Thursday, May 04, 2006

Beware the Glut!!

Let's note it yet again: The media is picking up the mantra: "Too many animated features! Catastrophe ahead!" They point with trembling hand to what happened in the early nineties: "See, Disney had all these big hits. And then these OTHER studios jumped in, and had FLOPS. And then, Disney started having flops!" Well, ah, no. See, the way it works, you make good movies with interesting characters and compelling stories ("Little Mermaid," "Lion King," etc., etc.) and people turn out to see them. You make less compelling films with, say, lacklustere stories and/or the same types of characters and/or repetitive Broadway show tunes that audiences have seen a half dozen times before, and whattayanknow, they don't come out. When I taught school, there was an old axium: No matter how wondrous your lesson plan, no matter how energetically you deliver it to your eager young minds, eventually they get tired of it if the plan doesn't CHANGE. Same thing with movies. There are only so many action pictures, horror pictures or animated features people will plunk down money to see if they're the same old bells and whistles in barely different packaging. I mean, no media outlet says: "Boy, the public is sure getting tired of live action films." They don't say it because it's a ludicrous statement. Audiences get bored with the tired and uninteresting, no matter what kind of film it is. There's a reason the Pixar films, some of the DreamWorks features, and the Disney films from the early and mid-nineties smashed box office records: they had qualities that the public sparked to. There's a reason why "Valiant" and "Atlantis" didn't improve Disney's balance sheet. They weren't very good films. You can pretty much ignore conventional wisdom regarding what audiences want to see. It's generally wrong. Seventy years ago, conventional wisdom said that pirate movies didn't perform, then "Treasure Island," "Captain Blood" and "Mutiny On the Bounty," turned that idea on its head. (More recently, Geena Davis's mega-flop "Cutthroat Island" provoked the same C.W. Then "Pirate of the Caribbean" came along.) Civil War pictures were poison at the box office, then "Gone WIth the Wind" hit big. And of course, "Snow White" was going to sink Disney. So you can, I think, pretty much ignore media bleatings of oncoming disaster now. Our prediction: If an animated feature is produced that people want to SEE, audiences will flock to it. Whether it appears in the middle of a "glut" or not.

5 comments:

Brian Growe said...

Yeah, I totally agree with you. What you're saying kinda reminds me of the mantra from "The Critic"; "If the movie stinks just don't go! If people stop going to bad movies they'll stop making bad movies..." I hope this is true, I miss movie-going being a positive experience...

Unknown said...

That's a pretty naive statement. Plenty of stinky movies do well and have sequels made of them...Hi Mr Lucas...

I prefer to quote William Goldman: "Nobody knows anything!"

Steve Hulett said...

Yeah, well. Maybe a trifle naive. (I prefer to cite "Billy Jack" rather than "Star Wars," but hey....)

My point is, more often than not, popular movies have SOMETHING that endears them to audiences. Granted, bad movies often make money, and good ones often die sad deaths. But I would submit that the "bad" successful ones have a quality that make them big money spinners.

What the hell is "good" or "bad" anyway? There are films I think are fabulous that my friends think are lousy. One of my favorite all-time flicks is "How Green Was My Valley," but most people, while liking it okay, can't believe it won "Best Picture" over "Citizen Kane."

Steve, there's just no accounting for taste.

Unknown said...

Without a doubt...I have many favorite films that I wouldn't foist upon anyone (especially people I care about).
My point was - and you obviously get it - is that just because a film is heralded as good - or bad - doesn't mean anything to the public.

Anonymous said...

"Good" or Bad" or "Indifferent" we can all debate about till the cows come home(or Flushed Away is released);
all that matters to a company's bottom line(I am NOT saying the artists')is "successful".

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