Movies We Want and
Movies We Need
I told a huge lie when I wrote about The Marvel Cinematic
Universe before the release of Avengers:
Infinity War:
“Infinity War will
arrive soon, and you can bet I’ll be reviewing it as soon as I get a chance to
see it, so stay tuned!”
What happened, Clayton?

2018 hasn’t been a great year for movies for me, personally,
and I’ve been struggling to figure out why, when it seems like general
movie-goers are enjoying the content being pumped out by Hollywood for the most
part. I think I’ve figured out the reason, with the recent release of Solo: A Star Wars Story, the latest
adventure in a galaxy far, far away, which has people talking and arguing once
again.
The last big movie that really hit it home for me (and,
without coincidence, is the last movie I reviewed positively on my blog) was Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi.
Many fans—in fact, most, I’d say—were mixed to negative on it, mainly because
they felt it got Star Wars wrong. If
anything, I felt it got Star Wars
right in places where the previous Episode
VII: The Force Awakens stumbled. Writer/Director Rian Johnson made bold,
unexpected decisions with the characters and delivered a far more unique story
than Force Awakens’ basic rehash of A New Hope.
But fans didn’t want that. So what did they want? Here’s a quote from Mark Hamill, about working on Last Jedi with Rian Johnson.
“Last Jedi was
incredibly daring…I would say ‘we really have to think about what the audience
expects and what they want. He says ‘no, no, we have to do the opposite, we
have to give them something they don’t expect that we want.’”
I champion this kind of writing mentality. Sure, not
everything in Last Jedi paid off as a
result of this approach, but it certainly made for an exceedingly more
interesting film to watch and discuss. More interesting in comparison to what,
you might ask? Well Solo wasn’t
particularly engaging, story wise.
In case you don’t know, Solo
is the second of Disney’s standalone Star
Wars films set outside the main episodic storyline, with the previous one
having been 2016’s Rogue One (check out
my review on it for more thoughts). When Solo
was announced, right away people went, “an origin story about Han Solo? Who
wants to see that?” According to the
box office, not many. It made less than 100 million opening weekend, which was
considered a flop.

I’ve seen headlines like “Solo Box Office Disappoints: Does
Star Wars Need to Shift Focus?” “Star Wars: How Many Movies is Too Many?” “Boba
Fett Movie Announced: Do Star Wars Fans Want This Movie?”
That last one is what struck me. Do fans want this movie? Since when do fans know
what they want?
And that’s the key to all of this, to my lack of enthusiasm
for the big movies in 2018. All of the biggest movies these days are being
produced with the fans in mind. Every one of these big tent pole blockbuster movies
has to be a crowd-pleaser, in such
specific ways. You have to have x, y, and z in there so people will stand up
out of their seats and clap and cheer and point at the screen and say “I know
what that is!” And I’m not even exaggerating.
People don’t know what they want. They think they do, but
they don’t. With these blockbusters, whether we’re talking superhero movies or Jurassic Park movies or Star Wars or whatever, they’re just
focusing on what people want and making more of it. I admit to not knowing much
about the true intricacies of producing large Hollywood films, but all I can go
on is what is presented at the theaters week in and week out.
I need to pump the brakes for a second. To gain some
perspective, this isn’t exactly a new tactic. Movies that gain success are
always milked for all their worth. Why are there 3 Robocop movies or 11 Friday
the 13th movies (not counting the remakes)? Because the first
ones made money. Of course Hollywood has always been a business, and always
will be a business, but it seems like every year there are fewer new attempts
to make the next big thing and more and more rehashes of the same old stuff. We
are firmly stuck in an age of nostalgia.
Let me go back to Last
Jedi. I didn’t just like it
because it did unexpected things. In fact, some critics have cited its attempts
to thwart audience expectations as a huge flaw in the film; risks were taken
purely to be shocking, not to pay off in any dramatic sense, and I can
understand where these critics are coming from. But, I interpreted what I saw
as a clear vision from a filmmaker who knew what he wanted to do, and I enjoyed
seeing that. What I didn’t like about Rogue
One was it felt like the studio cobbled together some “cool” Star Wars elements and put them into
what ended up feeling like the biggest, most-expensive fan film I had ever
seen. There was no original angle or vision or story that I could see and latch
onto, just lots of hollow visual effects without any interesting characters or
plot elements to back it up.
Back to Solo. Why
are people not head over heels about it? It answers questions fans have been
asking for decades, after all. What did Han Solo mean when he said the
Millennium Falcon made the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs? How did Han meet
Chewie, and Lando? Seeing all of these things answered in a film is purely fan
service, not because it helps paint a clearer picture of the character or tell
parts of a missing story. I think a big reason for Solo’s disappointment is that it’s only been five months since the
last Star Wars movie.
Star Wars isn’t
the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it feels like Disney is trying to make it
the next one of those. Let’s remember that the Marvel Cinematic Universe
started only ten years ago, and from the beginning, fans have been conditioned
to expect the next movie in the ongoing tale in a relatively short amount of
time. With Star Wars, it’s utterly
different. The original trilogy had three years between each film, and for a
long time, those three movies were it. Then the prequels came, but they weren’t
furthering the story. It was all backtracking. Still, three years between each.
That’s six movies, over the course of nearly thirty years. All of a sudden,
we’ve had four Star Wars movies over
the course of four years, two of which are prequels, and to paraphrase Willy
Wonka, it certainly shows no signs of slowing. Love them or hate them, these Disney
Star Wars films all have the distinct
sense of having been made with the fans in mind, catering to what they think
fans want (especially with the standalone films). This still applies to Last Jedi, even if, as far as I’m
concerned, it is the most original and least-concerned with “fans” of all
four. Do you really think there was
someone who sat down at a meeting at Lucasfilm and pitched an original, bold
vision for a Han Solo origin movie? I highly doubt it.
Love them or hate them, you have to at least give George
Lucas a pinch of credit when it came to doing the Star Wars prequels. He did some things in those movies out of fan
service, yes, but not everything. You think he went “I know fans would love to
find out that the force is really microscopic organisms!” He thought that was a good idea, and he
went with it. I’m not saying it was a
good idea, but kudos to him for
having an original idea and sticking
with it, not thinking about what the fans might like when it came to every
little detail.

Not every example of a film made specifically for fans is
bad, though. In 2016, we got Deadpool,
which was a significantly different take on the superhero genre than what we
had been used to seeing in recent years. It was R-rated, edgy, funny, and went
hard. Not only did hard-core Deadpool
fans rejoice at the character finally getting his own movie, it appealed to a
wide audience, and was hugely successful. Now this year, we got Deadpool 2, which although a pretty good
sequel, I thought, didn’t feel as hard or fresh as the original.
While I’m on the topic of 2018 movies, what about Avengers: Infinity War, anyway? I think
what I liked the most about it was how unexpected it was, kind of like The Last Jedi. Infinity War paired up characters I didn’t think would get to share
the screen together, characters I expected to have limited cameos had full,
well-constructed scenes, the storyline was layered and interesting, and it
didn’t simply rehash what we had seen before. Having said that, it’s still just
another big Marvel movie, so I can’t get that excited about it, because I’ve
been getting excited about the same kind of movie for so many years now, it’s
starting to wear thin.

So what am I trying to get at with all of this yammering? Do
I just hate modern movies now? No, I’m certainly not saying that, and I’m not
even saying that I hate all the franchises I once loved. I did like Avengers: Infinity
War, I hope The Predator reenergizes the franchise and lives up to the
original. I just don’t put as much stock in new entries in existing franchises
as I once did.

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