3 ms·

That doesn't really make sense to me - a market of that size ought to have niches and market segmentation. After all, no matter how generic and broad-appealing

by sbacic 5y ago

That doesn't really make sense to me - a market of that size ought to have niches and market segmentation. After all, no matter how generic and broad-appealing the script is, I don't think my 60+ year old mother is going to get excited about the next Marvel movie.

MrScruff 5y ago
Yes but if you're making a movie that costs $200m then it needs to target the average of the planets expectations for a movie to make money. Any divergence from that ends up confusing some of your target audience. Sure this will end up turning off a bunch of people who have tastes that demand something more authentic, but you don't care about that because most peoples tastes are clustered around the mean. Look at pop music for comparison. Or imagine the Apple of the 00s announcing Memoji as a feature.
jiggawatts 5y ago
A great example is Blade Runner 2049. In my opinion, it is essentially a perfect movie. Fantastic music. Gorgeous sets. Great fight scenes. Good story. Interesting characters. Proper science fiction. Most importantly, it stayed true to the original, while still having a novel story, that nonetheless touched on the theme of the original without being overly repetitive like the latest Disney-made Star Wars movies. I thought the movie was basically genious, and I will now watch anything Dennis Villeneuve directs. But if you listen to reviews by typical moviegoers, they panned the movie. "Too slow", "Boring", etc... Interstellar similarly polarised viewers. This is why most movies are made the way they are: to avoid negative reviews by the mass market viewers and hence to maximise profits. Or to put it another way: Their only metric is ticket sales, not the level of your enjoyment. They don't get a cent more if the movie touches your soul.
- TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
  It's a bell curve issue. Most of the audience is close to the centre. If you challenge them too hard and don't give them the roller coaster ride they're paying for and expecting, they get bored and tune out. Subtlety and nuance are not the point. Big Dumb Movies are a theme park ride, and deliberately designed that way.
  - jiggawatts 5y ago
    Precisely.
  - maxerickson 5y ago
    For example though, Interstellar is a convoluted mess, where the resolution depends on the unseen hand of the future humans (with the characters in the film having to take some risks to carry out the plan the future put into place...). Nolan tends to do that though, wrapping science words around some magic thing that is needed to drive the plot.

by sbacic 5y ago

MrScruff 5y ago

Yes but if you're making a movie that costs $200m then it needs to target the average of the planets expectations for a movie to make money. Any divergence from that ends up confusing some of your target audience. Sure this will end up turning off a bunch of people who have tastes that demand something more authentic, but you don't care about that because most peoples tastes are clustered around the mean. Look at pop music for comparison. Or imagine the Apple of the 00s announcing Memoji as a feature.

jiggawatts 5y ago

A great example is Blade Runner 2049. In my opinion, it is essentially a perfect movie. Fantastic music. Gorgeous sets. Great fight scenes. Good story. Interesting characters. Proper science fiction. Most importantly, it stayed true to the original, while still having a novel story, that nonetheless touched on the theme of the original without being overly repetitive like the latest Disney-made Star Wars movies. I thought the movie was basically genious, and I will now watch anything Dennis Villeneuve directs. But if you listen to reviews by typical moviegoers, they panned the movie. "Too slow", "Boring", etc... Interstellar similarly polarised viewers. This is why most movies are made the way they are: to avoid negative reviews by the mass market viewers and hence to maximise profits. Or to put it another way: Their only metric is ticket sales, not the level of your enjoyment. They don't get a cent more if the movie touches your soul.

TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
It's a bell curve issue. Most of the audience is close to the centre. If you challenge them too hard and don't give them the roller coaster ride they're paying for and expecting, they get bored and tune out. Subtlety and nuance are not the point. Big Dumb Movies are a theme park ride, and deliberately designed that way.
- jiggawatts 5y ago
  Precisely.
- maxerickson 5y ago
  For example though, Interstellar is a convoluted mess, where the resolution depends on the unseen hand of the future humans (with the characters in the film having to take some risks to carry out the plan the future put into place...). Nolan tends to do that though, wrapping science words around some magic thing that is needed to drive the plot.