Whether it’s because of video piracy, the fall of Blockbuster and rental stores, or simply a long string of boring movies, Hollywood has been moaning about falling revenue and lost profits. And instead of recognizing a vastly different market – paying less per movie because of Netflix, HDTV delivering superior quality and eliminating a need to visit the theater, TiVo and DVR devices – Hollywood has reacted in the worst way possible by remaking movies and shoving 3D down our throats for an extra $5.
So here is a brainstormed list for how to increase the quality of new films. Many of these techniques are enjoying success in other markets while some are simply evolutionary for film.
1) Connect “Based on a True Story” to Reality:
Voice of a Murderer (2007) follows a Mel Gibson’s Ransom-esque story of a rich father trying to retrieve his son from a kidnapper. The kidnapper receives the money, but demands more without producing evidence that the son is well. After a painful game of cat and mouse, the police advise that the evidence points to homicide and the parents give up. A few days later, they find the body of the boy and deduct that he had been dead before the ransom was even requested. The father takes a long time off from his news anchor job and keeps the entire event a secret. The first story that is aired the night of his return on the news regards the discovery of his son’s body. As he sits in his chair and tries to read the teleprompter, he becomes crippled and starts crying. He looks into the camera and pleads with the audience for help identifying the killer of his only child. All he can offer as a lead is the voice recording, which he painfully introduces. The screen goes black with the text written “the voice that you are listening to is the voice of the actual killer, recorded in 1991. Please listen very carefully.” It is absolutely chilling to hear the real conversation overlapped on police sketches and physical descriptions -- hearing the real mother receiving directions where to meet. The whole movie, the audience only hears characters discussing this tiny piece of evidence (analyzing word choice, accent, age, etc.). Then you really hear it. It’s very difficult to keep yourself composed.
2) Let Women Take a Punch
Remember that scene from Taking Lives (2004), when Angelina Jolie is wearing the fake pregnancy belly and is knocked to the floor at the end (don’t worry, it wasn’t a good movie)? I remember only because the entire audience gasped. A few minutes into this fight and she kills the attacker, revealing the belly as a trick. Nobody made a sound. Concluding from this experience, it seems that audiences are more accepting of violence perpetrated by women than against women. But, problematically, as more women take heroic roles calling for action, it should be expected that they take more ‘roughing up’ than has been the norm. And as cautious as Hollywood is to showing violence against women, it seems there is an implicit insult that women simply aren’t as tough as men. Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn’t made tough by shooting a lot of people, he was made tough by getting his ass kicked but still getting up (think Terminator, Eraser, The Running Man etc.). He always had some blood on his face, a torn shirt, bruises and sweat.
3) Kill Likable Characters
We all know that horror movies like to kill off the annoying and/or guilty characters. The audience usually has no problem watching them die, and even if we feel some remorse, we may react “well it’s better to kill him than…” But films, stretching independent to horror, should keep audiences on their seats with the unexpected. When Marion Crane dies in Psycho (1960), we’re all surprised since we didn’t see it coming. After she’s dead, the whole film feels in flux – we have no idea where it will go, who will live and die and struggle to make predictions since all our initial assumptions (“another heist movie”) are thrown out the window. How can this feeling be recreated? The best way to do this is to craft likable characters, but make them vulnerable. Perhaps it’s a lot to ask stars to not survive the movie, but did anyone go into Iron Man 2 (2010) thinking that Tony Stark wouldn’t resolutely stand triumphant? Exactly. That’s the problem.
4) Give Audiences Some Credit
One of the reasons that Lost was so successful as a TV show was they didn’t force-feed you every detail. They left some paths of the show unexamined, leaving the audience to either piece together a correlation or jump online and read internet forums. Granted, Lost sometimes overindulged in these details, but at least the producers allotted some respect to the audience to discover details themselves. Part of the fun for movies like Matrix (1999) and Inception (2010) was people went home and really tried to interpret the film. Those people made Youtube videos and wrote long articles about why their view was correct (I still remember reading The Matrix as a retelling of Plato’s Cave…met with intense disappointment when it didn’t work out that way). Some people figured it out, some didn’t, but it was stimulating to see the movies interpreted by other people.
5) Revise Ratings
There is a great argument from This Film is Not Yet Rated (2006) that the MPAA (organization that gives ratings to movies) acts as a chilling effect for films. For instance, the MPAA generally gives more restricted ratings for depictions of sexuality than violence. If you ever saw The Triplets of Belleville (2003), the French-Belgium-Canada-U.K. cartoon with amazing art direction, you'll remember the film receiving a PG-13 rating despite no language or violence, but probably because there is a ten second segment at the beginning of the film that has an animated woman dancing topless. Sinfully, her nipples bounce in all directions (I mean it wasn't even meant to look realistic! They really do bounce everywhere!) Remember, this is the same rating as Titanic (1997) with the F-word, gun shots, people dying in a frigid Atlantic, premarital sex, and so on. The MPAA's rating system says these two movies are both intended for people 13 years of age and older, but seems very inconsistent. And the chilling effect comes from a studios' primary goal -- to make money. So if studios don't believe they can make money at an R rating, they demand edits to reach a PG-13. This rating system is incredibly detrimental to the full exploration of art in film. Perhaps this is harder to observe, so instead see the divide between NC-17 and R -- most theaters won't show NC-17 movies, so the studios won’t distribute at NC-17 and they a favor censored R. It's very hard to measure what impact this pressure has on an artists' ability to show what he/she really wants.
6) Experiment With Self-Imposed Censorship
Movies crafted under the heavy hand of censorship have always imagined nuanced ways to communicate ideas under an indefeasible guise to protect their careers. Consider the example of Spring of Korean Peninsula (1941). The story involves a Korean director trying to make a Korean movie, but meeting difficulties at every turn (mostly financial). At this time period, Korea was a colony of Japan, under "cultural genocide." Japan was trying to turn Korea into Japan by forcing Koreans to take Japanese names, speak only Japanese in schools and otherwise eradicate Korean culture from the world. Under film censorship laws, Korean movies had to contain a certain percentage of Japanese spoken language, and often had to include hard subtitles (subtitles imprinted onto the film cells so they couldn't be removed). Needless to say, the Japanese authorities also heavily regulated the production and distribution of Korean cinema to stomp out nationalist sentiment. So directors and producers had to find creative ways to explore Korean art without angering Japanese censors, who had little patience to test boundaries. In Spring of Korean Peninsula, the protagonist will often speak Japanese (probably a requirement for the movie), but appears to do so reluctantly. Famously, in one scene at dinner to congratulate a new financer and foundation of a new film company to assist the director, a speaker talks about how great Japan is for helping her subjects modernize. The camera stays fixed on the protagonist, blank faced, staring down at his food. He's supposed to be happy -- now he has the money to finish making his film (too bad that money comes from Japan...) Everything looks lively, but the audience experiences nothing festive since the protagonist just lifelessly stares down. The film passed censors and was released to Korean audiences in 1941, but it's very hard to judge if the film's nuances were able to communicate to a subjugated people. Notwithstanding, what an amazing example of Korean artistic zeitgeist. Thankfully, the U.S. doesn't have to deal with this rigid censorship, but what if it did? Would our directors be able to craft something profound? Or do our film creators consider us too stupid to really see their message?
7) Let the Antagonist Win
Remember how you felt at the end of the first Saw (2004), when John got up and walked out of the room, closing the door and winning? It was refreshing to see an unpredictable ending, and even more exciting to see the bad guy win. When I was young, I asked my mom why bad guys never win in movies and she explained that society wants to see the good guys win, with "justice" prevailing. And as true as that may be today, it keeps the audience on our toes to actually be unsure if the protagonist wins. If the audience doesn't start a movie almost 100% sure who comes out ahead, the satisfaction of justice is even better. For example, in the original Predator (1987), the alien kills off most of the characters and gives Arnold a helluva fight. Arnold's victory didn't feel assured as the film progressed (they killed off everyone else, including Jesse Ventura and Carl Weathers), whereas something like Prince of Persia (2010) was cookie-cutter, an obvious victory for the hero. This is very similar to killing likable characters.
8) Stop Remakes!
Ok, listen, I think that new technology and storytelling can offer a really good remake (like The Italian Job...maybe even the Wolfman, but only because I didn’t see the original or any remakes). But please please please stop remaking movies twenty years old (Nightmare on Elm Street, The Karate Kid, Robin Hood…Oh God, there are even more in the works...and what the hell, they're re-releasing Avatar a year after it left theaters? Did they need to break even on a budget or something? You don't think...that George Lucas got involved...do you?). And as much as I love the new Batman Begins reboot, every movie franchise doesn't need one (Spiderman is three years old...at least Batman was like five). I also understand that taking excellent foreign movies and bringing them to American audiences is a good idea, in theory, but as Homer Simpsons says "in theory, communism works, in theory." In other words, if remakes of foreign movies are made, don't destroy the essence of the movie that made it so special: My Sassy Girl (2001), the Korean version, and the dismal American remake in 2008. The Korean version was so satisfying because it crafted very unique characters and had fun with them. It was light, humorous and didn't feel like a chick flick. The American remake was the exact opposite, a Dharma & Greg with more drinking and movie stereotypes. It’s almost like filmmakers are convinced that people will hate refreshing takes on overused genres.
9) Make People Think
I've been trying for a long time to find a place to discuss After Life, the 1998 Japanese film (not to be confused with the awful American movie with the same name). It's been hard because the film isn't too exciting, has a lot of issues with pacing, and struggles with character growth – in fact, it really looks more like documentary. The reason I love it so much is that it simply asks one question as “officially” described by an employee in “purgatory” addressing the recently deceased: “We need you to select one memory. One memory that was most meaningful or precious to you. There is a time limit. You have three days to decide. When you’ve chosen your memory, our staff will do their best to recreate it on film. On Saturday, we’ll screen the films for you. As soon as you’ve relived your memory, you will move on, taking only that memory with you.” So now you, the viewer, have three days to find only one memory worth keeping and you forget everything else. Which would you choose? Although there is a story behind this film, for the most part, the meat comes from interviewing the characters (some stories were scripted…but many were honest memories from the real actors). After Life engages the audience in a deep, personal meditation. While we watch the characters describing the memories they've chosen, we're sparked to consider if our similar memory would qualify (then again, perhaps our senior prom wasn't as good as theirs). But we're curious: how old are we? Who's with us? What's the situation? Even more painful, out of our entire life, what memories can we bear to forget?
Some films need to engage audiences this way. While philosophical questions can be wonderfully explored in movies like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), we can often fail to interpose the dilemma facing the characters on ourselves. After Life is a hard movie to watch because it doesn't try to tell us a narrative -- we don't really connect with any characters, many scenes are shot at a flat and boring angle, there is little music. The movie is really only good at one thing: asking us "what would I say?"
This list isn’t complete and may be amended in the future, but consider if these suggestions would help movies. Did I miss anything? Would any of these suggestions hurt the film industry?
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