Summer Sequels: Blockbusters and Clunkers

As an avid web user and film student my primary interest in the internet focuses upon the exploration of movie news sites. At these sites, which I will visit up to thirty times on a given day, I tend to immerse myself in up-to-the-second developments within the film industry. I find this both entertaining and educational in that these sites are multifaceted, dense, and often times more explicit in their news coverage than commercial newspapers or television networks. Film blogs, as the movie news sites I frequent daily (listed in a linkroll to the right of this post), enlighten readers to movie news stories provide an interactive platform where current events and ideas can be discussed and explored beyond the conventions of previous news media. With film weblogs such as /Film and Cinematical I have been able to immerse myself in ongoing discussions between web authors and users on current events in the film industry. Here I have addressed the pros and cons of Hollywood movie sequels, which sometimes results in a good and successful follow-up, but more often falls like a dead weight (often referred to in Hollywood as a "bomb" or a "clunker"). Ultimatly, it was my goal to reflect personal taste as most if not all film blog posts do and explain why I am looking forward to 2008's Summer release of "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," and am less than excited about 2009's "Transformers 2."

Shia LaBeouf Talks Transformers 2
Comment:
In describing the script for "Transformers 2," written mainly by director Michael Bay over the course of the recently resolved writer's strike, the returning "Transformers" actor Shia LeBeouf uses words "massive" and "insane." I, for one, am not surprised.

What is one to expect of a screenplay written by Bay himself, who in fact, does not posses any screenwriting credits on any film? Rather, Bay is known through Hollywood by another signature: fast cars, explosions, ridiculous action, obvious humor, and slick music video flair. All of which can be found in any of Bay's high-octane summer blockbusters including the aforementioned "Transformers."

When I walked into the multiplex to see the first "Transformers" this last summer, I was prepared for one of the crowning achievements of my young adult life. With a premise such as: evil alien robot cars vs. good alien robot cars, I couldn't imagine the lame and unsatisfactory story I was about to view. Especially from producer Steven Spielberg, who often times creates works unapologetically commercial but nevertheless supremely enjoyable.

Sitting in the theater, I was somewhat surprised at the lack of imagination that went into the film. This was not a "film," it was only merely a "movie." Still stunned by the great wealth of imagination that must have gone into the visual aspects, I was forced to modify the very personal relationship I had with Bay's picture. In other words, I grew to accept what it was: massive, and insane.

Overall, "Transformers" and Michael Bay came to turn a downtown roller derby into the next hot thing: a downtown roller derby with cool special effects and cars transforming into monster robots. This is fine, not great. Sometimes, audiences have to unfortunately ask themselves why a robot war spectacle is not enough. Why do we need a great story with great characters? Why can't we just blow shit up? Or, shall I say, blow it up artfully? Though this bit of news may be merely a flick of the great marketing strategy audiences will get slapped with come the summer of 2009, it only confirms Hollywood will once again take the same stale ideas from the fridge and re-microwave them to something nearly satisfying and eatable. But at least, this time, it is not pretending to be anything but the highly intelligent "bad-ass."

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Movie Trailer
Comment:
Of all the joys in my childhood, nothing comes closer to the exhilaration of experiencing one of Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones movies. Harrison Ford comes to define adventure masculinity and wit in his portrayal of Dr. Indiana Jones, a ragged, yet suave intellectual cowboy-bandit set against allowing the greatest artifacts of history to fall in to the hands of evil, often Nazi, souls. While the films, conceived in the dreams of filmmaker George Lucas (who later produced and receives a ’story by’ credit), were designed as a rehash of matinée cliffhangers from his childhood, they have become richly more in the masterful hands of director Spielberg.

Although often times more playful for the sake of pure adventure rather than realism, actor Ford’s ability to ground even the greatest most absurdly fantastic of events into a believable portrayal of strength, attitude and humor makes his realization on screen something worthy of not only one film but many. In fact, watching the new teaser for the long in development fourth installment, “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” ignites in me the very fire and spark of exuberance that I had felt as a child. Despite that, there is a concern present in modern-day Hollywood, as well as in the hearts and minds of Indy fans around the world, young and old, that we are not getting another installment of the franchise purely out of a desire to profit.

Obviously Hollywood would love to make another one of these films in that it’s high popularity over the last thirty years and the names involved with the series ensures a high profit margin. In Hollywood sometimes the most obviously profit driven bets are the ones that should be avoided in that the final product, while predicable, thus, and at a loss of originality seem to compromise the artistic integrity of a medium that must constantly produce profit to stay alive.

Franchise re-installments of the greatest and most memorable action heroes in the last few years, such as with the “Die Hard,” “Rocky,” and “Terminator” films, have been churned out with delicate kindness and above all else love from the filmmakers of the characters they are modifying and re-introducing into a world somewhat harsher against their independent idealism and more complex in the strongholds our characters must overcome to reclaim an equal success to ones created ages ago. John McClane (Bruce Willis) of “Die Hard” returns just as crusty and crazy to get in over his head because no one else will to get the job done. Rocky Balboa of “Rocky” aspires to become the champion he used to be despite the doubts of everyone, including himself. The Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is “baack” in “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines” as a robot that now, rather than preventing the inevitable tragedy, must guide the future’s savior towards his destined salvation.

All these films comeback hitting hard and reopening the books that we had all assumed would be closed to our own imaginations for some time. While profitable and able to reintroduce these characters back into the mainstream from the retro back-burner, Hollywood must remember to stray from the trappings of star-studded sequel blockbusters because unfortunately they can not all be good. I, for one, trusting in Spielberg, Lucas and Ford, for the love of these storytellers who had been able to knock three out of the ballpark for us previously, am looking forward to May 22nd, when the man in the hat will don his pistol and whip and ride again.

Blu-ray VS. HD-DVD: The Return of the Format War

Behind the gates of Hollywood a deeply contentious and surprisingly familiar war has been waged in the last five years. A far cry from the high profile disputes waged over the course of previous months between the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, few people care to follow this war's progress or even know of its existence. Rather, the high-definition home video format war between Sony's Blu-ray Disc and Toshiba's HD-DVD has polarized Hollywood, redefining the modern landscape of corporate media and the steps that must be taken to ultimately conquer competition in an elusive and challenging digital age.

The turn of the century established a new age in the digital revolution as millions feared the impending Y2K apocalypse and home video surpassed theatrical receipts for film investors hungry to make excessive monetary gain. Digital Versatile Discs, also commonly known as DVDs, shocked Hollywood by the sheer volume of profit, reestablishing the industry's focus on what had been, since the first home video format war of the 1980s, another way to exploit one's holdings and creative properties. As with television syndication of motion pictures, each film studio and parent media giant found profitable returns on movies within their vaults that had only previously collected dust. Hollywood had discovered that with DVD, a highly profitable product with low overhead, reselling ancillary properties solidified the key to producing a high back end profit of roughly six-billion dollars per fiscal year without the expenses of actually producing a new product. The establishment of DVD as the gold standard for home video eventually put VHS, the more expensive low quality video standard, to rest. As time passed and profits continued, it was inevitable that the film industry would eventually establish a new, higher quality version for the home video make, and needless to say, with it, reissues of movies from the vault once again. The time for a new high-definition home video format was on the horizon and two companies would begin a fight to the death in hopes to own the patents and hardware of the next generation of DVD.

The year 2002 saw the introduction of Sony and Toshiba Corporation's "next-gen" formats which planned to capitalize on high resolution TVs, promising six times the picture resolution of a DVD with up to 8.1 channel surround sound in replacement of 5.1, the previous standard for DVDs. Dubbed HDTVs, these televisions led a cutting edge in establishing home movie theaters as a affordable and consumer friendly means of reliving the movie theater experience from the comfort of one's own living room. Wielding blue lasers to read information at a greater wavelength, thus capable of condensing more information on a single CD sized disc, Sony's Blu-ray Disc and Toshiba's HD-DVD sparked excitement for the film industry and "techno-buffs" around the world, while suggesting that the competition between two media giants could only result in catastrophe for one side unless the two formats could find some way to work together. Others believed that for either format to win, one must prevail and win the support of each of the five major Hollywood studios, for, with each studios support comes a contract to market and sell that studio's library. Ultimately lines were drawn in the sand with Sony Pictures Entertainment, MGM, Columbia, Fox and Disney taking sides with Blu-ray and Universal, Paramount and The Weinstien Company joining HD-DVD. The largest studio of them all, Warner Bros. decided they would hold out and went neutral between the two formats until one showed indisputible promise.

In attempts to work together, HD-DVD and Blu-ray executives met in 2005, attempting to combine aspects of both formats. These negotiations failed to go as smoothly as planned and eventually led to a stalemate with both sides deciding their own format was superior. It was a declaration of war. Some companies attempted to counter this conflict by developing hybrid players that could playback both kinds of discs, but ultimately the cost to develop this and make it affordable to the consumer took more time than expected and fell on the back burner in hopes that one format would prevail early.

In terms of the actual nuts and bolts technology and specifications, the two formats boasted their own strengths and their opponent's weaknesses. Though both formats presented perfect specifications for playing back video at equal 1080p quality and recreate soundtracks perceivably identical to the original film master, Sony's larger 50 gig dual layer discs showed promising storage capacity that suggested limitless possibilities for holding movies or TV shows. Sony invoked this strength as their superiority suggesting people would someday buy entire television series on a single disc or even own multiple cuts of a film, such as the theatrical cut, director's cut and special editions, on a single high-definition disc. In a related statement, Sony CEO Howard Stringer boasted the format's superiority, stating, "I think Blu-ray is just a better format," Stringer said. "Our partners are with Blu-ray Disc because, first of all, we have greater security, which Fox is particularly good at. Disney thinks it's a better picture. And the sheer amount of bandwidth on the disc gives directors and beyond all kinds of future opportunity, including director's cuts and who knows what 3-D capabilities will be down the road."

HD-DVD, on the other hand, while smaller in capacity with a 30 gigabyte dual layer disc was cheaper to produce with a dual decoder, for picture in picture playback, and internet capability as a standard in all players. The release of the Sony Playstation 3 in 2006 helped Sony make it's greatest and most effective move. The Playstation 3, unlike most video game systems has a Blu-ray laser inside and with it the capabilities of serving as a Blu-ray player as well. While costs seemed too high for the common consumer at the time of its release with a price tag of over six-hundred dollars per console, the role of a Playstation in the entertainment hardware market is and has been a substantial one since its introduction in 1994. By Christmas of 2007, while sales were up for the Blu-ray format having cultivated a following in PS3 owners, projections showed that the Blu-ray format had reached the hight of garnering nearly one-billion dollars by 2008. This, along with the high end of sales for Blu-ray, unmatched by HD-DVD, and the lowering price of Blu-ray players led to nearly unbeatable competition for Toshiba's wavering high-def disc.

In the following months the final blow to HD-DVD from Blu-ray was made by way of a exclusivity contract with Warner Bros. and their parent media giant Time Warner. Ultimately, this move with the subsequent modification of future Blu-ray players to match and heighten previously touted HD-DVD capabilities has led most experts to claim Blu-ray the winner.

Needless to say for for anyone interested and well acquainted in modern entertainment business and new media, this technical, corporate, and artistically influencing melee remains both cautionary tale and case study once two important truths are acknowledged. First, this war could have been easily avoided and second, Blu-ray and HD-DVD were never all that different to begin with.

What can ultimately be learned from a study of the Blu-ray/HD-DVD format war is a valuable expose on what it takes to succeed in Hollywood as the established standard of home video media, and more importantly how modern media conglomerate Sony, architect and proprietor of the Blu-ray format, seems to but has not conclusively won the format war with money, a higher ratio of studio, global and peripheral support and the Trojan horse of home entertainment, the Sony Playstation 3.