A Plea Against Mediocrity
Today I saw The Bourne Supremacy. Aside from reinforcing my hatred of non-stadium seating theaters and teaching me that that hand-held shooting equals eye-strain headache, I found the characters and story to be seriously lacking, which I wasn’t expecting with the positive reviews. Part of the problem may be that I never saw The Bourne Identity, but the overall empty feel of the movie really turned me off. I have nothing against action movies in general, but like special effects and eye-candy actors, action cannot and should not be expected to carry a film.
Sometimes I think the movie-going public is at the heart of the problem. It’s possible to make decent films within the bounds of the standard genre formulas–the basic three act story structure in screenwriting works for the vast majority of movies. But the cost of producing and marketing a major studio picture has gotten so high that of course the studios are going to go with what has been proven to sell well such a huge investment on the line. Hollywood is a business and they are going to with the product that is most likely to be successful.
So is the majority of the movie-going public really too lazy or too wary to try to watch anything that stretches their mind in any way? Are movies expected to remain solely as a form of escapism, while other art forms are left to say something meaningful? Or have increasing ticket prices and expanding alternative entertainment venues left the public much more selective and less adventurous then they should be? I really don’t know. But in the business of entertainment, it is the demand of the consumer that is most likely to influence any sort of artistic change. Until more people decide that they are tired of the regurgitated and hollow crap that too often opens to a much larger box office than it deserves, that’s what we’ll all be stuck with.