What's Happened to the Hollywood Movie Industry?

You two seem to think that I don’t love SW. I do. It’s enjoyable as hell. It really works as a movie. But it’s not really original. I knew, when I first saw it, that I’d seen and read the story many times before. Yes, the whole package. I’d been reading science fiction and fantasy for about a dozen years when I first saw SW, and I could predict that Luke was, in fact, going to go off and be a Jedi even as he was explaining to Ben why he couldn’t. The story was quite predictable, for me. It’s like reading a story about a man and a woman in a space ship, they are the last two people of their kind, they are looking to find a planet where they can start over, and they find one that has a large moon, it’s the third planet from the local sun…and oh yes, their names are Adam and Eve. Now, the first story of this sort that one reads, it seems very original. However, when you’ve read a dozen or so, it no longer seems original, or even clever. And because I was a voracious SF reader, and had been for years, and had access to my grandfather’s library (he was also a voracious SF reader), I didn’t see anything original in the story. There was nothing that surprised me in the first three movies, other than “I am your father”, and I should have been able to predict THAT, too.

Well, no. It had never been done in film before because the technology wasn’t there before. People had WANTED to do it before, but there were technological limits that couldn’t be overcome.

Lucas made some very successful, very enjoyable movies. However, they were not particularly original, story-wise. I’ve watched the original three movies many times over, but that’s because they are fun to watch, not because I think that they are original or groundbreaking.

And I find it somewhat irritating that you seem to think that I was referring to only FEMALE redheads. Smith had both male and female redheads in his stories, in fact red hair was a genetic marker for a couple of lines. I’m a heterosexual female, and I find redheaded men to be THE most attractive. Now, I’m married to a man who has black hair (what little he has left) with a little white in it. But an attractive or even average looking redheaded man will always catch my eye. And as a female gamer (I was playing Dungeons&Dragons before it was popular), I know very well that there are no interests that are limited to sex-starved nerdy men and teen boys.

And yes, I find it irritating and demeaning that someone would assume that I, as a female, would find attractive females to be a draw…but that isn’t the case. And I’m astounded that you would think that of me. I have certainly made this stance clear. I don’t get off on the titty bar scenes in movies, nor do I find other gratuitous female nudity to be interesting.

Oh, please. You make watching movies sound like a civic duty. It is not my responsibility to find the diamonds in the rough and “support these filmmakers”.

Then don’t bitch about “Hollywood.” I’m just speaking of the people who do that, not people in general. I don’t care if people aren’t into movies, but this thread is about something specific (other than Star Wars).

Can I just say that that link is endlessly amusing. For instance, did you know that in 2006, there was a film called Zyzzyx Road with a budget of $2 million that grossed $30.

Not 30 million. $30. As in, three (maybe four) people in all of America ever paid to see this film in the theatres.

ETA: from Wiki:

Zyzzyx Road was shown once a day at noon for seven days (February 25 through March 2, 2006) at Highland Park Village Theater in Dallas, Texas,[3] a movie theater rented by the producers for $1,000.[1] The limited release was deliberate: Grillo was uninterested in releasing the film domestically until it underwent foreign distribution, but needed to fulfill the U.S. release obligation required by the Screen Actors Guild for low-budget films[1] (films with budgets less than $2.5 million that are not for the direct-to-video market).[4]

The strategy had the side effect of making the film at the time the lowest grossing film of all time, earning just $30 at the box office from six patrons.[5] Unofficially, its opening weekend netted $20. The $10 difference is due to a personal refund by Grillo to makeup artist Sheila Moore, who had worked on the film, and her friend.[1]

The similarly named Zzyzx has also (mistakenly) been cited as the lowest grossing film of all time, due to the similar titles and release dates of the films.[6]

The film was released on DVD in 23 countries, and by the end of 2006 had earned about $368,000.[1] As of 2010[update], the film has not yet received the legitimate domestic distribution that the producers had hoped would follow its foreign release.

I agree with Lynn Bodoni that Star Wars was not very original. I pretty much agree with all her points re Star Wars.

But as for Hollywood - it’s always been about making money. It 's just so much more obvious now. We can’t be satisfied with the surprising goodness of “Pirates of the Caribbean”. We have to crap all over it in the sequels to wring every last penny of profit. Yes, that’s good business. But that’s all it is. If you are looking for originality, artistry - look elsewhere

I watched this movie on DVD. (I watch a lot of bad movies for funz.) Just to dissuade others:

  1. Tom Sizemore is a terrible actor.

  2. It was the same pattern of misleading events, repeated over and over. X is dead/gone. No he/she isn’t. No surprise, care or interest by the time the movie was halfway over.

It does illustrate how easy it is to get a bad movie made.