I understand in the various forms of entertainment the true goal is to make money. Quality sometimes takes a backseat to the sheer quantity. Actually sometimes I don't even think quality is in the same car. Just look at Transformers 2. Bigger explosions. Megan Fox gets more screen time to look all hot and slutty. Oh and there are about five times as many robots bouncing around on screen. Those things don't make up for the fact that there's almost no coherent story. All that matters is that there was more! Despite the fact that the movie was generally considered to be an ocular rape, they've already started working on the third movie. I can't really blame them though. It's made over 400 million dollars. Obviously someone was watching it. So there will be a Transformers 3 and depending on how that does, probably another one. They are going to ride that franchise as long as they can squeeze out another nickle. Which means it'll be ridden straight into the ground at full speed. Think Batman & Robin.
I get the desire to make money and that things move quickly out of the collective consciousness so one has to always be a step or two ahead. What I don't get is there seems to be no foresight as to what's going to happen when the hot property of today becomes so over saturated it's nearly radioactive.
Let's start with something simple like zombies. Now I like zombies as much as the next person and believe that it touches on some of our basic fear of people. Zombies aren't a new idea. You could say it started with Frankenstein. While the monster isn't exactly a zombie like we think of today, the general concept was there. Even the original story I Am Legend built on what we know about zombies. George Romero said that Richard Matheson's story was a major influence to his own Night of the Living Dead. His movie came out in 1968 and pretty much set the standard for zombies. Shoot them in the head! The 70s and 80s saw plenty of zombie movies, but things tapered off and by the 90s it was just another obscure sub genre.
During the 90s our horror was driven by monsters and unstoppable serial killers. Then came 9/11 and we had something new to be afraid of. People who looked like normal people, but were actually out to hurt us. You couldn't tell who was just a normal person and who was secretly plotting your death. Suddenly the zombie genre was back. It fed on our fear of other people. Next thing you know there was an endless parade of zombie movies coming out. And it didn't stop there either. It was spreading. Even Stephen King took a crack at zombies with his book Cell. Zombies were showing up in Pride and Prejudice, in comic books, in survival guides, and even in a forensics guide of the living dead. Ironically zombies are everywhere.
Since I'm on the subject of horror, I can't ignore the Saw franchise. What started out as a mildly clever twist to horror has essentially become just another tired series in the torture porn genre. I saw a preview for Saw VI that said "If it's Halloween. It must be Saw." That's their promotion, that every year, regardless of quality, we're going to get another entry of traps and torture. The first movie was a different brand of horror compared to the other movies coming out at the time. The second movie built on that to some degree. After that it just became this convoluted mess of industrial strength devices designed to tear people apart while we watched. Go to Rotten Tomatoes and check out how the ratings plunged into almost single digits. It's nearly a 10% drop between movies and the first one was only ranked at 46%. It doesn't stop them from churning out another one. So by the time we get around to Saw X it'll just be 97 minutes of people getting their faces ripped off by bear traps.
This one might not be as apparent to the non-geeks out there, but Wolverine needs to go sit down with some juice and crackers and take a break. The guy is everywhere in comics. He is on several super teams and he appears in no less than three titles a month. He got to be in three X-Men movies and his own stand-alone movie. Plus he's got another one on the way, this time with more origins! I don't get it either. He's not that interesting of a character. His big claim to fame is his ability to heal from just about any injury. So I'm supposed to be impressed with the fact that if you shoot him in the face he'll just heal from it? You want to impress me, don't get shot in the face. The ability to heal from a gunshot just means he's not smart enough to avoid the damage in the first place. So really this super popular character is just a short, hairy man with unbreakable bones and some knives in his hands. You take away the knives and unbreakable bones and I've just described porn legend Ron Jeremy, who is also nicknamed after a small furry animal.
Oh and movies based on comic books. Not every comic book ever published needs to be optioned for a movie. Studios have realized there is a lot of potential to make serious money by turning comics into movies. Doesn't matter if they're any good, but they'll be sure to tap that well until it's bone dry. They're working on Spider-Man 4 now, but the original plan was to ramp up 4, 5, & 6. Now I like Spider-Man. Unlike the previously mentioned hedgehog, he has the ability to avoid bullets. Even still there is just too much of a good thing. Preplanning three movies, which will take at least six years to realize, seems like overkill. I guess the idea is that there should be a rush to make these comic movies before audiences grow tired of the genre, but they don't realize in doing so they're only speeding the process along.
There is a Lego Star Wars movie. This is a movie based on a video game based on a toy based on another movie. We've gone full circle. The only way to grind that further into the ground would be to make a Lego Star Wars: The Movie: The Video Game. The very idea of it creates this sharp spike of pain behind my left eye.
Let's talk about Twilight real quick. Oh you didn't think I could talk about dead horses without bringing up this series. Vampires are another one of my favorite sub genres. Sure we had Buffy and Blade and various books in the late 90s, but that's nothing compared to the blitz we're seeing now. Thanks to some cheesy writing about sparkly, brooding teen baseball players we're overrun with a bunch of emo vampires. Some of which are vampire in name alone. You take away the blood sucking part and what you've really got is a bunch of lazy teenagers. By the way, they don't sparkle! They burst into flame when exposed to direct sunlight. Kind of the whole point of a vampire is that they've given up the ability to walk in daylight so they can be young and live forever. Being your own nightlight is not a drawback. Now there vampires in everything. Go to your local Barnes & Noble and see how long it takes you to find the Twilight...I mean teen section. Majority of the books on display have some reference to a vampire.
The thing is a lot of these trends are being pushed because the audience for them is fickle. The Twilight books are marketed towards teenage girls. Movies based on comics are geared towards young boys and middle aged men who don't know the touch of a woman. Teenage girls grow up. Young boys turn into young idiots who can't sit still for more than five minutes unless there is a naked woman present. The point is interests change quickly so a lot of this stuff is being crammed down our throats before we have time to digest the last trend. It's like a kid eating candy until they're sick. The entire time they're eating candy it's fantastic. Then suddenly it's not. They don't sense that feeling when one more candy is going to cause them to throw up. The last one tasted good so the next one should be just as good. The problem is that people won't remember how good the candy tasted, only that in the end they got sick from it. They keep beating this horse and eventually people will hate the things they loved.
