood’s rules, and those were dictated by the demands of the American market.  But, in the last few decades, there has been a shift that has dramatically altered the way Hollywood does business.  As more and more nations have pulled themselves into developing and even prosperous economies, their film industries have grown alongside them, and Hollywood has taken notice.  Right now, film studios are thinking less about how a movie will perform domestically, and are instead focusing more on the international grosses.  And that is having an effect on what kinds of movies are getting made today.  The money is now no longer going towards movies that will play well just for the American market, but for the entire world.  And that includes your easy to translate fare, like the Transformers movie, the Fast and the Furious movies, and most anything that animated.  But. what is interesting right now is the ever increasing influence of one nation in particular, that not only is rising as a film market but is even challenging the American market as the largest in the world, which is greatly changing not only is changing Hollywood’s focus but is even shifting the way it does business as well; the ancient country of China.

China, for the longest time, was an almost zero factor market for Hollywood.  From the rise of Communism through the Cultural Revolution, China was a closed off nation that accepted nothing from the outside world; including movies.  Until Nixon opened up diplomatic relations in the 1970’s, China was a country that probably knew nothing about Hollywood, nor had seen all the advances that cinema had made in all that time.  But, in the years since, they’ve made great progress in establishing their own mark on the film industry.  For the longest time, the center-point for Chinese film-making was in Hong Kong, the one time British colony that was untouched by Communism.  From Hong Kong, the world was introduced to a whole new genre that was distinctively grown out of Chinese culture; the martial arts film.  And from these movies, we were introduced to the first Chinese movie star in Bruce Lee, who managed to achieve international fame even before China began to open itself to the rest of the world.  Martial Arts cinema did help to put Hong Kong on the map as a hub for film-making, and that in turn helped to develop a new class of Chinese filmmakers.  Names like John Woo and Zhang Yimou began to make an impact not only in their homeland, but worldwide as well.  And it wasn’t just Hong Kong that took notice of their talents, but Hollywood as well.  Woo eventually made his way stateside where he took his distinctive style that he honed on films like A Better Tomorrow (1986) and Hard Boiled (1992) and helped to redefine the American action thriller with Face/Off (1996) and Mission Impossible 2 (2000).  And though he began outside of China in the small but important Taiwan film industry, Ang Lee quickly became known for his mastery of multiple franchises, which became a skill that managed to make him the first Asian filmmaker to win an Oscar for direction.  And he too also brought a uniquely Chinese flavor to his films, best illustrated in his sumptuous martial arts epic, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000).

To put it in short terms, China not only made up for many missed years separated from the world of cinema due to their isolation, but they did so in a spectacular fashion, quickly leaving their mark.  But now, they are having an impact on cinema in a different way.  After opening up special capitalist districts within the traditionally Communist nation, the nation quickly became a booming trade market, which has seen their national wealth balloon to unprecedented levels.  Because of this, more than 2/3 of the over 1 billion people in China have moved out of poverty and into the middle class.  As a result, more Chinese citizens have the income available now to do a variety of activities, including going to the movies on a regular basis.  And this been where business has really boomed for the Chinese film industry.  Over a thousand new movie theaters have opened up across China in just the last couple years alone.  Though they still haven’t caught up to the total number of screens here in North America. they are closing that gap fast, because there are far more Chinese out there than Americans, and the demand for more screens is high.  For a long time, imported American films were the top draw for Chinese theaters, and still are (except Star Wars for some reason), but China’s own film industry has seen a boom in their box office returns as well.  When you look at each year’s top grossing worldwide releases, you’ll see a growing number of Chinese productions like Wolf Warrior (2015) or Operation Red Sea (2018) appearing on the list, grossing in the range of $500 million each.  And these films don’t even reach American cinemas at all, which shows you just how much money right now can be made in China alone at the box office.  And because of this, American studios are taking notice and rethinking their strategy for which films to make.  The regular American film-goer no longer has the maximum influence over the market; now it is shared with the Chinese, and an amalgam of all other film markets worldwide.

That worldwide gross number is now a bigger chunk of the pie than the domestic grosses, and that has greatly influenced which films are given the bigger percentage of attention in Hollywood.  We’ve seen in particular a steady decrease in things like romantic comedies, westerns, and period epics being made by Hollywood, because these movies tend to be expensive and don’t translate very well over in places like China.  But the things that do translate well overseas are big, loud action films, which rely less on witty dialogue and intricate plots.  Disney has excelled with Marvel films, as well as their many animated properties, and one only has to look at the fact that the country is now home to two Disney theme parks to see how well their brand has connected with the Chinese.  Other studios are finding their footing in different ways.  Paramount has connected with their Transformers films, with many of the recent chapters in the series intentionally setting their stories in China.  Warner Brothers has even gone further by investing in movies that really are motivated solely by the international market.  Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim (2013) was disappointing at the domestic box office, despite critical praise, but it did extremely well in Asia, with China accounting for nearly $100 million extra in grosses alone, and that sole reason is why it received a sequel earlier this spring.  Another surprise was the film Warcraft (2016), based on the popular online multiplayer game.  By all accounts, the movie would’ve been considered a costly flop based on the domestic gross alone, and yet, it made a profit because of how well it did oversees, especially in China.  Despite what critics may think of these movies, the rising influence of a new class of paying customers out of China and elsewhere are dictating the projects getting greenlit by the choices they make at the box office.

What’s even more interesting, however, about Chinese rising influence on Hollywood is not just their increased profile as a film market, but also the fact that they are having an even more prominent presence right in the heart of Hollywood itself.  Many emerging billionaires coming out of China right now are not only investing more heavily in film-making, but they’re going as far as to purchase several little studios in Hollywood itself, making movies for American audiences in addition to their own.  This has recently manifested in the arrival of cross-cultural movies targeted to appeal to both countries.  One of the clearest examples of this is the recent release of The Meg (2018), a big budget monster movie where a team of scientists from all over the world cross paths with the giant prehistoric shark, Megalodon.  Though there’s nothing remarkable about the premise, it is interesting to note how much of the casting of the movie is reflective of the studio’s interest in appealing to both American and Chinese audiences alike, having British action icon Jason Statham and Chinese actress Li Bingbing sharing top billing, and with near equal amounts of the movie’s dialogue spoken in English and Mandarin.  What this shows is that China is looking not just for their own homegrown filmmakers and actors to do well over seas, but they’re even seeking out American talent to participate in their own distinctly Chinese films.  This has led to some confusion here in America, especially when it was revealed that all-American actor Matt Damon was going to appear in a movie called The Great Wall (2017).  Some cried foul and said that it was an egregious example of white-washing a Chinese movie, but in reality Damon’s role was specifically tailored by Chinese director Zhang Yimou to be filled by someone of European decent, as part of a larger ensemble that was dominated by native Chinese actors.  Unbeknownst to many, this was not white-washing, but a sea change in who was starting to call the shots in Hollywood, and the fact that A-listers from Hollywood like Damon and Statham were not just linked to domestic productions anymore really showed how much that change has already affected the business.

But dramatic shifts in the way that Hollywood conducts business is not without risks.  And considering the volatility of the Chinese economy, with it’s rapid growth beginning to show stresses and signs of potential collapses in some sectors, the ramifications for some chaotic downfalls spreading into Hollywood as well also increases, especially with more and more smaller studios being bought up by Chinese conglomerates and new billionaires.  In some cases, you have production companies either being started up or bought out by wealthy investors who know no one thing about how the film industry works, and yet are putting up a ton of money just to get their name into show business.  In these cases we see the most extreme cases of boom and bust from these Chinese investments.  This late August slate of new releases in particular represents the growing presence of Chinese money in Hollywood.  Would you have expected films like A-X-LKin, and The Happytime Murders to all have been Chinese productions.  Not a single one looks distinctively geared for an Asian audience, and yet each was co-financed by a Chinese production company.  Ironically, they are being beaten at the box office by a completely American production called Crazy Rich Asians (2018).  And it’s that lack of focus in knowing how to produce broader appealing movies that is the drawback to the increased investments coming from China.  One of the more troubling examples has been the case of Global Road Entertainment.  Once called Open Road Films (which produced the Oscar winner Spotlight), Global Road reformatted under the new management of Tang Media Partners, which is conglomerate run by Chinese-American billionaire Donald Tang.  Tang’s inexperience with running a film studio quickly became apparent as costly flops like Show DogsHotel Artemis, and the fore-mentioned A-X-L have all lost the company money in very quick succession and the short-lived company is now in financial straights.   It’s not the case with all Chinese investments in Hollywood, but it certainly marks a cautionary sign of how quickly things can go awry once a new influx of money floods into the business.

In a lot of cases, Hollywood is going to end up compromising a lot of things in order to work with the new Chinese economy.  In most ways, an improved alliance is a good thing.  Increased cultural exchange is going to help both China and America live in better harmony, as well as benefit each other financially.  But, there are aspects that Hollywood is going to have to come to terms with the more they of the global giant in their community.  One is the fact that a large part of their investment is coming from a nation with not the greatest human rights track record.  The Communist nation’s lack of freedoms for things that liberal Hollywood holds dear, like free expression and human rights, are going to make many future agreements a little tumultuous.  Some very anti-Chinese government pet causes of Hollywood celebrities in the past, like a “free Tibet”, may sadly have to be compromised as China becomes increasingly in charge of where the money goes in the business.  I think that’s why you see some avenues of Hollywood remaining cautious through all of these changes, and that’s leading to a whole new face in the industry itself.  I wouldn’t be surprised if Disney and Fox’s merger was in some way motivated by some of this, as neither company wants to face a hostile takeover by an international conglomerate and feel that they are better suited pooling their resources together to stay independent as a distinctly Hollywood institution.  It’s hard to say, but the clear indication is that by becoming the fastest growing film market in the world as well as one of the wealthiest, China’s impact on Hollywood and Cinema in general will be felt for many years to come, and in many cases, will be a permanent change.  And to face this sea change, Hollywood has to adjust alongside it, otherwise China’s red wave of influence will leave much of it washed out and buried.

It’s hard to say if a greater Chinese influence on cinema is going to be a plus or a negative for the industry just yet.  On the one hand, Chinese filmmakers and actors are gaining much more notoriety than before, and more and more Chinese people are seeing the benefits of a vibrant film culture in their lives as many of them are increasingly going to the movies each week.  Hollywood is no longer undervaluing the Asian audiences either, and are far more willing to invest in movies that have a distinct Asian perspective to them.  The cross pollination between cultures is also a positive outcome, as the once isolated nation grows more comfortable with seeing America as a partner rather than a threat, and vice versa.   At the same time, China’s volatility also runs the risk of creating a more chaotic state in the film industry, as many start-ups from enthusiastic but inexperienced investors can’t sustain for very long in Hollywood, and that in turn creates a lot of uncertainty for the industry in general.  Despite the costs, it’s a trend that can’t be avoided.  We are going to be seeing a lot more co-productions with China in the years ahead, with multi-national movies like The Great Wall and The Meg becoming more and more common.  And Open Road Entertainment’s quick downfall is not an indication of all Chinese investments going sour.  There’s companies like the Huayi Brothers, who have found success with a diverse slate of releases both big and small, including movies just for Chinese audiences and American audiences, like Journey to the West and the Bad Moms series.  American companies are even looking to target China’s market specifically, with Horror film producer Jason Blum announcing a new slate of films through his Blumhouse Pictures specifically made for Chinese audiences.  And it’s not just China alone that Hollywood wants to focus on, but other emerging economies like India and Latin America as well, though their vibrant film industries have been around far longer than China’s.  It’s the fact that China’s growing industry is so fresh and unexplored and yet insanely wealthy at the moment that has made the whole film industry take notice all of a sudden.  China is a serious player in the game right now, one that may even eclipse that of Hollywood’s home base of America in the years to come, and it will be interesting to see what becomes of this industry down the road as a result.