John Carter of Mars Flop

As much of a horrendous misanthrope as I can be, I am prone to brief bouts of hope that the public express the sentiments of the Who (via the CSI Miami soundtrack); namely, that they won't get fooled again.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17442200
John Carter flop to cost Walt Disney $200m

John Carter of Mars has elicited one such reaction. I am giggling with delight at the idea of people tiring of the visual spectacle, of moviegoers switching off from shit and only attending movies by word of mouth. I know this was the sentiment in our house about the film - we had the opportunity to see it, but everyone was just tired of brainless action, and frankly nobody trusted Disney to truly deliver on the advertised promise. But the obvious failure of John Carter this weekend must set Hollywood into a flurry of panic, since as William Goldman put it, "The single most important fact, perhaps of the entire movie industry, is that nobody knows anything". To continue from yesterday's rant, money men have been running the show for too long; and while they're undoubtedly good with money, they have no idea what makes a good film. So they do statistical analysis on films that have been successful, and hash together a list of rules governing blockbusters. There are now so many tiny rules to scriptwriting - there must be one joke/point of tension per page, there must be an action sequence on page 60... Reading the list of requirements, you imagine a room full of coked-up executives excitedly trying to out-do each other's pitches for how many explosions / sky battles the finale will include. The industry is being run by excitable children, and John Carter represents the absolute apex of their idiocy. Look at any of the classic films like The Graduate, Casablanca, The Godfather - these films would all have been turned down under modern scriptwriting rules. Films that don't meet the criteria are cast out, so the potential successes that could prove the formula wrong never make it. And now all we're left with is executives scratching their heads at why formulaic pap like John Carter - films designed by committee to fulfil a checklist of cliches - are bombing. Bizarrely though, Hollywood now stands on the brink of becoming the good guys for once. Since it's been proven that the suits don't know anything about what audiences want, it falls to the studios actually looking to the public for what they want. And this doesn't mean distilling a list of cliches from films that already sold well; if they actually start using social media to contact their demographics rather than thinking of it as a demographic in itself, they could get the feedback they need. It's all out there Hollywood. You just need to know where to look.