Pirates Of The Caribbean was a huge hit in 2003. It had action, adventure, and was quite funny, too. It had big stars and a beautiful historical setting. So of course they had to crank out sequel after sequel, which could never live up to the first movie, which was pretty much perfect on its own. Nerdstalgic looks at the inevitable problems with trying to recreate lightning in a bottle, as each Pirates sequel took the franchise downhill. (via Digg)
The problem, as I see it, is that movies don't depend on ticket sales any more. Used to be that if you wanted to see a film, you had to haul your butt down to the theater that was showing an actual film through a projector onto a screen at a time of THEIR choosing ... so for the most part, the studios didn't green-light every proposal that got plopped down in front of them; they only OKed the ideas that would sell.
ReplyDeleteNow, however, if a viewer doesn't get into a theater, who cares? It'll be on Disney+ or Netflix or Hulu or some such streaming, on-demand platform... so as long as the producers make their money from the sale of the rights to be distributed on one or more of these channels, who cares if they sell a paper ticket to sit in a 16-screen multiplex?
The other thing is that the public is so hard up for entertainment – ANY kind of entertainment — that they WILL pay to watch something, even if it is dreck ... how else can you explain something like "The Masked Singer"? You could probably drag "Cutthroat Island" (the movie they used as an example of a box-office flop) out and re-release it through Paramount+ or Peacock, and end up making back everything that Carolco lost when they first made the film.
And don't get me started on all the side merchandise – the toys, the Halloween costumes, the hair extensions and beads, the action figures, the novelizations, etc. (swear to God, if I see many more 'Jack Sparrow' tattoos, I'm gonna flip out). Mel Brooks in "Spaceballs" was more correct that even he could imagine when he had 'Yogurt' deliver the line about "Merchandising — where the REAL money from the movie is made."
-"BB"-
I haven't seen the fifth /Pirates/ yet, but I liked all the first four, and clearly three or four billion dollars' worth of other people felt the same.
ReplyDeleteWhen critics slap around the combined work of all the hundreds of cats that had to be herded and kept herded /for years/ to produce any feature film, they should have to include the list of their own brilliant film accomplishments: The three-minute Super-8 one from when they were 10, say, about a mud monster, or a teevee commercial for their dad's store. It puts things in perspective, against their bitching about the /abysmal thematic texture/ of something literally millions of people liked enough to come back again and again to see more of. And, Jesus, the cheap shot at the end of Nerdstalgic's (!) video, inserting the cut of Johnny Depp asking why he's here. Wow.
Here's a trick for when a show is not quite good enough to please you, whether you can quite put your finger on why or not, and you can't figure out why so many other people like it: just turn the play speed up. It works for everything, Star Trek, Star Wars, Cowboy movies, foreign films, whatever; everything but live sportsball games, alas, and you can always watch the game later and it would work for that too.