I liked this long Twitter thread by Arash Amel, who I’m pretty sure is a striking movie writer with time to think the big thoughts at the moment. With MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: DEAD RECKONING (Part 1) looking very shaky at the B.O. this week, it looks like we are seeing a disastrous summer Box Office. Where did it go wrong? The answer is pretty simple. (A THREAD on creative risk.)
"And that truly is the underlying malaise, part of the new phenomenon of America's leaders aging out. Hollywood is no exception. We are in a death spiral. We have to win young audiences back. The only way out is to go back to the creativity and first principles" swap any American institution for the word Hollywood here and you describe the United States of America at the moment.
Or you describe Australia for its entire colonial history. Big mine? Tick. Big farm? Tick. Build apartments? Tick. Make cars, or computers or hearing aids? Good luck with that.
We do Indie quite well. Music, movies, international-market specialist manufacturing: clever things that start up on a shoestring. These are invisible to the finance industry, and therefore to the news cycle. "..run by second rate men..." indeed.
sorry to return so long after but have just seen another example of this "
Speaking of climate politics — the Albanese government’s plan to create a battery industry here wouldn’t be worth it, according to the Productivity Commission via the AFR ($). The government has long held that “if we can mine it, we can make it” — and considering we are the world's largest producer of lithium and bauxite (third biggest of cobalt and manganese), coupled with Beijing’s solar and EV battery monopoly, it seems a no-brainer. But Productivity Commission deputy chair Alex Robson reckons we should “never forget the lessons of our protectionist past” and focus on selling to US buyers rather than do our own manufacturing because we won’t lose money that way. It comes as Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen granted $1.12 million to the Australian Photovoltaic Institute for a study into “opportunities for production of solar panels and components here at home”."
Yep, we won't lose money, but we won't capture much of the value, either. There have got to be few manufacturing opportunities with a more certain future and growing market, but no, too hard for us. Timid.
It really shows the limits of thinking about everything in terms of immediate economic return. The PC shows no interest in the value of learning how to build an industry from scratch and learn and develop new skills and technologies that could possibly bring economic value in the future.
Real "you're better off selling the farm rather than learning how to cultivate the land and derive future value from crops" vibes.
You know that there are two big new non-sequal movies opening this weekend, right? I'm hoping to see both of them, but perhaps not on the same weekend.
Sometimes stories have more in them than one go-round. Our host has a few series of his own.
And cap'n Dirk has a point too: movies are being made in a lot of places now, as technology has brought the costs of production down a lot: the new kids on the block are the iPhone/TikTok generation: they've been brought up breathing video. And Holywood and the Wallstreet investment model are getting some compettitionn from indies and kickstarter (or so I've read).
Doesn't mean that there isn't also room for a few more Water-Worlds. Or Pigs.
I looked up the financials for Pig (2021), one of the best movies of the last few years, IMO. Apparently it made $4 million total (including post-release sales), but it's ahead, because it was rumored to have been made for $3 million, of which a third was Cage's art-movie fee.
Bear in mind that movie financials tend towards the fictitious. Various people invest in movies on a share-of-profit basis, so the studio accountants structure the books to ensure the smallest possible payout to those investors. Many movies never break even, despite the people involved being well paid.
I've pretty much always been the guy that'll wait for something to come out on video for various reasons, but are cinema costs another factor for Hollywood wanting "safe" movies? What does it cost to see a movie these days? $20?
This touches on my two big complaints about Hollywood movies. First, lack of originality, which I think is largely due to the big studio domination the poster talks about - a studio boss wants to know in advance how much money a movie is going to make, and the easiest way to get an estimate of that is to point to some almost-identical movie and say how much it made. If there is no existing almost-identical movie, it's harder to tell him (usually him) what he wants to hear. This is very similar to why Australian businesses are really bad at R&D - they don't want to take a risk on something until they see someone else succeed with it.
Number two, stories have to be big. The stakes in the story have to be end-of-world, or even better, end-of-universe. It seems much harder to get small stories told. Once you've told one huge story, the sequel has to escalate, you can never go back to telling an ordinary story, so the whole thing devalues very quickly.
I’d have happily watched a 110 minute Marvel movie set in a coffee shop where Black Widow and Banner went for coffee each day while they worked out their relationship
"And that truly is the underlying malaise, part of the new phenomenon of America's leaders aging out. Hollywood is no exception. We are in a death spiral. We have to win young audiences back. The only way out is to go back to the creativity and first principles" swap any American institution for the word Hollywood here and you describe the United States of America at the moment.
Or you describe Australia for its entire colonial history. Big mine? Tick. Big farm? Tick. Build apartments? Tick. Make cars, or computers or hearing aids? Good luck with that.
We do Indie quite well. Music, movies, international-market specialist manufacturing: clever things that start up on a shoestring. These are invisible to the finance industry, and therefore to the news cycle. "..run by second rate men..." indeed.
sorry to return so long after but have just seen another example of this "
Speaking of climate politics — the Albanese government’s plan to create a battery industry here wouldn’t be worth it, according to the Productivity Commission via the AFR ($). The government has long held that “if we can mine it, we can make it” — and considering we are the world's largest producer of lithium and bauxite (third biggest of cobalt and manganese), coupled with Beijing’s solar and EV battery monopoly, it seems a no-brainer. But Productivity Commission deputy chair Alex Robson reckons we should “never forget the lessons of our protectionist past” and focus on selling to US buyers rather than do our own manufacturing because we won’t lose money that way. It comes as Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen granted $1.12 million to the Australian Photovoltaic Institute for a study into “opportunities for production of solar panels and components here at home”."
Yep, we won't lose money, but we won't capture much of the value, either. There have got to be few manufacturing opportunities with a more certain future and growing market, but no, too hard for us. Timid.
It really shows the limits of thinking about everything in terms of immediate economic return. The PC shows no interest in the value of learning how to build an industry from scratch and learn and develop new skills and technologies that could possibly bring economic value in the future.
Real "you're better off selling the farm rather than learning how to cultivate the land and derive future value from crops" vibes.
also Australia punches well above it weight in software for sound engineering I believe
"We do Indie quite well" and whilst quite boutique I'd like to thrown in computer games.
You know that there are two big new non-sequal movies opening this weekend, right? I'm hoping to see both of them, but perhaps not on the same weekend.
Sometimes stories have more in them than one go-round. Our host has a few series of his own.
And cap'n Dirk has a point too: movies are being made in a lot of places now, as technology has brought the costs of production down a lot: the new kids on the block are the iPhone/TikTok generation: they've been brought up breathing video. And Holywood and the Wallstreet investment model are getting some compettitionn from indies and kickstarter (or so I've read).
Doesn't mean that there isn't also room for a few more Water-Worlds. Or Pigs.
I looked up the financials for Pig (2021), one of the best movies of the last few years, IMO. Apparently it made $4 million total (including post-release sales), but it's ahead, because it was rumored to have been made for $3 million, of which a third was Cage's art-movie fee.
Bear in mind that movie financials tend towards the fictitious. Various people invest in movies on a share-of-profit basis, so the studio accountants structure the books to ensure the smallest possible payout to those investors. Many movies never break even, despite the people involved being well paid.
Yep. If you produce stale crap, safe bets, no one tunes in and everyone loses.
Isn't that how it's supposed to work?
Amel has a point. Just look at what scores at Netflix. Either it's non US (Money Heist) or new universes for for example Schwarzenegger.
I've pretty much always been the guy that'll wait for something to come out on video for various reasons, but are cinema costs another factor for Hollywood wanting "safe" movies? What does it cost to see a movie these days? $20?
This touches on my two big complaints about Hollywood movies. First, lack of originality, which I think is largely due to the big studio domination the poster talks about - a studio boss wants to know in advance how much money a movie is going to make, and the easiest way to get an estimate of that is to point to some almost-identical movie and say how much it made. If there is no existing almost-identical movie, it's harder to tell him (usually him) what he wants to hear. This is very similar to why Australian businesses are really bad at R&D - they don't want to take a risk on something until they see someone else succeed with it.
Number two, stories have to be big. The stakes in the story have to be end-of-world, or even better, end-of-universe. It seems much harder to get small stories told. Once you've told one huge story, the sequel has to escalate, you can never go back to telling an ordinary story, so the whole thing devalues very quickly.
I’d have happily watched a 110 minute Marvel movie set in a coffee shop where Black Widow and Banner went for coffee each day while they worked out their relationship