The Creeping Commodification of Cinema

If you ask most people why they got into movies, and want to work in the industry, I doubt it would be to make assembly line studio films solely focussed on making as much money as possible (well, I would imagine, I neither work in or know anyone that works in the industry). Unfortunately, it seems like that is the trend Hollywood is going down. The SAG strikes confirm that the big studios do not care about the craft and have solely focussed on profit and not those, the ones that actually make that money, dedicating themselves to crafting something meaningful. This is a worrying trend that is completely against the spirit of making movies in the first place, although, there is still some hope left… just.

I think a good place to start is with the strikes. Nothing sums up Hollywood’s attitude to making movies more than their reaction to the strikes. The soul of the production, the people that make it possible, that write the stories have been abandoned for the cheap, soulless ai scripts. The actors and production team have been kicked to the curb for having the gall to ask for a fairer share of the profits, and for protection over their rights to their own image, you know, for being the talent of the films! Studios have got so far down this rabbit hole of chasing the money, they’re turning their back on what makes the money. Audiences want an engaging story that is well acted, it is kind of hard to deliver that without anyone writing or acting out the scripts!

The birth of the franchise was the moment that started this trend. Tim Burton’s Batman is often heralded as the film that jump started the franchise film. Now a franchise is not inherently a bad thing. With superhero films, taking an established character with recognised story arcs and fleshing them out can lead to brilliant films. Take Batman for instance, allowing a director the creativity to flesh out their interpretation of what the character is about and the world they inhabit. Burton went for a dark and violent interpretation of the Dark Knight which directly opposes the campy, cartoonish version played by Adam West in the 60s series. Then you have Nolan’s realistic character studies, resulting in one of the best films of the 2000s and one of the most iconic portrayals of a character of all time in Heath Ledger’s Joker. Matt Reeves looks at Batman’s title as the World’s greatest detective with a Gothic, noir crime thriller. There are certain themes that carry across all these interpretations, but allowing each director to put their spin on each entry provides a new and interesting exploration on a beloved property. This use of franchises is the medium at its best. The problem is that studios are not utilising these opportunities in this way.

Franchises in modern cinema are just cookie cutter efforts that has well known IP attached to it. How many Jumaji remakes, or unnecessary Cloverfield entries do we have to sit through at the expense of a new original IP. Studios fall back on recognisable names, forgetting why people liked these in the first place: they were once highly original, new films that stood out from the pack. There has been a huge disenfranchisement with Marvel entries as of late. Ever since the culmination of their cinematic universe with Endgame, the Marvel films have felt like a chore to sit through rather than this exciting new cinematic experience. The homogenous viewing experience that is required for these shared universes stifles so much creativity; it is extremely frustrating. Marvel compound this frustration by hiring extremely creative Directors and then forcing them to stay within this box of bland shots, uninteresting colour palettes and static camera work; that quippy comedy style is extremely grating now. Hiring Nomandland director Chloé Zhao and confining her to the Marvel template for a film such as the Eternals was never going to end well. I am not saying that the Eternals would have been good had Zhao been given free reign over the creative direction, but there could have been a way more interesting approach there. The infamous Ant-Man/Edgar Wright situation was a huge missed opportunity that could have resulted in something wonderful. Wright’s style of filmmaking is perfectly suited to a comic book film, but the constraints put on him prevented us from getting this. Instead, we got a standard, replaceable superhero story that no one will remember.

The comic book format lends the opportunity for so much creativity. It is a medium that allows you to play around with art style, tone, characters in ways that a lot of others do not. Think of Into the Spiderverse and its style, each Spider-character lends itself to a completely different tone and these are melded together perfectly to represent the Spider-universe. This is the perfect representation of the power of allowing directors with vision and true understanding of the source material to present their ideas in full. Spiderverse was a beloved film by almost all those that saw it and will go down as one of the best superhero films of all time, and generally just a fantastic movie. Marvel is now playing catch up trying to establish their own multiverse based on the popularity of Spiderverse, and it just feels rushed and inauthentic. There is clearly potential there, as shown by James Gunn’s success with Guardians of the Galaxy, sadly it seems the creative possibilities with these films will always be sacrificed in exchange for simple filmmaking, focussed only on money. What is even more frustrating is that the most creative Marvel films have often been their most successful, yet they stick to this boring template…

The success of Barbie and Oppenheimer proves that audiences want original, well-made movies. The summer blockbuster is still a big deal and going to the cinema is still a thing in the age of streaming. However, with the high prices and general low-quality showings, a trip to the cinema needs to be an event. That was the case this summer. The two biggest films of the year were two, very different, well crafted, visual spectacles. Greta Gerwig being given the creative freedom to go down a meta route and get critical of today’s culture surrounding women was a bold move, but one that proved successful as the film made over $1 billion. Nolan put on another spectacle with Oppenheimer. Nolan’s commitment to the use of IMAX always results in stunning cinematography, and Oppenheimer might be his best-looking film to date. The black and white scenes, the bomb dropping scene, the stunning desert shots, these are all mesmerising moments that deserved to be seen on the big screen. Again, Oppenheimer grossed over $1 billion. Studios need to see what happens when they take risks and make films worth seeing.

The modern studio has lost sight of the reason films exist. They are a visual expression of a director’s vision, telling a story. The first and most important job that a film has is to entertain, that should be the primary focus that is being considered in making a movie. Studios need to refocus their visions, put the viewers first and pay the people making the product the money they deserve. Cinema is an art form that deserves to be treated with respect, its been making these studio executives a lot of money, the least they could do is make some actual decent films for us to watch!