6 ms·

An Open Letter to Warner Bros CEO About Layoffs and Donuts-

130 points by legodt 10y ago

kiba 10y ago
I wonder why story quality in movies such a toss-up? They got screenwriters, producers, and editors, right? You think movie studios should had managed to figure out 'consistent quality' by now.
- skyrw 10y ago
  Isn't that a bit like asking why hasn't microsoft managed to figure out "consistent bug-free software' by now.
  - kiba 10y ago
    By consistency, I mean a certain standard of quality, not that it's bug-free. There's a certain level of quality that firms like Google and Microsoft wouldn't be caught dead writing. If the same movie studio produce garbages between blockbusters, then I am wondering what's the hell wrong with their quality control process.
    - dpitkin 10y ago
      I might suggest that Wave and Vista are obvious projects Google and Microsoft wrote and below a standard of quality, and akin to a bad movie from WB. Google+ and Windows 8 could be considered bad sequels.
      - nneonneo 10y ago
        I don't think either Wave nor Vista were poor quality products, same way I don't think Glass nor Phone were poor products. The engineering on all of these is fine for the most part. Sure, there are bugs, but not really any more than usual. The real problem is that nobody really wanted these products in the first place. For Wave, most users didn't seem to figure out what Wave was actually useful for (and it didn't help that Google wasn't sure either). For Vista, people liked XP and dragging them kicking and screaming into a software upgrade turned out to be really hard. Vista set the architectural foundation for future Windows releases, and Microsoft had an obligation to take people off of what was then a 5-year-old operating system - much like OS X 10.0 attempted to do. Nobody seems to pay much attention to the fact that 10.0 was incredibly buggy and took quite some time to bring up to a usable state.
      - justinlardinois 10y ago
        Vista was just bad marketing. After that whole fiasco Microsoft did market tests where they presented consumers with a "new version" of Windows that was actually just Vista, and they got a positive response. And even if you don't believe that story completely, the fact that Windows 7 wasn't all that different from Vista and yet got just as popular as XP was says a lot.
        Throwaway23412 10y ago
        >the fact that Windows 7 wasn't all that different from Vista Say what now? I don't know if you remember but Vista had really high hardware requirements. When Vista came out, it was fundamentally unusable for me. Hardware requirements is literally the first section of criticism in Vista's Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista#Hardware_requirements_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista#Hardware_require...): >For example, Mike Nash (Corporate Vice President, Windows Product Management) commented, "I now have a $2,100 e-mail machine" because his laptop's lack of an appropriate graphics chip so hobbled Vista. Windows 7 made substantial performance improvements in comparison to the widespread hardware incompatibilities that Vista had.
- ArkyBeagle 10y ago
  They'd rather die. And there's many a slip between the cup and the lip. There's too many moving parts - Huston shot "Sierra Madre" on something approximating 16MM on tripods with only tequila for accessories. When digital gets to the "16MM" phase, but with people who learned the agonizing details in the studio system 'we'll have it again. Oh wait...
  - aerovistae 10y ago
    wait what
  - Animats 10y ago
    In the 1990s, when I was working on animation software, I was told something like that by a major Hollywood director. He'd directed some of the early films that had both animation and live acting. The costs were high. What he really wanted was to get the overhead down, so he could make first-rate films for about $20M. At the time, "Reboot", the first all 3D cartoon, was being cranked out at one episode per week by 30 people. He was hoping the technology would let him produce feature films with a similar sized staff. The idea was to pull in set models from a "digital back lot", green-screen in the actors, and go. The technology didn't deliver that. Instead of a cast of thousands of actors, we now need thousands of animators. Look at the credits for any action movie today. There's just too much custom modeling, artwork, move matching, and manual editing of the edges of clipping paths. (The last two are outsourced grunt work and likely to be automated soon.) Viewers wanted photorealism, and that requires as much detail work as set-building. People have tried to do CG action features on the cheap. "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" was supposed to be one. But that cost $70 million, and only made $54 million. (The semi-noir look didn't help. Done better, it might have been a franchise like Captain America.) Iron Sky (budget $10M, box office $8.1M) almost a decade later had much better effects; the CG isn't as obvious. Other than low-budget horror features, most notably "Paranormal Activity", there haven't been many successful low-budget action movies in recent years.
- bennesvig 10y ago
  There are so many moving parts that it's so easy to screw up. An amazing script can get ruined by a bad director, actors, editor, executives with bad notes, etc. Also, I'm sure with so much money involved, people are more likely to meddle in the director's vision so you get too many cooks in the kitchen.
- jedberg 10y ago
  Sunk cost fallacy. A director shoots bad material, they don't go back and start over. They make due with what they have because of what they've already spent on it. Disney does the opposite. Look at what we've heard about the Rogue One -- the studio felt that it was good but not great and sent them back for a whole bunch of (expensive) reshoots. Pixar does the same. If they don't like the final product they'll rip it apart and do it again.
  - manarth 10y ago
    > "If they don't like the final product they'll rip it apart and do it again" Sometimes twice! http://thenextweb.com/media/2012/05/21/how-pixars-toy-story-2-was-deleted-twice-once-by-technology-and-again-for-its-own-good/#gref http://thenextweb.com/media/2012/05/21/how-pixars-toy-story-...
  - sangnoir 10y ago
    > If they don't like the final product they'll rip it apart and do it again. WB dies that too, but they can't seem to do it right. In the aftermath of Batman v Superman flopping, WB panicked and asked Ayer to "punch up" Suicide Squad adding more humor and faster pacing - this included reshoots. SS wasn't originally meant to be a blockbuster, but an end of summer fun movie
  - aidenn0 10y ago
    FWIW according to the Rogue One filmmakers, the reshoots were planned for and fit in with the already planned shots. Nothing like what happened with Toy Story 2.
thewopr 10y ago
I am not an insider but wow, this really resonated with me. > We pursued a potentially great summer movie like Edge of Tomorrow and completely botched its release. Edge of Tomorrow was a pretty solid movie. I would absolutely have gone to it in the theater, but the marketing just did not connect with me. I've run into this with a number of movies now.
- kiba 10y ago
  Edge of Tomorrow was a hollywoodized happy version of the original Japanese novel, which ended on a very bittersweet note.
  - thewopr 10y ago
    Hmmm, I didn't know that. Will have to read. Thanks.
    - kiba 10y ago
      The title is All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka for anyone who don't know.
  - IOT_Apprentice 10y ago
    Doesn't detract from it being a great movie.
  - Cyph0n 10y ago
    The movie had a much better execution in my opinion, mainly thanks to the masterful editing throughout. The light novel was OK but nothing great.
  - moultano 10y ago
    The original novel is terrible though. Everything that was interesting or moving in it was invented for the movie.
    - clevernickname 10y ago
ekianjo 10y ago
A decent article, but the end weakens it bad: > I love that studio, and you're allowing it to sink. It's not about making movies for 'the fans' and not 'the critics.' It's not even about 'ruining childhoods.' It's about protecting livelihoods. Companies do not exist to make their employees happy and employed forever. The fact that they do is because it goes with their interest for a given amount of time, but that does not mean it always do. Pretending it's the company goal to "protect livelihoods" is just wrong. Companies are not welfare agents.
- slantedview 10y ago
  This misses the point of the article entirely. The point was that when leadership screws up, the lower level employees suffer. No accountability at the top.
  - CamatHN 10y ago
    The top has to have the ability and leeway for things to go wrong so that they can take risks. To make sure they take the right risks they are stakeing a % of their pay if its in options or bonuses as well as in their reputation.
    - dpark 10y ago
      > To make sure they take the right risks they are stakeing a % of their pay if its in options or bonuses as well as in their reputation. Did you manage to hold a straight face while you wrote that? The people at the top still walk away with millions or more when they screw up. The people at the bottom walk away with very little. Whether the risks are worth taking is a good question, but certainly the people at the top don't feel the bulk of the pain if the risks don't pay off.
    - joshAg 10y ago
      No one's arguing that they shouldn't have that leeway and ability. They're saying it's shitty that people on the bottom get punished as a result of risks taken because of that leeway.
    - 10y ago
privateersman 10y ago
I think this is a symptom that the movie industry is on its way out, in much the same way as has happened to music. They were flush with cash during the early 2000s thanks to TV and DVD. It was like a golden age with lots of studios producing unusual material. The problem is the internet has damaged their tiered selling technique, yet their projects are still as expensive and risky.
- thewopr 10y ago
  But what's interesting is that TV is having such a different trajectory (TV as in video packaged as episodes, the lines have blurred). Netflix and the like. I often wonder if TV is winning because it has built-in sequels. If a series doesn't stick, whatever, money lost. If a new series does well, you can milk it for many many more seasons. TV vs Movies, the risk in cost is the same but the upside is much higher for TV.
  - tw04 10y ago
    That's because instead of trying to fill 3 movies, TV can just flow naturally until it's done. Yes, for some shows they end up with filler either because they want to drag it out, or they don't have quite enough to fill an entire last season... but for the most part it feels like TV shows don't have that pressure to fit into a very tight box.
    - sirclueless 10y ago
      for the most part it feels like TV shows don't have that pressure to fit into a very tight box. Don't they? I feel like TV is a lot more constrained than movies. The forced "last time on XYZ" cadence means that it's very difficult to have natural story-lines when things need to be wrapped up in a suitable emotional resolution and/or cliffhanger every 22 or 45 minutes. Especially when the writers are working with 25% of the screen time being commercials (thankfully much less of a problem with Digital-first TV from Netflix, HBO etc.). I think it's a lot easier to write and produce a quality movie about just about anything. Yes the mass-produced sequel machines look pretty cookie cutter, but you also get some extremely well-told stories like In Bruges or Wes Anderson's stuff. There's anything-goes stuff like Swiss Army Man. I feel like this kind of thing couldn't realistically be produced for TV. The acting, writing, and production value falls off a cliff very quickly as soon as you leave the mainstream. Even a single season of a TV show means 6-10x as much content as a movie, and consistently conforming to the structure of a serial TV show means the content feels inevitably more repetitious.
neveroffensive 10y ago
Am I the only one who kind of liked Suicide Squad? I mean the sound track was great...
- madebysquares 10y ago
  Suicide Squad was very entertaining sure it had a few missteps but it's not that bad. I mean was anybody expecting Inception? It was far more enjoyable than Man of Steel or BVS or Pan or many of the other bombs WB has made recently.
- sethammons 10y ago
  I feel like the DC movies are stepping in the right direction. I enjoyed Suicide Squad.
basicplus2 10y ago
This resonates with me too.. similar to screw over workers who get the job done and steal all the I'll gotten gains with a personal payrise..
native 10y ago
Hollywood. What does that even mean anymore ? They've run out of good ideas along that ago and with all the writing talent in the world to boot. And its's not by accident. You've got MBA execs with not a atom in their soul about art or creativity calling the shots.
alexandercrohde 10y ago
The thing that I think makes this letter great, and the reason I upvoted it on a tech site, that I haven't seen anybody else mention yet is this: it's a universal point. Movies aside, I think his point applies to a lot of other industries, "If I worked at a donut stand, and I kept fucking up donuts, I'd be fired. Even if I made a tiny decent one every now and then, it doesn't matter. I'm gonna get fired." I have found this myself in tech, that often those held as icons of genius are often held to lower standards and have the potential to do much more damage than those at the bottom. For example, a startup may have an awful product yet the pressure always trickles down to engineers to make it 10% faster or get in trouble. Yet so often it seems not to be that 10% delivery rate that separates a unicorn from a failure. It's a truly novel idea, a great design, and architects who can implement that vision in a stable and smooth way.
- 20yrs_no_equity 10y ago
  My experience made me identify with this letter very closely-- in broad generalized terms, you often have "management" which is a bunch of "business" people who are directing "creatives" (whether software engineers or movie artists) based on the management's perception of the state of the market. Unfortunately, there is always a tendency to believe your own PR, believe you know more about things than you do, and to believe that, because you're on top and they are on bottom, you know better. You see this in startups also when the "management" is a 20 year old CEO who just graduated business school, as much as when he is a 60 year old who has worked in the industry (but whose background is not in actually making things). This is the big gulf between the makers and the managers. And I think the correct response is, as makers, to make sure we are managed by other makers. An engineer in the CEO role can manage a VP of marketing, or a VP of sales or a VP of engineering fine. Find a VP of marketing who wants to do customer discovery, find a VP of sales who can close (and incentivize him to do so, if he's not hungry don't hire him) and you'll do better, in my experience, than a CEO who doesn't understand how software is made (and subsequently keeps inadvertently undermining his own products as a result.) Apologies if this seems like a bit of a rant- this is a comment on a letter that is a rant, though-- but I've seen this over and over and over in the past 30 years working for technology startups. I would say having a technical CEO has a positive order of magnitude improvement on the outcome, and liklihood of a liquidity event and the size of that liquidity event, in my experience. It lowers risks many ways, including increasing retention of your most valuable employees. (One of the key things that business people can't seem to get over is the idea that commoditizing employees leads to hiring what Paul Graham calls "blub" programmers, but that if you hire great programmers you can't treat them like cogs or they will leave.)
eggy 10y ago
Great letter especially mixing in love of the material, and company vs. poor leadership and execution. It's a shame, since this is an amazing time for comics/fantasy fans around the world. So many old properties being mashed up, brought to the screen, and a younger generation eager to watch them. I wonder if it has stolen a large part of the Western anime market? Edge of Tomorrow was a sneaky surprise. I've seen it several times, and my children loved it. A lot of fun for such a simple premise. I wasn't aware it didn't do well fiscally, since everyone I know loved it. I guess it might be doing better on DVD/digital release? I grew up in the late 60s early 70s, and it was always DC vs. Marvel. As much as I appreciated Batman and Superman back then, even though Batman wasn't a thing for me until Frank Miller in 1986, I was a Marvel fan. Spiderman, because he was a local boy, the underdog, and kids in my neighborhood could relate. I guess I will wait for Suicide Squad on DVD/digital, and not waste the theater ticket. [Edit] Pretty strong objections from Director of Wonder Woman, Patty Jenkins, basically saying the letter misinformation - https://twitter.com/PattyJenks?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw https://twitter.com/PattyJenks?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
jfoutz 10y ago
To throw things in a greek setting, Marvel is traditionally comedy and DC is tragedy. Iron Man is a drunken, womanizing asshole. Robert Downey Jr was is brilliant because he's still likeable. Sure, he's rich, but his life is a mess. You can look down on him. He's a fun guy, you want him to make it, but he's still kind of a scumbag. Christopher Nolan's Batman is the opposite. Sure, he's rich, but he's facing some big demons. There's a note of sadness, because in spite of his advantages, he faces some terrible challenges. You feel for the guy, because he suffers so much. Marvel is relatable, at least i'm handling my life better than that guy. DC is aspirational, i wish i was strong enough to handle what they handle. This is a sweeping generalization, but i think it's generally true. I've seen most of the movies the author called out, and i enjoyed them. I can't say i enjoyed them enough to see in a theater, but they're fun. I think of them as Saturday afternoon matinee movies. I like movies. I don't mind flaws, but those popcorn movies are something i'll wait to watch on a Tuesday night with a couple of beers. I think warner's big problem is they're spending 100+ million dollars to produce something that's in the 20-60 million range. I'll watch them, independent of production value, because i like movies. But i'm going to get the $2.99 SD itunes version, i'm not going to spend the 12 bucks to see that in the theater. (i did see suicide squad opening night, but the ticket was free) I hope they figure it out. WB made some great stuff, and some fun stuff. They're just not quite calibrated right. If you're going to blow 100M+ on a movie, you really need the details right. Calling back to Suicide squad, it was fun. I really enjoyed it, and i'd be happy to pay 3-5 dollars on a weeknight to watch it. If i had to pay $12 for the ticket, and another $10 for the popcorn and soda (how can you not get popcorn and soda?!? it completes the experience!) I'd be annoyed.
- sandworm101 10y ago
  Iron man is a jerk. He is the embodiment of all that is wrong with our economy. But that is why the Marvel movies work. That's what I like about them. The characters are human enough for me to actually care. Superman? He is too flat for me to have any opinion. For all the bluster, the MCU is full of metaphor and leveled humor. My favorite is the 1-minute WWII skit in Avengers (The old jewish man about to be killed by the german, saved by the soldier who then needs the scientist to force a surrender ... that's the american story of WWII.) It isn't historically accurate, but it's fun. You don't see stuff like that in the DC movies. They have no metaphor, no depth. That requires writers and crews who both care about the work and aren't afraid for their jobs.
Grue3 10y ago
Didn't Suicide Squad break the box office record? This whole post reads like sour grapes.
- 20yrs_no_equity 10y ago
  It was a fun movie, but it was weak in a lot of the same ways that Batman vs Superman were weak. So, I see the criticism. Well and poorly executed movies both can connect with the audience, but the author of the letter presumably believes that well executed movies are more likely to do so.
mouzogu 10y ago
Is there some reason that Zack Snyder is allowed to keep directing and producing these mediocre films? It's clear that storytelling is not his strength. So what is it exactly that's keeping him in the directors chair?

130 points by legodt 10y ago

kiba 10y ago

I wonder why story quality in movies such a toss-up? They got screenwriters, producers, and editors, right? You think movie studios should had managed to figure out 'consistent quality' by now.

skyrw 10y ago
Isn't that a bit like asking why hasn't microsoft managed to figure out "consistent bug-free software' by now.
- kiba 10y ago
  By consistency, I mean a certain standard of quality, not that it's bug-free. There's a certain level of quality that firms like Google and Microsoft wouldn't be caught dead writing. If the same movie studio produce garbages between blockbusters, then I am wondering what's the hell wrong with their quality control process.
  - dpitkin 10y ago
    I might suggest that Wave and Vista are obvious projects Google and Microsoft wrote and below a standard of quality, and akin to a bad movie from WB. Google+ and Windows 8 could be considered bad sequels.
    - nneonneo 10y ago
      I don't think either Wave nor Vista were poor quality products, same way I don't think Glass nor Phone were poor products. The engineering on all of these is fine for the most part. Sure, there are bugs, but not really any more than usual. The real problem is that nobody really wanted these products in the first place. For Wave, most users didn't seem to figure out what Wave was actually useful for (and it didn't help that Google wasn't sure either). For Vista, people liked XP and dragging them kicking and screaming into a software upgrade turned out to be really hard. Vista set the architectural foundation for future Windows releases, and Microsoft had an obligation to take people off of what was then a 5-year-old operating system - much like OS X 10.0 attempted to do. Nobody seems to pay much attention to the fact that 10.0 was incredibly buggy and took quite some time to bring up to a usable state.
    - justinlardinois 10y ago
      Vista was just bad marketing. After that whole fiasco Microsoft did market tests where they presented consumers with a "new version" of Windows that was actually just Vista, and they got a positive response. And even if you don't believe that story completely, the fact that Windows 7 wasn't all that different from Vista and yet got just as popular as XP was says a lot.
      - Throwaway23412 10y ago
        >the fact that Windows 7 wasn't all that different from Vista Say what now? I don't know if you remember but Vista had really high hardware requirements. When Vista came out, it was fundamentally unusable for me. Hardware requirements is literally the first section of criticism in Vista's Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista#Hardware_requirements_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista#Hardware_require...): >For example, Mike Nash (Corporate Vice President, Windows Product Management) commented, "I now have a $2,100 e-mail machine" because his laptop's lack of an appropriate graphics chip so hobbled Vista. Windows 7 made substantial performance improvements in comparison to the widespread hardware incompatibilities that Vista had.
ArkyBeagle 10y ago
They'd rather die. And there's many a slip between the cup and the lip. There's too many moving parts - Huston shot "Sierra Madre" on something approximating 16MM on tripods with only tequila for accessories. When digital gets to the "16MM" phase, but with people who learned the agonizing details in the studio system 'we'll have it again. Oh wait...
- aerovistae 10y ago
  wait what
- Animats 10y ago
  In the 1990s, when I was working on animation software, I was told something like that by a major Hollywood director. He'd directed some of the early films that had both animation and live acting. The costs were high. What he really wanted was to get the overhead down, so he could make first-rate films for about $20M. At the time, "Reboot", the first all 3D cartoon, was being cranked out at one episode per week by 30 people. He was hoping the technology would let him produce feature films with a similar sized staff. The idea was to pull in set models from a "digital back lot", green-screen in the actors, and go. The technology didn't deliver that. Instead of a cast of thousands of actors, we now need thousands of animators. Look at the credits for any action movie today. There's just too much custom modeling, artwork, move matching, and manual editing of the edges of clipping paths. (The last two are outsourced grunt work and likely to be automated soon.) Viewers wanted photorealism, and that requires as much detail work as set-building. People have tried to do CG action features on the cheap. "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" was supposed to be one. But that cost $70 million, and only made $54 million. (The semi-noir look didn't help. Done better, it might have been a franchise like Captain America.) Iron Sky (budget $10M, box office $8.1M) almost a decade later had much better effects; the CG isn't as obvious. Other than low-budget horror features, most notably "Paranormal Activity", there haven't been many successful low-budget action movies in recent years.
bennesvig 10y ago
There are so many moving parts that it's so easy to screw up. An amazing script can get ruined by a bad director, actors, editor, executives with bad notes, etc. Also, I'm sure with so much money involved, people are more likely to meddle in the director's vision so you get too many cooks in the kitchen.
jedberg 10y ago
Sunk cost fallacy. A director shoots bad material, they don't go back and start over. They make due with what they have because of what they've already spent on it. Disney does the opposite. Look at what we've heard about the Rogue One -- the studio felt that it was good but not great and sent them back for a whole bunch of (expensive) reshoots. Pixar does the same. If they don't like the final product they'll rip it apart and do it again.
- manarth 10y ago
  > "If they don't like the final product they'll rip it apart and do it again" Sometimes twice! http://thenextweb.com/media/2012/05/21/how-pixars-toy-story-2-was-deleted-twice-once-by-technology-and-again-for-its-own-good/#gref http://thenextweb.com/media/2012/05/21/how-pixars-toy-story-...
- sangnoir 10y ago
  > If they don't like the final product they'll rip it apart and do it again. WB dies that too, but they can't seem to do it right. In the aftermath of Batman v Superman flopping, WB panicked and asked Ayer to "punch up" Suicide Squad adding more humor and faster pacing - this included reshoots. SS wasn't originally meant to be a blockbuster, but an end of summer fun movie
- aidenn0 10y ago
  FWIW according to the Rogue One filmmakers, the reshoots were planned for and fit in with the already planned shots. Nothing like what happened with Toy Story 2.

thewopr 10y ago

I am not an insider but wow, this really resonated with me. > We pursued a potentially great summer movie like Edge of Tomorrow and completely botched its release. Edge of Tomorrow was a pretty solid movie. I would absolutely have gone to it in the theater, but the marketing just did not connect with me. I've run into this with a number of movies now.

kiba 10y ago
Edge of Tomorrow was a hollywoodized happy version of the original Japanese novel, which ended on a very bittersweet note.
- thewopr 10y ago
  Hmmm, I didn't know that. Will have to read. Thanks.
  - kiba 10y ago
    The title is All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka for anyone who don't know.
- IOT_Apprentice 10y ago
  Doesn't detract from it being a great movie.
- Cyph0n 10y ago
  The movie had a much better execution in my opinion, mainly thanks to the masterful editing throughout. The light novel was OK but nothing great.
- moultano 10y ago
  The original novel is terrible though. Everything that was interesting or moving in it was invented for the movie.
  - clevernickname 10y ago

ekianjo 10y ago

A decent article, but the end weakens it bad: > I love that studio, and you're allowing it to sink. It's not about making movies for 'the fans' and not 'the critics.' It's not even about 'ruining childhoods.' It's about protecting livelihoods. Companies do not exist to make their employees happy and employed forever. The fact that they do is because it goes with their interest for a given amount of time, but that does not mean it always do. Pretending it's the company goal to "protect livelihoods" is just wrong. Companies are not welfare agents.

slantedview 10y ago
This misses the point of the article entirely. The point was that when leadership screws up, the lower level employees suffer. No accountability at the top.
- CamatHN 10y ago
  The top has to have the ability and leeway for things to go wrong so that they can take risks. To make sure they take the right risks they are stakeing a % of their pay if its in options or bonuses as well as in their reputation.
  - dpark 10y ago
    > To make sure they take the right risks they are stakeing a % of their pay if its in options or bonuses as well as in their reputation. Did you manage to hold a straight face while you wrote that? The people at the top still walk away with millions or more when they screw up. The people at the bottom walk away with very little. Whether the risks are worth taking is a good question, but certainly the people at the top don't feel the bulk of the pain if the risks don't pay off.
  - joshAg 10y ago
    No one's arguing that they shouldn't have that leeway and ability. They're saying it's shitty that people on the bottom get punished as a result of risks taken because of that leeway.
  - 10y ago

privateersman 10y ago

I think this is a symptom that the movie industry is on its way out, in much the same way as has happened to music. They were flush with cash during the early 2000s thanks to TV and DVD. It was like a golden age with lots of studios producing unusual material. The problem is the internet has damaged their tiered selling technique, yet their projects are still as expensive and risky.

thewopr 10y ago
But what's interesting is that TV is having such a different trajectory (TV as in video packaged as episodes, the lines have blurred). Netflix and the like. I often wonder if TV is winning because it has built-in sequels. If a series doesn't stick, whatever, money lost. If a new series does well, you can milk it for many many more seasons. TV vs Movies, the risk in cost is the same but the upside is much higher for TV.
- tw04 10y ago
  That's because instead of trying to fill 3 movies, TV can just flow naturally until it's done. Yes, for some shows they end up with filler either because they want to drag it out, or they don't have quite enough to fill an entire last season... but for the most part it feels like TV shows don't have that pressure to fit into a very tight box.
  - sirclueless 10y ago
    for the most part it feels like TV shows don't have that pressure to fit into a very tight box. Don't they? I feel like TV is a lot more constrained than movies. The forced "last time on XYZ" cadence means that it's very difficult to have natural story-lines when things need to be wrapped up in a suitable emotional resolution and/or cliffhanger every 22 or 45 minutes. Especially when the writers are working with 25% of the screen time being commercials (thankfully much less of a problem with Digital-first TV from Netflix, HBO etc.). I think it's a lot easier to write and produce a quality movie about just about anything. Yes the mass-produced sequel machines look pretty cookie cutter, but you also get some extremely well-told stories like In Bruges or Wes Anderson's stuff. There's anything-goes stuff like Swiss Army Man. I feel like this kind of thing couldn't realistically be produced for TV. The acting, writing, and production value falls off a cliff very quickly as soon as you leave the mainstream. Even a single season of a TV show means 6-10x as much content as a movie, and consistently conforming to the structure of a serial TV show means the content feels inevitably more repetitious.

neveroffensive 10y ago

Am I the only one who kind of liked Suicide Squad? I mean the sound track was great...

madebysquares 10y ago
Suicide Squad was very entertaining sure it had a few missteps but it's not that bad. I mean was anybody expecting Inception? It was far more enjoyable than Man of Steel or BVS or Pan or many of the other bombs WB has made recently.
sethammons 10y ago
I feel like the DC movies are stepping in the right direction. I enjoyed Suicide Squad.

basicplus2 10y ago

This resonates with me too.. similar to screw over workers who get the job done and steal all the I'll gotten gains with a personal payrise..

native 10y ago

Hollywood. What does that even mean anymore ? They've run out of good ideas along that ago and with all the writing talent in the world to boot. And its's not by accident. You've got MBA execs with not a atom in their soul about art or creativity calling the shots.

alexandercrohde 10y ago

The thing that I think makes this letter great, and the reason I upvoted it on a tech site, that I haven't seen anybody else mention yet is this: it's a universal point. Movies aside, I think his point applies to a lot of other industries, "If I worked at a donut stand, and I kept fucking up donuts, I'd be fired. Even if I made a tiny decent one every now and then, it doesn't matter. I'm gonna get fired." I have found this myself in tech, that often those held as icons of genius are often held to lower standards and have the potential to do much more damage than those at the bottom. For example, a startup may have an awful product yet the pressure always trickles down to engineers to make it 10% faster or get in trouble. Yet so often it seems not to be that 10% delivery rate that separates a unicorn from a failure. It's a truly novel idea, a great design, and architects who can implement that vision in a stable and smooth way.

20yrs_no_equity 10y ago
My experience made me identify with this letter very closely-- in broad generalized terms, you often have "management" which is a bunch of "business" people who are directing "creatives" (whether software engineers or movie artists) based on the management's perception of the state of the market. Unfortunately, there is always a tendency to believe your own PR, believe you know more about things than you do, and to believe that, because you're on top and they are on bottom, you know better. You see this in startups also when the "management" is a 20 year old CEO who just graduated business school, as much as when he is a 60 year old who has worked in the industry (but whose background is not in actually making things). This is the big gulf between the makers and the managers. And I think the correct response is, as makers, to make sure we are managed by other makers. An engineer in the CEO role can manage a VP of marketing, or a VP of sales or a VP of engineering fine. Find a VP of marketing who wants to do customer discovery, find a VP of sales who can close (and incentivize him to do so, if he's not hungry don't hire him) and you'll do better, in my experience, than a CEO who doesn't understand how software is made (and subsequently keeps inadvertently undermining his own products as a result.) Apologies if this seems like a bit of a rant- this is a comment on a letter that is a rant, though-- but I've seen this over and over and over in the past 30 years working for technology startups. I would say having a technical CEO has a positive order of magnitude improvement on the outcome, and liklihood of a liquidity event and the size of that liquidity event, in my experience. It lowers risks many ways, including increasing retention of your most valuable employees. (One of the key things that business people can't seem to get over is the idea that commoditizing employees leads to hiring what Paul Graham calls "blub" programmers, but that if you hire great programmers you can't treat them like cogs or they will leave.)

eggy 10y ago

Great letter especially mixing in love of the material, and company vs. poor leadership and execution. It's a shame, since this is an amazing time for comics/fantasy fans around the world. So many old properties being mashed up, brought to the screen, and a younger generation eager to watch them. I wonder if it has stolen a large part of the Western anime market? Edge of Tomorrow was a sneaky surprise. I've seen it several times, and my children loved it. A lot of fun for such a simple premise. I wasn't aware it didn't do well fiscally, since everyone I know loved it. I guess it might be doing better on DVD/digital release? I grew up in the late 60s early 70s, and it was always DC vs. Marvel. As much as I appreciated Batman and Superman back then, even though Batman wasn't a thing for me until Frank Miller in 1986, I was a Marvel fan. Spiderman, because he was a local boy, the underdog, and kids in my neighborhood could relate. I guess I will wait for Suicide Squad on DVD/digital, and not waste the theater ticket. [Edit] Pretty strong objections from Director of Wonder Woman, Patty Jenkins, basically saying the letter misinformation - https://twitter.com/PattyJenks?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw https://twitter.com/PattyJenks?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

jfoutz 10y ago

To throw things in a greek setting, Marvel is traditionally comedy and DC is tragedy. Iron Man is a drunken, womanizing asshole. Robert Downey Jr was is brilliant because he's still likeable. Sure, he's rich, but his life is a mess. You can look down on him. He's a fun guy, you want him to make it, but he's still kind of a scumbag. Christopher Nolan's Batman is the opposite. Sure, he's rich, but he's facing some big demons. There's a note of sadness, because in spite of his advantages, he faces some terrible challenges. You feel for the guy, because he suffers so much. Marvel is relatable, at least i'm handling my life better than that guy. DC is aspirational, i wish i was strong enough to handle what they handle. This is a sweeping generalization, but i think it's generally true. I've seen most of the movies the author called out, and i enjoyed them. I can't say i enjoyed them enough to see in a theater, but they're fun. I think of them as Saturday afternoon matinee movies. I like movies. I don't mind flaws, but those popcorn movies are something i'll wait to watch on a Tuesday night with a couple of beers. I think warner's big problem is they're spending 100+ million dollars to produce something that's in the 20-60 million range. I'll watch them, independent of production value, because i like movies. But i'm going to get the $2.99 SD itunes version, i'm not going to spend the 12 bucks to see that in the theater. (i did see suicide squad opening night, but the ticket was free) I hope they figure it out. WB made some great stuff, and some fun stuff. They're just not quite calibrated right. If you're going to blow 100M+ on a movie, you really need the details right. Calling back to Suicide squad, it was fun. I really enjoyed it, and i'd be happy to pay 3-5 dollars on a weeknight to watch it. If i had to pay $12 for the ticket, and another $10 for the popcorn and soda (how can you not get popcorn and soda?!? it completes the experience!) I'd be annoyed.

sandworm101 10y ago
Iron man is a jerk. He is the embodiment of all that is wrong with our economy. But that is why the Marvel movies work. That's what I like about them. The characters are human enough for me to actually care. Superman? He is too flat for me to have any opinion. For all the bluster, the MCU is full of metaphor and leveled humor. My favorite is the 1-minute WWII skit in Avengers (The old jewish man about to be killed by the german, saved by the soldier who then needs the scientist to force a surrender ... that's the american story of WWII.) It isn't historically accurate, but it's fun. You don't see stuff like that in the DC movies. They have no metaphor, no depth. That requires writers and crews who both care about the work and aren't afraid for their jobs.

Grue3 10y ago

Didn't Suicide Squad break the box office record? This whole post reads like sour grapes.

20yrs_no_equity 10y ago
It was a fun movie, but it was weak in a lot of the same ways that Batman vs Superman were weak. So, I see the criticism. Well and poorly executed movies both can connect with the audience, but the author of the letter presumably believes that well executed movies are more likely to do so.

mouzogu 10y ago

Is there some reason that Zack Snyder is allowed to keep directing and producing these mediocre films? It's clear that storytelling is not his strength. So what is it exactly that's keeping him in the directors chair?