By Brandy Sloan
In recent decades, the film industry and the way directors, producers, and actors operate their craft has changed drastically. Most often in the media, we see the best of these changes, for example, the representation of people of color in the film industry is expanding. This advance in how casting directors recruit actors is a step in the right direction, but there are other aspects of developing film projects that have been deterred, to the resulting film’s detriment.
In today’s film industry, it seems that profit is the only concern. Years ago, when you sat down to watch a new movie, the driving motivation of the project was to tell a story and to create something that virtually forced people to think about things they would’ve altogether ignored if they hadn’t seen it (via entertainment) whether it be a latter-day issue, a resurgence of the past, or just an interesting concept the audience themselves couldn’t have conjured. The integrity of the film was in telling the story. Currently, directors and producers focus on what will bring in more of an audience. That is, saturating the cast with Youtubers or celebrities that can’t act, and rebooting old movies that brought in revenue in the past.
The Internet might have something to do with this. Social media platforms have completely grasped the attention of the audience that had previously spent their watch time viewing cable shows and going to Cinemarks. With platforms like Youtube providing more content that people enjoy more, those old proclivities of the American population have for the most part been put to rest. Now what people want to watch is an independent creator, or group, that they can relate to on a deeper level than what they can find in a theatre. Film producers and teams go wrong where they attempt to get those same creators to attract the audience they lost, or try to create the same sense of relatability in movies as in Youtube videos. Not all movies that come out are like this, but it’s usually big companies in the industry that used to make good movies that end up disappointing because of this.
Other than that, remakes of old movies are most often disappointing as well. With exceptions such as It, reboots of old movies these days seem to be an obvious cash grab. This is especially the case with movies like The Lion King and Charlie’s Angels being revisited and failing to live up to it’s iconic first takes. Disney’s The Lion King was a success back when it was first released, yet many believe it should have never been revisited seeing as the visuals were meant to be the only real change. It ended up being a disappointment to most of the people that went to watch it and has a 53 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Yet there are more of these reboots to come from Disney, most likely for greedy purposes on the company’s part.
In the end, the modern film industry has applied a lot of internal changes that make the movies end up being overall underwhelming. And though some of these changes have been improving movies, there is still much to be done in the ways of progression, like the representation of minorities such as colored people and those with disabilities. In order some moviemakers to turn out results in the way that some creators on social media platforms they have to make a genuine effort in doing something for the story itself. And with that, they have to be held to the same standard when putting out a project that they can do more with instead of settling for what’s easiest for everyone to handle.
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