I frequently go on rants about how Hollywood produces mostly garbage films and has done this for quite some time. It has become so common that anytime that something comes out of Hollywood that doesn't suck, I am genuinely surprised.
The thing that I find so upsetting about this is the fact that the world continues to reward bad film-making as these films, most of which I consider to be extremely stupid, end up making a ton of money globally, most likely because of the Asian market and mass appeal of superheroes.
I don't even pay any attention to these films because I hate them, but from a business perspective this is exactly what the studios are trying to accomplish. Make no mistake that is exactly what a majority of the movie industry is, a business. They don't care if what they make is any good, only that it makes money.
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Take Transformers: Age of Extinction for example. I didn't even see this and at no point in time did I feel even remotely compelled to do so. Someone could have offered me a ticket to go see this movie for free and I would have said no. You could have offered to pay me to go see it and I still would have said no. Literally nobody in the critical industry has anything good to say about this vapid, boring, completely absurd and very predictable film. Yet it made over a billion dollars at the box office globally and continues to make money on streaming services.
It has an 18% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and probably something similar over on IMDB. I can't imagine the mind of a person that this would be surprising to though. Of course this movie is bad, it's a movie about car robots that are in a struggle to control earth. All of these robots speak English despite coming from a distant planet where car robots or born or something? Urgh. I get it ok, I had the toys when I was a kid but I find the fact that they try to put a story in there with humans to just be completely stupid.
This is just one of many bad films like this that Hollywood is going to continue to make.
There are a lot of fanbois out there but almost all superhero movies are just downright terrible.
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I don't know how they managed it but a friend of mine actually convinced me to go see Captain Marvel in the cinema. If I had been alone I would have left. There is no story here and the main character takes "overpowered" to a totally new level. Just like all other superhero movies with rare exceptions, you already know the ending. The person whose name is on the poster is going to win, it's just a question of how they get there and how crazy it is going to be along the way.
This film was in my mind just awful, yet again it made over a billion dollars at the box office. Critical reception of this film is much better than Transformers but I think this is because critics were afraid that if they told the truth that they would get accused of sexism because they only reason why anyone would think a superhero film is bad would be because a woman is the star. That's the same excuse they tried to make for the horrible all female remake of Ghostbusters.
You can look at almost anything that Marvel or DC has made over the years and the formula is always the same with the only exception being perhaps the Nolan Batman films. Even of those 3 films just 2 of them can actually be considered good in my opinion. By the time we got to the 3rd one it was clear to me that the idea had run its course and I am glad they walked away after just 3.
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So they are not all terrible, but these are exceptions, not the norm
I agree with what Martin Scorsese said when he was asked about modern superhero films when he called them "theme park rides providing thrills and excitement but not much below the surface." He also said that they are "not cinema and lacked human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences."
I don't even like all of Scorsese's work and even some of his most popular films are things I find a bit too artsy and even boring. However, you can't argue that there are real stories there with real people and a lot of emotion and interesting characters, not just some robots or a woman who can fly and shoot lasers out of her hands.
Let's look at Goodfellas which is what I consider to be one of the best movies ever made and some of Scorsese's finest work. This film barely turned a profit at the box office and didn't even pull in $50 million. When we are looking back on the past it's just embarrassing to me that a shitty Transformers movie took in over 20 times the amount of money at the box office than what is largely considered to be one of the best gangster movies of all time.
I roll my eyes a bit when I see that Marvel is planning yet another superhero film because I know it is just going to be a campy story that is only minorly different from all of the other ones. There's going to be a bit of comic relief, some attempts at humorous one-liners, a bunch of explosions and the inevitable good guys winning in the end. It's always the same.
Personally, I would love to see some superhero films where the good guys don't win at least then there would be some element of surprise in these big-budget films that are all the same. I don't remember which one it was, but the Avengers film that ended with the bad guys having a leg up on the good guys was probably one of the only big-budget superhero films that I actually enjoyed. I would have loved it if it had just ended like that but since it was part 2 of a 3-part series, we all could tell what was going to happen in part 3.
At the end of the day Hollywood is a business and if you have a business model that expects to get a profit of 500 to 800 million dollars per film, why would they ever feel inclined to change that? I don't think that they will and this is unfortunate because I feel as though almost all of these movies are completely lacking in any sort of substance and because so many of the resources are poured into them, there is very little left for people to actually make films that are good.
This is why I look to Japan and Korea for films. They simply do not have the budget to pour 100 million dollars into CGI and have to revert to more innovative tactics and also having an actual story with good acting. We need more of that out of Hollywood, but with such huge profit margins coming out of the "same ol' same ol'" this is very unlikely to change. Tragic.