Movies not made for Americans anymore?

[thalaw2]

Well...I had read an article on Yahoo News! (please don't be too harsh when judging me...I was bored).  Anyway, I read a really good article about how movies are no longer made for the American market, because the profits overseas make even the worst flops profitable for movie studios.  According to the article, foreign audiences aren't as picky about plots and movies filled with lots of special effects don't need complex translations.  Therefore, movies that Americans find interesting because of the engrossing story line will not perform as well as movies that are just continuous action sequences with pretty special effects.  I just wanted to know what the good people here think about this.  Are we gonna see a lot of dumbing down of movie plots because they're no longer made for the finicky American market? I'll keep looking for the article so I can post it here.

The article made a lot of sense to me...also the cost of a movie ticket in developing countries where the middle class is growing is very minimal (i.e. I paid 35 yuan about $5 to see Avengers in 3D).  Did you know even post production editing has been outsourced to China? 

[Talavar]

Are we "going" to see this happen?  It's already happened!  We live in a world where Transformers 3 (the pinnacle of brain dead, CGI-fests) is the second highest grossing movie ever!  Avatar (the first highest grossing movie ever), beyond its FX work, had a charisma black hole as its lead actor, and was just Dances with Wolves with a happy ending tacked on.  A movie based on the board game Battleship, but now with aliens, is coming out this summer!

Blockbusters with half a brain are already a diminishing breed; all we can do is support the good ones, ignore the bad ones, and hope someone locks Michael Bay up where he can't hurt movie-goers any more.

[spydermann93]

Some movies are pretty bad if you take away the CGI, but some movies shine, namely the Dark Knight.

[Previsionary]

The thing about CGI and special effects in general is that they really date a film in a very short amount of time. Look at the effects from 3-5 years ago as compared to today. Most of them now look extremely obvious and bland.

As for the statement that was made about films being made for foreign markets, I have two things to say about that.

1. Action, non-plot heavy films have done well overseas for decades. This is not new or unusual. It's a case of more-of-the-same, so that conclusion is a silly one to me. The reverse is also true in the English speaking parts of the Americas. Most will go out to see an action heavy, foreign (mostly chinese or japanese) film before they latch onto something with a deep story, translations, and subtitles. Less work for the audience.

2. Most of the movies with a"heavy" plot are also very dependent on the region they derive from. An American movie mostly set in some part of the U.S. with American sensibilities is not going to connect as much with audiences outside of this country. The reverse is also true. That's just how it is.

[BentonGrey]

Ehh, I don't think Hollywood needs any excuses to dumb down films, but Tal makes a very good point.  We vote with our wallets.

[BWPS]

Hollywood overall is at least twice as good at making awesome movies this past 5 years as it has been in any other period in history. I think they can make awesome movies and sell them everywhere due to their awesomeness. Though I'm sure a steaming pile of robot crap like Transformers 3 could be better when you can blame things on being lost in translation.

[BentonGrey]

Hollywood overall is at least twice as good at making awesome movies this past 5 years as it has been in any other period in history. I think they can make awesome movies and sell them everywhere due to their awesomeness. Though I'm sure a steaming pile of robot crap like Transformers 3 could be better when you can blame things on being lost in translation.

If we're talking about superhero movies, I'll agree with you.  If we're talking about movies in general, I'll disagree.  Hollywood has always been shallow, empty, and out for a quick buck, but I'd say quality films are becoming at least a slightly rarer thing overall.  It's remarkable, however, how little real change a look back reveals.  For example, one of the first adaptions of Moby Dick had Ahab killing the whale and going home to his girlfriend because the original story was deemed too much of a downer and the powers that be decreed there needed to be a love interest.  So, they've always been souless out there in Hollywood.  I do think we're seeing more mindless fodder these days, though.  We've got some really fantastic filmmakers working today, and they help disguise that trend.  These are folks who can make movies like Inception, Gran Torino, and the many others that don't fit the Hollywood formula, but manage to reach audiences in-spite of that fact.  Their work, outside of the norm, gives us movies that rise above any possible downturn in the general quality of films.  In the end, though, I'm a fan of classic cinema, and I will argue that, even if we have a higher degree of technical excellence in film making (not just special effects, but innovative storytelling and the like), we tend to make less movies with real heart. 

[lugaru]

This sort of article always weirds me out... because honestly nothing has really changed. There have always been mind dead action movies, and there have always been arthouse brain food, and writers have always ignored the artsy films. In the last 5 years there have been some absolutely awesome american films. Same goes for foreign of course.

But (and this is against critics, not the people on this forum) I feel that you get all these entertainment writers pushing out articles like "All the movies these days are stupid" when they refuse to see any of the smart movies. They want to drive web traffic, so they just talk about the things on the most screens. But if an indy movie costs $10 million to make and rakes in $25 million, that is a huge success you wont see talked about anywhere.

Lastly the tone makes foreigners sound stupid... like americans are any different. A lot of americans have seen Underworld, but probably not Russian Arc. They have seen Ong Bak, but not Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. In other words action movies will always travel well, smart movies encounter resistance.

[BentonGrey]

Good points Lu, good points.  I don't think these kinds of stories actually make foreign audiences sound stupid, though I can certainly see how they could be read that way.  It seems pretty legitimate to me that Transformers is going to be an easier movie to translate for, say, a Chinese audience than Inception, and that has nothing to do with intelligence and everything to do with the complexity and cultural relevance of the respective stories.  The real problem is not and has never really been foreign audiences, though I imagine that the worldwide releases of modern films won't help matters.  Instead, the problem is that we've been pitching to the lowest common denominator for so long (always?) that that figure has dropped, and the popular media has fallen in quality to reflect it.  We pay for utter garbage, and garbage is easier to create than art.  This isn't anything new, though, as Conde Pallen was lamenting the sorry state of popular entertainment in the late Nineteenth Century....

For film though...I don't know, it's hard to quantify these things, as Lu makes another excellent point about the fact that really great cinema isn't always getting a lot of exposure these days, while great films from the past will have endured while the fodder will have been more likely to fall into obscurity.  Going from my own limited point of view, I can't help but think of the classic romantic comedies that my wife and I enjoy, and how much they tend to be head and shoulders in terms of writing, plotting, acting, and even moral character than the standard fare in the same genre today.  It isn't a fair comparison to pit the likes of It Happened One Night or Roman Holiday against modern movies like No Strings Attached or *shudder shudder* Twilight, but these are the comparisons that we are likely to make given the current crop of films.

[thalaw2]

I don't know if it's fair to make a comparison to Twilight (is it Romantic comedy?...I never even cracked a smile), as it did well in the US.  But a flop like Mars Needs Moms can turn a profit in the foreign market.  This is scary because Hollywood now has a way to make a profit off of any POS they put out whereas in the past such films actually hurt studios.

American movies are now being released first overseas (ie Avengers) where studios can make rake in huge profits before even entering the US.  It's getting to he point where the US is an after thought.  However, this might be good for Indy films since big name theaters miay soon be fighting to get movies in them or risk shutting down.  We'll see.

[detourne_me]

There's a bit of a revers thing happening too actually.... Foreign markets becoming an afterthought for bombed movies.

One of my coworkers has a side job at a Korean distribution company.   He reviews scripts of upcoming movies and makes offers on failed american movies.
I think his first purchase was Cafe a Jennifer Love Hewitt comedy...  it would be a tough sell for moviegoers, but the package also gives rights for cable TV, VOD and streaming services...
For a movie like that, the distrubtion co. paid around $25K
I think his company's also trying to get some other ones like Puncture and I think they secured the rights for Looper (which is a major win in my opinion)... 

[lugaru]

There's a bit of a revers thing happening too actually.... Foreign markets becoming an afterthought for bombed movies.

One of my coworkers has a side job at a Korean distribution company.   He reviews scripts of upcoming movies and makes offers on failed american movies.
I think his first purchase was Cafe a Jennifer Love Hewitt comedy...  it would be a tough sell for moviegoers, but the package also gives rights for cable TV, VOD and streaming services...
For a movie like that, the distrubtion co. paid around $25K
I think his company's also trying to get some other ones like Puncture and I think they secured the rights for Looper (which is a major win in my opinion)...

Yeah, growing up in Mexico for the most part what was on TV was whatever was cheap. That means I got a huge leg up on Anime, martial arts movies, arthouse and indy movies and american straight to video (horror, action, erotic thrillers).

[Mr. Hamrick]

First of all, when they say "movies not made for Americans" anymore, it means the stuff coming out of the "big studios" in Hollywood.  It doesn't include films that studios by to distribute from film festivals and other avenues.  It strictly means the "big budget" films that are usually released from the early Spring to late Summer and around the Holiday Season.  Generally speaking, studios need to make their money on these larger films so they can afford to distribute the "smaller" or "indie" films.

The movie industry is changing, though. 

In the past, a movie like Superman Returns making $391,081,192 worldwide at the box office would've been seen as a huge success.  As it stands, the movie cost $209,000,000 give or take to make so the movie didn't even make twice it's budget back.  Furthermore, over half of that was made in foreign markets.  (On the other hand, The Avengers had an estimated $220,000,000 budget and has (to date) broken the $800,000,000 mark worldwide just over half of that coming from domestic audiences.)  Now take the 1989 Batman movie.  It had an estimated $35,000,000 budget and grossed $411,348,924 worldwide with only $160,160,000 coming from outside the US.  Movies are getting more expensive to produce by the studios and harder for them to make their money back on.  In short, it makes sense that if they are going to make as much if not more from international audiences then they should take that into account.

On the other hand, a film like "Milk" or "The Hurt Locker" can be made for between $11-$20 million and still be a success despite making it's budget back plus a few million at the box office on a domestic distribution.  (Milk made just over $12 mil for it's 11 mil budget and Hurt Locker just over $30.)  Now both of those movies won Oscars, if you recall.  Neither of those films had any sort of serious foreign/worldwide distribution.  Don't forget to factor in something like "Blair Witch" or the more recent "Paranormal Activity" which were bought by studios and distributed.  Both films were made for well under $75,000.

If studios didn't made the bigger films, they couldn't take the chances with the smaller and better films. 

American audiences are getting better exposed to the smaller indie films being made here in the US, as well.  I think foreign audiences have already stumbled across various independent films made here that were never distributed here or were, at best, a festival circuit film or a direct to video release. 

As far as content of the films, people who say intelligent movies are not being made are not looking in the right places.  The biggest problem is that not enough people pay attention to what is coming out at festivals or even the "smaller art house" fare.  Most towns and cities don't even have theaters that screen them.  (I have to drive an hour plus into Atlanta to go to one.)  However, this is one thing that could be a boon to come from the "digital distribution" set-up that many theaters are talking about going toward.  (and possibly the only boon.)

In the end, it could (and should) help smaller films in the US get larger audiences and even get some degree of foreign distribution.

[thalaw2]

I've a had a little to drink......I don't know why Hurt Locker won an Oscar....it sucked IMO.  Monster Ball was better...or not.  Avengers should win  an Oscar or two.