7 Ways To Fix The Current State Of Cinema

Chances are you've not been having the best year at the cinema so far. Though 2016 has delivered some true gems, it's also seen an above average share of flops as well. Not just in terms of box office, either. There have been a lot of grumblings lately about poor box office returns - the surest sign we have of general audience opinion of the films in question - but critical opinion of the movies coming out of Hollywood has been pretty muted, too. After a massive 2015, 2016 was supposed to be another big one, with, to name just two, Batman V Superman, a film that fans had been anticipating for years, as well as the sequel to the highest-grossing X-Men movie ever, due for release. But, the former broke the hearts of fans and the latter underwhelmed everyone who bothered to lay eyes upon it. These are just two event movies to bomb in 2016; there was also The Legend of Tarzan, Independence Day: Resurgence, Warcraft: The Beginning, Alice Through the Looking Glass, The Hunstman: Winter's War and so on and so on. Critical opinion was low of these films, but perhaps more importantly, audiences just didn't bother to turn up. Right now, it looks as though the studios are losing sight of what it is that cinema-goers want, and so, with that in mind, here are some ideas to fix our stagnating cinema. 7) Make The Writer King Television, which is obviously doing very well right now, has made the writer king of content. But in cinema, films - especially those with the big budgets - are primarily controlled by producers who often see an opportunity to make money first and a good story second, and directors whose ability to bring a film in on time/budget is prized above their storytelling skills. (See: Michael Bay, Roland Emmerich and Zack Snyder, all of whom regularly command huge budgets but who are no one's idea of artists.) In TV, however, projects are made in the writers' room, and those with the best ideas are the ones who flourish. It's why you know the names Vince Gilligan and Nic Pizzolatto, but might not be able to name a single movie screenwriter. This writer-led approach has made TV the new hot visual medium, a medium that has viewers talking at the water cooler and has critics falling over themselves in trying to give the highest praise. Hollywood might want to think about giving the movie writer more power than they currently have. 6) Give Interesting Filmmakers More Respect As much as it would help to give talented movie writers more creative impact, the same goes for singular directors and writer-directors. Of course, there are a select few filmmakers who could be called 'singular' that seem to get their unique projects off the ground with relative ease; Quentin Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson are but two who immediately come to mind. There are many more directors and writer-directors, though, who - despite their acclaim - just don't have access to the studio money they need to make the films they want to make. One such figure is Charlie Kaufman, writer of Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Kaufman was one of the more popular writers of the 90s and 00s, and now he's an Oscar-nominated director that studios won't even touch. There's clearly something wrong in Hollywood's logic here if Kaufman can't get financed yet Brett Ratner consistently can. 5) Be More Conservative With The Budgets As blockbuster budgets get bigger and bigger, the chance of making huge losses on single gambles increases. Currently, blockbuster directors command by far the biggest budgets, while those with individual, original stories of their own are left to pick at the scraps. Batman V Superman, for example, cost $250 million and was broadly regarded as a major creative disappointment, while Warner Bros. - presumably with some of the change it had left over - gave Jeff Nichols just $18 million to make Midnight Special. This was an effects-heavy film in the Steven Spielberg/John Carpenter style, made for a PG-13 audience. The film turned out well, earning some of the best reviews of the year, but Warner producers gave this tried and tested filmmaker just one 14th of the money they gave to the man behind Sucker Punch to make BvS. If studios could be more conservative with their budgets on tentpoles, they might have more money to spare on smaller projects that actually make the viewer happy, rather than blow it all on pictures that have fans tearing their hair out. 4) Cut Down On The Remakes And Reboots The idea in Hollywood currently is that if you take an existing property - Ghostbusters, Spider-Man - and remake or reboot said property, then audience numbers will be higher as viewers immediately recognize the brand. That's the idea, anyway; that's why Hollywood seems to be churning out virtually nothing else right now. Only, it's not true: the numbers actually show that these remakes and reboots are generally under-performing commercially. This might not be so bad if the films were actually highly-regarded by critics and audiences. But the numbers again show that they aren't (if we're to believe review aggregators like Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes, anyway). Cinema is really feeling the hit right now, as the amount of great original content increases on TV and decreases on the big screen. The studios should take note of hard numbers, and maybe think about cutting down on all the relentless rebooting. 3) Push Entertaining And High-Quality Low Budget Movies There's not just a problem with the type of movies Hollywood makes today. Another issue is distribution, and the lack thereof of high quality films with box office potential that just happen to be low budget. A wide audience probably would have taken to the Carpenter-esque horror Green Room or batshit thriller The Invitation for example, if only they had known they were there/if they had access to one of the few cinemas that bothered to screen them back in April. They got some of the best reviews of the year, and made just $4 million between them - buried by unenthusiastic studios. Foreign movies count here, too. Potentially crowd-pleasing thrillers like Disorder and A War sank stateside this year, just as foreign movies always do, because of Hollywood's apparent lack of interest in promoting them. The rise of foreign-language television, such as Nordic noir, has at least proven that audiences are prepared to jump the language barrier and read some text as long as there's a good story involved - so why not push foreign cinema more, too? 2) Make Movies, Not Release Dates On small and mid-budget movies, it all starts with an idea, whether that's from the writer, producer or director. Then, a script will start doing the rounds, it'll pick up actors and crew, and the project will finally get greenlighted by a studio. It's a simple process, and one that sounds like the best way to go: lay out the necessary plans and assemble the players BEFORE settling on a budget and getting down to work. Unfortunately, most blockbusters don't happen this way. It's been a problem for a long time that the studios will announce a release date on a film before all the pieces are in place. This could mean setting a time frame before there's a cast or director. There have even been films recently which have gone to shoot with no script at all. This process of making a release date and not a movie has resulted in some truly woeful films of late. For the sake of the audience that has to pay to watch these things, more studios could learn from the Rogue One shoot: if it's not ready, push the release back and make amends until it is. 1) Give The People Sequels They Actually Want There isn't necessarily anything wrong with sequels. Last year brought some great ones that both audiences and critics alike absolutely lapped up: Mad Max: Fury Road, The Force Awakens, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, Furious 7. However 2016, in the sequel department at least, has seen absolutely abysmal reception, financially and critically. Ice Age: Collision Course, Independence Day: Resurgence, The Hunstman: Winter's War, Alice Through the Looking Glass, Zoolander 2, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2...all were critical disasters, and audiences stayed away. It seems Hollywood was so focused on delivering sequels this year that it never stopped to ask whether people actually wanted the ones they were churning out. Some real quality sequels have come out so far in 2016 - Civil War, 10 Cloverfield Lane, Finding Dory - that happened to land with audiences. For starters, this was probably because they didn't stink of failure, but also because these were also sequels that viewers were actually looking for. Simply put, if Hollywood is going to keep sequelizing, and it likely will, it should make more sequels that people really want.