[brador]

Here's the thing, everyone I speaks to agrees that modern movies are mostly crap. But...why, with their big focus group budgets and such, are the movie studios not listening to this? Or is their output really the best they are being pitched?

[saucetenuto]

Well, two things:

"Everyone you speak to" is probably a group of people very similar to you. That's how most peoples' social groups work, and it's hard to notice because your experience of them tends to factor out the similarities and focus on the differences.

The value of a potential moviegoer is almost a binary function of movie quality: the looks good enough to be worth the price of a ticket, or it doesn't. The marginal value of added quality past that point is slight, at least from a box office perspective. So to maximize revenue, you want your movie to exceed that threshold for as many people as possible. This is why the highest-grossing movies in any given year tend to be family-friendly comedies.

[ericd]

WRT marginal quality, I don't think that word of mouth buzz from great quality can be ignored - one of the ways to build a massive (and massively profitable) franchise like the Dark Knight/The Matrix/Toy Story is by making a really, really good movie.

It's getting a lot harder to "con" people into making a movie a blockbuster via advertising.

[ericd]

WRT marginal quality, I don't think that word of mouth buzz from great quality can be ignored - one of the ways to build a massive (and massively profitable) franchise like the Dark Knight/The Matrix/Toy Story is by making a really, really good movie.

[ericd]

Gah, stupid phone... sorry about this.

[phaus]

Because the most money is made from appealing to the lowest common denominator. There are plenty of awesome T.V. shows, but whenever American Idol and the Real Housewives are on, people ignore them.

For every person who loved the original "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," there are 1000 who just want to see Michael Bay spend $300 million on 120 minutes' worth of animated explosions for a 4th, 5th, and 6th time.

[forcefsck]

The movie industry is being ran by idiots, that's why. They are ready to kill the internet and free speech because they think this will save them a buck.

Anyway, french movies seem more interesting lately. And you can always vote for (with your money) alternative forms of art.