People bitch about it all the time. Why do bad things happen to good people? And why do good things happen to bad movies?
Summer after summer, year after year, movie studios put out formulaic romances, low-brow action flicks, and moronic comedies. Bad movies, sequels, remakes, spinoffs, imitations, and the like keep our air-conditioned movie houses full and our film critics cringing.
Everyone notices the trend, though they may not agree on its cause. Studios keep churning out charmless wastes of time like Miss Congeniality and Speed 2: Cruise Control - not to pick on Sandra Bullock - instead of supporting more dramatic and artistic work. To twist the knife a bit, studios then make bad sequels instead of attacking bold new material.
With rare exceptions (such as the Terminator series), the original film is usually better than the sequel, even if the original was horrible. You're welcome to try to disagree, but the examples are so numerous that it's not worth arguing about. How about Mannequin v. Mannequin 2: On the Move? Or Sister Act v. Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit? And all nostalgic respect to Mannequin aside, this applies to good movies, too, not just dreck. Father of the Bride (the Steve Martin version, and yes, I realize that it's a remake) deserves all the praise you can think to heap on it. Father of the Bride Part II, on the other hand, deserves nothing. Please don't watch it.
While these sequels may stink, they at least followed reasonably successful originals. Money motivates studio executives just as it does anyone else earning a living off of entertainment. If the upcoming crop of releases looks dismal, making a sequel to a profitable movie just to rake in some cash makes sense, even if it doesn't justify making a rotten, lifeless film.
So the sin deepens: why make bad sequels to bad movies? It's bad enough to follow up good work with tripe, but why subject the public to multiple Mortal Kombat or Weekend at Bernie's installments?
Don't start patting yourself on the back. Studios continue to make sequels because people continue to pay for them. Because you continue to pay for them. They made two sequels to Mortal Kombat because the original was profitable.
It's the basic ecology of movies. Studios want to make money. Therefore, movies exist because the studio thinks they will be profitable. If no one had seen the first Mortal Kombat, there would have been no sequels.
And don't claim that you wish things were different but that the American public has poor taste in film. You cannot blame the uncultured "public" for bad movies (or bad music, or anything else) because you are the American public.
American entertainment is a capitalist market. If you don't like the movies in theaters, don't go see one anyway; don't go see one at all. Call it voting with your wallet, call it voting with your feet, call it not wasting your money, but don't encourage moviemakers to release films that you don't want to see. The theaters don't have a monopoly on entertainment. There are so many things to do in the world that you should never have to settle for something that you expect to waste your time.
This is why Gladiator won Best Picture. This is why The Fast and the Furious did so well. This is why Jerry Bruckheimer can get away with producing Armageddon, Coyote Ugly, and Pearl Harbor. People like it, people want it, people pay for it. Don't fool yourself into thinking that the entertainment business isn't about money. It may not be about money alone, but it's still a business.
And it's quite a business. So long as people like breasts, explosions, and bad acting, Hollywood will be happy to oblige. It takes a lot less time to come up with those than to make something good - and it's a lot less risky.
I don't blame the studios or the producers for making bad movies any more than I blame the record industry for the debatable quality of pop music. Studios make bad movies for the same reason that people keep their money in banks. Who wants to take a huge risk when his livelihood is on the line?
Stop picturing Hollywood as an evil, leering behemoth and start realizing that it's just a mirror the size of a movie screen. The big names may have enough money to market the hell out of anything they want, but I blame the consumer for being dumb enough to buy it.
The bottom line: don't settle for something bad when you know it's bad... and if you do settle, at least stop complaining. If you voted for the wrong side, I'm not about to listen to any whining about the results.
