Why Hollywood Makes So Many Crappy Movies

The Oscars are still fresh in my mind.  This year’s lot was a little different than previous ones.  It was missing a real blockbuster, a Titanic that stood out from the lesser known films.  In fact, this year’s surprise winner, Crash was highlighted on ABC News, specifically because it almost didn’t get made.

That led me to wonder, why in the world did a movie that won an Oscar - not to mention the best picture award - almost not get made, when real crap like Yours, Mine and Ours and House of Wax managed to get the studio green light?

Then I realized that the answer was in the strangest of places: my computer.  I’m a digital cowboy (nerd) who earns his money writing software.  While in engineering school I heard an interesting definition of the term “technology.”

The guy who ran the chip making lab gave the students a tour one day.  He said that the definition (or at least his definition) for technology is “the knowledge and means to manufacture a material product.”  He was quick to mention that all the software us geeks would write wouldn’t mean a thing without hardware to run it on.

It’s the same with films.  All the storyboards, scripts and actors in the world are nothing without the means of manufacture, the machinery that turns all that movie “software” into a strip of film.  In the end, it’s the studios that are like the giant chip makers, the Intels and AMDs of Hollywood.

The studios have the means of production - and money, lots of money - and are dying to hang onto it.  So they do what chip makers do - produce remakes and sequels.  Each new “Pentium” chip release Intel makes is essentially a sequel of the original PC brain it produced long ago - only with better special effects.

The problem with such a safe approach is that it’s essentially the same as putting all your cash into a regular savings account.  Sure, you’ll earn interest, but you won’t keep up with inflation.  Need proof?  Look at the stock chart for Intel and the box office for the last few years.  They share the same lackluster results.

Instead of looking for the next Napoleon Dynamite, studios are likely looking for the next obscure 60’s film or comic book to remake.  Sure, there are films that win in the short term with that strategy, but there are just as many losers.  The long term effects are painful to watch.  Moviegoers who are just bored with what they see.  Movies - like the award shows that surround them - are no longer remarkable.

This year’s Oscars contained more than once reference to how much better a movie is in the theater.  I won’t argue with that.  But the movie itself has to be something special.  Transporter 2 - one in a series of sequels that shouldn’t have been made - isn’t going to stink any less on the big screen, so people just utter the phrase “I’ll catch that on DVD/Rental/PPV.”  They will wait for a film, if they watch it at all.

Studios now have better means to produce quality movies than they have ever had before.  But it really isn’t going to matter if The Dukes of Hazzard 3 is shot on purely digital film and projected on an IMAX screen.  It’s still going to suck.  For the studios, it’s time to put up original content watch most of their movies - and money - lost at the bottom of the discount DVD bin.