What Happened To Movie...goers?

We've all heard the complaining that the quality of movies these days is dwindling. Originality is dead and Hollywood has sold its soul to the devil to produce another sequel. Facts being what they are, that's mostly true. Just look at the Golden Globe best picture nominees this year: American Gangster (based on fact), Atonement (based on a novel), Eastern Promises (wait, an original?), The Great Debaters (based on fact), There Will Be Blood (based on a novel, albeit loosely), and No Country For Old Men (based on a novel).

That's not to say these movies are bad. On the contrary, the only poor film among the group is Atonement, which, predictably, won best picture at the Golden Globes this past Sunday. Still, didn't we used to go to the movies to get away from real life, instead of reliving it? Originality is gasping for air beneath an endless vapid sea.

Obviously there's absolutely no question at all that Hollywood is responsible for mercilessly slaughtering all forms of originality. Let's take a look at the top five grossing movies of the year: Spider-Man 3, Shrek the Third, Transformers, Pirates of the Caribbean 3, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Notice anything? Three threequels, a fifth chapter, and a big, big budget movie based on wildly popular cartoon. But, wait, if those are the five highest grossing movies of the year, that must mean people, mostly people outside Hollywood, went to see those movies. That can't be true! This would all be okay in a world where the aforementioned films were quality films, but out of the five I can only call Harry Potter a good film, and only if I listen to my fanboy nerd, I can put Transformers there as well (yeah, the movie was offensively bad, I know, I know).

It wasn't always like this. Take a trip back to 1990 with me. A year when Turtles rocked, Swayze and Costner were big stars, parents went on vacation and forgot their kid, and a hooker charmed a millionaire. That's right, the top five of 1990 were: Home Alone, Ghost, Dances With Wolves, Pretty Woman, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Word of mouth meant something, critics weren't complete pompous asses, and people went to see movies that were just plain good. Now, no one in their right mind will argue that the original TMNT was a piece of classic cinema history, but it was fun. It was good, clean, sensible fun. The other four in the list actually are classics that have withstood the test of time and remain relevant 18 years later.

The one thing that remained constant from 1990 to 2008 is this: movie studios produce what can be sold. When you start a good business, art or not, you have to make sure it can be sold for a profit. Movies have always been a business. Always. But, in 1990, movies made their money primarily by word of mouth from regular Joe's like you and me, and somewhat from critics. Marketing didn't focus on having a mammoth opening weekend because they knew most good movies would make their money back and then some when it was all said and done. Oh, how the times have changed. The only top 25 opening weekend of all time to come outside of this decade sits at number 24 with 1997's The Lost World. Movies just didn't used to open that big. Heck, the highest grossing movie of all time, 1997's Titanic, opened with a now puny $28.6M, but it stayed at number one for a record 15 weeks which is unheard of in today's industry.

Hollywood isn't completely free of blame. Heck, it might even be more to blame, but that's not the point. Hollywood's problems are transparent and easy to blame. Between the paparazzi, the fake couples, and movie stars becoming political figures, the movie studio execs, directors, writers, and actors forgot what movies were. In an attempt to fight DVD's and home theater systems, the studios brought out movies that were bigger and louder. When that didn't work because those movies were just too expensive, they turned to the rebirth of a low budget yet highly profitable genre: horror. Most of us like a good horror movie every now and then, but I can name about two over the past ten years that I consider good movies, or even entertaining movies.

The problem isn't even that people rush out to see movies that I wouldn't subject my worst enemies to (damn you Shoot 'Em Up, damn you). It's that the public's definition of what makes a great movie, or even an entertaining movie, has changed drastically. Happy endings replaced by senseless deaths, likable heroes replaced by passive and unlikable characters, and ultimately a darker tone. I know what most of you are thinking: this guy likes fluff. Stamp a prince marrying a princess at the end of the movie and he'll call it a quality film. That's not the point at all. The point is that the shift towards a darker medium has damaged our very understanding of film.

Let's take this year's Golden Globe best picture winner for example. Atonement currently has an 8.1 rating on IMDB, signaling that it is playing very well with the general public, and universal praise from top critics (minus A.O. Scott). If you wish to see this movie in the future, normally I'd tell you to skip the next two paragraphs, but I implore you not to do so and read them instead. Positives: the movie itself looks pretty. The visuals are well constructed, and the cinematography is quite good. But, it frightens me that this movie was nominated for best screenplay, as it fails to make us feel even the slightest bit of emotion for any of its characters. We're expected to believe that Robbie and Cecilia are in love because they share a moment at a fountain and a quick screw in the library. That might be the Ron Jeremy definition of love, but it sure isn't mine.

Maybe I would have believed their love for each other if Cecilia weren't a typical intolerable, pompous rich girl living in a mansion. Or, even if she were, I could believe it if Robbie had some depth to him, some singular likable quality. Thankfully, the story isn't about our lovers. After all, the movie isn't called Love, it's called Atonement. Our story is about Briony, our little thirteen year old brat who is even less amenable than her sister Cecilia. We can't root for Briony before she tells the lie that sends Cecilia and Robbie's lives spiraling into a dark abyss, or after when she's grown up to regret her sins. See the title coming into play now? Clever. Very clever.

The problem is that there is no atonement. There is no constant theme throughout this movie and without that string to tie it all together, the individual scenes lose any sense of meaning. There is a very long tracking shot on the beaches of Dunkirik that critics have absolutely raved about. While technically impressive, it quickly turns into a snorer. I get that Broiny's actions sent two people's lives into a toilet, but when I don't care about those two people, it's not really a big deal. We're treated to two hours of the same uninspired mess. There is a nonlinear storyline that seems to be nonlinear only for the sake of being artistic and different. There are scenes and shots meant to show the destruction of innocence, ala dead school girls shot in the head by the Germans, but they come across more as a desperate attempt to be artistic and throw some meaning into an ultimately meaningless movie. Through Robbie's suffering we're supposed to understand how horrible Briony's sin, and more importantly the consequences of her sin, really are. But, Robbie's supposedly horrible plight never feels that horrible, neither does Cecilia's. In the end, Briony's attempt at atonement is so pathetic that we wish everyone had just died at the beginning.

Though I've basically just written an essay bashing Atonement, the problem isn't with that one movie. If it were, I wouldn't be writing this. The problem is that people consider trash like this good because they just don't understand it, or they watch a movie like they read a book. Between The Departed (admittedly, a great movie until the last five minutes) and Million Dollar Baby, we have an epidemic of films that simply don't understand what they are about, so they travel down a dark path that we have all been trained to think is deep. A happy ending is conventional, it is too expected, and audiences stamp it as too cheesy these days, so anything that aims at critical success must end with some kind of hopelessness. The senselessness of these endings takes the characters we have come to relate and destroys everything we care about in the movie by taking them out of character in order to create a tidy, if dark, conclusion.

My hope in writing this is to at least point this out so that we may not be as easily entertained or impressed by what people too easily deem a brilliant work of art these days. There are still great movies being made by great directors, written by great writers, starring great actors. Many of these movies are dark and depressing, but don't confuse correlation with causation. Babel is a depressing movie loved by critics but ignored by the public. Requiem For A Dream is a great movie that is about as dark as you can get, but it only found its audience once it got to the local video store. City of God, a dark movie based on a true story (how dare they combine the two!?) is one of the best movies ever, and definitely one of the best no one has ever seen. Some greats are Hollywood blockbusters, like Minority Report and Batman Begins, but these don't stand a chance come awards season because for some reason coming out too early in the year decreases the quality of a film (we'll get into that another time).

These greats are being glossed over or not given their due because of what has almost become a public fad. A love affair with darkness and depression, a lack of understanding of characters, and a general lack of emotion has inspired Hollywood to create moving images that I cringe to call movies.