Huge shout out to our executive producer for
this month: Tom Dolan. Thank you.
I had a video planned for today that was about
TERFS and how much they suck, but bloody hell
it was hard to research that without wanting
to bang my head against a wall so let's talk
about films and more specifically why Capitalism
is making them safe and boring and repetitive
and dull. Now if you follow Jim Sterling,
you’ll know about his work with Ca-Triple-Apitalism
ruining games, and I’m gonna just push you
towards him if you want video game focused
discussion about this. But we’re going to
talk about film because, oh boy.
First, a primer on how these massive companies
work. When you get to be a publicly traded
company that’s as big as someone like Disney
or a Warner, you become beholden to your shareholders
[picture of a leech], rather than the actual
customers. Nathaniel Wayne did a really good
breakdown on this on their second channel,
so go and give that a watch, but as a small
primer, here goes. A company’s shareholders
don’t just demand profit year over year,
but growth, year over year. If a company makes
5 billion dollars in 2018, they will be considered
a failure by their shareholders (and potentially
sued) if they only make 4.9 billion dollars
in 2019. As such the companies get more and
more desperate to chase this infinite growth
and leads them to care less about what us,
the public actually want and just sort of
telling us what we want, then only making
that? And all the things I’ll discuss down
the line will all loop back to this point:
the most important thing is making money.
Not a good product.
point one: preawareness
There’s this thing in hollywood called preawareness,
which is the idea that a film will be more
well received if it’s based on a thing the
audience is already aware of. That if an audience
sees a poster with characters they already
recognize, they are more likely to go and
see the movie. And they have charts that agree
with them, I mean for whatever reason Ice
Age 3 did way better than Ice Age 1 did, and
the number one grossing movie of all time
is a bloody sequel.
And on face value, that point makes a lot
of sense. If you end the conversation there,
it sounds like yeah, that’s logical right?
But when you dig into a little you see how
this argument is made by the very people who
are constructing the problem in the first
place. Let me explain. The way films are distributed
in cinemas leaves very little wiggle room
for anybody who isn’t a major movie studio
to get their films seen (with few exceptions,
take for example Parasite). So when it’s
basically just Disney deciding what films
can come out, and all they’re making are
sequels because it’s easier to recognize
them on the poster, I can only chalk that
up to laziness. It is entirely possible to
create an engaging and convincing trailer
for a movie that doesn’t rely on “hey
don’t you recognize this character from
comics or books or the last film we squirted
out”. But because that process takes a little
more work and is a little less reliable, studios
resort to just pumping out twenty three marvel
movies in the span of just over a decade,
because you have to remember that the company
doesn’t care if the film is good. The company
only cares about whether or not you buy a
ticket.
And sure, the reviews will make a difference
as to whether or not you buy a ticket, but
once a cinematic universe gets a big as marvels
or heck, even Fast and Furious, they’re
gambling on you being invested in the franchise
to the point of ignoring reviews.
But they could be producing engaging, original
movies with original ideas. And they are deciding
not to, simply because it’s a little easier
to sell you a movie you’re already sold
on.
point two: IP
IP is a terrible concept that drives producers
to do terrible things. For those of you that
don’t know, IP stands for “intellectual
property”, and just refers to basically
an idea for a piece of fiction? The Spiderman
Series is an IP, Pikmin is an IP, Gone With
The Wind is an IP. And the “IP rights”
are, in theory, that the person who thought
of the idea should be able to say what happens
to that idea. Now, again, on its face that
sounds like a reasonable idea, right? If Jim
Bimbles writes a really good book called “Coleslawman”,
then Jim Bimbles should be able to say what
happens to Coleslawman, right? Well, I disagree,
personally, I think art should be free but
then I don’t agree with capitalism in general
but we’re TANGENTING. In the current hellscape,
letting the creator of a thing decide what
happens to that thing makes a little sense.
But the way this concept has been twisted
into what is it today is another facet of
capitalism ruining art. Because now Jim Bimbles
won’t just make the Coleslawman movie, because
the film industry is prohibitively expensive
to get into, he has to sell the rights the
Coleslawman to a movie production company
and they make the Coleslawman movie, obviously
they do because of the whole preawarness thing.
But the way most of this IP contract business
works, the film rights expire if they go unused,
which means that the film company will pump
out sequel after sequel or continual terrible
reboots just to maintain the rights because
god forbid anyone else get the rights! And,
you know, the whole infinite growth thing.
So the film company, in a desperate effort
to keep making money, will force life into
a terrible franchise that nobody wants, just
because it’s a name that people are aware
of.
So combining these two points, we have a company
that’ll make movies based on any property
people have heard of, just because they’ve
heard of it and will then continue squirting
out sequels just because they want to keep
the rights to them. We get a swath of unoriginal
movies, sequels, prequels, reboots, adaptations.
In 2019, every single one of the top ten movies
released was one of those, with the top 6
being disney movies. The 12th movie in this
list, Us, is the first original one we see.
And it’s a spectacular, meaningful movie
that’s vastly overshadowed by this industry
reliant on infinite growth via mediocre sameyness.
Movies like Us show that there is still creativity
and risk-taking in hollywood, and with a little
push they can perform as well they deserve,
vastly outshining the numerous movies built
on preawareness that flopped. Remember Rampage?
Baywatch? They got marketing way harder than
Us ever did, and did far worse, because they
were uninteresting and boring movies.
Now imagine, for a second, that capitalism
didn’t interfere with Films. That people
could make the films they wanted, without
having to worry about contracts and IP and
who has the rights to the characters and how
you’ll distribute it and whether or not
you’ll make enough money to avoid getting
sued by your shareholders. You could just...make
movies. Tell stories. Exchange ideas. That’d
be pretty great, wouldn’t it? And if, with
all this creative freedom, you really wanted
to make a movie about Batman, you could. We
wouldn’t have to just put up with the Allegory
for the Bush Era and...whatever the fuck this
is. It’d be lovely, wouldn’t it?
But we’re stuck with this. We’re stuck
with capitalism shoving it’s oar into everything
and ruining it in the process. And I don’t
know how to end this video, but yeah. Doesn’t
that suck?
Thank you to everyone for your support on
patreon, those of you make this video possible.
Special Shout Out to the Fresh Cheese Bags
of the month: Karl Raade, Ethan Safron, Whatwouldjedido,
The Magpie Magus, NeutroticAnarchy, Mulloy,
Alex Bryson and Swishyclang. And a huge thank
you to our executive producer, Tom Dolan.
Love you, bye.
