The Future of Film

Depending on how you look at it, the future of film may be bleak, bright, or [insert nebulous alliterative term here]. If you're all for giant budgets, jaw-dropping special effects, ubiquitous marketing, and broader audience appeal, things just get better every year. If you long for small, intimate films, brilliant storytelling, surprising discoveries of astonishing brilliance, and unique, daring films, then you might be compelled to stand and curse the sun beside me.

Up until 2003, there had been only 3 films with production budgets that exceeded $150 million. By the end of this year, that number will nearly quadruple. Now, I enjoyed watching the assault on Zion in Matrix Revolutions and the unassailable car chase in Terminator 3, and the trailer alone for The Day After Tomorrow looks fantastic. But simply put, big budgets and the special effects orgies they produce make most filmmakers lazy. Films like The Day After Tomorrow can sell themselves solely on the quality of their 'money shots,' and need not bother with things like story and character to sell themselves. The result? No story or character.

Gorgeous special effects free filmmakers from the burden of selling their movie with more fundamental storytelling qualities and techniques, like originality, character, plot, dialogue, or even acting.

Thankfully, this is not always the case. I thought Pirates of the Caribbean could have stood on its own with 1970s special effects, on the basis of its storytelling and acting strengths. In this case, the budget only made a good movie better with truly tasty eye candy.

Another trend is that marketing is becoming increasingly important for the success of a film. Print, TV and Internet ads, product, fast food and video game tie-ins, along with other marketing techniques, were never more prevalent or unavoidable. Sony is spending a reported $100 million just to market this summer's Spider-Man 2, double the promotional money spent on any film before it. Notice that doesn't include the production budget, which approaches $200 million.

On the other hand, there is the notable success of The Passion of the Christ which had the biggest 5-day opening weekend ever (until Shrek 2 came along, anyway) with virtually no conventional marketing. Mel Gibson and Newmarket used an extensive grass roots campaign and milked the film's controversy and resulting interviews for all the promotional worth they had. And it paid off, big time. Only after the film's huge opening did Newmarket really start spending some cash to promote the film.

Shrek 2's success can be contibuted to a number of factors: the 'sequel advantage,' a lack of family films in the market, the widest release in history (by 400 theaters), and big-name stars. But mostly, I'd attribute its success to uber-wide appeal. Shrek 2 is perhaps the least daring, most pandering film of the year. Which is not to say some of its jokes aren't funny or that it doesn't have its moments, but it takes every opportunity to please as many people as possible. It is the most unoriginal film of note to come in a long while.

The trend towards mass audience pandering can also be seen when one looks at the original films of the year. Charlie Kaufman is repeatedly one of the most original and daring writers of our time, and as a result, his films, while critically hailed, have consistently been box-office failures. Even when Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind benefited from the star power of Jim Carrey and
became the best-reviewed movie of the year so far, it floundered at the box-office because most moviegoers simply aren't interested in something daring. And Hollywood is a business, after all.

The bright side of all this is that daring and small films continue to be released, and occasionally succeed. The previously off-the-map documentary genre
has seen the light of day recently due to relative hits like Bowling for Columbine, Super Size Me and surely, the upcoming Farenheit 9/11. Charlie Kaufman will continue to write films that are produced. Maybe no one else will watch the upcoming Open Water, but I will, and I look forward to it.

So while I'd love to see careful character development, brilliant dialogue, quirky originality, intricate plotting, beautiful storytelling, and top-notch acting coexist with stunning special effects and epic scale, I can at least continue to see them separately.

We'll have to keep our eyes on films like Batman Begins and King Kong, or even Spider-Man 2 and Harry Potter 3, to see if modern filmmakers are choosing to exhaust themselves over the finer points of film art in a big-budget movie. If not, well, then, I'll always have Sin City and the next Charlie Kaufman flick.