theSuburbanLetdown wrote:Hollywood is not dumb. They make this crap because they know it sells.
I, in fact, do think that it's dumb. But it's intentionally dumb, because if you act dumb you're able to automate your acting. They want to make movies on an assembly line, therefore they have to dumb down entire process, from initial choice of ideas to distribution. The whole industry makes quality of films irrelevant because what sels tickets is strong advertising machinery and monopoly that Hollywood has on many markets, and not the quality of the film itself. Think about it - they make sequels of things long after they stop being sellable, Kevin Kostner could make an expensive film long after his films earned their last nickel - but still, things like Rocky V still made some money because people mostly let adds or Oscar nominations decide for them what film to watch.
So basically being dumb is their way of survival. Truly, they haven't tried other ways - I dunno, say, incouraging individuality and originality, and they likely aren't gonna, because they won't take that chance. I may be an idealist but I do believe that deep down people want to see something new when they go to cinema (albeit with some dose of familiarity) and that you can fool them to some level, but can't fool them all the way and all the time. So I believe that system where quality of films is in the first place would work - but it's a system where there wouldn't be any constants. In current system, you know that if you get an attrocious film, usually you can still slap "Meatballs XLVIII" as a title, advertise the hell out of it and that way gather enough crowd to pay for production costs.
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