The declining state of Hollywood
For many regular movie-goers, the title of this blog might come as no surprise. Over the past decade, Hollywood has ‘transformed’ (how I deplore that word now!) into a separate entity of deflowering its characters into cheap, ‘fun-factor’ commodities with the aid of Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) effects and poor characterisations.
Recent research has indicated that there has been a rapid decline in adult drama films over the past few years. And those studios which were brave enough to put out politically-correct films on the silver screen have been shunned by movie-goers across the US. Films such asThe Soloist, Australia, Revolutionary Road, Invictus, The Road, Up in the Air, A Serious Man, Precious have three things in common: they all did poorly at the box office, they all have been critically acclaimed films and lastly, these films are all quite relevant to the times of today. This is based on the domestic total gross (DTG) of the film and not the international gross (IG). However, films are more reliant on on IG than the DTG.
Seems like the audience of today flock more towards films that have a large amount of star value in it (Expendables, Red, Avatar), accompanied by action/CGI sequences. Of course, these mindless films have always existed since the creation of blockbusters and are as permanent to life as death and taxes but where we had Jurassic Park (1993), we had Schindler’s List (1993) to counter it (both films directed by Steven Spielberg). And where we had the super box office hit like Die Hard III (1994), we had non-linear narrative films like Pulp Fiction(1994). Studios back then were eager to produce both commercial and art house films side by side. Unfortunately, those days are long gone.