Boxed out of the Box Office

Michael Medved, who I loved on Sneak Previews, has a reason why Hollywood is having a rough year: the morals of your movies suck. McQ at QandO doesn't dispute this, but comes to a simpler more free-market conclusion: your movies just suck. He notes that about half the A-list movies coming out this summer are remakes of Movies or TV shows.

Medved has a point. I am royally sick of both the power/money-hungry industrialist and the neo-fascist right-wing politico as villians. Just for once I'd like to see a villian that isn't a white male for a change. This is especially the case with children's films. Nickelodeon's Hey Arnold movie was basically about the neighborhood kids banding together to prevent urban renewal. Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron didn't have a single good white guy.

But more importantly, movies in general are crap. I wonder how much the decline of talent in the publishing industry is affecting things. When paper prices skyrocketed in the late 1980s, publishers often neglected the development of new talent in order to milk the big names that they knew would still make money at the higher prices. Now the old talent is petering out and they have nowhere to turn. I can't help but wonder if the internet might be a solution to their problems via a digital distribution medium.

But I've digressed. Remakes are fine and dandy, especially if they fix problems in the original, but there used to be an old saying in Hollywood: you don't remake the good films. While War of the Worlds was great, just slapping new effects and faces on old stories generally doesn't do much for me. And many of the "original" films are just Michael Bey style retreads of the same action genre. At the end the hero beats the villian in a climactic battle in the Old Abandoned Flame Factory, roll credits.

I also can't help but wonder if DVDs and the increase in home theatre ownership isn't contributing to the downward trend as well. Taking Amybear to a movie costs $16 when I could wait and buy most of these movies for $10 in a year. If I invest in a decent sound system I might be saving money in under a year, especially considering I can rent for slightly less than I can buy.

Of course none of this whining on my part is going to keep me from seeing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with Amy this weekend.