What is the very definition of a box office bomb? Would you say it’s a film that cost over one hundred million dollars to produce, opens to a little over ten percent of that cost with poor reviews and little to no buzz about it. “Transcendence” opened this past weekend and well, it didn’t transcend into anything much.
It bums me out. “Transcendence” is what you hope would get made and/or distributed by a major studio. It’s an original science-fiction morality thriller with “big ideas.” It stars Johnny Depp as the kind of “regular guy” type character that we all claim he never plays anymore, with ample support from a murderer’s row of character actors. It’s directed by a guy one degree removed from Chris Nolan and looks good enough to actually deserve the IMAX treatment. It’s made by and intended for adult moviegoers, operating as a B-level blockbuster just before the summer rush. So what happened? Where and who do we point the finger at?
I like to call it ‘The Fate Of The World Is On The Line’-itis.
Forget making two peoples problems seem as important as the whole world. Hollywood has decided that the general viewing population has no interest in small stakes for anything anymore. So, the only films that get green lit by production houses with any real resources behind them are the ones where the peril exists on a grand a scale as possible.
In truth, I love low-stakes stories. Maybe the powers that be are worried that the general modern audience has media-ADD? That if the story isn’t flashy enough, people won’t go to see it?
Epic stories only work when you have small stake matters, I.E. some of the few people caught in the middle of vast events. Kurt Busiek does this regularly in “Astro City.” It’s great to see the humanity in the middle of all this apocalyptic noise. The Marvel Now! “Hawkeye” books (My Life as a Weapon & Little Hits) are about Hawkeye dealing with street thugs and evil landlords. For other small stakes, look at the works of Charles de Lint, Jim Butcher. Or even Stephen King – “Misery” was as small a stake as you could get.
Any truly effective drama comes from having the protagonist make a choice. Ideally, it’s a choice between two fundamental concerns: love vs. duty, honor vs. loyalty, vengeance vs. friendship or whatever. To be honest, most of the time I don’t care whether the world gets saved. What I care about is what a person must sacrifice to save it. And sure, if it’s a life-and-death choice you get cheap tears of killing off Bruce Willis in “Armageddon.” But it’s even more interesting if the sacrifice is something he or she must live with.
Still, a bad movie is a bad movie regardless of budget or the ‘cant we raise the stakes’ de facto studio mantra. More importantly, should we be hating on Warner Bros., Alcon, and DMG for spending $100 million (plus marketing) on an original science-fiction thriller with adult movie stars? Isn’t that what we say we want when we whine about reboots, sequels, and remakes?
-Dagobot
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