(On a slight note prefacing this article, which takes the shape of an op-ed, my previous article, Born Villain: The Greatest Antagonists in Film History, was my six-hundredth post on this blog. I knew I was prolific, but flip me!)
On the 21st of June of this year, Toy Story 4 opened in UK cinemas to delight of audiences and critics alike. So far, it has grossed approximately $920, 535, 664 (Box Office Mojo), a resounding success off the back of it's $200 million budget. Indeed, far from the argument of the doomsday naysayers who lament the death of cinema, if the numbers are to judge by anything, our multiplexes are flourishing, the pictures are taking in more money, and audiences continue to flock in ever-increasing droves to see the latest tentpole releases. In 2019 alone, six films thus far have grossed over $900 million, four of which have crossed the $1 billion threshold (including re-releases, only three films pre-2000, Jurassic Park, Titanic and Stars Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, have generated that much revenue at the box-office), and Avengers: Endgame, the tip of Marvel's marketing iceberg, has grossed $2, 793, 404, 739 (Box Office Mojo), displacing Avatar as the highest-grossing film of all time. And yet, despite all these statistics, facts and the general consensus being that now is perhaps as vibrant a time as ever to go to the cinema, I can't help myself, can't shake this feeling that something's awry. There's a taste in my mouth, and it's a little bit bitter.
Now, objectively speaking, Toy Story 4 is a great film. It's a charming work, beautifully animated with a wonderful voice cast, and a crew of hundreds, maybe thousands at Pixar, working behind the scenes who put their heart and soul into realising these characters to their fullest degree, with warmth and sincerity. They are people who care about what they do, the efforts that they put into their craft, and the audiences they're making their pictures for. And still, I can't help but feel that the whole thing is a perfunctory exercise. Maybe part of the problem is that with Toy Story 3, a film which I hold up in the highest estimation as one of the greatest motion pictures of all time, was for me a perfect ending to this story. How do you top perfection, or move on from there?
It's an inevitability that anything you follow on with has an uphill battle, and more often than not these works fail to live up expectations. There have been times when I have been very vocal in my opposition to reboots, remakes and sequels, but have been thoroughly proved wrong. I cite the recent entries into the Planet Of The Apes franchise. As a lover of that series, and an old-school make-up/practical special effects guy, I was horrified and dismissive of the move to do it all with motion-capture and animation. However, when I saw it all in action, the skill, excellence and dedication to the craft sold me on it. I was hooked, convinced from the get-go by the performances. The same can be said for Blade Runner 2049. I was outraged that a sequel was even being made, much less contemplated as some mindless fantasy in the head of a fanboy. Again, I went to see the film in the cinema and was astounded. It's an extraordinary piece, very much within the same universe but a work all of it's own, a rare piece of cinema, and one of the few times in recent years that studios have invested a heavy financial budget into what is essentially an art film.
That being said, while it's hardly a recent trend (indeed, since the mid-1970s in particular), I feel that in the 21st century our cinemas have been increasingly swallowed up and digested by what I call 'self-celebratory art.' What I mean when I refer to certain works as self-celebratory art is non-original pictures which are part of an extended franchises, or are remakes/adaptations of already-existing works. I might be generalising and lumping things together here, and it's not a commentary on the quality (or lack thereof) of a given work, but I do feel the overall atmosphere to be roundly insidious, pernicious, negative, damaging and detrimental to the advancement of cinema and art as a whole.
Take a quick glance over a list of the top fifty highest-grossing films of all time (Wikipedia). I haven't had a look at it for a few years, being largely out of film criticism and focusing on my own creative work, but it's even more frightening than it was before. The numbers may be up, but I've cobbled up a short list of what I suppose could be considered 'original properties' at the time of their release:
(Number is according to their ranking on the top fifty highest-grossing films of all time)
#45. The Lion King - $968, 483, 777 (1994)
#43. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - $975, 051, 288 (2001)
#38. Zootopia - $1, 023, 784, 195 (2016)
#34. Jurassic Park - $1, 029, 939, 903 (1993)
#14. Frozen - $1, 276, 480, 335 (2013)
#3. Titanic - $2, 187, 463, 944 (1997)
#2. Avatar - $2, 789, 679, 794 (2009)
Of the information presented here, there are a few things to take back. Three of these pictures (The Lion King, Frozen and Zootopia) were produced by Disney, the former two developed into successful franchises. Indeed, the original Lion King was surpassed at the box-office recently by it's 2019 remake, and Frozen has become a massively popular sub-brand under Disney. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone came off the back of J.K. Rowling's literary success and launched the beginning of it's own cinematic franchise. Jurassic Park was an adaptation of a hot property (by Michael Crichton, soon to become even hotter property with ER on the way for television), and Titanic and Avatar were the brainchild of a visionary filmmaker (and at their given times of production the highest-budgeted films of all time).
So, basically, unless you have Disney's backing, a ready-made brand (Harry Potter), or your name is Steven Spielberg or James Cameron, good luck trying to get some backing for your $200 million masterpiece. Filmmakers such as Christopher Nolan and Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu, original auteurs for all intents and purposes, needed the financial success of The Dark Knight or the award-winning acclaim of Birdman to get the backing required for big-budget original passion projects Inception and The Revenant. No such trouble for Alfonso Cuaron, who followed 2013's Gravity with the modestly-budgeted (at $15 million) Roma, but Guillermo del Toro has encountered production problems (as he has throughout his career) in realising the vision for his adaptation of Carlo Collodi's The Adventures of Pinocchio, first announced in 2008, even off the back of The Shape Of Water. It was only with the recent intervention and backing of Netflix (increasingly a force in the industry in their own right) that the project was able to be revived.
In today's world, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is king. With a genius strategy of saturating the market and slowly whetting the appetites of their audiences that everyone else in the game has been trying to emulate since, the twenty-three films of the MCU has collectively grossed $23, 491, 347, 603, and is by some margin the highest-grossing film franchise of all time. The nearest competitor in terms of overall gross is the Star Wars franchise, with it's eleven films having grossed $9, 241, 699, 398. But there is a common thread between these franchises. In October 2012, Lucasfilm was acquired by Disney, and in September of 2015, Marvel Studios was integrated into The Walt Disney Studios. Indeed, on March 20th, 2019, a deal was completed between 20th Century Fox, the previous distributor of the Star Wars franchise and formerly one of the 'Big Six' studios, and Disney, during the merger in which The Walt Disney company purchased most of the assets of 21st Century Fox.
Now, this is no grand conspiracy against Disney, although certainly my myriad reasons for occasional contempt against Disney are many. Among the top twenty-five highest-grossing film franchises of all time, all but two are properties under the thumb of the current 'Big Five.' Lionsgate, a mini-major studio with a not-insubstantial 3.3% of the market share, have The Hunger Games and The Twilight Saga (through the acquisition of Summit Entertainment in January 2012) under their belt. Besides those, though, everything else is spread between Walt Disney Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures, Universal Pictures, Columbia Pictures and Paramount Pictures.
The market share statistics among the Big Five (and by proxy their studio parent/conglomerates, are also worth noting):
Universal Pictures - 14.9%
Paramount Pictures - 6.3%
Warner Bros. Pictures - 16.3%
Walt Disney Pictures - 36.3%
Columbia Pictures - 10.9%
(Source: US/CAN Market Share 2018)
Take into account that even a percentage, a comparative small slice of the pie when we're talking about the kind of money that goes into the film industry, is still a fair whack of money. So, as you can see from this information, Disney dominate with over a third of the market share, which is surely only set to increase after said acquisition of 20th Century Fox and it's cinematic franchises. But what this also tells us is that, between the Big Five studios, an estimated 84.8% of the market share is spread among these five companies. It's a staggering statistic when you think about it.
What I gather from this information is that it is a very financially lucrative market in the film industry at present. I may have said the MCU is king, but really commerce is king. This is a comparative monopoly in which a small group of individuals overlord and run the film industry, essentially propping themselves and their organisations up off of the back of capitalistic gain in the name of consumer art. In recent years, Warner Bros. acquired the distribution rights to The Hobbit films in 2012, partnering with New Line Cinema, who produced and distributed The Lord Of The Rings films, and, with Sony's deal expiring, after an April 2017 bidding competition for distribution rights, Eon Productions and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer announced a one-picture deal with Universal Pictures for the twenty-fifth instalment in the James Bond film franchise, MGM handling domestic distribution and Universal taking on international distribution. The Wizarding World under Heyday Films, the UK's other major franchise, has always had American backing from it's owner and distribution company Warner Bros.. This is a highly competitive market in which the big organisations and conglomerates are snapping up what they see as hot property, not as art but as investments, potential profits, and as you can see from this decade alone the trend seems to be continuing further and further down along that line.
Does that mean that there is a decline in the quality of art? No, not necessarily. Indeed, as I mentioned earlier, there have been some remarkable pictures from these franchises, and from what I've seen of the current crop of independent artists who continue to be ahead of the curve, the cream will always rise to the top. However, what it does mean that unfortunately the film industry is driven, more so than ever, by commerce, money, financial and materialistic gain over quality control and genuinely enriching, original and creative art. When you have an industry, rather than a culture, which is driven in such a fashion, it has the impact upon it's audiences as that of the Ouroboros, the ancient symbol of the serpent, or the dragon, eating it's own tail. Now, while Carl Jung may have seen this as constituting the secret of the prima materia, and it may still be so, I personally tend to take a negative interpretation of the Ouroboros. We become like a worm that devours itself; we're returning to something we're acquainted with, a familiar state, an old friend, maybe, but ultimately, in doing so, and thus continuing to buy into and consume these things, and thus ourselves, we are slowly chewing and swallowing ourselves up, piece by piece. Denying ourselves of the chance, the opportunity, to try out new things, we close ourselves off from the world and submit to living within the warm, comforting arms of solace. We end up walking over the same old ground, treading the same steps we have before, stuck in the mud, not really going anywhere.
Where are the risk-takers, where are the daredevils, the enfant terribles, the provocatuers, the agitators, the extremists?
Where are the people who're willing to break the chains that hold, the mould created around them, throw the middle-finger up and shout with defiance in the face of fear?
Where are you now?
Show yourself.
The greatest creative artists, Ingmar Bergman, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, people of that ilk, had their very own specific crafts, but never allowed themselves to get pigeonholed or repeat themselves. Masters of self re-invention, they consistently gave the world something new and original (and they didn't have to bankrupt half a third-world country for their productions to boot!), fresh and interesting, to devour and consume, if you want to look at it in those rather base and crude terms. I prefer to look at it as bathing in the light of the sun, or basking in the sea of consciousness. The greatest of art, as one of the great forms of human expression, inspires a universal and collective sense of oneness, being, consciousness, enlightenment, understanding and contentment. Personally speaking, I for the most part do not get that feeling of satisfaction from these grotesque and bombastic works made with money that would be better off going towards charitable causes, more especially given their varying quality. I lament every time a new Terminator film is on the way. Sometimes it's better, to rip off a phrase from John Ajvide Lindqvist, to let the old dreams die.
So, what is there to be taken away from this?
To creative artists, keep doing your thing. You are a unique and original voice, and your fierce determination and self-confidence will continue to inspire others around you. Never let anyone tell you that you and your work ain't worth it, because, believe me, they are. There is always a place out there for those who willing to dare to dream, be brave, courageous, and kick against the pricks.
To audiences, don't just take what you're given, what's foisted upon you or shoved down your throats, and that goes for all aspects of life as well as art. Get out there, venture into the unknown, do something new, participate in something you've done before, engage with what you otherwise thought was not possible. There's a big bad world out there waiting to be discovered.
At the end of the day, all of these great trees and the branches spinning-off of them, grow from the very same soil as everything else, and from this fertile ground, all the same seeds, sown;
the lightswitches in the brain, the flickering flames in the heart, the beginning of new ideas...
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