I have just read a bad review of the movie “The Perfect Storm”. The ads for the movie looked rather good and I thought the movie might be good.
Any way here is my question.
Can one tell the quality of a movie by the media blitz that precedes it? It seems to me that when a studio realizes that a film is a dog; we see an increase of the films stars on talk shows and increased advertising.
Some examples would be films such as Dogzilla and Water-world, both heavily hyped and both rather lame.
Of course, this theory does not hold for a guaranteed blockbuster film such as Star Wars.
On a side note: Why do some movies go straight-to-video?
Are films that go straight-to-video necessarily poor films?
The quality of a film is indirectly proportional to the ammount of advertising that goes into promoting it. Shitty films are hoping to cash in on a first weekend rush to make all of their money. Good films play strong and long for a while. They may never make the best opening weekend, but word-of-mouth is usually enough to build a good film into a success. Compare “Wild Wild West” to “American Beauty” for a concrete example of this. You saw http://www.stuff everywhere for months before the film came out. It was probably a month before anyone really noticed American Beauty. Which was a better film?
Most do suck, but a few have been VERY good movies. For an example of a great STV release, rent “The Last Seduction.” It went straight to video, and got such good press from the video it was later released in theatres. It even received Oscar buzz, but was ineligible because it appeared on video in wide release before going to the Big Screen.
Generally, it costs a great deal of money to release a movie to theaters; renting space, placing ads, making copies, etc. When the producers don’t feel that a movie will make enough money in the theatres, they’ll send it straight to video (where it still won’t make much money, but it won’t be facing nearly as many costs, either). Generally, most movies that go straight to video are either:
A) Lame ass suck-fests where the producers knew no one would go to the theatres to see it;
B) Great, but esoteric movies where only about one in five theatre goers would ‘get it’, meaning that a theatre release would likely be a flop despite being a good movie;
C) Absolutely incredible movies that just didn’t have the money left over to be able to afford a theatre release.
I’d say the ratio is about 99:1:.00000001 between those three.
As for quality of movie relation to media blitz- one of the best ways to tell how good/bad a movie it is (IMHO) is to see who gets quoted in talking about the movie. Major reviewers or industry rags saying good things? Good movie. Quoting Lenny from the North Hampton New Hampshire Free Union Press? Not good movie. In addition, check out the number of “…” in each blurb. The more ellipses, the more likely that in was a mixed (or even bad) review they’ve done a hatchet job to. Conversely, if there aren’t many ellipses in the blurb, then the reviewer likely had some sort of praise for the movie.
I really don’t see any mathematic proportionality between quality of film versus pre-hype it receives. Some that get a lot of hype are good (anyone remember Independence Day? I thought that lived up to its hype.) Others get loads of hype and suck (both Armageddon and Deep Impact).
What I’d like to know is…in years when a big blockbuster is planned, inevitably TWO movies come out in close proximity that have similar story lines ala Armageddon and Deep Impact, or The Arrival and Independence Day. Usually one is the ‘real’ one and one is a knockoff, although I wasn’t sure which was supposed to be which with Deep Impact/ Armageddon. In these cases, is it a given that the first one out is always the shittier one? I’d say that’s the case IMHO with both of these examples (i.e. obviously The Arrival sucked, and I personally thought Deep Impact blew big time primate penis)
I agree with the earlier posts about the quality of the reviewers in the ads. Interestingly enough though, when Mission Impossible 2 came out in San Diego, the ads here had all no-name reviewers the first week. The week afterwards, however, they had the usual Roger Ebert/ Jeffrey Lyons/ Peter Travers real reviewer comments. I refused to see it until the second week because of that…
There’s really no relationship between advertising dollars and film quality. It’s noticeable when hyped films suck bad, but many unnoticed films ALSO suck bad, and many hyped films do not suck at all. It’s funny, but I thought “American Beauty” was the most irritatingly hyped film of 1999; maybe Jayron doesn’t live near any billboards, but here they actually had ads up with text that talked about what a wonderful movie it was months before it opened.
If you want to know whether or not a movie will suck, you need to pay careful attention to the CONTENT of the advertising, not the volume. Look for these six warning signs:
POP MUSIC CREDITS. If anywhere in the trailer, TV ads or posters, you see “With Songs By” followed by a list of half-assed popular music acts, e.g. “Teen Beach Party, with songs by Limp Bizkit, Jesus Lizard, Chantal Krevaizuk and Busta Rhymes,” the movie is an absolute, complete dog.
EFFECTS OVEREXPOSURE. If the trailer or ad shows just enough special effects, stunts, or car chases to seem interesting, the movie might be cool. However, if the trailer or ad shows ALL the very best effects, monsters etc., the movie probably sucks.
JONES’S LAW OF CAST DEJA VU. If you notice that there’s a coterie of actors all playing the same roles they played in a previous film that was not a prequel, watch out. Typecasting one actor (e.g. Jim Carrey as a nut) is okay, but if you can say to yourself “You know, I’d swear to Christ I saw Freddie Prinze Jr., Jason Biggs, and Jennifer Love Hewitt play those exact same roles just three months ago,” run away as fast as you can. Merchant-Ivory films are (in)famous for this.
STAR BAIT AND SWITCH. If the trailer or ad features a reasonably famous actor, but it is obvious that that actor plays a minor role and all the real lead roles are staffed by nobodies, the movie will be atrocious.
LOW PRODUCTION VALUES. If the trailer seems slapped together and disjointed, can you expect anything different from the feature it’s promoting?
PEDOPHILE RULE. If the trailer features an offensively sexual shot of a teenager (e.g. “Snow Day”) the movie will be horrible.
FWIW, I’ve found one absolutely sure-fire way, that works for me, of telling whether I’m going to like a movie or not.
I look at the newspaper ad–if the quotes saying things like, “The Best Movie of the Year”, “One of the year’s 10 best movies”, “The funniest movie ever!” are all by people you absolutely NEVER heard of, from obscure media outlets, like “Mary-Jane Smith, KXYZ Radio Syndicate” (who the heck are THEY?), then that’s a dead giveaway. If it were any good, and it had gotten good reviews from anybody whose opinion really mattered, you can bet they’d have those ads plastered all over the place.
Actually, I think that “The Last Seduction” was made for cable, not a STV.
“The Perfect Storm” actually looks like shit to me, the newest “Star Wars” was shit. “Coyote Ugly” will be shit.
Any Jerry Bruckheinmer (sic) film will suck, anything where N. Cage plays an action hero probably will suck, any film with “mismatched partners” (except for Jackie Chan ones) will suck.
The presence of any of the following actors is a warning sign: Kevin Bacon, John Travolta, Pauly Shore, Oprah Winfrey, most of the cast from “Friends” (too bad), Bette Midler, Harvey Keitel in a lead role, Chrisitan Slater, wow there’s a whole lot of them.
If the trailer tries to get you to turn off your brain, either by lots of eye candy or by lots of sentiment, it will suck. If the movie features women dancing together to celebrate being women, it will suck. If the movie features men fighting each other and then becoming best buds, it will suck.
I agree with all Bucky’s points and would like to add two more:
If the movie is based on an old TV show (Avengers, Mod Squad) - it will suck.
If the trailer show big flashing words spliced in with really quick shots of the actually film, it will suck. (“PREPARE” <1 second of car chase> “YOURSELF” <1 second of explosion> “FOR THE” <1 second of guy jumping off building> “ULTIMATE” <1 second of gunfight> “THRILL-RIDE” <character delivers 1 liner> <up-tempo rock music kicks in>)
I read this in a news article a long time ago, so I’m not taking credit for it, but there are ways to read a newspaper ad for a movie to tell if it will be good or bad. Some of rules mentioned were:
(Similar to what Duck Duck Goose mentioned above) if the ad has numerous “quotes” from reviewers, but they are all one-word blurbs (such as “Awesome – says Entertainment Weekly”) it is a safe bet that the single word was taken out of context. (the review might have read “an AWESOME amount of talent is wasted in this horrible movie…”)
Writer credits: if there is more than one “screenplay by”
credit, it generally means a script has gone through rewrite
after rewrite after rewrite, etc. An ad with many “screenplay by” credits indicates a movie with an incoherent, worked over and spotty plot, mainly because to many writers have been forcing their ideas into the script.
The copy for the ad is written by either an associate or executive producer. Of course, whoever is writing the copy for the ad will definitely want his/her name in the as, unless they’ve seen rushes for the movie and decided it was a turkey. If the producer isn’t listed, it’s because they don’t want their name associated with the movie – obviously a bad sign.
No big stars. Of course this has to be taken with a grain of salt since lots of low budget indies out there have great but unknown casts. But any big summer blockbuster that can’t attract even a single marquee name is a dud. (the newspaper I read gave “Congo” as an example, a multimillion dollar production based on a John Grisham book couldn’t get a single recognizable name to star in it–because it was so excretable.)
The well-known Directed by Alan Smithee, which is a pseudonym name adopted by any director who wants to disown the movie he just made. “Directed by Alan Smithee” movies are below the level of STV. They are movies that should be dumped in barrels marked “toxic” and stored away in the farthest regions of the earth away from all mankind.
I pay attention to the films I have watched and who was involved. Once I notice a pattern, I stick with it. I will see any James Cameron film, but no Olivier stone films. I recently watched “Valley of the Gwangi” because the fx were by Ray Harryhausen, and I wasn’t disappointed. If I don’t know anyone involved in the film, then I tend to go by word of mouth.
Video rental has caused a slight change in how theatrical films are promoted. Studios now really pump a lot of cash into pre-theatrical release advertising, in the hopes that the vague memory of said advertising will affect your video rentals several months down the line. As you have rightly expected, studios do the most hyping for the films they think will not do as well in the theatre. They realize, however, that what you may not want to see in the theatre, you might be willing to rent.
My personal way of evaluating a film is from the poster. The more quotes, goofy graphics, and other nonsense on it, the worse the film. The best films have very simple, dramatic posters.
I think a simple test of whether a movie is going to be bad is the trailer. Remember - the trailer has the best scenes/lines from the film. If the trailer sucks, the movie’s gonna suck. The reverse isn’t always true - a bad movie can have one or two good scenes/lines which make it into the trailer, but the rest of the film could just bite.
If all the promo quotes come from one source it will suck too. If they could only find one source for quotes that is not a good sign is it? If the quotes say a laugh riot or laugh fest run away …fast. If the ads say from the producer of… flee also. The producer doesn’t have much to do with the success of the movie. If the ad mentions the screenwriter in big letters that isn’t a good sign, especially if it’s Joe Esterhaus.
Finally avoid any movies with Adam Sandler, Pauley Shore or any Kevin Kline movie where he has facial hair.
Keith
Reviews. My tastes don’t closely coincide with any film reviewer I have ever seen or read. But if a film (like say, Super Mario Brothers) goes straight to the theatre without a pre-screening, you know it’s a stinker. And reviewers are good about mentioning that.
There are other tricks reviewers pull, too. Recently, the Washington Post defecated a four-column screed trashing Gladiator. I had to ask myself, “why is this reviewer working so hard to spike this film?” I still don’t know why, but I went and saw it largely based on the hunch that the reviewer was a pompous ass who was trying very hard to remain above what I considered to be an entertaining film.
Trailers. Get to the movies early instead of finishing off that fifth of Scotch in the parking lot. Grit your teeth and watch the trailers. Watch out for:
–Trailers that reveal the entire plot of the film, complete with denouement. This type of trailer is made for, um, your average filmgoer. You know, the same people for whom the “don’t shake the Pepsi Machine because it could fall over and squish you” warning stickers are made.
–Trailers that show the same shot twice. You just saw the best parts of the film in three minutes, and they had to recycle footage to get that much. Not good.
–Special-made trailers. In other words, a trailer that is designed in such a way that while it incorporates footage of the film, it is presented in such a way that it is not merely showing you scenes from the film. This usually tips me off to the fact that the director had enough influence over his project to “direct” the trailer as well. That’s a good thing to me, but not for everyone. I cite the trailers for “The Big Lebowski” as an example.
My short list:
[ul]
[li]Science fiction: Sad but true, anyone who cut his teeth on Bradbury and Asimov will be sorely disappointed by Hollywood SF. It seems that Hollywood is incapable of making a film that really is science fiction, as opposed to using semi-SF plots and backgrounds to move along/spice up/disguise tired old stories. Good science fiction does not depend on a love interest or an evil mastermind to work. Good science fiction moves along by examining the implications of either scientific advance or nonhuman settings, with many doing both. Apparently, that is too cerebral for the average screenwriter (aka Zippy the Pinhead).[/li][li]Romance: Read Shakespeare and the classic Greek myths. You’ll find every plot that’s ever been used in romantic fiction. And they’ve never been used better since.[/li][li]Action: Watching steroid junkies survive the unsurvivable cuts no mustard here. These films are so formulaic people act them in their sleep (see Terminator for proof). Writing one of these is akin to getting your name printed in BASIC: Very nice, Billy, now go do your homework.[/li][li]Drama: The Ancient Greeks have everyone beat hands-down. This should be a rather difficult genre to master, as it requires at least some understanding of the human psyche. Not so in Hollywood: Recycle a few ancient plots with ‘twists’ that would be shot if they hadn’t died of old age already.[/li][li]Comedy: Don’t make me laugh. No, wait, you couldn’t if you tried. Thanks for playing, Hollywood.[/li][li]Western: The liberties taken with this genre are atrocious. Did everyone jack off through history?[/li][li]War: Grow up. I sold my toy soldiers ages ago. Nothing new can be said about war.[/li][/ul]
OK, what’s left? Nothing? This brings me to my rule of thumb: If Hollywood hypes it, it’s crap. Hope that helped.
A good example of this is Rocky and Bullwinkle. In the trailer I saw, they make a big deal over Rocky not being able to fly in the real world. Then, towards the end, it shows Rocky saying, “I have to fly to save Bullwinkle!” and he takes off. Oh. Well, thanks. There goes that little bit of non-suspense.
My instinct is to stay far away from any flick whose trailer depends on explosions and guns and a loud sound track. I’m not always right, but it’s a good general rule.
Another is to read the critics every week. I like to look at reviews in the major papers and magazines, especially after I’ve seen the film in question. After a while I get an idea of which critics I generally agree with, and which ones are always sucking up to the studios or just hate a particular artist.
I was pleasantly surprised by Independence Day, mostly cuz I expected to be repulsed. There was, imho, a significant qualitative difference between Deep Impact and Armageddon. Both were quite poor from a dramatic standpoint, but DI at least got some of the science right. In Armageddon, the only thing they got right was that the Earth is, indeed, spherical.
Nobody has mentioned sequals yet. Generally, they are going to be weaker than the original. There are some notable exceptions however, such as The Empire Strikes Back and The Silence of the Lambs.
Also, you have to realize that movies are always going to be a crapshoot. My theory for moviegoing is simple. If you like a director, go see the movie. If you like the subject matter, go see the movie. If you don’t like the genre, don’t see the movie.