Movie Frustration

I am an avid movie watcher. It is one of my most favorite things to do. I feel that movies are America's "oral tradition," the way in which it hands down its values and stories to the next generation, and presents itself to other cultures.

Lately, however, I have been very disappointed in the movies in general. Hollywood has gone soft, preferring to rehash the same old story rather than finding the gem in the submission file. While it is true that remakes and sequels can be good (see Toy Story 3 for one example), it most often is not.

Most recently, my wife and I went to see Voyage of the Dawn Treader. It, like so many movies, is based on an existing story which has lasted and has been beloved for years (decades in this particular case). Yet, outside of a decent opening scene, using the names, and the general theme being the same, the producers, writers, and director decided to completely change the story for the screen. They took an exciting action/adventure story, with pirates, a sea serpent, a dragon, slave traders, storms and becalmed oceans, and turned it into a ... much less exciting action/adventure story that barely paid homage to the original story. Why?

If I were the producer on this series, I would note that each movie has taken more liberties with each subsequent story, and each movie has opened smaller and done less business than the last. I would then look at the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings movies and note that they stayed much closer to the source material, and the changes made were to focus the story on (a) specific character(s). Outside of those changes, the rest was, for the most part, directly from the books, just reinterpreted for the screen.

I would look also at the current spate of comic book character movies and which were highly touted and made money and which did not. Iron Man, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, Spider-Man, and Spider-Man 2 all stayed very close to the source material, not taking undue liberties with it, and told exciting, interesting stories. Each made boatloads of cash and are rated very highly on IMDB.com. Now look at, say, the two Fantastic Four movies. Both took a lot of liberties, did not stay true to the characters as they have existing in the comic books for some 50 years now, did not play to their audience, and dumbed down all of the villains... and did rather poorly in box office and with the critics and audiences. One of the worst cinematic catastrophes occurred when someone decided to bring Catwoman to the screen and then totally ignored the character's 70 years of comic book history and spat in the faces of the millions of fans of the character. Halle Berry could have been a dynamic, sexy Catwoman, but the movie they made was a travesty.

Another excellent example would be the recent attempt to take Susan Cooper's excellent "The Dark Is Rising" series to the big screen as a movie series. Ignoring the book almost entirely, they changed so much in bringing it to the screen that it was unrecognizable to fans of the books. It tanked horribly at the box office and with critics/audiences, dooming chances of this very film-able series ever making it to the big screen.

My point being that those films that stay true to the source material, taking it and the audience for it seriously, tend to do very well at the theater. Those that don't, do not.

It really boils down to something simple: if you make something true to the original, the fans of the original story will like it and want to see it multiple times, bringing friends and family along with them. Those who don't know the original story will still be getting a strong story, one that is well rounded and easy to identify. So it is a win-win for the movie makers. But those who choose to go too far afield with their production lose the original, core audience. That core audience poisons the well for other audiences, do not see it multiple times, and do not bring it to a wider audience of their friends and family. Those movie have just halved or worse their potential paying audience.

My hope is that a film like Inception, doing so well both financially and with critics/audiences, will show studios that taking the chance on the unique and interesting can pay off. I also hope that the relative failures of Robin Hood, The Last Airbender, Prince of Persia, A-Team, and The Wolf Man show that you can't just remake something without making it good and being true to the original.